Eberhard Schulz shot after standing up to surrender

Eberhard Schulz, born on 11 March 1946, lived in Brusendorf, south of Berlin, and worked as an unskilled farm labourer on a state farm in Boddinsfelde. His friend and colleague Dieter K. had carted away rubble when houses at the Großziethen border were demolished in 1964/65 and remembered the border there as simple barbed wire and mesh fencing.

Late on 29 March 1966 the two took a bolt cutter from their workplace and cycled about 20 kilometres to Großziethen. They lost the cutter on the way. At about 3 a.m. they approached on foot, but the border was now far stronger than Dieter K. remembered: a 250-metre-wide lit death strip, 64 signal devices, ten guard dogs and a signal fence.

Dieter K. crawled through the rear fence and set off the alarm. Flares went up and both men froze in the grass, Schulz still on the near side of the fence. When three guards ordered Dieter K. to stand up with his hands raised, Schulz, whom they had not noticed, also stood up.

According to Dieter K., a guard fired from the hip at once without warning; the guards claimed Schulz reached into his pocket and tried to run. He was hit in the face and neck and died instantly. Dieter K. was sentenced to two years in prison.

The investigation opened in 1991 was closed in 1996 because the guard's claim of putative self-defence could not be disproved; his death went unpunished.