Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border
Encyclopedia
There were numerous escape attempts and victims of the inner German border during its 45 years of existence from 1945 to 1990.
Escapees had various motives for attempting to flee East Germany. The vast majority had an essentially economic motive: they wished to improve their living conditions and opportunities in the West. Some fled for political reasons, but many were impelled to leave by specific social and political events. The imposition of collective agriculture and the crushing of the 1953 East German uprising prompted thousands to flee to the West, as did further coercive economic restructuring in 1960. Thousands of those who fled did so to escape the clearance of their villages along the border. By the 1980s, the number of escape attempts was rising again as East German's economy stagnated and living conditions deteriorated.
Attempts to flee across the border were carefully studied and recorded by the East German authorities to identify possible weak points. These would be addressed by strengthening the fortifications in vulnerable areas. The NVA and the Stasi carried out statistical surveys to identify trends. In one example, a study was carried out by the East German army at the end of the 1970s to review attempted "border breaches" (Grenzdurchbrüche). It found that 4,956 people had attempted to escape across the border between 1 January 1974 and 30 November 1979. Of those, 3,984 people (80.4%) were arrested by the Volkspolizei in the Sperrzone, the outer restricted zone. 205 people (4.1%) were caught at the signal fence. Within the inner security zone, the Schutzstreifen, a further 743 people (15%) were arrested by the border guards. 48 people (1%) were stopped – i.e. killed or injured – by landmines and 43 people (0.9%) by SM-70 directional mines on the border fence. A further 67 people (1.35%) were intercepted at the border fence (shot and/or arrested). The study highlighted the effectiveness of the SM-70 as a means of stopping people getting across the fence. A total of 229 people – just 4.6% of attempted escapees, representing less than one in twenty – made it across the border fence. Of these, the largest number (129, or 55% of successful escapees) succeeded in making it across the fence in unmined sectors. 89 people (39% of escapees) managed to cross both the minefields and the border fence, but just 12 people (6% of the total) succeeded in getting past the SM-70s.
Escape attempts were severely punished by the East German state. From 1953, the regime described the act of escaping as Republikflucht
(literally "flight from the Republic"), by analogy with the existing military term Fahnenflucht ("desertion
"). A successful escapee was not a Flüchtling ("refugee") but a Republikflüchtiger ("Republic-deserter"). Those who attempted to escape were called Sperrbrecher (literally "blockade runners" but more loosely translated as "border violators"). Those who helped escapees were not Fluchthelfer ("escape helpers"), the Western term, but Menschenhändler ("human traffickers"). Such ideologically coloured language enabled the regime to portray border crossers as little better than traitors and criminals. An East German propaganda booklet published in 1955 outlined the official view of escapees:
Republikflucht became a crime in 1957, punishable by heavy fines and up to three years' imprisonment. Any act associated with an escape attempt was subject to this legislation. Those caught in the act were often tried for espionage as well and given proportionately harsher sentences. Some escapees were executed, sometimes being deported to the Soviet Union for the death penalty to be carried out. More than 75,000 people – an average of more than seven people a day – were imprisoned for attempting to escape across the border, serving an average of one to two years' imprisonment. Border guards who attempted to escape were treated much more harshly and were on average imprisoned for five years. Those who helped escapees were also subject to punishment, facing prison terms or deportation to internal exile in faraway towns. Some 50,000 East Germans suffered this fate between 1952 and 1989.
, inspiring the film Night Crossing
. Other escapees relied more on physical strength and endurance. An escapee in 1987 used meat hooks to scale the border fences, while in 1971 a doctor swam 45 kilometres (28 mi) across the Baltic Sea from Rostock almost to the Danish island of Lolland
, before he was picked up by a West German yacht. Another escapee used an air mattress to escape across the Baltic in 1987. Mass escapes were rare. One of the few that succeeded took place on 2 October 1961, when 53 people from the border village of Böseckendorf
– a quarter of the village's population – escaped en masse, followed by another 13 inhabitants in February 1963. An unusual mass escape occurred in September 1964 when 14 East Germans, including eleven children, were smuggled across the border in a refrigerated truck. They were able to escape detection by being concealed under the carcasses of slaughtered pigs being transported to the West.
