Wolf-Olaf Muszynski drowns in the Spree, presumably while trying to escape

Wolf-Olaf Muszynski, born on 1 February 1947, lived in the East Berlin district of Friedrichshain. From 6 February 1963 the 16-year-old was missing.

On 18 March the East Berlin People's Police did something unusual for the time: it asked the West Berlin authorities whether the boy had registered there, in other words whether he had fled to the West. Enquiries, including at the Marienfelde refugee reception camp, found nothing. On 27 March his grandmother, who lived in West Berlin, told the police that her grandson had talked about wanting to escape.

On the morning of 1 April 1963 residents found his body in the Spree on the West Berlin (Kreuzberg) side not far from the Oberbaumbrücke; the fire brigade recovered it. He could be identified at once because he had tied his identity papers under his shirt on his back. The West Berlin police report of 2 April noted that he had presumably drowned during an escape attempt, and the Tagesspiegel reported the find as a drowned refugee.

The post-mortem found no injuries or illness; he had drowned and had been in the water for a long time. With no sign of third-party involvement the investigation was closed, and investigations reopened in the 1990s reached the same result. The Chronik der Mauer counts him among the victims of the Berlin Wall, concluding that everything points to his having drowned in an escape attempt unnoticed by the GDR border guards.