17 August 1965 – 18 August 1965 · Over the wall
Klaus Garten – left to bleed in the vehicle ditch
Disillusioned SED member Klaus Garten was shot in the thigh climbing a garden fence at the border in Teltow-Seehof; guards hid him from Western view and he died after a long detour to a Stasi prison hospital.
Klaus Garten, born on 19 July 1941 in Radeberg, had served three years in the NVA at Stahnsdorf and later worked as a fitter at the Hennigsdorf steelworks, where he was an SED party group organiser. He and his wife lived in a single room of a garden shed and, as a childless couple, had little prospect of a flat.
On 17 August 1965, after a fruitless trip to Teltow to find a used car, he decided to leave the GDR. At about 9 p.m. a sentry saw him climb the fence of a property on the Paul-Gerhardt-Straße in Teltow-Seehof, directly at the border, where the strip was only about 20 metres wide. From about 200 metres a guard fired a burst of three rounds from a light machine gun and Garten fell from the fence.
Badly bleeding from a bullet in the thigh, he dragged himself into the vehicle ditch. As West Berlin police searched the area with lamps, the guards hid with him in the ditch and then carried him on a long detour to avoid being seen. Almost an hour passed before he received first aid.
Instead of the Diakonie hospital a kilometre away, he was taken to the Stasi prison hospital in Hohenschönhausen, at least an hour's drive, where he died. His widow was questioned before being told of his death and was made to say he had died in a motorcycle or car accident.
An investigation in the 1990s was closed because the suspected shooter's claim that he had fired only a warning shot could not be disproved.
Sources
- Garten, KlausChronik der Mauer
- Jahrgang 1965: Verhinderter Grenzdurchbruch bei TeltowStasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (DDR im Blick)
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