Those working on or near the border were occasionally able to use their privileged access and knowledge to escape. For the border guards, this presented special dangers, as their colleagues were under orders to shoot without warning if an escape attempt was made. The dilemmas they faced were highlighted in the May 1969 defection of a soldier and a non-commissioned officer of the Grenztruppen. When the NCO made his escape, the soldier, Jürgen Lange, decided not to shoot him. As this exposed Lange to severe punishment by his superiors for disobeying the order to shoot, Lange made his own escape ten minutes later. When he reached the West German side, Lange found that his rifle had been sabotaged by his NCO to prevent him firing in the first place. Soviet soldiers also sometimes escaped across the border, though this was very rare. Only eight such defections succeeded between 1953 and 1984.
The traffic was not one-way; thousands of people a year migrated from West Germany to the east. The East German press described such individuals as "west zone refugees" who were fleeing "political pressure", "growing unlawfulness" or "worsening economic conditions". Research carried out by the West German government found more prosaic reasons, such as marital problems, family estrangement and the homesickness of those who had lived in East Germany in the past. A number of Allied military personnel, including British, French, German and United States troops, also defected. By the end of the Cold War, as many as 300 United States citizens were thought to have defected across the Iron Curtain for a variety of reasons – whether to escape criminal charges, for political reasons or because (as the St. Petersburg Times put it) "girl-hungry GI's [were tempted] with seductive sirens, who usually desert the love-lorn soldier once he is across the border." The fate of such defectors varied considerably. Some were sent straight to labour camps on charges of espionage. Others committed suicide, while a few were able to find wives and work on the eastern side of the border.
, the GDR defence minister, declared in August 1966 that "anyone who does not respect our border will feel the bullet." In 1974, Erich Honecker
, as Chairman of the GDR's National Defence Council, ordered: "Firearms are to be ruthlessly used in the event of attempts to break through the border, and the comrades who have successfully used their firearms are to be commended."
East German border guards had a standard procedure to follow if they detected unauthorised individuals in the border zone. (Though the West Germans referred to the control strip as a "death strip", deadly force could be used at any location along the border – it did not depend on an individual's being in, or crossing, the control strip.) If the individual was less than 100 metres (328.1 ft) away, the border guard would first order: "Stop! Border sentry! Hands up!" ("Halt! Grenzposten! Hände hoch!") or "Stop, stand still, or I will shoot!" ("Halt! Stehenbleiben, oder ich schieße!"). If the individual was further away or on the Western side of the border fence the guard was authorised to shoot without warning. If the escapee was a fellow border guard, he could be shot immediately from any distance without prior warning. Border guards were instructed not to shoot if innocent bystanders might be hit or if the escapee had made it into West German territory, or if the line of fire was into West Germany. In practice, though, shots fired from East Germany often landed in West German territory.
The border guards were under considerable pressure to obey the Schießbefehl. If they shot escapees they were rewarded with medals, bonuses and sometimes promotion. In one typical example, the killers of one would-be escapee in East Berlin in February 1972 were rewarded by being decorated with the "Order of Merit of the Border Troops of the GDR" and a bonus of 150 marks. By contrast, failure to shoot or suspicion that a shooter had deliberately missed was punished.
The Schießbefehl was, not surprisingly, very controversial in the West and was singled out for criticism by the West Germans. The West German authorities established a "Central Recording Office" to record details of deaths on the border, with the ultimate aim of prosecuting the offenders. This significantly discomforted the East German authorities, who repeatedly but unsuccessfully demanded the office's closure. The GDR authorities occasionally suspended the Schießbefehl on occasions when it would have been politically inconvenient to have to explain dead refugees, such as during a visit to the GDR by the French foreign minister in 1985. It was also a problem for many of the East German border guards and was the motivating factor behind a number of escapes, when guards facing a crisis of confidence defected because of their unwillingness to shoot fellow citizens.
There were many ways to die on the inner German border. Numerous escapees were shot by the border guards, while others were killed by mines and booby-traps. A substantial number drowned while trying to cross the Baltic and the Elbe river. Some died of heart attacks during their escape attempts; in one incident, a baby died after its parents gave it sleeping pills to keep it quiet during the crossing.
