His name was Hans Conrad Shumann. A 19 - year old East German border guard who escaped to freedom in the West by jumping the last section of Berlin Wall as it slowly closed. The photo is a still from the newsreel footage of the day. I watched the newsreel when first released, completely transfixed as a boy in a movie theater in 1961. I was deeply affected by it. Many years later, in 1989, I walked through the shattered sections of the Berlin Wall, retrieving two large pieces in the German national colors. The German people erected a statute at the very place where he jumped, so that he would never be forgotten. “Eine Deutschland.” Freedom. Is. Everything.