THE LEAP 1961 (PC)

On 15 August 1961 the nineteen-year-old East German border policeman Conrad Schumann leaped over a barbed-wire barrier into the West section of Berlin. This moment was captured by the photographer Peter Leibing. According to Time magazine, the photo of the fleeing policeman is an icon of the 20th century and counts among the 100 photographs that have changed the world. Like no other photo it stands for the division of Germany and the history of Berlin. Today it is part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme. THE LEAP carries visitors from reunified Berlin back to the year 1961.
60 years after the Berlin Wall went up, film director Boris Hars-Tschachotin tells the story of the genesis of the iconic shot from three different filmic perspectives: that of Conrad Schumann fleeing in his National People’s Army uniform, that of the photographer Peter Leibing, and that of the West Berlin policeman Manfred Klumm. In the 1960s, there were approximately two million refugees worldwide. In 2021, more than 80 million people have already been forced to leave their homes, their friends and families. Behind every flight lies a fate, a human being.