C. Schuman escaping from East Berlin

On June 20, 1998 Conrand Schuman committed suicide. The name may mean nothing to you but the picture above will definitely remind you of the person. He was that brave East German soldier, 19 years old, who was photographed on 15 August 1961 at 4 p.m. escaping from East to West Berlin just by jumping over the barbed wire. The East German government had just began the building of the Berlin wall which separated the two parts of the city until 1989.

Schuman's picture while he was escaping was entitled The leap to freedom and became a symbol of those Germans who were locked up in East Berlin and East Germany during the Cold War period (1947-1989). In his first interview, immediately after his escape, Schuman stated that he was touched by the sight of a boy who had tried to escape a few day before his successful attempt but it was captured and brutally drawn back to East Berlin. This incident forced him to make his decision because he could not be a "prisoner" in East Berlin anymore.

Schuman did not live a happy life. He was already an alcoholic in the 1960s but he managed somehow to go over it and get married. He moved to Bavaria in South Germany and worked for about three decades in the Audi automobile factory. He did not gain any money from his picture and he was useless to West german intelligence because he did not know any secrets to reveal. He never changed his name and actually he had been traced by Stasi (East german Intelligence). He was both a hero for the western world and a traitor for communist Germany.

Schuman came back to Berlin in 1989 when the Wall fell and he was immediately surrounded by TV cameras and people who wanted an autograph. This was a moment of glory. But when he visited his home town in ex-East Germany, some of his compatriots still viewed him as a traitor. He came back to Bavaria but his relations with his wife and son where not the best. Last June, after a wild family row, left the house and hanged himself from a tree nearby.

Schuman was just another victim of 20th century political and ideological madness, a victim of the Cold War. Although his death was probably a result of personal weakness, the fact is that both friends and enemies were just interested in using him and his action for their short and long-term propaganda purposes. His name will definitely be forgotten in the years to come but the picture of his escape will remain a historical evidence of an era: the Cold War and divided 20th c. Germany.

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