This might be a bad assumption to begin with, but I’m guessing that it was A LOT harder to the GDR Government to guard the whole frontier than to guard the relatively small (and therefore more controllable) Berlin Wall. Taking that assumption into account, wouldn’t be a lot easier for someone to secretly cross the border than to escape through Berlin? I have always been fascinated by the story of the berlin wall, but still wandered about this...
Maybe there were actually a lot more escapes through the border than trough berlin, but we just don’t hear about that so often because of the berlin wall being a “more interesting” situation?
If someone could enlighten me about this issue, it would be amazing.
Well the main reason was that, before the construction of the Wall in 1961, all you had to do was walk across the street to West Berlin and you could get on a plane, instead of having to cross the inner-German border, which had been fortified since about 1952. Between then and the construction of the Berlin Wall, the majority of Germans who wanted to flee took this option, to the tune of ~3.5 million people. In total numbers, looking back, that proved to be, by far, the most prolific avenue of escape to the West.
After the construction of the Wall in 1961, escapes via West Berlin dropped drastically. From then forward, the majority of those who successfully escaped did so via third countries (East Germany to Hungary to Austria was a popular route, iirc) or simply by staying in West Germany after visiting legally. This was a much smaller number, a trickle as compared to the flood of people who left in the '50s.
The larger inner-German border was guarded by several layers of protected zones in which non-residents faced arrest if they were caught. There is a really good book by an anthropologist named Daphne Berdahl called Where the World Ended about a town village that happened to be located in the inner most restricted zone, which I believe was 500 meters from the actual border. It's a fascinating book, if you're interested in the topic. 10/10 would read again.