For 31 years, Rene Seiptius had been counted among the thousands of people killed while trying to escape the confines of communist East Germany.

As it turns out, he was alive all along.

"I can't explain how it could have happened," Seiptius told Reuters on Monday.

Seiptius first attempted to cross the deadly strip of land that once separated East Germany from the West in 1981, when he was 17.

He and two friends managed to tiptoe past a row of minefields but then triggered fire from an automatic spring gun.

They were quickly arrested by border guards. But records kept by East Germany's secret police, known as the Stasi, show Seiptius as having died during that botched escape attempt.

"I've been alive for the last 48 years," he said.

Eventually his name found its way to a list of all the people who had died along Germany's East-West border compiled by a museum in Berlin.

Seiptius tried two more times, unsuccessfully, to escape East Germany until he was granted permission to leave. Today, he lives near the western German city of Mainz.

The case wasn't made public until recently, when Seiptius' ex-wife stumbled across an article on the website of the German broadcaster NDR, which listed Seiptius as deceased.