Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel was born in Silesia in 1944 and grew up in West Berlin. As a 17-year-old he experienced the construction of the Berlin Wall. Since then, he has publicly denounced the wall as well as the order to shoot and he spoke up for the reunification. In one of his countless protest campaigns, he was arrested by boarder guards of the former GDR at Checkpoint Charlie in 1965, taken to Hohenschönhausen and was given a prison sentence of eight years. After nine months of solitary confinement, he was transferred to Bautzen and after a total of thirteen months of solitary confinement, the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany paid for his release. Since then, he has continued his protest unperturbed and courageously. On August 13, 1989, he made the headlines throughout the world, when he lay demonstratively across the white borderline at Checkpoint Charlie. A few months later, the SED dictatorship gave way to the protests and opened the border to the Federal Republic and West Berlin on November 9, 1989.
