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.
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.
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
Whose account is this? Told from a Western official record only.
Western official records
- 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)
Facts checked against the sources: September 2026
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Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “A 19-year-old reaches Staaken with a bullet wound in his hand”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/staaken-s-bahn-wounded-hand-1978/ (accessed [date]).
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