Lot 207 D

The present image was shot by Peter Leibing on 15th August 1961, just two days after the SED had begun closing the borders of the Soviet Sector. Leibing was just 20 years old and was working as an intern for the Hamburg Contipress agency in Berlin when he shot this image, which was to become so iconic of the cold war. He had observed policeman nervously smoking a cigarette on Bernauer Straße, several passers-by had remarked “He's going to jump.”, and that day the policeman Conrad Schumann, who was the same age as the photographer, took the chance to flee to the west. The fact that Leibing caught the exact moment of his leap to freedom on camera was not a matter of chance, but of photographic training: As a sport photographer for the Hamburg Derby, he had learnt to capture horse and rider in the exact moments of their jumps. He had focussed on the barbed wire for some time before Schumann jumped. The image went around the world and was named an item of documentary heritage by UNESCO.