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In 1978, Gunter Wetzel and Peter Strelzyk decided they could no longer live in the communist state of East Germany. So, the two men proceeded to put together an epic project, creating a hot air balloon that would facilitate their flight to freedom over Germany's inner border – that's right; they were going to get their families out of the oppressive, communist state by flying over the border wall that separated East and West Germany.
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In 1978, Gunther Wetzel and Peter Strelzik decided they could no longer live in the oppressive
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communist state of East Germany. Determined to get their families out, the two men made
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the only possible decision. They built a hot air balloon to fly them to freedom over Germany's
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inner border. So today, we're going to take a look at how two families fled East Germany
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in a homemade hot air balloon. In the late 1970s, Peter Strelzik and Gunther Wetzel were
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co-workers who often spoke with one another about getting out of East Germany, a common topic of
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discussion at the time, according to Wetzel. Apart from satisfying the intrinsic human need to scale
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climbable objects, getting over the wall meant escaping the totalitarian rule of the Eastern
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Bloc nation. Straszak and Wetzel couldn't know it then, but East German attempts to cross the Berlin
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Wall, as well as the larger internal border wall, would span three decades, right up until the wall's
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destruction in 1989. What they did know was that not everyone who tried to escape
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was successful, and many tragic deaths occurred over the years the wall stood
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In fact, some 200 people lost their lives attempting to cross the Berlin Wall alone, while some estimates
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put the human life toll on the inner border wall as high as 1,000
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Choosing to climb either barrier to freedom was not something to be taken lightly
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In 1978, Wetzel's sister-in-law, who had escaped some years earlier, came to visit
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bringing with her a newspaper that would change the family's life forever. Inside the paper, Strelzik and Wetzel happened upon a story about an international hot air
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balloon festival that had recently taken place in the United States. That's when light bulbs went
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off. On March 7th of that year, the two men made the decision to fly their families over the border
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wall in a homemade hot air balloon. All they needed to get their idea off the ground was
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approval from their wives. Apparently, fleeing an oppressive regime was similar to the plot of a
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sitcom if instead of throwing a blowout Super Bowl party, Kevin James were trying to smuggle
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two families out of post-war Germany. Wetzel was a bricklayer, and Strelzik was an electrician
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Strelzik had also previously worked as a mechanic for the German Air Force. So they weren't total laypeople when it came to designing and building the balloon for their
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escape. That being said, they weren't exactly experts either. Indeed, nobody is. If anyone
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ever tells you that they are a hot air balloon expert, call the time police, because they are a
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swindler from the 19th century. But both men were bona fide tinkerers
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and they used that hobby to form their great escape plan. They both read everything they could on the mechanics
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of hot air balloons, and even looked at pictures of balloons in flight in order to come up with the formulas they needed to build their getaway vehicle Given that it was the pre era in a hardline communist country that discouraged free thought particularly the free thought of constructing a flying machine to vault
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the Berlin Wall variety, finding balloon building materials in East Germany was no easy feat
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When looking for materials with which to build their hot air balloon, the families had several
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options, none of which involved professional-grade materials purchased from the local Dirigible
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store. Hey, Siri, look up dirigible stores near me. Hmm, apparently it's still not a thing
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Struzik and Wetzel considered all sorts of fabrics for the main body of the balloon
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including tents and umbrellas, bed linens, and taffeta, which is a synthetic material most often
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used in dressmaking. All of the materials were mostly airtight, obviously a very important
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quality for the construction of a balloon that needed to be able to retain hot air
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But the bed linens were the heaviest and therefore the least ideal. The two men settled
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on taffeta since it was the easiest fabric to buy in bulk without arousing suspicion
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They bought it in several hundred square meters at a time from shops all around the country
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sort of like how Walter and Jesse didn't buy all the cold medicine they needed from a single
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drugstore. Smart. Though they preferred to build the whole thing from taffeta, they were ultimately
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forced to mix in some bed linen as well to complete their balloon, using a manual sewing
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machine and heavy-duty thread to stitch it all together. A propane tank attached to a stovepipe
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served as a release valve for the necessary hot air. And the passenger basket was constructed
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from steel poles and nylon ropes. It all sounds like the beginning of the most gruesome
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hold my beer meme in recorded history. And that was almost the case
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More on that in a bit. If you're thinking that a hot air balloon big enough to carry eight people would be pretty hard
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for the East German police to miss, well, you are right. So it was with utmost secrecy that the tests
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of the prototype balloons were carried out. Strelzik and Wetzel conducted multiple test runs
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of the balloon and its inflation system deep within the forest in the wee hours of the morning
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and in different clearings each time to reduce the chances of being found
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Even so, there were a few times during those tests that the men suspected they had been caught
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It's hard to explain away a secret hot air balloon test as anything other than a secret
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hot air balloon test, but luckily, they were never discovered. At the time the two families were plotting their exit, it was especially dangerous to
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be planning an escape from East Germany. The wall was heavily fortified with guards, dogs, barbed
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wire, and automatic machine guns. And a lot of people who attempted escapes did not survive. In
