From the GDR to Studen: How the Swiss von Känel family fled the workers' and farmers' state (Swiss Press Text 2025, by Denis Von Burg) - Swiss Press Award
ajour.ch
Text
2025
Denis Von Burg
Horst and Karin von Känel – he a GDR Swiss citizen, she a GDR citizen – fought to emigrate from the GDR to Seeland in 1985. Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they recount how they were ensnared and then harassed by the Stasi, why they could no longer stand it "over there," and how they managed to leave. Archival research shows that the von Känels were part of a wave of returnees in the 1980s.
