Herbert Halli shot while turning back at Zimmerstraße

Herbert Halli, born in Brandenburg an der Havel in 1953, trained as an electrician. Before his divorce at the end of 1974 he moved to East Berlin, lived in a workers' hostel in Lichtenberg, co-founded an FDJ youth club there and applied to join the SED. From 1 April 1975 he worked on the building site of the Palast der Republik.

On 3 April 1975 he celebrated his start on the site with colleagues, drinking from 3 p.m. At around 9 p.m. he left, heavily drunk, and took bus 32 towards the border in Mitte, losing his wallet and identity card in a scuffle with the driver at the terminus. At about 9.45 p.m. he climbed a two-metre metal fence and the rear wall near Zimmerstraße and Otto-Grotewohl-Straße and set off the signal fence alarm.

After a warning shot he threw himself to the ground, then jumped up and ran back towards the rear wall – he had clearly abandoned his escape. From about 100 metres the post commander fired a single shot, hitting him in the back as he was about to climb back into East Berlin near the former Haus der Ministerien. He died at around 10.45 p.m. in the Volkspolizei hospital.

Because nobody in the West seemed to have noticed, the Stasi concealed the killing: the time of death was moved by 24 hours, a fictitious report stated he had been found dead in a construction pit, and his mother was told he had fallen into a pit near the Czechoslovak embassy while drunk. Only a few people had known of his wish to leave; he had once told his mother that it would be 'quite easy here', and his former wife said he had always wanted to join his brother in Kiel. The truth came to light in 1995; in 1998 the marksman received a one-year suspended sentence for manslaughter.