Horst Frank – caught in the last wire at Schönholz

Horst Frank, born in 1942 in Lommatzsch, Saxony, trained as a gardener and moved to East Berlin a few months before the Wall was built. At Easter 1962, visiting his parents, he found that his childhood friend Detlev W. also wanted to leave the GDR. His call-up for military service was imminent; his conscription notice was among the few things he carried when he died.

On 28 April 1962 the two met in East Berlin. Frank had scouted a spot at the Schönholz allotment colony in the north of the city, bordering Reinickendorf. After dark they cut through the rear fence with wire cutters and spent about four hours crawling slowly across the roughly 80-metre-wide border strip, avoiding a tripwire.

They reached the final obstacle, a triple barbed-wire fence. Detlev W. got through unseen and escaped to West Berlin. Horst Frank, caught in the wire, was discovered at about 0.30 a.m. on 29 April by two guards, who fired at him from about 20 metres; a third guard joined in. He was hit three times and suffered a wound through the abdomen and lung.

He died in the People's Police hospital at around 4 a.m. without regaining consciousness, while the Stasi was already applying for an arrest warrant against him. Residents in the West put up a wooden cross the next day. Decades later the three guards were convicted of joint manslaughter and given suspended sentences. In 2013 a bridge in the Klemkestraße was named after him.