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The West German border crossing at Herleshausen, on the autobahn to Wartha in the GDR, from the air, June 1985.Photo: WG5 Danny Trujillo, 1985. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Häftlingsfreikauf

West Germany bought 33,755 political prisoners out of East German jails

From 1963 to 1989 Bonn paid 3.4–3.5 billion DM, mostly in oil, copper, coffee and other goods, for them and for about 250,000 family reunifications. By 1977 one prisoner cost 95,847 DM.

33,755
political prisoners bought free, 1963–1989
3.4–3.5 bn DM
paid in all, mostly in goods; sources differ
~250,000
family reunifications through the same channel
95,847 DM
the flat rate for one prisoner from 1977

01Christmas 1962

It began at Christmas 1962, with three wagons of potash

The first prisoners were let go for 3 railway wagons of potash fertiliser, arranged through church channels (Kurt Scharf, Reymar von Wedel) with two lawyers: Jürgen Stange in West Berlin and Wolfgang Vogel in East Berlin. The first deal with the West German government followed in 1963.

How many went free that Christmas depends on the source. The standard account, after Schroeder (1998), counts 20 prisoners and as many children. The federal government’s own history speaks of “the first 15 prisoners”.

A cobbled yard between a high white wall topped with razor wire and an old brick building, leading to a gatehouse.
The entrance yard of the former prison at Cottbus, now the Gedenkstätte Zuchthaus Cottbus, 2014.Photo: Vtg, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Price per prisoner, 1962–1990

The price West Germany paid per political prisoner, from three wagons of potash at Christmas 1962, to a flat average of forty thousand Deutschmarks from the mid-1960s, to a flat rate of almost ninety-six thousand from 1977, with the peak year 1985, the end of the trade in 1989 and the last delivery in September 1990 marked.

Scroll on: the price, step by step.

December 1962

No price in money at all, at first

The first releases were paid for in kind: 3 wagons of potash fertiliser.

Two men in suits stand at the front of a small room, facing rows of seated young people seen from behind.
Rainer Barzel, federal minister for all-German affairs, receives a youth group from the USA in Bonn, 1963. Photo: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F015300-0005 / Patzek, Renate / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

1963

Bonn takes over the trade

In 1963 the federal minister for all-German affairs, Rainer Barzel, took up the channel. From then on the government paid.

From the mid-1960s

A flat average of 40,000 DM a head

Prisoners were priced in bulk, at an average of 40,000 DM each.

1977

In 1977 the price of a prisoner more than doubled

The flat rate became 95,847 DM: 2.4 times the old average.

1985

1985: the busiest year of the trade

2,669 prisoners were bought free in 1985, more than in any other year.

1963–1989

33,755 people in 27 years

By the autumn of 1989, when the GDR began to fall, the Federal Republic had bought the freedom of 33,755 political prisoners.

24 September 1990

The bill was settled after the Wall had fallen

The last goods owed for prisoners reached the GDR on 24 September 1990, a few days before reunification.

02The GDR’s prisons

Critics said the money gave the GDR a reason to fill its cells

Every prisoner the West bought was someone the GDR had jailed for political reasons, and each was worth hard currency. Critics, Amnesty International among them, argued that this gave the state an incentive to arrest people it could later sell. The historian Jan Philipp Wölbern found strong indications that it did.

Supporters answered that every release ended a real prisoner’s suffering. The trade survived every change of government in Bonn from 1962 to 1989.

A long brick wall with a gate in front of a four-storey prison block, seen across a cobbled forecourt under a grey sky.
The gate of the Stasi’s former remand prison at Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, now a memorial, 2006.Photo: Christian Liebscher, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
A long, narrow corridor with a tiled floor and a row of grey steel cell doors along one wall.
A cell corridor in the former Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen, 2017.Photo: JoachimKohler-HB / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
A small cell with a frosted barred window, a wash basin, a narrow table and stool, and a bed with a blue prison uniform laid on it.
A cell in the former Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen, 2017.Photo: JoachimKohler-HB / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
A dim room with patterned wallpaper, a barred window, a bare table and a stool.
An interrogation room in the former Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen, 2014.Photo: VomMüller / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
A yellow-painted prison corridor with heavy wooden cell doors, each with bolts, a hatch and a number.
Cell doors in the Bautzen II memorial, 2019.Photo: Stephencdickson, 2019. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Looking up from inside a walled concrete pen to a wire-mesh roof and a catwalk above it.
An open-air exercise cell, the so-called tiger cage, in a former Stasi prison, 2007.Photo: Martin Owen, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

03Karl-Marx-Stadt to Herleshausen

The last stop was the Kaßberg prison; then a bus whose number plates flipped at the border

Prisoners chosen for release were gathered at the Kaßberg prison in Chemnitz, then called Karl-Marx-Stadt. From there West German buses took them across the border at Herleshausen/Wartha.

