Rainer Hildebrandt, 89; Director of Berlin Wall Museum

Rainer Hildebrandt, 89, who was director of a Cold War museum that he established 40 years ago near Checkpoint Charlie of the Berlin Wall, died Friday in his Berlin home after a long illness.

An anti-Communist activist, Hildebrandt created the museum to illustrate the often fatal attempts of Germans to flee Communist East Germany through the Checkpoint Charlie crossing into democratic West Germany. The Berlin Wall fell 14 years ago, but the museum remains.

Born in Stuttgart, Hildebrandt studied physics at the university in his hometown, then went to Berlin to earn his doctorate in psychology. He was inspired by a professor, Albrecht Haushofer, an anti-Nazi activist shot by Adolf Hitler’s SS toward the end of World War II.

Hildebrandt, imprisoned 17 months for his own criticism of the Nazis, was equally opposed to Soviet Communism after the war. In 1948, he founded the Fighting Group Against Inhumanity to search for missing German prisoners of war and aid political prisoners in the Soviet Union.

After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, he helped support those fleeing East Germany. They gave him their tools of escape -- boats, gliders, cars -- which he incorporated into his museum.