15 January 1963 · Over the wall
Horst Kutscher – shot 25 metres from West Berlin
On the night before the SED party congress, a 31-year-old coal worker and a colleague crawled towards the border in Johannisthal; about 25 metres from West Berlin shots were fired and Horst Kutscher was killed.
Horst Kutscher, born in 1931 in Berlin-Treptow, worked for coal merchants in East Berlin. On 14 January 1963 a labour court rejected the claim he and his colleague Joachim F. had brought against their dismissal. After spending the afternoon drinking in several bars, the two men decided that evening to flee to West Berlin.
At around 10 p.m. they first went to the border area at the Semmelweißstraße, planning to cross the frozen Teltow Canal, but found it brightly lit. They moved to an allotment colony near the Rudower Straße, between the Wredebrücke and the Ententeich, crawled under a barbed-wire fence and, watching the guards, worked their way along the security ditch towards the border.
The guards had been told that no border breach must be allowed on the eve of the SED's Sixth Party Congress, and more patrols had been deployed. At about 0.10 a.m. on 15 January, roughly 25 metres from West Berlin, two shots were fired. Joachim F. was arrested; Horst Kutscher had been hit. The guards dragged him into their trench and took him by truck to their post, where a medic found that he was dead.
He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Baumschulenweg cemetery; his father was not allowed to see him or attend the burial. The guard who fired the fatal shot was sentenced in August 1997 to one year and three months' imprisonment on probation.
Sources
- Kutscher, HorstChronik der Mauer
- Gedenkstelen für Horst Kutscher, Johannes Sprenger, Opfer der Berliner MauerMuseen Treptow-Köpenick / Berlin.de
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