Conrad Schumann died at his own hands on 20th June 1998.
Schumann was born on 28th March 1942 in Leuwitz, near Riese on the River Elbe, at the height of the SecondWorld War. Within a few years of his birth, the region in which he lived found itself occupied by forces from the advancing USSR, as they pushed the Nazi army back, entering Germany on 19th January 1945. Berlin capitulated on 2nd May, and the German Army finally surrendered on 7th May. The Russian advance from the East meeting the Allied advance from the West, new international boundaries were drawn up at the Potsdam Conference by the leaders of three of the Allied powers, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill (later succeeded by Clement Attlee) and new American President Harry S Truman. Germany was carved in two, the Soviet dominated east becoming the Communist state the German Democratic Republic, and the west the Federal Republic of Germany. Berlin, situated in the heart of East Germany, was also divided into four zones of control, under Britain, the USA, France and the Soviet Union.
So Schumann grew up as an East German. He later enrolled in the Nationale Volksarmee, received his training in Dresden and was posted to Potsdam, to the south of Berlin. Shortly afterwards, he volunteered for service in the capital. At this time, the East German government was facing an increasing number of its population escaping to the freedom of the West. It was a relatively simple task to cross from East to West Berlin, and from there flying out from the Allied airports. At the start of 1961, over 1500 people were leaving by this route every day, so the East German police increased patrols on the border in an attempt to stem the flow. Among those to have fled from East Germany was Schumann's wife Kunigunde, who had found a new home in Bavaria, in the south of West Germany. With the new patrols, around half of those attempting to escape were intercepted, although the numbers were still too high to be tolerated. Threats by the government that the border would be sealed only increased the desire to cross before it was too late. The country's leader, Walter Ulbricht, assured the world that there would be no wall constructed dividing Berlin, but secret plans were already in place.
Early on 13th August 1961, the 40,000 troops of the Nationale Volksarmee in Berlin, including Schumann, were deployed. Their officers opened the secret orders, and men were moved to the sector boundaries in the city. Before sunrise, vast rolls of barbed wire were stretched along the border of the Soviet zone. As Berliners came out of their houses for work in the morning, they discovered their new city. Crowds gathered on both sides of the fence. On the east side, the soldiers kept the crowds back from the divide, but on the west, they came forward and taunted the guards. The soldiers were unsettled. For 48 hours, they were given no orders except to stop people crossing from the east, not to provoke the crowds on the west, and not to open fire. Moreover, they were not given proper quarters, having to find what shelter they could in the deserted houses in the area, and all they had to eat in the night were cups of soup. On the third day of his guard duty at the corner of Ruppinerstrasse and Bernauerstrasse, feeling demoralised, Schumann took his place at the fence. The crowd, including photographer Peter Leibing, gathered across from him and called for him to come over. Seeing his opportunity, Schumann leapt over the barbed wire, was bundled into a West German police car, and was driven away at high speed.
Shortly afterwards, Schumann was given permission to travel to West Germany proper. Once there, he travelled to Bavaria to find his wife in Gunzburg. However, he was not able to feel truly free while the wall stood. In the years following his escape, a much more substantial barrier was constructed, not only across the centre of Berlin, but also around the rest of West Berlin's border with East Germany, forming an island within the Communist state. It would not be until 9th November 1989 that the wall was brought down, although around 5000 people succeeded in following Schumann's example in defecting to West Berlin.
Even with unification, however, Schumann did not travel back to the east. There was bitterness between him and his former colleagues from whom he had deserted. He did not even feel comfortable visiting his parents, brothers and sisters in Saxony, near the eastern border of Germany. Instead, he remained in Bavaria with his wife. He suffered from depression from that time on and, unable to readjust to life in the new Germany, on 20th June 1998, Schumann hanged himself from a tree in his orchard in Kipfenberg, Oberbayern.