A fun yarn of a run to freedom

[pwd72s]

In an Austin Healy Sprite:

https://mossmotoring.com/sprite-true-love-cold-war/

1963 was a bad year to fall in love with a girl from the German Democratic Republic – especially if you lived in the Federal Republic of Germany. The Berlin Wall had been erected two years earlier to stem the tide of East Germans seeking to cross the border that divided Berlin between the East and West. Heinz Meixner cared little for international politics but the barrier represented by Checkpoint Charlie was much more personal for him. But never underestimate a young man in love with access to an Austin-Healey Sprite with the guts to come up with a plan.

The young West German lathe operator was engaged to a girl from the other side of the tracks (actually – a wall) and his attempts at getting official sanction for his fiancee, Margrete Thurau, to emigrate had met with failure. So like any enterprising youth in love he set about devising a plan to do unofficially what he had failed to do through more legal channels. He rented an Austin-Healey Sprite and crossed over into the east on a tourist pass. Heading to his betrothed’s home he hid her in the area behind the seats and then directed his future mother-in-law into the trunk.

So it was that just after midnight on May 5, 1963, Meixner headed back towards the Wall behind the wheel of the rented Sprite with the love of his life and her mother ensconced under the tonneau and in the boot. The top was down and the windscreen had been removed and he was – needless to say – scared as hell. After showing his passport to the AK-47 brandishing armed guards he was waved over to the Customs inspection area. Rather than stopping at the shed as directed he stabbed at the throttle and proceeded to run the gymkhana of his life. Steering around the various cones, concrete barriers and alarmed guards that were about to shoot him, he maneuvered the Sprite past the these obstacles and at the last minute ducked his head as he drove under the barrier arm that represented freedom in the west.