The walker from Rostock to Syracuse: How Egon Krenz became an accomplice in an escape

Not to escape, but to go on an educational trip to Syracuse, Italy. After all, his Saxon compatriot, the writer Johann Gottlieb Seume, had already covered the 6,000 km distance to Syracuse from Grimma near Leipzig in 1802, mainly on foot.

Seume was considered a master of travel writing. His account, Walk to Syracuse, became a bestseller in the early 19th century. But he was still inspiring 200 years later. This is shown by Klaus Müller, who wants to follow in Seume’s footsteps across the Alps to Sicily.

FC Delius wrote a novel about Müller

The story is so touching and absurd that the writer FC Delius immortalized it in a novel in 1995. And it’s not just literature that has taken up the material. The film adaptation “Walk to Syracuse” will be in cinemas on August 20th. Even if the film generously interprets the true story, the cast with Charly Hübner in the lead role is worth seeing.

The special thing about the educational trip to Syracuse, which lasted several weeks, was Müller’s desire to return to the GDR. That’s exactly why he inaugurated the deputy chairman of the State Council. However, he only sends the letter on the evening of his “departure”. Better safe than sorry. Egon Krenz is now considered an involuntary witness to the plan and an “informant”. An ace up the sleeve for Müller.

It was no coincidence that the whole incident happened in Hiddensee, of all places. The island was considered a no-man’s land and an extraterritorial area. Located in the sea, within sight of the Danish island of Møn, it no longer seems to be the GDR or any other state. So the island became an Eldorado for artists and bon vivants, dropouts of all stripes, dreamers and people who think differently. Those who wanted to leave the country also hired themselves out here as seasonal workers and left the GDR behind them.

8 months on an educational trip

But not only those who had settled accounts with the GDR came here. Members of the Central Committee and Politburo, scientists, actors, writers, painters and journalists also discovered the charms of the island. Gerhart Hauptmann, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann were here in the pre-war years, followed during the GDR era by Walter Felsenstein, Gret Palucca, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Markus Wolf, the head of the foreign secret service and deputy head of the Stasi.

However, the peace and quiet was limited because sometimes punk bands like Feeling B used self-made, battery-operated amplifiers to provide deafening sound to entire sections of the beach. The band members were sometimes also the children of officials. Many of them despaired of the system, had applied to leave the country or tried to escape across one of the GDR’s borders.

Klaus Müller also wanted to leave, but wanted to return. He applied to leave the country and hoped to be able to travel west as part of the newly concluded Rostock-Bremen city partnership. But when this request was rejected by the Rostock authorities despite the advocacy of the then mayor of Bremen, Klaus Wedemeier, Müller decided to organize his departure himself.

From then on he used his stays on Hiddensee to plan an adventurous trip from here. In any case, reaching freedom from Hiddensee seemed to him to be significantly less dangerous than, for example, crossing the inner-German land border or the Berlin Wall. But what does safer mean?

More than 170 people drowned while attempting to escape across the sea. Klaus Müller knew the dangers of the sea, he knew that there would be a draconian punishment if he succeeded in leaving the country – he did not speak of escape. He prepared everything meticulously. He purchased a dinghy and taught himself to sail. Above all, he learned to navigate, to recognize cardinal points based on the zodiac signs, to calculate currents, to recognize tidal creeks and to interpret winds.

The wind was favorable that day

On June 7, 1988, after years of waiting, the time had come. In the morning, Klaus Müller heard the sea weather report on the radio, which electrified him. The wind was favorable and, despite initial difficulties, he pushed his plastic nutshell out of the bay into the open sea. From then on we headed quickly northwest.

After almost 14 hours, the hobby sailor reached the Danish port of Gedser. While an arrest warrant was issued for Müller in absentia in Rostock, he began his 8-month educational journey, which would take him to the Federal Republic and then to Italy, where he reached Syracuse via Rome, Naples and Taormina, overjoyed. In the spring of 1989, after informing Egon Krenz again, he returned to the GDR.

Extremely skeptical as to whether his justification for an educational trip will be able to appease the state, he makes another suggestion to be on the safe side to underline the usefulness of his trip.

This is what it says in the letter to Krenz, which is archived in Müller’s Stasi file: “If you don’t want to allow me to go on an educational trip because I’m not an academic, I’ll call my trip a roller coaster. I worked temporarily in 4 cities in 7 jobs in 2 professions in the Federal Republic of Germany and was able to gain rich professional experience there and in Italy.”

State security is at a loss. After a night in a guest cell, Müller is taken to Röntgenthal to a recovery camp for emigrants from the West. He stays there for 21 days – and is released to the GDR without any conditions.