Herbert Kiebler shot near Mahlow; death disguised as suicide

Herbert Kiebler, born in Mahlow in 1952, worked as a press operator in a Berlin metalworks and lived with his mother and younger sister on the southern edge of Berlin. On the evening of 26 June 1975 a fight broke out in a Mahlow pub, and he came home badly beaten. Half an hour later he left again, leaving a note for his mother: 'Auf Wiedersehen im Knast oder in Westdeutschland' ('See you in jail or in West Germany'). He told his younger sister he wanted to go 'over there'.

At around 12.30 a.m. he got over the signal fence near the former Fernstraße 96, crossed the patrol road and moved towards the anti-vehicle trench, unaware that he had triggered an alarm. Two guards searching in a Trabant jeep found crawl marks and took up position. When he climbed out of the trench they opened fire from about 100 metres. Hit in the chest and upper arm, he bled to death on the spot. The guards later admitted they could easily have arrested him without using their weapons.

Weeks before the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, the Stasi moved the scene of death to a forest far from the border. With the involvement of a forester, police, registrars, pathologists and prosecutors, false reports were produced, and on 3 July the family was told that Herbert Kiebler had been found in a wood in Potsdam-West, having killed himself with a knife. Relatives secretly opened the coffin in the chapel at night and found the gunshot wounds.

The truth emerged only in the 1990s. A quarter of a century after the shooting, the Potsdam Regional Court gave the marksman and his company commander suspended sentences of 24 and 15 months for manslaughter and aiding manslaughter. A memorial stele near the place of his death was erected in 2012.