Wilfried Tews swims the canal – border guard Peter Göring killed

On 23 May 1962 Wilfried Tews, a 14-year-old schoolboy from Erfurt, climbed over the Wall at the Invalidenfriedhof and jumped into the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal. Under a hail of bullets from GDR border guards he swam to the western bank. He was hit several times but survived; he was recovered on the West Berlin side and remained severely disabled for the rest of his life.

Because the border guards' bullets were landing on West Berlin territory, West Berlin police officers gave the boy covering fire. Peter Göring, a 21-year-old border policeman, had left his watchtower against his post commander's explicit order to get a better firing position and was himself firing at Tews. A West Berlin officer who felt threatened returned fire. After the shooting ended, Göring's body was found between two walls near the bank; East Berlin forensic tests showed he had been killed by a ricochet.

The GDR portrayed Göring as a martyr murdered by the West Berlin police and gave him a state funeral; streets and schools were named after him. Military and court files kept secret in the GDR show that he had taken part in the shooting and, by aiming at a child and towards the West, had broken the GDR's own firearms regulations.

In July 1991 proceedings against the West Berlin police officer were dropped on the grounds of self-defence and aid to another. Three former border guards were charged with the attempted manslaughter of Wilfried Tews but acquitted in June 2002, because the court could not establish who had fired the shots that hit him; it noted that Göring himself may have caused the wounds.