Peter Fechter bleeds to death at Zimmerstraße

Peter Fechter, an East Berliner, was born on 14 January 1944. On 17 August 1962, a year and four days after the Wall was built, the 18-year-old bricklayer and his co-worker Helmut Kulbeik attempted to flee to West Berlin.

The two young men had found a run-down building on Schützenstraße whose rear windows faced the Wall. They got out through a window and ran, in their socks, the few metres to the Wall on Zimmerstraße, close to the Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße crossing point known as Checkpoint Charlie.

Border guards opened fire; according to the Chronik der Mauer four guards fired 35 shots in total. Kulbeik got over the Wall unhurt. Fechter was hit and fell back on the eastern side, where he lay at the foot of the Wall.

For around 50 minutes he screamed for help while crowds, police officers and US soldiers watched from the West; they could do little more than throw bandage packs over the Wall. The East German guards did not recover him until his cries had stopped. Photographs and film of the dying young man went around the world.

In 1997 two of the former border guards were convicted of manslaughter and received sentences of 20 and 21 months, suspended on probation. A steel stele on Zimmerstraße, about 200 metres from the former Checkpoint Charlie, was unveiled on 13 August 1999; it bears the inscription '...er wollte nur die Freiheit' (he only wanted freedom).