Airplane hijacking from Gdansk

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The hijacked Tu-134 on August 30, 1978 in Tempelhof

On August 30, 1978, during the Cold War , the East Berlin waiter Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede hijacked an airplane of the Polish airline LOT on a scheduled flight from Gdansk (Poland) to Berlin-Schönefeld (then GDR ) and forced the crew of the Tupolev Tu -134 for landing in Berlin-Tempelhof (then West Berlin ). He was supported by the East Berlin waitress Ingrid Ruske.

background

Ingrid Ruske had a relationship with Horst Fischer from Hamburg . Fischer worked on behalf of a Hamburg company for the construction of the slaughter and processing combine (SVKE) in Eberswalde , GDR , as a site manager. Both had met in East Berlin's Café Moskau , where Ingrid Ruske was employed as a waitress. Since the construction contract was about to be completed and the two could not imagine a future together in the GDR, Fischer developed a plan. He got forged papers for his East Berlin friend. Both should travel separately by train to Gdansk, from there to travel together by ferry to Travemünde (Federal Republic of Germany). Detlef Tiede, who had known Ruske for many years, was also there. He had previously submitted twenty applications to leave the GDR.

The abduction

The plan with the forged papers failed because Fischer, who was supposed to bring the papers to Danzig, had previously been arrested by employees of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) . Ruske and Tiede waited in vain for four days. When Fischer still did not come to the agreed place in Gdansk, the two suspected (rightly, as it later turned out) that their plans had been uncovered and they could no longer go back. They then changed their escape plans at short notice. They bought a toy gun at the flea market and booked a flight from Gdańsk Airport to Schönefeld Airport in East Berlin . Shortly before landing, Tiede took a Polish stewardess hostage and threatened to shoot her if the plane did not land in West Berlin . The Polish pilot then landed the Tupolew Tu-134 with flight number LO 165 at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. Tempelhof was in the American sector of Berlin. A US special unit received the hijacked machine. Tiede left the plane with his arms raised and was arrested without resistance. Shortly afterwards, Ingrid Ruske was also taken into American custody.

The processes

A request from the People's Republic of Poland to extradite the criminals was rejected by the US occupying forces . In order to enable criminal proceedings against the kidnapper in West Berlin, a non-military US court (the United States Court for Berlin ) with twelve West Berlin juries was set up for the first time in history . At the end of May 1979, Judge Herbert J. Stern from Newark sentenced Detlef Tiede to nine months' imprisonment, which had already been served by pre-trial detention. The proceedings against Ingrid Ruske were discontinued because she had not been properly informed of her rights as a suspect prior to her statements on the matter and a lawyer had been withheld from her for two months.

Horst Fischer was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in the GDR for helping people escape and also human trafficking (!) And was ransomed by the Federal Republic in 1980 .

Others

Of the 62 passengers on the flight, 50 were GDR citizens. In addition to Ruske and Tiede, seven other people, including a married couple and a family of four, spontaneously stayed in the West. After being interrogated by the Americans, the others were taken to the GDR by bus. A young woman who had initially stayed in the West returned to the GDR by train the next day, August 31st.

Horst Fischer and Ingrid Ruske married shortly after Fischer's release in 1980. In an interview with Spiegel in May 2010, Ruske said : "I had no expectations of the West, and they were also exceeded." She lived happier in East Berlin.

Aircraft hijackings were a relatively common method of escape in the People's Republic of Poland, especially in the 1980s. By 1987, sixteen aircraft hijackings from Poland to West Berlin had been registered. Most of the hijacked planes landed in Tempelhof, which soon gave the abbreviation of the Polish airline LOT the meaning " L andet o ft in T empelhof" or in Berlin " L andet o och in T empelhof".

Novels, films and radio plays

The airplane hijacking served the American judge Herbert J. Stern as the basis for a factual novel , which in turn became the template for the film A Judge for Berlin .

Another novel on the subject was published in 2004 by Antje Rávic Strubel under the title Tupolew 134. This was also staged as a radio play by Südwestrundfunk (adaptation: Barbara Meerkötter / first broadcast April 29, 2007).

On August 27, 2008, Deutschlandradio Kultur broadcast the radio play The story of a decent citizen by Marianne Wendt and Christian Schiller.

On September 26, 2010, RTL showed the feature film Westflug - Abduction out of love , which is based on the plane hijacking in Gdansk. The leading roles are played by Hendrik Duryn , Sophie von Kessel and Oliver Mommsen . This was followed by a 60-minute documentary entitled Escape to Freedom .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Abduction out of love - protocol of an escape from the GDR Film by Thomas Donker and Margit Geßner (1999) sent a. a. on August 17, 2001 at PHOENIX
  2. ↑ a b c Film report by Matthias Göpfert, April 2001. Sent a. a. on MDR television, LexiTV - knowledge for everyone, broadcast on September 23, 2008, 2:30 pm kidnappings
  3. ↑ Joachim Nawrocki: Berlin: “Do you want such judges?” In Die Zeit from June 1, 1979
  4. ↑ cf. United States v. Tiede , 86 FRD 227 ; Stefan Forch: Participation of German jurors in the exercise of American occupation jurisdiction in Berlin . In: ZaöRV . tape 40 , 1980, pp. 760–781 ( zaoerv.de [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).
  5. ↑ Christoph Scheuermann: The emergency exit . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 2010, p. 39-42 ( Online - May 17, 2010 ).
  6. ↑ Christoph Scheuermann: Kidnapped into freedom for one day , May 20, 2010
  7. ↑ Izabela Jopkiewicz: swifts in the daily newspaper of August 28, 2004
  8. ^ Antje Rávic Strubel: Tupolew 134 . Novel. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2004. ISBN 3-406-52183-5