25 November 1963 · Over the wall
Dietmar Schulz – killed on the S-Bahn tracks north of Bornholmer Straße
A 24-year-old man from Pankow tried to reach Wedding across the railway tracks in the border zone north of Bornholmer Straße and was fatally struck by a train.
Dietmar Schulz, born in 1939, lived in the Gaillardstraße in Pankow, only a few minutes from the sector border, which ran along the S-Bahn tracks between Bornholmer Straße and Wollankstraße stations. He had told a young West German he met in April 1963 that he rejected the SED regime and intended to go to the West; his fiancée believed that fear of being called up to the National People's Army was his motive.
On the evening of 25 November 1963 he left their flat at around 7 p.m., apparently without having said that he planned to act that night. Not entirely sober, he entered the railway area inside the 100-metre-wide border zone that had been set up in June 1963.
While trying to cross the tracks towards the West Berlin district of Wedding he was struck by a moving train. Border soldiers found him that evening, unconscious and badly injured, and he died shortly afterwards in the People's Police hospital.
His fiancée suspected he had been shot; the West German Central Registry in Salzgitter opened an investigation in 1964, and the Berlin prosecutors took it up again in 1991. The suspicion of violence was not confirmed, but the Chronik der Mauer concludes that he died because he wanted to flee to West Berlin.
Sources
- Schulz, DietmarChronik der Mauer
- Dokumentation: Sie starben an der Berliner MauerDer Tagesspiegel
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