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East Germany balloon escape

East Germany balloon escape

robertvc

Comments (114)

  • mkmk
    The photo of the balloon here really helps put the story into perspective.https://web.archive.org/web/20190408181736/https://www.museu...
  • nrjames
    Disney made a movie about this called Night Crossing in the early 1980s. More recently, there's a 2018 German movie about it called Balloon.[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774
  • snicky
    This reminds of a person I read about on HN years ago - a Russian guy who escaped from the USSR jumping off a cruise liner and swimming a couple of days to Philippines.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov[1] https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Ocean-Slava-Kurilov-S/dp/965555...
  • VelNZ
    The Damn Interesting podcast (no affiliation, just a huge fan) had an episode on this topic if you prefer to listen to this story: https://www.damninteresting.com/up-in-the-air/
  • mhh__
    Fascinating. Always enjoyed the near-history one can feel in east germany.Europe is obviously very old e.g. I go to a pub back home that's 500 years old, but you can still sort of feel the concrete setting in some parts of Germany. Although saying that it might be that they haven't changed much since and I don't like the future chosen much elsewhere.Or it's just the light temperature... In places that have kept their old street lighting I find it interesting to find angles that look the same now as they did in 1981 (or '71, etc).
  • jryle70
    A reminder of something much bigger, much longer, and far more tragic. People died, families split, a country divided.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people
  • freakynit
    Was curious to know the calculations involved. Found them to be pretty simple.Vibe-coded an online calculator for future escapists: https://balloon-lift-calculator.pagey.site
  • russdill
    One of favorite escapes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Papago_EscapeThey built boats to sail down the Salt River, to the Colorado River, and to Mexico. Of course the salt river is almost always just a dry river bed. It's shocking to me that no dramatization of this escape exists
  • gnatman
    The investment, planning, danger, and dogged persistence… incredible story.
  • adharmad
    Reminds me of George Gamow and his wife's attempts to escape from the Soviet union by kayaking across the Black sea (first attempt) and the Norwegian sea (second attempt) until he was lucky enough to be given permission to visit the Solvay conference and was able to defect using conventional methods (Simply not returning).
  • baud9600
    In Eastern Europe in 1979, those were big sums of money. What an extraordinary story
  • hmokiguess
  • nephihaha
    I first read about this in Reader's Digest back in the eighties.
  • marginalien
    This is so impressive. Survival of the fittest at work.
  • tobyhinloopen
    Poor family members though
  • exabrial
    There was a mcgyver episode about this.
  • jasonwatkinspdx
    My elementary school showed the Disney movie about this at least once a year.
  • thenaturalist
    > East Germany immediately increased border security, closed all small airports close to the border, and ordered the planes kept farther inland.[6] Propane gas tanks became registered products, and large quantities of fabric suitable for balloon construction could no longer be purchased. Mail from East Germany to the two escaped families was prohibited.[12]> Erich Strelzyk learned of his brother's escape on the ZDF news and was arrested in his Potsdam apartment three hours after the landing. The arrest of family members was standard procedure to deter others from attempting escape. He was charged with "aiding and abetting escape", as were Strelzyk's sister Maria and her husband, who were sentenced to 2½ years. The three were eventually released with the help of Amnesty International.People - here in Germany as well as abroad - forget too easily what a sinister but also ridiculous state the GDR was.Authoritarians everywhere belong on the dustpile of history.
  • mothballed
    I'm amazed most of all they were able to keep it under wraps with 4 children involved. I don't think you could pay my children at that age $1 million to keep their mouth shut even under the same risks.
  • SV_BubbleTime
    > Propane gas tanks became registered productsHa. Someone does a thing and the state moves in to regulate. Same as it ever was, apparently.Item registration… not used to prevent crime, just to make it easier to document after it happens.
  • potato3732842
    >hey needed just ten minutes to inflate the balloon and an additional three minutes to heat the air.That's faster than most professionals by a substantial margin. I guess when it matters you make it work.
  • lazysheepherd
    It amazes me that some people will somehow still have the audacity to defend communism...
  • rottencupcakes
    Odd how nobody ever builds a balloon to fly towards the communist utopias.
  • martin-t
    One good metric of quality of life (which includes various freedoms) is how many people emigrate or immigrate.Anybody who defends authoritarians has to explain why so many people want to leave and why the regime wants to keep them in. (With some exceptions such as China which weaponizes emigrants by threatening their families.)
  • TacticalCoder
    Wait... People want to escape from communist countries?
  • anonnon
    The GDR was a showcase state that, much like the DPRK, being on the periphery of the communist block, was propped up by USSR so that direct comparisons with its capitalist neighbor wouldn't be so unflattering. One of the most important forms of assistance the GDR and other satellites received was cheap energy. In the case of the GDR, through the Friendship Pipeline. One only need look at the DPRK to see how vital this assistance was; it was only after the USSR collapsed and Russia turned off the spigot that North Korea started regularly suffering famines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famineAnd yet even with the high (in comparison to other communist states) quality of life people in the GDR enjoyed, people still risked life and limb to escape. You could leave Brazil under its various juntas, Chile under Pinochet, Portugal under Salazar, and Spain under Franco, yet the only option for citizens of the GDR and other communist states (in some cases, still today, e.g., Cuba and the DPRK) was escape and defection.
  • fuckyah
    [dead]
  • DefundPortland
    [flagged]
  • coldtea
    [flagged]
  • stackghost
    >The family members included:> Peter Strelzyk, aged 37> Doris Strelzyk> Frank Strelzyk, aged 15> Andreas Strelzyk, aged 11> Günter Wetzel, aged 24> Petra Wetzel> Peter Wetzel, aged 5> Andreas Wetzel, aged 2Was/is it common practice to omit the ages of adult women in Germany?
  • appreciatorBus
    People will do anything to escape the fruits of marxism. Discoursers today should take note!