Rudolf Müller's Tunnel and the Death of Reinhold Huhn

Rudolf Müller, a former cross-border commuter, had been cut off from his family in East Berlin by the Wall. After other escape plans failed, he and his brothers and other helpers spent weeks digging a tunnel from the Springer publishing company's building site in West Berlin to the cellar of Zimmerstraße 56, a border house in the old newspaper district.

On the afternoon of 18 June 1962, Müller emerged from the house and returned about an hour later with two women and two children. Border policeman Reinhold Huhn, aged 20, was ordered by his post leader to check their papers. Müller drew a pistol and shot him in the chest at close range; Huhn bled to death. The post leader fired at the group, but all reached West Berlin through the tunnel unharmed.

The West Berlin Senate backed Müller, who was flown out to West Germany with his family. At the time he claimed he had only struck the guard and that Huhn had been hit by his comrade's fire, a version the Western press adopted. The GDR turned Huhn into a martyr and renamed a street after him.

In 1999 the Berlin regional court convicted Müller of manslaughter, with a one-year suspended sentence, after he admitted firing the shot but claimed self-defence. In 2000 the Federal Court of Justice classed the act as murder but left the sentence unchanged.