Peter Mädler – 'Don't shoot!' in the Teltow Canal

Peter Mädler was born in 1943 near Breslau and grew up with adoptive parents in Hoyerswerda. After training as an electrician he moved in December 1961 to a job at the Geräte- und Reglerwerk in Teltow; from the roof of the works the border section along the Teltow Canal at Kleinmachnow could be seen. According to a friend from his youth, he had learned that blood relatives of his lived in the West.

In the dark early hours of 26 April 1963 he approached the border installations near the Erlenweg by the Teltow Canal, cut the lower wires of the fence with side cutters and left his clothes on the bank. With a belt carrying the cutters and a plastic bag holding his wallet and identity papers, he entered the water, got past the barrier in the canal and swam carefully along the northern bank towards the harbour entrance, close to a watchtower.

At 4.45 a.m. the guards on the tower spotted him when he was only about ten metres from the border. He shouted 'Don't shoot!' and swam on. One guard fired 30 rounds without a warning shot; Mädler dived and was not hit. When he surfaced right in front of the border line in the water, the second guard fired three aimed single shots and he sank, fatally wounded. The fire brigade recovered his body at the entrance to the Teltow harbour that afternoon.

The border unit's commander praised the guards, who received a medal for exemplary border service. In the mid-1990s the Potsdam regional court convicted both former guards of manslaughter and gave them suspended sentences of one year and three months. In West Berlin the dead man remained unidentified for years; today memorial steles at the Knesebeckbrücke in Teltow commemorate him.