Not all of those killed on the border were attempting to escape. On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau journalist Kurt Lichtenstein
was shot on the border near the village of Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany; he was a former parliamentary representative of the German Communist Party. The incident prompted students from Braunschweig
to erect a sign on the border protesting the killing. An apparent mix-up over papers at a border crossing point led to the shooting of an Italian truck driver in August 1976. The dead man was a member of the Italian Communist Party
, which denounced the killing. The episode severely embarrassed the East German government and produced an unusual apology. In one notorious shooting on 1 May 1976, a former East German political prisoner, Michael Gartenschläger, who had fled to the West some years before, was ambushed and killed by a Stasi commando squad on the border near Büchen
as he tried to dismantle an SM-70 anti-personnel mine. When his body was buried it was described merely as an "unknown body fished out of the water". The Stasi's after-action report, however, declared that "before he could carry out the act [of removing the mine], Gartenschläger was liquidated by security forces of the GDR".
25 East German border guards died after being shot from the Western side of the border or by resisting escapees or (often accidentally) by their own colleagues. The East German government described them as "victims of armed assaults and imperialist provocations against the state border of the GDR" and alleged that "bandits" in the West took potshots at border guards doing their duty – a version of events that was uncorroborated by Western accounts of border incidents.
The two sides commemorated their dead in significantly different ways. Various mostly unofficial memorials were set up on the western side by people seeking to commemorate victims of the border. West Germans such as Michael Gartenschläger and Kurt Lichtenstein were commemorated with signs and memorials, some of which were supported by the government. After the policy of détente was initiated in the 1970s this became politically inconvenient and state support for border memorials largely ceased. The taboo in East Germany surrounding escapees meant that the great majority of deaths went unpublicised and uncommemorated. The border guards who died on the frontier were, however, portrayed as "martyrs" by the East German regime. Four stone memorials were erected in East Berlin to mark their deaths. The regime named schools, barracks and other public facilities after the dead guards and used their memorials as places of pilgrimage to signify that (as a slogan put it) "their deaths are our commitment" to maintaining the border. After 1989 the memorials were vandalised, neglected and ultimately removed.
Few East German escapees were commemorated in the West, not least because their identities were mostly unknown until after 1989. One notable exception was Helmut Kleinert, a 23-year-old from Quedlinburg
in Saxony-Anhalt
who was machine-gunned to death on 1 August 1963 as he and his 22-year-old pregnant wife attempted to cross the border near Hohegeiß
in the Harz
mountains. A memorial dedicated to "The Unknown" was soon erected by local people on the western side of the border. When Kleinert's identity became known in the West, his name was added to the memorial. It became something of a shrine with piles of flowers and wreaths deposited by visitors. The East German regime strongly objected and erected a watchtower nearby, from which threats and communist propaganda were broadcast across the border. Ultimately, in August 1971, the memorial was replaced by a stone set 150 metres (492.1 ft) away and out of sight of the border.
Refugee flows and escape attempts
Between 1950 and 1988, around four million East Germans migrated to the West. 3.454 million of them left between 1950 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The great majority simply walked across the border or, after 1952, exited through West Berlin. After the border was fortified and the Berlin Wall was constructed, the number of illegal border crossings fell drastically. The numbers fell further as the border defences were improved over the subsequent decades. In 1961, 8,507 people fled across the border, most of them through West Berlin. The construction of the Berlin Wall that year reduced the number of escapees by 75% to around 2,300 per annum for the rest of the decade. The number of escapees fell further to 868 per annum during the 1970s and to only 334 per annum between 1980 and 1988. However, escapees were never more than a small minority of the total number of emigrants from East Germany. Far more people left the country after being granted official permits, by fleeing through third countries or by being ransomed by the West German government. During the 1980s, only about 1% of those who left East Germany did so by escaping across the border.| Total | Official permits |
Escapes through other countries |
Direct escapes |
Ransomed by West Germany |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962–70 | 229,652 | 146,129 | 56,970 | 21,105 | 5,448 |
| 1971–79 | 131,176 | 85,434 | 27,576 | 7,816 | 10,350 |
| 1980–88 | 203,619 | 150,918 | 36,152 | 2,672 | 13,872 |
| Total (+ 1961) | 616,066 | 382,481 | 163,815 | 40,100 | 29,670 |
Escapees had various motives for attempting to flee East Germany. The vast majority had an essentially economic motive: they wished to improve their living conditions and opportunities in the West. Some fled for political reasons, but many were impelled to leave by specific social and political events. The imposition of collective agriculture and the crushing of the 1953 East German uprising prompted thousands to flee to the West, as did further coercive economic restructuring in 1960. Thousands of those who fled did so to escape the clearance of their villages along the border. By the 1980s, the number of escape attempts was rising again as East German's economy stagnated and living conditions deteriorated.
