Konrad Schumann

Born in Zschochau (now part of Ostrau, Saxony) during World War II, Schumann enlisted in the East German Grenzpolizei (border police) following his 18th birthday. After three months' training in Dresden, he was posted to a non-commissioned officers' college in Potsdam, after which he volunteered for service in Berlin.

In May 2011, the photograph of Schumann's "leap into freedom" was inducted into the UNESCO Memory of the World programme as part of a collection of documents on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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.

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. When he returned to East Germany after the reunification to visit his relatives, he was rejected by them. They saw him as a traitor who abandoned his family.

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 later at the Audi car factory in Ingolstadt, where he worked for nearly 30 years.

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."

Hans Konrad Schumann (often anglicized to Hans Conrad Schumann in English-language sources; 28 March 1942 – 20 June 1998) was an East German border guard who escaped to West Germany during the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.