The BWM Isetta Was Once The Smallest People Smuggler

The BWM Isetta Was Once The Smallest People Smuggler

Did you know the BMW Isetta was the smallest people smuggler? We’ve seen boats, trains, trucks and containers, but an Isetta?

Straight out of something in a movie, and rather a good plot I’d say, the little Isetta was instrumental in getting people out of East Germany. The story was retold in a short film by BMW called Heading For Freedom back in 2019. I’ve always had a passing interest in the East and West divide, I own a Trabant after all. But the whole division and socialist control of certain sections of Europe after it was divided up by the allies after World War 2. The British, Americans and French had their sectors, the three allies forming the Federal Republic Of Germany over the next four years. The wall being built by the DDR (German Democratic Republic) separating the capital of East Berlin from its Western twin.

The Berlin wall fell in 1989 starting the reunification of Germany for the first time in over 44 years. During the occupied times things were very different for people living in each area. But it was the Soviet Union that had the East and the most control over their citizens. This was especially true during the cold war era and the tales or defections and escape weren’t just exciting fiction, they were real. So here we come to one of the most ingenious was of breaking out and the man behind it, Klaus-Günter Jacobi.

Heading For Freedom BMW Isetta

Klaus and his family moved to the West and left Berlin in 1958, some three years before the wall was built having had enough of the socialist state and their spying. But Klaus had left behind his childhood friend Manfred Koster. Manfred decided to stay a little too long and when the wall was built it wasn’t possible to see him. Manfred had a brother and in 1962 he was able to get a pass to see him and stay in the East. As they were quite similar Manfred borrowed the pass and visited Klaus, turning up unexpectedly one day at his home. Having been told he would be drafted into the army it was enough to make Manfred want to leave. It was here they hatched a plan to use Klaus’s Isetta to perform a brilliant bit of people smuggling.

The Isetta only measures 2.3 meters in length and 1.4 meters high. It was a tight fit for the 6’5 Klaus sat in the driver’s seat, so to hide another person somewhere in the car seems mad. Luckily Klaus was a motor mechanic and back then you’d need welding and fabrication skills, things used to rust quite a lot. The good thing about an Isetta is that no one would expect you to be able to hide another person inside it. But Klaus had fabricated a compartment behind the seat bench alongside the engine.  He cut an opening and moved the shelf upwards, removed the spare wheel, heating and the air filter. He also swapped out the 13 litre fuel tank for a 2 litre canister to make space. Just as well they’re economical. All the work was done at Klaus’s old training workshop in Berlin.

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he border check was fraught with danger. It’s not like going through any border in Europe now. Armed guards, shoot on sight, thorough checks with sever penalties of any infringement. A medical student was chosen to drive the car, but she pulled out due to nerves after the test run. With only a week to go before Koster was to be enlisted two more students volunteered to perform the escape. They didn’t share their names but one of them was to drive the Isetta and the other in a VW Beetle as backup.

On the 24 May 1964 they picked up Manfred Koster and drove outside of Berlin to a field where they were caught by a Farmer whilst swapping the fuel tanks. Pretending to have a puncture worked and they installed the 5 foot 7 Koster into the small space. They were an hour and a half late, Jacobi pacing up and down chain smoking cigarettes near to the border at Bornholmer Bridge. At 11:55pm they make it through, only 5 minutes to spare before the border closed. Klaus running alongside the car to a park where they get Manfred out, taking some five minutes to extract him.

Heading For Freedom BMW Isetta
Heading For Freedom

This was the only time Klaus’s Isetta was used, the red and white car was later scrapped. But the escape inspired 8 more successful smuggling runs using the same method.

BMW made a film tribute to this event, using a blue and white Isetta and filmed it in Budapest to re-create an authentic 1964 Berlin. This similarly converted car is on display in the Berlin Wall Museum where Klaus-Günter Jacobi gives tours and is on now on my list of places to visit. The Small Escape Film is rather beautifully shot. If only they had made it longer, there’s enough plot to have made it feature length.

You can watch all of the fantasticly moody 3 minutes and 50 seconds below.

Thanks very much to BMW for the images and video.

Simon

 

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