Berlin Wall Escapes1961–1989

13 September 1964 · Over the wall

Michael Meyer pulled over the Wall under fire

Badly wounded by border guards' bullets, 21-year-old Michael Meyer was hauled over the Wall on a rope by a US military police sergeant while West Berlin police and US soldiers returned fire.

Colour photo from a height of a wide grass border strip with a row of lamps, a white watchtower and the Wall, with blocks of flats behind.
The border strip along the Stallschreiberstraße, photographed from West Berlin in November 1987; Michael Meyer was pulled over the Wall on this street in 1964 Photo: Roehrensee. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Early on 13 September 1964 Michael Meyer, a 21-year-old stable lad and former jockey, tried to climb the Wall in the Stallschreiberstraße near Spittelmarkt. After warning shots the guards fired to hit him; two officers who lived nearby joined in, and he fell back wounded onto the control strip.

The officers tried to drag him away, but West Berlin police and US soldiers took up positions in the houses on the western side and opened fire. A tear-gas grenade was thrown. The officers took cover, and Meyer tried again to get over the Wall.

A US soldier climbed onto the Wall to throw him a rope, but was at first kept back by the guards' fire. After concentrated fire from the western side, another US soldier got onto the top of the Wall, threw a rope over and pulled Meyer onto the western side, from where he was and taken away by fire engine. The Stasi counted about 100 shots from the West and 82 from its own guards; nobody else was hurt.

The rescuer was US military police sergeant Hans Werner Puhl. Martin Luther King, who was visiting Berlin that day, went to the scene and condemned the 'dividing wall of hostility'. Neues Deutschland and other East German papers afterwards presented Meyer as a 'notorious criminal', using material from the Stasi.

Sources

GDR records

Press

Historians and memorials

Facts checked against the sources: September 2026

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Berlin Experiences, “Michael Meyer pulled over the Wall under fire”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-meyer-hans-puhl-stallschreiberstrasse-1964/ (accessed [date]).

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