Max Sahmland – shot while swimming the Teltow Canal
Wounded while cutting through the fences, Max Sahmland reached the Teltow Canal and swam for the western bank, but guards kept firing and he sank only metres from safety.
Max Sahmland, born in Berlin on 28 March 1929, had moved to West Berlin in January 1961 and returned to the GDR a few months later. His marriage broke down, and in January 1967 he was sentenced to six months in prison followed by committal to an institution for alcoholics. Not wanting to be locked up again, he decided to flee with his fiancée.
After two failed starts, the couple and a female friend who joined them spontaneously set out shortly before midnight on 26 January 1967. They went by S-Bahn to Adlershof and on foot into the border area, which Sahmland knew from former work at a sewage plant. He left the two women in a ditch and crawled ahead with wire cutters.
At about 2.30 a.m. he set off the alarm on the signal fence, and the watchtower at the Wredebrücke opened fire. Although wounded, he crawled under the remaining barriers, reached the bank of the Teltow Canal and tried to swim across. The guards kept shooting even when he was already in West Berlin waters; one bullet entered his right lung.
Two workers from the nearby Eternit factory on the western bank tried to help him but had to take cover because of the shooting, and he sank a few metres from the shore. His body was found by the West Berlin water police on 8 March 1967. The two women escaped back home unseen, but were arrested and sentenced to prison terms.
Sahmland was buried in the Parkfriedhof Neukölln in West Berlin; the Stasi imposed a travel ban on his mother so she could not attend. The alleged marksman was acquitted in 2000.
Sources
- Sahmland, MaxChronik der Mauer
- Gedenkstelen für Dieter Berger, Michael Kollender, Max Sahmland, Opfer der Berliner MauerMuseen Treptow-Köpenick (berlin.de)
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