Berlin Wall Escapes1961–1989

22 April 1978 · Over the wall · Staaken

A 19-year-old reaches Staaken with a bullet wound in his hand

In the early hours of 22 April 1978 a 19-year-old East German turned up at the S-Bahn station in Staaken with a gunshot wound in his hand. He told police he had been fired on as he crossed the border.

Colour photo taken from a bridge: an empty, weed-grown platform with a long canopy on iron posts runs beside the tracks; a train of coaches stands on the right-hand track, with poplars and autumn trees behind.
The platforms of Staaken station on the West Berlin side in October 1986; the S-Bahn ran here until 1980, and in April 1978 the wounded 19-year-old turned up at this station Photo: Roehrensee. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

In the early morning of 22 April 1978 a 19-year-old East German escaped into the British sector of Berlin near the S-Bahn station at Staaken, on the western edge of Spandau.

He appeared at the station with a gunshot wound in his hand. He later told the West Berlin police and the British authorities that he had been shot at while crossing the border. Nobody had heard shots at the time, but the US Mission reported that neither it, the British nor the police had any reason to doubt his account.

Colour photo: a diesel locomotive pulls a long train of passenger coaches along tracks between two lines of white concrete wall; a watchtower stands on the left, tall lamp posts line the tracks and dry grass and weeds fill the foreground.
The Wall and a watchtower along the railway at Staaken in October 1986, seen from West Berlin as a transit train from Hamburg passes Photo: Roehrensee. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Berlin CDU leader Peter Lorenz used the case to condemn the GDR's shoot-to-kill orders and said Chancellor Helmut Schmidt could not leave the issue out of his talks with Leonid Brezhnev. In its survey of a 'spate of minor incidents' along the Wall that spring, the US Mission singled this out as the one case of an apparent wounding by East German border guards.

Sources

  1. Mauervorfeld and S-Bahn; a spate of minor incidents cause the Senat concern (telegram 1978USBERL01079, 6 May 1978)US National Archives, Access to Archival Databases (Central Foreign Policy Files, RG 59)

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