Attempts to flee across the border were carefully studied and recorded by the East German authorities to identify possible weak points. These would be addressed by strengthening the fortifications in vulnerable areas. The NVA and the Stasi carried out statistical surveys to identify trends. In one example, a study was carried out by the East German army at the end of the 1970s to review attempted "border breaches" (Grenzdurchbrüche). It found that 4,956 people had attempted to escape across the border between 1 January 1974 and 30 November 1979. Of those, 3,984 people (80.4%) were arrested by the Volkspolizei in the Sperrzone, the outer restricted zone. 205 people (4.1%) were caught at the signal fence. Within the inner security zone, the Schutzstreifen, a further 743 people (15%) were arrested by the border guards. 48 people (1%) were stopped – i.e. killed or injured – by landmines and 43 people (0.9%) by SM-70 directional mines on the border fence. A further 67 people (1.35%) were intercepted at the border fence (shot and/or arrested). The study highlighted the effectiveness of the SM-70 as a means of stopping people getting across the fence. A total of 229 people – just 4.6% of attempted escapees, representing less than one in twenty – made it across the border fence. Of these, the largest number (129, or 55% of successful escapees) succeeded in making it across the fence in unmined sectors. 89 people (39% of escapees) managed to cross both the minefields and the border fence, but just 12 people (6% of the total) succeeded in getting past the SM-70s.
Escape attempts were severely punished by the East German state. From 1953, the regime described the act of escaping as Republikflucht
Republikflucht
"Republikflucht" and "Republikflüchtling" were the terms used by authorities in the German Democratic Republic to describe the process of and the person leaving the GDR for a life in West Germany or any other Western country .The term...
(literally "flight from the Republic"), by analogy with the existing military term Fahnenflucht ("desertion
Desertion
In military terminology, desertion is the abandonment of a "duty" or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning...
"). A successful escapee was not a Flüchtling ("refugee") but a Republikflüchtiger ("Republic-deserter"). Those who attempted to escape were called Sperrbrecher (literally "blockade runners" but more loosely translated as "border violators"). Those who helped escapees were not Fluchthelfer ("escape helpers"), the Western term, but Menschenhändler ("human traffickers"). Such ideologically coloured language enabled the regime to portray border crossers as little better than traitors and criminals. An East German propaganda booklet published in 1955 outlined the official view of escapees:
Republikflucht became a crime in 1957, punishable by heavy fines and up to three years' imprisonment. Any act associated with an escape attempt was subject to this legislation. Those caught in the act were often tried for espionage as well and given proportionately harsher sentences. Some escapees were executed, sometimes being deported to the Soviet Union for the death penalty to be carried out. More than 75,000 people – an average of more than seven people a day – were imprisoned for attempting to escape across the border, serving an average of one to two years' imprisonment. Border guards who attempted to escape were treated much more harshly and were on average imprisoned for five years. Those who helped escapees were also subject to punishment, facing prison terms or deportation to internal exile in faraway towns. Some 50,000 East Germans suffered this fate between 1952 and 1989.
Escape methods
Refugees used a variety of methods to escape across the border. The great majority crossed on foot, though some took more unusual routes. One of the most spectacular was the escape in September 1979 of eight people from two families in a home-made hot-air balloon. Their flight involved an ascent to more than 2500 metres (8,202.1 ft) before landing near the West German town of NailaNaila
Naila is a town in the Frankenwald hills, in the Hof district of Bavaria. Naila is situated some 18 km from the larger city of Hof.-History:...
