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The white crosses for people killed at the Wall, beside the Spree near the Reichstag, 2011. Each carries a name and a date.Photo: JoJan, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

The dead of the Berlin Wall

Historians examined 576 deaths at the Berlin Wall. They could prove 140; the youngest was 15 months old

Between 2005 and 2009 the ZZF Potsdam and the Stiftung Berliner Mauer checked every death and suspected death at the Wall against archives, court files and the testimony of families. These are seven of the 140, the places where they died, and the cases that could not be counted.

576
deaths and suspected cases researched, 2005–2009
140
proven to be deaths at the Wall
164
excluded after checking
24
unresolved, 16 of them unidentified bodies from the border waters

0113 August 1961 – 9 November 1989

The first died nine days after the border closed. The last died eight months before it opened

The Wall ran 155 km around West Berlin. Only 43.1 km of it went through the city, between East and West Berlin; 111.9 km separated West Berlin from the GDR’s surrounding country. People died along all of it.

A street with pedestrians and cars seen from above; the border strip runs along its right-hand side.
Bernauer Straße, 1966. The house fronts on the right were the border; the pavement in front of them was West Berlin. By then the windows had been bricked up.Photo: ELAB, Archiv der Versöhnungsgemeinde, 1966. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Wall around West Berlin, 1989

Map of Berlin with the line of the Wall in 1989: the stretch through the city between East and West Berlin, and the longer stretch between West Berlin and the GDR's surrounding country. The places where seven of the dead died are marked in turn.

155 km in all: yellow through the city, pale against the GDR’s surroundings.

Workers and a crane set concrete elements along a border strip at the edge of woodland.
Building a new wall on the outer ring near Kleinmachnow, 1965. Most of the Wall ran not through the city but between West Berlin and the GDR’s surrounding country. Photo: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-P091010 / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

155 km

Most of the Wall ran through fields, woods and lakes

Of the 155 kilometres, 111.9 lay between West Berlin and the GDR’s surrounding country, and 43.1 through the city.

A square granite stone set in paving, carved with an inscription and the date 22.8.1961.
The memorial stone for Ida Siekmann on Bernauer Straße, 2007: “Dem Opfer der Schandmauer Ida Siekmann † 22.8.1961 gewidmet” (dedicated to the victim of the wall of shame). Photo: Katzenmeier, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The first to die · 22 August 1961

Ida Siekmann, 58, Bernauer Straße

Her building at Bernauer Straße 48 stood in the East; the pavement below it was already the West. Nine days after the border was sealed, she threw her bedding from her third-floor window and jumped after it. She died on the way to hospital, a day before her 59th birthday.

A rough stone block engraved with the name Günter Litfin stands on a paved quay in front of glass office buildings.
The memorial stone for Günter Litfin on the bank of the Humboldthafen, 2017, with today’s main station behind it. Photo: Ansgar Koreng, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0 de.

The first victim of the order to shoot · 24 August 1961

Günter Litfin, 24, the Humboldthafen

A tailor from Weißensee who worked in West Berlin until the Wall took his job. Two days after Ida Siekmann’s fall he ran for the Humboldthafen. Transport Police fired as he swam, and a bullet struck the back of his head. In 1997 two of them were convicted of manslaughter and given suspended sentences.

A tall dark wooden cross stands in a small planted bed in front of a graffiti-covered section of the Wall.
The cross for Peter Fechter at the Wall on Zimmerstraße, photographed on 1 December 1989. Photo: Aad van der Drift, 1989. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Left to bleed to death · 17 August 1962

Peter Fechter, 18, Zimmerstraße

A bricklayer, shot in the death strip a few steps from Checkpoint Charlie and left lying there. He called for help for about fifty minutes while people on both sides watched. He died in 1962, the deadliest year of the Wall: 22 dead.

A bronze plaque with a long German inscription about the tunnel of October 1964 and the death of Egon Schultz.
The plaque at Strelitzer Straße 55, 2010. It records that the GDR made Egon Schultz a hero and called the escape helpers murderers, and that after the Wall fell it emerged that the fatal shots came from a comrade’s weapon. Photo: OTFW, Berlin, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

A border soldier · 5 October 1964

Egon Schultz, 21, Strelitzer Straße

A GDR border soldier, killed in the courtyard of Strelitzer Straße 55 when an escape tunnel was discovered. The fatal bullet came from a comrade’s rifle. The GDR blamed West Berlin escape helpers and kept the finding secret; it was established only after 1989. He is one of 8 border soldiers among the 140.

A wide river under a pale sky, with a long painted wall along the far bank.
The Spree between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, 2017. On the far bank, the East Side Gallery, a surviving stretch of the Wall; the Gröbenufer is on the Kreuzberg bank of this stretch of the river. Photo: Ansgar Koreng, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The children of the Gröbenufer

Five children at the Gröbenufer

On the Kreuzberg bank at the Gröbenufer, the Spree itself was the border water. Five children playing on the bank fell into it and died. They are among the 7 West Berliners who died in accidents at the Wall.

