Invalidenstraße and the Humboldthafen
The crossing point on Invalidenstraße, the Sandkrugbrücke and the canal basin beside the Charité.
Here the border ran along the water. The Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal (Spandauer Schifffahrtskanal) formed the border with West Berlin, and there was a crossing point on Invalidenstraße.1 At the Invalidenfriedhof the line ran directly along the bank, so in 1961 the border troops levelled part of the cemetery and laid their patrol road straight across the grounds.2
Water and the crossing account for most records. On 17 August 1961 a person swam the Spree from behind the Charité, grounds the Stasi called hard to secure, and four days later someone in a white coat came out of the hospital's dental-clinic gate and jumped the barrier while the guard was on the telephone. On 24 August 1961 Günter Litfin was shot swimming the Humboldthafen, the first refugee killed by aimed shots at the Wall. In May 1962 the 14-year-old Wilfried Tews swam the canal under fire and reached the West badly wounded; a border guard was killed in the exchange of shots. At the crossing itself, in May 1963 a steel-plated bus carrying eight East Berliners came under 138 shots and crashed into the last barrier about a metre short of the West, while in December 1964 the driver of the Interflug airport shuttle took his girlfriend through in the bus's spare-wheel box. Walter Heike was shot on the last wall before the canal at the cemetery in 1964.
The patrol road across the Invalidenfriedhof is still clearly visible, with a piece of the rear wall.2 The preserved command tower on the canal at Kieler Eck is now the Günter Litfin memorial; it was one of 280 towers along the Wall, and public tours are held on Saturdays from April to October.3 Two history-mile panels at the former crossing tell of a failed escape attempt there and of Litfin.1
Sources for this text
- Mauerweg: Vom Nordbahnhof zum Potsdamer Platzberlin.de
- InvalidenfriedhofChronik der Mauer
- Gedenkstätte Günter Litfinberlin.de
Checked October 2026. Facts taken from an escape record on this site link to that record, which lists its own sources.
13 events: 6 successful escapes, 4 failed attempts and 3 fatal attempts. At least 8 people reached the West in these events.
17 August 1961
Across the Spree behind the Charité
On 17 August 1961 a person swam the Spree from behind the Charité hospital towards West Berlin. The Stasi said the confusing terrain there made the border very hard to secure.
19 August 1961
Two people caught at the cemetery wall in Scharnhorststraße
On 19 August 1961 two people were stopped trying to get over the wall of the cemetery in Scharnhorststraße into West Berlin.
21 August 1961
The person in the white coat from the Charité
On 21 August 1961 a person in a white coat came out of the last gate of the Charité and jumped over the barrier into West Berlin while the guard had been called to the telephone.
24 August 1961
Günter Litfin – shot swimming the Humboldthafen
On 24 August 1961 tailor Günter Litfin, born 1937, tried to swim across the Humboldthafen and became the first refugee killed by targeted shots at the Berlin Wall.
1962
Klaus Müller lets the Panke carry him into the Spree and dives to the Kronprinzenufer
In the autumn of 1962 the dentistry student Klaus Müller climbed into the Panke at Reinhardtstraße at night, let the piped stream wash him into the Spree and dived with a closed-circuit diving set along the river to the West Berlin bank at the Kronprinzenufer. Guards fired when he surfaced once; he learned of it only from the West Berlin police who met him.
23 May 1962
Wilfried Tews swims the canal – border guard Peter Göring killed
A 14-year-old schoolboy from Erfurt swam the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal under heavy fire and reached West Berlin badly wounded; in the exchange of fire with West Berlin police, 21-year-old border guard Peter Göring was killed by a ricochet.
27 May 1962
Lutz Haberlandt – shot at the Charité
On a warm Sunday a 24-year-old bricklayer climbed from the Charité hospital grounds into the border strip; a guard on the tower of the Supreme Court shot him in the head and he lay in the bushes for about 40 minutes.
12 May 1963
Failed bus escape at Invalidenstraße
Eight young East Berliners tried to ram a stolen, steel-plated bus through the Invalidenstraße crossing; it was riddled with bullets and stopped one metre short of the West.
22 June 1964
Walter Heike shot at the Invalidenfriedhof
Former customs officer Walter Heike climbed the cemetery wall and was pulling himself up the last wall before the canal when a border NCO shot him.
11 December 1964
Hidden in the airport bus's spare-wheel box
The driver of the Interflug shuttle bus to West Berlin simply did not come back one morning; his girlfriend rode with him through the Invalidenstraße checkpoint inside the spare-wheel box.
29 December 1972
Ellen Thiemann's escape car stopped at the border
The journalist Ellen Thiemann planned to leave the GDR with her eleven-year-old son Carsten in a specially prepared car. On 29 December 1972 she and her husband were arrested and she was later sentenced to three years and five months; after the Wall fell she learned from her Stasi files that her husband had been an informer.
4 February 1976
Look-alikes for hire: the Dawid organisation's couriers arrested in Potsdam
Three West Berliners went into the GDR as tourists. They were to hand their own identity papers, clothes and handbags to two East Germans, who would then leave through the Invalidenstraße crossing as their look-alikes. The Stasi arrested them in Potsdam.
June 1978
Two East Germans escape in a Belgian diplomat's car
In June 1978 two East Germans who had befriended a Belgian diplomat in East Berlin knocked him out, altered his identity papers and drove his diplomatic car into West Berlin.