, inspiring the film Night Crossing
Night Crossing
Night Crossing is a 1982 Disney film starring John Hurt and Beau Bridges. The film is based on the true story of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, who on September 16, 1979 escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a homemade hot air balloon during the days of the Berlin Wall when emigration to...
. Other escapees relied more on physical strength and endurance. An escapee in 1987 used meat hooks to scale the border fences, while in 1971 a doctor swam 45 kilometres (28 mi) across the Baltic Sea from Rostock almost to the Danish island of Lolland
Lolland
Lolland is the fourth largest island of Denmark, with an area of 1,243 square kilometers . Located in the Baltic sea, it is part of Region Sjælland...
, before he was picked up by a West German yacht. Another escapee used an air mattress to escape across the Baltic in 1987. Mass escapes were rare. One of the few that succeeded took place on 2 October 1961, when 53 people from the border village of Böseckendorf
Böseckendorf
Böseckendorf is a village in the Teistungen municipality in the district of Eichsfeld in Germany. It became famous during the Cold War for two mass escapes in 1961 and 1963 involving a total of 65 inhabitants – a quarter of the village's population – across the heavily fortified inner German...
– a quarter of the village's population – escaped en masse, followed by another 13 inhabitants in February 1963. An unusual mass escape occurred in September 1964 when 14 East Germans, including eleven children, were smuggled across the border in a refrigerated truck. They were able to escape detection by being concealed under the carcasses of slaughtered pigs being transported to the West.
Those working on or near the border were occasionally able to use their privileged access and knowledge to escape. For the border guards, this presented special dangers, as their colleagues were under orders to shoot without warning if an escape attempt was made. The dilemmas they faced were highlighted in the May 1969 defection of a soldier and a non-commissioned officer of the Grenztruppen. When the NCO made his escape, the soldier, Jürgen Lange, decided not to shoot him. As this exposed Lange to severe punishment by his superiors for disobeying the order to shoot, Lange made his own escape ten minutes later. When he reached the West German side, Lange found that his rifle had been sabotaged by his NCO to prevent him firing in the first place. Soviet soldiers also sometimes escaped across the border, though this was very rare. Only eight such defections succeeded between 1953 and 1984.
The traffic was not one-way; thousands of people a year migrated from West Germany to the east. The East German press described such individuals as "west zone refugees" who were fleeing "political pressure", "growing unlawfulness" or "worsening economic conditions". Research carried out by the West German government found more prosaic reasons, such as marital problems, family estrangement and the homesickness of those who had lived in East Germany in the past. A number of Allied military personnel, including British, French, German and United States troops, also defected. By the end of the Cold War, as many as 300 United States citizens were thought to have defected across the Iron Curtain for a variety of reasons – whether to escape criminal charges, for political reasons or because (as the St. Petersburg Times put it) "girl-hungry GI's [were tempted] with seductive sirens, who usually desert the love-lorn soldier once he is across the border." The fate of such defectors varied considerably. Some were sent straight to labour camps on charges of espionage. Others committed suicide, while a few were able to find wives and work on the eastern side of the border.
Order to fire
From 1945 onwards, unauthorised crossers of the inner German border risked being shot by Soviet or East German border guards. The use of deadly force was termed the Schießbefehl ("order to fire" or "command to shoot"). It was formally in force as early as 1948, when regulations concerning the use of firearms on the border were promulgated. A regulation issued to East German police on 27 May 1952 stipulated that "failure to obey the orders of the Border Patrol will be met by the use of arms." From the 1960s through to the end of the 1980s, the border guards were given daily verbal orders (Vergatterung) to "track down, arrest or annihilate border violators." The GDR formally codified its regulations on the use of deadly force in March 1982, when the State Border Law mandated that firearms were to be used as the "maximum measure in the use of force" against individuals who "publicly attempt to break through the state border". The GDR's leadership explicitly endorsed the use of deadly force. General Heinz HoffmannHeinz Hoffmann
Heinz Hoffmann was Minister of National Defense in the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic, and since October 2, 1973 Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party .-Youth:Hoffmann came from a working class family...
, the GDR defence minister, declared in August 1966 that "anyone who does not respect our border will feel the bullet." In 1974, Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well from Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976....
