How Two Families Flew Over the Iron Curtain in a Homemade Balloon

At half past two in the morning on September 16, 1979, in a forest clearing in East Germany, eight people stand on a steel platform the size of a kitchen table: two couples and four boys aged between two and fifteen. Above them sways a balloon ninety-two feet tall, sewn at home from cloth bought a little at a time, all over the country. It was finished four hours ago. It has never been tested. Then a rope is cut too soon, the platform tips, and the cloth catches fire. This film is the story of how Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel, their wives and their children built that balloon, and of why it took them so long. The magazine from the West that gave them the idea. A first balloon that would not hold air, because the cloth breathed. A second that would not lift eight people. The Strelzyks' flight in July, alone, ending in a forest that told them they were still in the East. Sixteen days in which the balloon hung in the trees while the police hunted for its owners. Then a race against a dragnet that never found them: cloth from more than a hundred places, a police appeal in the newspaper, a new law that raised the sentence to eight years, sick leave running out, an army call-up. And the twenty-eight minutes of the flight itself, in the dark, over a border they crossed without knowing when, until they could ask a policeman, "Are we in the West?" Afterwards the East German police wrote up what had gone wrong, and the Stasi went after the families in the West. Much of this story rests on the families' own words, and on one magazine's paid account. Where the record is uncertain, the film says so, and at the end it sorts what is PROVEN, what is ALLEGED and what is LEGEND. CHAPTERS 0:00 The launch 1:35 A magazine from the West 4:07 Cloth that breathed 6:19 Four on the platform 8:27 Sixteen days 10:08 A little at a time 13:44 Twenty-eight minutes 18:21 Are we in the West? 20:23 The long arm 23:21 The ledger SOURCES Jürgen Petschull, "Das Himmelfahrtskommando", Stern no. 40 (September 27, 1979), pp. 32-38 Günter Wetzel, ballonflucht.de (his own account, with dates and measurements) Michael Getler, "Harrowing Flight From East Germany", The Washington Post (September 28, 1979) "Schlußfolgerungen aus dem schweren Grenzdurchbruch mittels Ballon im Kreis Lobenstein am 16.9.1979", Stasi file BArch MfS BV Gera AOP 564/83, via the Stasi Records Archive media library (stasi-mediathek.de) "Dokumentation über verhinderte spektakuläre Angriffe auf die Staatsgrenze der DDR mittels Ballon und anderer Fluggeräte (September 1979 bis Dezember 1984)", BStU MfS AGM 357, via the Stasi media library Strafgesetzbuch der DDR (the East German criminal code, with amendments), sections 213 and 225 Udo Ludwig and Georg Mascolo, "Was habe ich verbrochen", Der Spiegel 36/1999 (September 6, 1999) Philipp Schnee and Jochen Leffers, "Ein Stoffsack, heiße Luft rein, auf geht's", Spiegel Online (September 27, 2018) Kate Connolly, "Film of daring balloon escape from East revives German identity debate", The Guardian (October 7, 2018) BR24, "Ballonflucht aus der DDR: Aus Feinden wurden Freunde" (September 17, 2024), on the border guard Peter Richter Peter Strelzyk, telephone account to pupils of the Goethe-Gymnasium Gera (September 13, 2002), and his interview for the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte (July 23, 2011) dpa reports and interviews with Frank Riedmann and Günter Wetzel (September 2019), Mauermuseum notice (September 9, 2019), Museum Naila news (2026) Hans-Hermann Hertle, "Grenzverletzer sind festzunehmen oder zu vernichten", and Gerhard Sälter, "Die Todesopfer des Grenzregimes der DDR", bpb (Federal Agency for Civic Education); bpb, "Das Grüne Band" FURTHER READING Schicksal Ballonflucht (1999), the Strelzyk family's book Nur raus hier! (2014), including Günter Wetzel's chapter on the night flight John Dornberg, "The Freedom Balloon", Popular Mechanics (February 1980) "East-West: The Great Balloon Escape", Time (October 1, 1979) Klaus Schroeder and Jochen Staadt (eds.), Die Todesopfer des DDR-Grenzregimes an der innerdeutschen Grenze 1949-1989 (2017) Museum Naila, Ballonflucht exhibition, Naila, Bavaria (where the balloon is kept) MAP DATA The inner German border (the Thuringia-Bavaria state line and the other former East-West state lines), West Berlin, and the places: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), openstreetmap.org/copyright Coastlines and Germany: Natural Earth (public domain)