A uniformed officer fixes a seal to the door of a lorry from a West Berlin haulage firm while the driver watches.
A GDR officer seals a West Berlin lorry at the Drewitz–Dreilinden crossing, 1972, the year before Holger H. died there. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-L0331-0009 / Reiche, Hartmut / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

The youngest · 22 January 1973

Holger H., 15 months, the Drewitz checkpoint

Hidden with his mother in a crate on a lorry, his father in another. At the Drewitz transit checkpoint the inspection dragged on; the baby cried, and his mother covered his mouth. He had an ear infection, and his nose was probably blocked. He was dead when the crates were opened, in the West. The memorial names the family only by initial, and so does this story.

The last · 8 March 1989

Winfried Freudenberg, 32, Zehlendorf

An engineer who took a job at East Berlin’s gas works to get at the gas. He and his wife built a balloon from plastic sheeting in their flat. Discovered while filling it, he cut loose alone after 2 a.m., drifted for several hours in freezing air and fell in Zehlendorf, eight months before the Wall opened.

02Every year of the Wall

120 died in the Wall’s first fifteen years. 20 died in its last fourteen

The deadliest year was 1962, the first full year of the Wall, with 22 dead. The research project credits the fall in deaths after 1975 to three things: the signal fence of 1974; Grenzmauer 75, the last generation of the Wall; and the Helsinki Final Act of August 1975. In four years nobody died at all.

Deaths at the Wall, 1961–1989: each wedge is one year, its area that year’s dead

  • 1201961–1975
    before the signal fence, Grenzmauer 75 and Helsinki took effect
  • 201976–1989
    after them

Years with no deaths: 1976, 1978, 1985, 1988. Each wedge’s area, not its length, is proportional to that year’s dead: a year with twice the dead has twice the area.

A smooth concrete wall topped with a round pipe, covered with graffiti, running along a street.
Grenzmauer 75, the last generation of the Wall, at Bernauer Straße and Bergstraße, about 1985.Photo: ELAB, Archiv der Versöhnungsgemeinde, 1985. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Workers and cranes on top of a long block wall in winter mist; a truck stands at left.
East German construction workers building the Wall, 20 November 1961.Photo: U.S. National Archives, 1961. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

03How a death was counted

For every death that was proven, more were set aside

The project counted a death as a Wall death if the person was trying to escape, or if the death was linked in time and place to the border regime: shot, killed in an accident in the border installations, or a suicide after a failed escape. It researched 576 deaths and suspected cases.

576 cases researched, 2005–2009

One dot for each case: the deaths proven to be Wall deaths, those that could not be resolved, those that were excluded, and the travellers who died at the crossing points.

What became of them: each dot is one case.

140 proven

140 deaths met the criteria

Each has a biography, written from archives, court files and the testimony of families and friends. 4 of them were added after the project closed in 2009, taking the count from 136 to 140.

24 unresolved

16 bodies from the border waters were never identified

For 16 dead found in the border waters, the records could neither prove nor rule out a link to the Wall, and nobody knows who they were. For 8 more, no records could be found at all. These 24 are not in the count, and not ruled out.

Steel anti-tank obstacles on a sandy strip in front of a concrete guard tower.
The death strip in 1977: anti-tank obstacles and a guard tower. Photo: George Garrigues, 1977. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

164 excluded

164 suspected cases were ruled out

Among them: people who were shot at while escaping and survived their wounds, escape attempts reported in the West that never happened, cases counted twice, and suicides in Berlin’s waters with no link to an escape.

A low glass-fronted pavilion with a steel roof beside an elevated railway.
The Tränenpalast, the departure hall of the Friedrichstraße crossing, 2004. Photo: Sir James, 2004. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

At least 251

At least 251 travellers died at the crossing points, most of heart attacks

Mostly older travellers from East and West, who died before, during or after the border controls. At Friedrichstraße station alone at least 227 died. They are not counted among the 140: the sources rarely say exactly where or how they died. The researchers say these deaths cannot be separated from the Wall either.

Who the 140 were

101 were escaping. 39 were not

101 died trying to escape. 22 were West Berliners and visitors with no intent to escape: 15 shot, among them 4 escape helpers, and 7 in accidents. 9 were East Germans who were not fleeing, one of them a Soviet soldier. And 8 were GDR border soldiers killed on duty.

04The other counts

A private count put the Wall’s dead at 262 in 2006, and 222 two years later

The Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August, the private working group behind the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, admits cases the academic project excludes, among them border-guard suicides and unidentified bodies from the border waters. Its figure has moved from year to year. The official tallies of the 1990s were lower, each on its own criteria. Neither kind of count can be reconciled with the project’s, which documents each case.

Published counts of the dead of the Berlin Wall

Not drawn, because no year is given: 86 (Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin). Not counted anywhere here: the 39 people who died at the Berlin sector border between 1948 and the building of the Wall.

140 of the Wall’s dead have a name and a biography. 16 more were pulled from the border waters and have neither.

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Berlinfographics (2026). “Where they died: the dead of the Berlin Wall”. Berlin Experiences. https://berlinfographics.com/wall-deaths/

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{{cite web |title=Where they died: the dead of the Berlin Wall |url=https://berlinfographics.com/wall-deaths/ |website=Berlinfographics |publisher=Berlin Experiences |date=2026-11-05 |access-date=2026-11-05}}