, as Chairman of the GDR's National Defence Council, ordered: "Firearms are to be ruthlessly used in the event of attempts to break through the border, and the comrades who have successfully used their firearms are to be commended."
East German border guards had a standard procedure to follow if they detected unauthorised individuals in the border zone. (Though the West Germans referred to the control strip as a "death strip", deadly force could be used at any location along the border – it did not depend on an individual's being in, or crossing, the control strip.) If the individual was less than 100 metres (328.1 ft) away, the border guard would first order: "Stop! Border sentry! Hands up!" ("Halt! Grenzposten! Hände hoch!") or "Stop, stand still, or I will shoot!" ("Halt! Stehenbleiben, oder ich schieße!"). If the individual was further away or on the Western side of the border fence the guard was authorised to shoot without warning. If the escapee was a fellow border guard, he could be shot immediately from any distance without prior warning. Border guards were instructed not to shoot if innocent bystanders might be hit or if the escapee had made it into West German territory, or if the line of fire was into West Germany. In practice, though, shots fired from East Germany often landed in West German territory.
The border guards were under considerable pressure to obey the Schießbefehl. If they shot escapees they were rewarded with medals, bonuses and sometimes promotion. In one typical example, the killers of one would-be escapee in East Berlin in February 1972 were rewarded by being decorated with the "Order of Merit of the Border Troops of the GDR" and a bonus of 150 marks. By contrast, failure to shoot or suspicion that a shooter had deliberately missed was punished.
The Schießbefehl was, not surprisingly, very controversial in the West and was singled out for criticism by the West Germans. The West German authorities established a "Central Recording Office" to record details of deaths on the border, with the ultimate aim of prosecuting the offenders. This significantly discomforted the East German authorities, who repeatedly but unsuccessfully demanded the office's closure. The GDR authorities occasionally suspended the Schießbefehl on occasions when it would have been politically inconvenient to have to explain dead refugees, such as during a visit to the GDR by the French foreign minister in 1985. It was also a problem for many of the East German border guards and was the motivating factor behind a number of escapes, when guards facing a crisis of confidence defected because of their unwillingness to shoot fellow citizens.
Deaths on the border
It is still not known for sure how many people died on the inner German border or who they were, as the East German state treated such information as a closely guarded secret. But numbers have risen steadily since unification, as evidence has been gathered from East German records. Current unofficial estimates put the figure at up to 1,100 people, though officially released figures give a lower count for the death toll before and after the Berlin Wall was built.
People killed crossing the East German borders before and after 13 August 1961: figures as of 2000 Before 13 August 1961 (1) After 13 August 1961 (1) Total (1) Total (2) Inner German border 100 271 371 290 Berlin border/Wall 16 239 255 96 Baltic Sea 15 174 189 17 GDR border guards 11 16 27 – Soviet troops 1 5 6 – Berlin ring road – – – 90 Aircraft shot down 14 3 17 – Total 160 753 916 519
(1) Figures from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August
(2) Figures from the Zentrale Erfassungsstelle für Regierungs- und Vereinigungskriminalität
There were many ways to die on the inner German border. Numerous escapees were shot by the border guards, while others were killed by mines and booby-traps. A substantial number drowned while trying to cross the Baltic and the Elbe river. Some died of heart attacks during their escape attempts; in one incident, a baby died after its parents gave it sleeping pills to keep it quiet during the crossing.
Not all of those killed on the border were attempting to escape. On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau journalist Kurt Lichtenstein
Kurt Lichtenstein
Kurt Lichtenstein was a communist journalist, and his death was a notable result of the German Democratic Republic's border control policies....
was shot on the border near the village of Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany; he was a former parliamentary representative of the German Communist Party. The incident prompted students from Braunschweig
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
to erect a sign on the border protesting the killing. An apparent mix-up over papers at a border crossing point led to the shooting of an Italian truck driver in August 1976. The dead man was a member of the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
, which denounced the killing. The episode severely embarrassed the East German government and produced an unusual apology. In one notorious shooting on 1 May 1976, a former East German political prisoner, Michael Gartenschläger, who had fled to the West some years before, was ambushed and killed by a Stasi commando squad on the border near Büchen
Büchen
Büchen is a municipality in the district of Lauenburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is situated on the Elbe-Lübeck Canal, approx. 13 km northeast of Lauenburg/Elbe, and 45 km east of Hamburg....
as he tried to dismantle an SM-70 anti-personnel mine. When his body was buried it was described merely as an "unknown body fished out of the water". The Stasi's after-action report, however, declared that "before he could carry out the act [of removing the mine], Gartenschläger was liquidated by security forces of the GDR".
