The Spree between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain
Here the river itself was the border, from the Oberbaumbrücke along today's East Side Gallery.
16 August 1961
The flower-box lorry at Köpenicker Straße
At 6.30 on 16 August 1961 a driver loaded flower boxes in front of a florist's in Köpenicker Straße and drove back and forth to lull the guards. Then he drove straight over the crossing into West Berlin.
6 September 1961
Two young guards let a mother and her baby through at the Puschkinallee
A woman whose husband was waiting on the other side asked the guards to let her through. They told her to come back after dark – and at 8.30 p.m. she crossed with a four-month-old baby and a boy.
5 October 1961
Udo Düllick – drowned under fire in the Spree
Railway worker Udo Düllick tried to swim the Spree at the Oberbaumbrücke around midnight; chased by gunfire, he drowned just short of the western bank.
14 October 1961
Werner Probst – shot at the West Berlin ladder
Truck driver Werner Probst swam the Spree at night near the Schillingbrücke and was hit by gunfire as he climbed the ladder on the West Berlin quay wall.
April 1962
Philipp Held – a West German who could not get back
A 19-year-old from Worms who had moved to the GDR in 1961 tried to return to the West by swimming the Spree; his body was recovered on 22 April 1962.
8 June 1962
The excursion ship "Friedrich Wolf"
Young East Berliners commandeered the passenger steamer "Friedrich Wolf", locked up its crew and swerved under heavy fire into West Berlin's Landwehrkanal.
8 October 1962
Anton Walzer – shot swimming from a barge
Sixty-year-old Anton Walzer climbed onto a moored barge and slipped into the Spree; border guards shot him in the back of the head.
15 December 1962
Pulled out of the Spree 15 metres from the line
Before dawn on 15 December 1962 border guards on a patrol boat fired about 25 shots at a man of about 45 who was swimming the Spree. They pulled him into the boat 15 metres short of the sector border, and he shouted to West Berlin police that he was wounded.
1 January 1963
Hans Räwel – New Year's morning in the icy Spree
After a New Year's Eve party, 21-year-old baker Hans Räwel swam into the freezing Spree and was shot at close range from a border boat about 35 metres from the western bank.
February 1963 – 1 April 1963
Wolf-Olaf Muszynski drowns in the Spree, presumably while trying to escape
A 16-year-old from Friedrichshain went missing in February 1963; on 1 April his body was found in the Spree on the West Berlin bank near the Oberbaumbrücke. Historians conclude he most likely drowned trying to escape, unseen by the border guards.
25 December 1963
Paul Schultz – shot on the Wall on Christmas Day
Two 18-year-old friends from Neubrandenburg climbed the Wall at dusk on Christmas Day 1963; Hartmut D. got across unhurt, while Paul Schultz was shot on the Wall and died that evening in a West Berlin hospital.
27 August 1965 – 28 August 1965
A miner swims the Spree at Mühlenstraße
In the night of 27 to 28 August 1965 a 31-year-old miner worked his way through ruined buildings in the border strip at Mühlenstraße and swam the Spree to Kreuzberg.
1 December 1971
Two border guards take a patrol boat across the Spree
In December 1971 two 20-year-old GDR border guards disarmed a comrade, took the patrol boat moored at Mühlenstraße and crossed the Spree to Kreuzberg in broad daylight.
14 February 1972
Manfred Weylandt – shot in the Spree
Stoker Manfred Weylandt crossed the border installations and entered the Spree near the Schillingbrücke late at night; two guards shot him in the head and he drowned.
6 October 1972
Over the waterworks wall and onto the Schillingbrücke – 46 shots
A young circus stoker climbed the wall of the waterworks on Holzmarktstraße and the fence at the Schillingbrücke, and tried to run across the bridge. Guards fired 46 rounds; he collapsed about 30 metres beyond the bridgehead with life-threatening internal injuries.
December 1980 – 9 February 1981
Peter Grohganz drowns in the winter Spree
On 9 February 1981 a GDR border boat found a body caught in a water barrier in the Spree east of the Oberbaumbrücke. It was Peter Grohganz, 32, from Premnitz, who had disappeared in December after his application to leave the GDR went nowhere.