So as not to be noticed, the buses carried GDR number plates on East German roads and West German plates in the Federal Republic. The driver only had to press a button on the dashboard to turn the plates over.

„Der Busfahrer brauchte nur einen Knopf am Armaturenbrett zu drücken, um die Nummernschilder umzudrehen.“Bundesregierung, “Häftlingsfreikauf – letztes Kapitel”

A high wall topped with coils of razor wire, a steel gate and a concrete watchtower among trees.
The former Stasi remand prison on the Kaßberg in Chemnitz, then Karl-Marx-Stadt, 2014: the last stop before the buses.Photo: Rillke, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

The way out, in four stops (not to scale)

The bus moves as you scroll. Its plates turn over at the border.

04The same channel

For every prisoner bought free, about 7 family reunifications went through the same channel

The prisoners were the smaller part. About 2,000 children were allowed to join their parents in the West, and roughly 250,000 family reunifications were arranged the same way: 7.4 for each of the 33,755 prisoners.

Who came out, 1963–1989: each square 500 people

33,755 political prisonersabout 2,000 childrenabout 250,000 family reunifications

05The bill

3.4–3.5 billion DM, and most of it was paid in oil and copper

Bonn did not hand over cash for most of it. The money bought goods (oil, copper, coffee, butter, rubber) that were delivered to the GDR through the Diakonisches Werk of the Protestant Church. In East Berlin the business had a code name: “Kirchengeschäft B”.

The total covers the prisoners, about 2,000 children and the family reunifications together. No source splits it between them, and no two sources give quite the same figure.

Four sources, four readings of the total

That is why this story gives the total as a range, 3.4–3.5 billion DM, and never as one number. The exact sum of 3.44 billion DM is Geißel’s (1991); the others are rounded by the Bundesregierung, the Chronik der Mauer and the historian Wölbern.

06East Berlin, 1962–1989

Bonn sent four negotiators in turn; the East Berlin lawyer across the table never changed

Wolfgang Vogel (1925–2008) brokered the trade from the first release at Christmas 1962 to the end. He also arranged the prisoner exchanges on Glienicke Bridge: Powers in 1962, 23 for 4 in 1985, Sharansky in 1986.

Vogel had once been registered as an informer of the Stasi, and he had a direct line to its leadership through his handler, Heinz Volpert. Bonn, for its part, paid him a yearly lump sum of about 320,000 DM.

In 1996 a Berlin court convicted him of perjury, extortion and forgery and gave him a suspended sentence. In 1998 the Federal Court of Justice acquitted him of extortion.

Black-and-white photograph of a steel truss bridge over a river, a barge passing beneath and a fence along the far bank.
Glienicke Bridge from the West Berlin bank, September 1982, with the border fence on the far side.Photo: Willy Pragher, 1982. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.

Vogel’s years at the table, 1962–1989

Across the table for Bonn, in turn:BarzelWehnerRehlingerWalter Priesnitz from 1988
A bald man in a dark jumper rests his chin on his hand and smiles.
Natan Sharansky, photographed in 2016. Vogel arranged his release across Glienicke Bridge.Photo: Nathan Roi, 2016. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.
A dark-haired man in a flight suit smiles and looks down, an aircraft behind him.
Gary Powers, the American pilot freed in Vogel’s first exchange on Glienicke Bridge.Photo: U.S. Air Force photo, public domain. Kelly Johnson and Gary Powers, 1966.
An older man in thick glasses holds a pipe to his mouth while a grey-haired man with a name badge leans in to speak to him.
Herbert Wehner (left), one of Bonn’s negotiators in the trade, at the SPD party congress in Hannover, April 1973.Photo: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F039416-0008 / Wegmann, Ludwig / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

0723 January 1990 – 24 September 1990

The last goods for the last prisoners reached the GDR a few days before it ceased to exist

By January 1990 there were no political prisoners left in East German jails, but the last bill was still open: goods worth 65 million DM. The Diakonisches Werk confirmed the delivery on 23 January 1990; the goods arrived on 24 September 1990, 244 days later.

57 kt
of crude oil
1,034
vans
3.7 t
of copper, as the source prints it
65m DM
the value of the last delivery

The vans in the last delivery, one block each.

For 27 years, freedom in divided Germany had a price, and the Federal Republic paid it 33,755 times.

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{{cite web |title=Häftlingsfreikauf: West Germany buys East Germany's political prisoners, 1962–1990 |url=https://berlinfographics.com/haftlingsfreikauf/ |website=Berlinfographics |publisher=Berlin Experiences |date=2026-11-05 |access-date=2026-11-05}}