Horst Kullack shot on New Year's Eve at Großziethen

Horst Kullack, born in 1948, grew up as the eldest of five children in the border village of Großziethen, south-east of Berlin. Without vocational training he worked as a transport labourer. An uncle and his grandmother lived in West Berlin. After an earlier escape attempt in 1967 he repeatedly came to the attention of the authorities; psychiatric assessments found him not criminally responsible.

On the evening of 31 December 1971 he set out for the border in the dark, possibly to reach his relatives in Neukölln, as his father later assumed. At about 10 p.m. he knocked on the window of a house in the restricted zone and asked whether he was already at the border, saying he wanted to 'get away' to West Berlin. The resident reported him to the local police officer, who informed the border troops.

Kullack nevertheless climbed the rear fence and, bent low, reached the border wall. A searchlight was turned on him, and the two guards fired two aimed shots each without calling on him to stop. Hit in the abdomen, he collapsed. The guards hid him in the anti-vehicle trench before any first aid was given; the New Year's fireworks had apparently drowned out the shots.

After five operations at the district hospital in Königs Wusterhausen he died on 21 January 1972. In 1995 the Potsdam Regional Court gave the two marksmen suspended youth sentences of one year and three months for joint manslaughter; one of them apologised personally to his father. A memorial cross on Wittelsbacher Straße in Lichtenrade has long commemorated him.