Hans Konrad Schumann (March 28, 1942 – June 20, 1998) was an
East German border guard who escaped to
West Germany during the construction of the
Berlin Wall in 1961.
On 15 August 1961, the 19-year-old Schumann was sent to the corner of Ruppiner Strasse and
Bernauer Strasse to guard the Berlin Wall on its third day of construction. He and his unit arrived at 4:30 AM, where an officer ordered them to take control and protect the border "against the enemies of socialism." Schumann later recalled: "We stood around looking pretty stupid at first. Nobody had told us how that's done: taking control of a border."
At that time and place, the wall was only a single coil of
concertina wire. Throughout the day, as Schumann paced ten steps up and down, West Berlin residents shouted catcalls. "You pigs!" "You traitors!" "You concentration camp guards!"
One scene particularly upset Schumann. A young lady in east Berlin passed a bouquet of flowers over the top of the wire to an older lady in west Berlin, obviously the younger lady's mother, and wished her a happy birthday. The young lady apologized for not being able to visit, then motioned to Schumann and added, "Those [people] over there, they won't let me cross anymore." Schumann started to reconsider whether he really wanted to spend the rest of his working life keeping his fellow citizens imprisoned.
Around noon, a west Berlin crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators approached the wire at Schumann's post. They shouted various slogans, including "
Freiheit (Liberty)." Schumann recalled: "Suddenly the mass of people moved toward us like a living wall. I thought: they're going to run over us right away. I was nervous and didn't know what to do. I didn't want to shoot and I wasn't supposed to."
Before Schumann was forced to act, more soldiers arrived in armoured cars and pushed the crowd back with rifles fixed with
bayonets.
Schumann started to think that he should leave, especially after trucks arrived with concrete posts and steel plates. Over the course of two hours, when no other soldier was watching, he pushed down the same section of wire. West Berlin bystanders started to take notice. One young man came close and Schumann yelled at him "Get back at once", then whispered "I'm going to jump!" The young man alerted the West Berlin police, who showed up with a van.
At roughly 4:00 PM, Schumann jumped over the barbed wire while dropping his
PPSh-41 submachine gun, and was promptly driven away in the van by West Berlin police. West German photographer
Peter Leibing photographed Schumann's escape. The photograph, entitled "Leap into Freedom", has since become an iconic image of the
Cold War era and featured at the beginning of the 1982 Disney film
Night Crossing. The scene, including Schumann's preparations, was also filmed on 16-mm film from the same perspective by
camera operator Dieter Hoffmann.
Schumann went from West Berlin to
West Germany, settling in
Bavaria. In 1962, he met and married Kunigunde Gunda in
Günzburg. They had a son the following year. Schumann took up a new job at a winery and eventually at the Audi car assembly factory in
Ingolstadt, where he worked for nearly 30 years.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall Schumann said, "Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free." Even so, he continued to feel more at home in Bavaria than in his birthplace, citing old frictions with his former colleagues, and was even hesitant to visit his parents and siblings in
Saxony.
On 20 June 1998, suffering from
depression, he committed
suicide,
hanging himself in his orchard near the town of
Kipfenberg in
Upper Bavaria. His body was found by his wife a few hours later.
