Klaus Zimmermann

* 1941

  • "Down the rucksacks, then we finished at Falkenstein and said - there's another rock over here. But there's the border in between and a fence, so it's kind of a loose fortification. Because the actual, much better guarded border was more inside Czechoslovakia, maybe 500 metres further in with a wire fence and hacked earth over there so that you could see the tracks of those who crossed. And the Wall in Berlin had not yet been built, and the border and fortifications in Czechoslovakia were intended to prevent the Czechs from escaping to West Germany via the GDR and West Berlin. So it was before the Wall was built and the border was also guarded by German border guards, with weapons. But they only patrolled in pairs and then came back after an hour. The rock over on the Czech side - do you know how that excites a climber? To go over to the Czech side - it's only 50 or 70 metres away. We left the girls at the Falkenstein with their rucksacks, we crossed over, crept through, heart pumping, we climbed up to the Rabenstein, to the Sokol. And then we were sitting upstairs and then we saw the border guards coming. And the border guards saw the two girls sitting at the bottom of the Falkenstein, but four backpacks! Of course, even the stupidest border guard would notice that. They waited so long until we were down, we had to go down at some point, and then they were strict with us. And they said, you have to come with us now. The border company was in Goss Schönau and we were given a friendly welcome in the border company and then we were locked down in the cellar. ID and interrogation and everything that goes with it and why this or that and what our names are and where we live and whatnot.""

  • "We had always been in contact with Czechs, with Czech mountaineers. We met each other and then there was the bad time in 1968, when we had mountaineering meetings in Sedmihorky and our friends told us that this would happen to you too, this freedom, this freedom of the press, the Dubček period, the Prague Spring. And then this upheaval that we, who lived so close to the border, felt so differently. We also wanted to be free.... The 21st of August was a terrible life experience."

  • “Back then, as a six-year-old, of course I didn't realize how big the population of Zittau was. The population exploded upwards. 45,48,50,52 thousand inhabitants. All the convoys came through Zittau. They had to be taken care of, how that was done is a mystery. As a boy, I was introduced to school in 1947, large classes, 50 children in the class, and there were many older children too. So there were four ten-year-olds who went with us to the first class, or then to the second. They could already count to a thousand, that was very special, they were very tall. And they had never been to school before. And lots of them. And a lot of them from Hungary. The Engelmeier family from Hungary lived with us. And then there was a room where a lady... So how many - they were three, four, six, nine - ten people in one apartment. It was not uncommon.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Zittau, 15.02.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:57:05
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The rock on the Czech side - can you imagine how that excites an East German mountaineer? But there was a border in between and a fence...

Climbing Falkenstein and Sokol, with friends and future wife, 1962
Climbing Falkenstein and Sokol, with friends and future wife, 1962
zdroj: pamětník

Klaus Zimmermann was born in 1941 in Zittau, Germany. In the last months of the war he experienced the bombing of the town, in May 1945 his father was arrested as a member of the NSDAP and taken to the prison in Bautzen, he died in 1947 after being transported to the USSR. Klaus grew up in post-war poverty in a city overcrowded with exiles and refugees from Czechoslovakia, Poland and other countries. In his childhood, the GDR was separated from the Czechoslovakia by an impenetrable barbed-wire border, which was intended, among other things, to prevent Czechoslovak citizens from escaping to the West via Berlin. Klaus studied pedagogy in Dresden, but in his spare time he climbed mountains and did not hesitate to cross the border illegally, which was then a criminal offence. He recalls a number of episodes of not-quite-legal border traffic from 1963 to 1989, as well as the invasion of Czechoslovakia by „brotherly troops“, which was a bitter experience for him. At the end of the communist era, Klaus Zimmermann became involved in opposition activities, was interrogated and once arrested. For a short time he was a member of the opposition New Forum, he co-renewed the activities of the Social Democrats in the GDR, and in 1990 he became deputy mayor of Zittau. At that time he made numerous contacts with Czech mountaineers, some of whom were doing local politics for the Czech Civic Forum at the time.