25 East German border guards died after being shot from the Western side of the border or by resisting escapees or (often accidentally) by their own colleagues. The East German government described them as "victims of armed assaults and imperialist provocations against the state border of the GDR" and alleged that "bandits" in the West took potshots at border guards doing their duty – a version of events that was uncorroborated by Western accounts of border incidents.
The two sides commemorated their dead in significantly different ways. Various mostly unofficial memorials were set up on the western side by people seeking to commemorate victims of the border. West Germans such as Michael Gartenschläger and Kurt Lichtenstein were commemorated with signs and memorials, some of which were supported by the government. After the policy of détente was initiated in the 1970s this became politically inconvenient and state support for border memorials largely ceased. The taboo in East Germany surrounding escapees meant that the great majority of deaths went unpublicised and uncommemorated. The border guards who died on the frontier were, however, portrayed as "martyrs" by the East German regime. Four stone memorials were erected in East Berlin to mark their deaths. The regime named schools, barracks and other public facilities after the dead guards and used their memorials as places of pilgrimage to signify that (as a slogan put it) "their deaths are our commitment" to maintaining the border. After 1989 the memorials were vandalised, neglected and ultimately removed.
Few East German escapees were commemorated in the West, not least because their identities were mostly unknown until after 1989. One notable exception was Helmut Kleinert, a 23-year-old from Quedlinburg
Quedlinburg
Quedlinburg is a town located north of the Harz mountains, in the district of Harz in the west of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. In 1994 the medieval court and the old town was set on the UNESCO world heritage list....
in Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt is a landlocked state of Germany. Its capital is Magdeburg and it is surrounded by the German states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia.Saxony-Anhalt covers an area of...
who was machine-gunned to death on 1 August 1963 as he and his 22-year-old pregnant wife attempted to cross the border near Hohegeiß
Hohegeiß
The health resort and winter sports village of Hohegeiß lies in the Harz Mountains between Braunlage and Benneckenstein at a height of between 570 to . Since 1 July 1972 Hohegeiß has been part of the borough of Braunlage in the district of Goslar in Lower Saxony...
in the Harz
Harz
The Harz is the highest mountain range in northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart , latinized as Hercynia. The legendary Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz...
mountains. A memorial dedicated to "The Unknown" was soon erected by local people on the western side of the border. When Kleinert's identity became known in the West, his name was added to the memorial. It became something of a shrine with piles of flowers and wreaths deposited by visitors. The East German regime strongly objected and erected a watchtower nearby, from which threats and communist propaganda were broadcast across the border. Ultimately, in August 1971, the memorial was replaced by a stone set 150 metres (492.1 ft) away and out of sight of the border.
See also
- Border guards of the inner German borderBorder guards of the inner German borderThe border guards of the inner German border comprised tens of thousands of military, paramilitary and civilian personnel from both East and West Germany, as well as from the United Kingdom, the United States and initially the Soviet Union.-East Germany:...
- Crossing the inner German borderCrossing the inner German borderCrossing the inner German border remained possible throughout the Cold War; it was never entirely sealed in the fashion of the border between the two Koreas, though there were severe restrictions on the movement of East German citizens...
- Development of the inner German borderDevelopment of the inner German borderThe development of the inner German border took place in a number of stages between 1945 and the mid-1980s. After its establishment in 1945 as the dividing line between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany, in 1949 the inner German border became the frontier between the Federal...
- Fall of the inner German borderFall of the inner German borderThe fall of the inner German border came rapidly and unexpectedly in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event paved the way for the ultimate reunification of Germany just short of a year later....
- Fortifications of the inner German borderFortifications of the inner German borderThe fortifications of the inner German border comprised a complex system of interlocking fortifications and security zones long and several kilometres deep, running from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia...