Michael Schmidt shot at Schulzestraße

Michael Schmidt was born on 20 October 1964 and trained as a carpenter in a building repair company in Pankow. He had refused to enlist for three years in the army and categorically refused to serve at the border. In November 1984 his company sent him to rebuild houses on Wollankstraße and Schulzestraße, right by the border, from whose upper floors he could study the border installations.

In the early hours of 1 December 1984 he got into one of the border buildings where he had been working, accompanied by a person who has never been identified. Two wooden ladders were waiting at the construction site and he took them. He climbed over the wall into a rear courtyard and then over the first border barrier. When he climbed the signal fence he set off optical and acoustic alarms.

Two guards in a tower about 100 metres away opened fire, one from the tower and the other from the ground after climbing down. He was hit in the back and the knee and fell.

Almost an hour passed before an ambulance took him, at 4:25 a.m., to the People's Police Hospital in Berlin-Mitte, where he died at 6:20 a.m. A 1991 medical assessment concluded that with prompt treatment his life could have been saved 'with a probability bordering on certainty'. His parents were given the runaround for days.

On 5 February 1992 the two guards were convicted of joint manslaughter and given suspended sentences of 18 and 21 months.