Horst Einsiedel shot on a ladder at Pankow cemetery

Horst Einsiedel, born in Pankow in 1940, trained as a fitter, gained his Abitur at a workers' and peasants' faculty and studied mechanical engineering in Dresden. Refusing to join the SED limited his career. His sister had moved to West Berlin in 1951 and his mother in 1969. His wife considered escaping with their young daughter too dangerous, and he eventually made the attempt alone.

Early on 15 March 1973 he told his wife he needed an emergency dentist and drove his Trabant to the Pankow cemetery where his father was buried. From its last fence it was only 30 metres to the first house in West Berlin. With a hacksaw and bolt cutters he freed two ladders chained to a tool shed, crossed the rear fence with one and the signal fence with a folding ladder, setting off the alarm.

He had placed the ladder against the concrete wall and was climbing when two guards in a tower 200 metres away opened fire. Hit in the neck and chest, he fell and died shortly afterwards.

The Stasi drew up plans to conceal his death, and 42 people who knew were sworn to silence. His wife, not knowing she was a widow, was questioned repeatedly, shown his car staged in a forest and told he might have been the victim of a crime; at the end of May she was told he had drowned in the Havel near Potsdam. In 1999 the two guards received suspended sentences of one year and three months for manslaughter. His urn was buried in his father's grave in Pankow – the place from which he had set out.