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addition, people who were suspected of trying to leave were also closely watched, arrested
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and occasionally disappeared, never to be heard from again. Two previous attempts at making the
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balloon had failed for various technical reasons So these factors coupled with the Wetzel family flagging faith in their ability to create a functional balloon led them to temporarily give up on the project in August of 1978
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After all, nobody wants to risk the embarrassment of crashing a homemade balloon right in front of the secret police
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Eventually, the Wetzels came around and decided to give their ambitious escape idea one more try
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If the Straussics persisted and failed, it wouldn't be hard for authorities to implicate the Wetzels
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in the plot anyway. so they might as well roll those hot air dice. By mid-1979, both families were keenly aware that
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they were running out of time. The Strelzicks had taken matters into their own hands and had
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unsuccessfully attempted to cross the border in a balloon, and police had found items they had
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abandoned just short of the border. Furthermore, the Volkspolizei, also known as the German People's
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Police, posted an ad asking citizens to help locate individuals possessing the materials
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needed to build and pilot a hot air balloon. So the families knew it was only a matter of time
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until they were caught. The police notice stated that the various items were left at the crime scene by the perpetrator
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of a serious offense. And yes, the serious offense in question was amateur hot air ballooning
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The Iron Curtain didn't take kindly to any attempt to penetrate it from either direction
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The police notice even listed the items in extreme detail. Nickel water pump pliers, a penknife with a blade
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and combined screwdriver bottle opener, several lightly grooved green plastic tubs, a barometer with a gold-colored housing mounted
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on veneered chipboard, and an older model pocket watch manufactured by UMF Rula. The notice then
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requested that anyone who could provide details about the owners of these items contact the BDVP
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Gera Criminal Police Department, assuring that such a contact would be treated confidentially
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With such a specific shopping list of building materials now circulating in public
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the family secret balloon project was in extreme danger of being noticed and reported
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It was this risk that persuaded the Wetzels to team back up with the Strelzicks and finish what
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they started. After midnight on September 16, 1979, the families piled into the Strelzicks
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car to make their escape. Because they couldn't all fit, Wetzel and the Strelzicks' oldest son
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Frank, had to ride on Wetzel's moped, which overheated and sputtered to a stop more than
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once. That's not as cool as Steve McQueen jumping barbed wire on a motorcycle in The Great Escape
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but real-life heroism almost never looks cool and barely succeeds. Despite the setbacks
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both vehicles made it to the launch site by 1 a.m. With no time left to test their device and with
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the authorities hot on their trail, the two families climbed into the makeshift basket they
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had fashioned As they took off one of the anchors that had been holding the balloon shot up from the smashing into Frank Stretzel face and causing blood to gush from the wound But they had no choice but to continue They were now en route to West Germany Although the ride only took roughly
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28 minutes, several things happened along the way that could have been the end of all eight people
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on board. Right at the start of the flight, the ropes holding the balloon to the ground were not
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cut simultaneously, and the balloon leaned to one side, tilting the gas burner and catching the
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balloon on fire. Luckily, the Strelzik's oldest son had a fire extinguisher handy and put it out
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because in addition to not being very aerodynamic, a giant flaming balloon tends to get a lot of
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attention. Even after the fire had been dealt with, they still had to dodge searchlights from
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the soldiers and police on the ground, endure freezing temperatures, and survive a rough landing
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in some trees when they finally made it over the border. You would think that two families so
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closely intertwined would stay on friendly terms as life went on, but this was not the case
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according to Gunther Wetzel. He claims in his own written account of the incredible ordeal
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that Peter Strelzik repeatedly attempted to take all the credit for creating the balloon
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He also claims that Strelzik was overly eager to appear in the media and even withheld invitations
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for major events from the Wetzel family, turning them down on their behalf. After Peter Strelzik's
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death in 2017, an article was published by the Sunday Express, which seems to confirm Gunther's
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claims that Struzik took all the credit for their escape and only brought the Wetzel family along out of pity
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Man, what a gas bag. That guy was full of hot air. The tale of two families living in an oppressed
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totalitarian country using their wits and limited resources to engineer a daring escape
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sounds like a particularly melodramatic movie. So of course, it eventually would be
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In 1982, Disney made the story of the two families' brave escape
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into a major motion picture called Night Crossing. The film starred two-time Oscar nominee John Hurt
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as Peter Strzelzik and Mark Wahlberg's Max Payne co-star Bo Bridges as Gunther Wetzel
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Apparently, not even the Hollywood version of Strzelzik could resist dunking on Wetzel
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There were many escape attempts made from East Germany, and while not all of them got the Tinseltown treatment
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several stand out for their creativity, daring, and cleverness. Besides the epic balloon flight
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there was a group of senior citizens that tunneled out, A family who flew over in a small plane, a man who made his convertible short enough to slip under the barriers, and two brothers who ziplined to freedom, marking the only time in history ziplining has lived up to its hype
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And yet others used water as an escape route, floating across rivers on air mattresses or swimming down cs, proving once again that there is no limit to human ingenuity when lives and freedom are on the line
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