Christian Peter Friese shot on Christmas night at Köllnische Heide

Christian Peter Friese, born in Munich in 1948, grew up in Naumburg, trained as a car mechanic and worked for the Deutsche Reichsbahn. He was active in a local youth club, while the Stasi disapproved of his taste for Western beat music. His mother later said he had often spoken of wanting to 'get away', disagreed with conditions in the GDR and did not want to serve in the army.

On Christmas Eve 1970 his mother found his room empty; a photo album, a tape recorder and clothes were missing. He had taken the train to East Berlin, hidden in an allotment colony near the border in Treptow and watched the installations.

Around midnight he climbed the rear fence unseen. As he crawled through the signal fence and jumped the trip wires beyond, he set off the alarm. The area was overlooked by two towers, the barriers were brightly lit, and an alarm group had been posted on the four-metre-high Köllnische Heide railway embankment for Christmas night. Five guards fired a total of 98 rounds. He tried to hide in the anti-vehicle trench, ran on and collapsed a few metres before the last fence, dying in the strip from wounds to the abdomen and chest.

Bullets struck trees and house walls on the West Berlin side, and residents shouted at the guards. His mother was told by the Stasi that he had died in a car accident and was made to sign a statement repeating that version. Twenty-eight years later the guards were acquitted because no intent to kill could be proved and the fatal shot could not be attributed.