# Who Died at the Berlin Wall on Bernauer Strasse? > Five people died after escape attempts on Bernauer Strasse in 1961–62; a border soldier was fatally shot nearby in 1964. Their stories and the memorial today. Published 27 September 2026. Web page: https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/bernauer-strasse-berlin-wall-deaths/ Five people died as a result of escape attempts on Bernauer Strasse: [Ida Siekmann](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/siekmann-ida/), [Rudolf Urban](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/urban-rudolf/), [Olga Segler](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/segler-olga/) and [Bernd Lünser](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/luenser-bernd/) in 1961, after jumping or falling from the border houses, and [Ernst Mundt](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/mundt-ernst/), shot on the wall of the Sophien Cemetery in 1962. A sixth man, the East German border soldier [Egon Schultz](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schultz-egon/), was fatally shot in 1964 in a courtyard on Strelitzer Strasse, very close to the barriers that ran along Bernauer Strasse. Today the street is home to the Berlin Wall Memorial, which Berlin has made its main place for remembering the city's division. ## A street divided at the front door The houses on the south side of Bernauer Strasse stood in Mitte, in East Berlin, but from the pavement at their front doors outwards the street was part of Wedding, in West Berlin. The only way into those houses was from the western pavement. After the sector border was closed on 13 August 1961, residents who wanted to flee could at first simply walk out of their front doors. From 18 August, doors opening onto the western pavement were nailed up or bricked in and replaced by new ways in from the back courtyards. Members of factory militia groups and police units checked anyone entering in the hallways and on the landings. In their desperation many residents leapt from windows or let themselves down on ropes, and on the pavement below the West Berlin fire brigade tried to catch them in rescue nets. According to Olga Segler's biography, more than 150 people reached Wedding this way in the Wall's first three months. Within that period a large-scale clearance of the border houses also began: from the morning of 24 September, two thousand residents were to be moved out of their homes, most of them unwillingly. ## How the people in this article were identified We searched the place-of-death lines of all 140 biographies in this site's data for the word "Bernauer". Five people matched: Ida Siekmann, Rudolf Urban, Olga Segler, Bernd Lünser and Ernst Mundt. A search of the full biography texts added Egon Schultz, who was shot very close to the barriers along the street. Four other biographies mention the street only in passing, in captions to photographs of memorials there or in a letter; those people died elsewhere. The Berlin Wall Foundation's digital guide gives a different figure. It counts seven deaths in escape attempts on Bernauer Strasse, all of them in the 1960s: people shot by border guards or killed jumping from the border houses. The guide names only Ida Siekmann, and we could not establish who the others in its count are, so this article keeps to the people found by the search. ## 1961: the border houses ### Ida Siekmann Ida Siekmann lived alone at Bernauer Strasse 48; her sister's home was only a few blocks away, in West Berlin. On 21 August the door of her building was barricaded. Early the next morning, 22 August 1961, she dropped bedding and other possessions from the window of her third-floor flat and jumped after them, before the West Berlin fire brigade could come to her aid with a rescue net. The fall left her gravely injured, and she did not live to reach the nearby Lazarus Hospital. Her 59th birthday would have been the following day. She was the [first person to die at the Berlin Wall](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/first-victims-of-the-berlin-wall/). At the place where she fell, the Wedding district office set up a memorial made of three wooden logs bound with barbed wire. According to her biography, memorial services were held there for decades, and Robert Kennedy and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer were among those who laid wreaths. ### Rudolf Urban Rudolf Urban, a 47-year-old driver, and his wife had their home at Bernauer Strasse 1, near the Reconciliation Church; he had been born in that building. In a 1980 interview his wife said he had at first been reluctant to leave. According to her, what finally decided him was the evening of 18 August, when the couple heard the front door being nailed shut; then, she recalled, he said: "Now we are going." On 19 August 1961 the couple tried to climb down to Bernauer Strasse, one after the other, on a rope tied to the window frame of their first-floor flat. Both lost their grip and were hurt, and they were taken to the Lazarus Hospital. His heel bone was shattered, and in hospital he developed pneumonia, from which he did not recover; he died there on 17 September 1961. The Wedding district dedicated a memorial of wood and barbed wire to him, which from then on marked the spot in front of Bernauer Strasse 1 where he had fallen. Newspapers of the time reported that East Berlin police hurled insults and stones at the men putting it up. ### Olga Segler Olga Segler, born in 1881, was 80. Her home was at Bernauer Strasse 34, close to Brunnenstrasse, and her daughter lived not far off, across the sector border in West Berlin. On the evening of 25 September 1961, the day after the clearance began, she jumped from her second-floor window as her daughter waited on the pavement below. She landed in the firemen's net but injured her back, and an ambulance took her to the Lazarus Hospital. She died there the next day, 26 September, of a heart condition that the agitation of the escape had made fatal. East German officials recorded her escape attempt as a "border breach", and official reports said she had succeeded in fleeing the republic; as a result, an investigation was opened against her in East Berlin. In November 1961 a memorial to her was set up where she had fallen, of wood and barbed wire like those for Ida Siekmann and Rudolf Urban. ### Bernd Lünser Bernd Lünser, 22, had grown up with his mother in Friedrichshain and studied at an engineering school in West Berlin. According to his father, he was set on finishing his studies there. Towards evening on 4 October 1961 he climbed onto a roof on neighbouring Swinemünder Strasse, meaning to make his way across the rooftops to the corner house on Bernauer Strasse and let himself down to the street on a clothes line. Two border guards spotted him. As they chased him, he called down to West Berlin passers-by: "Help me. I want to jump!" The passers-by alerted a West Berlin police patrol; on the eastern side the first shots were fired, and soon afterwards firemen stood ready with a rescue net. On the roof of Bernauer Strasse 44 one of his pursuers grappled with him. He tore himself loose and jumped; he landed a few metres from the net and died instantly. Bullets struck on the West Berlin side and West Berlin police returned fire, the first time they had done so since the Wall went up. In the exchange, the People's Police officer who had been struggling with him on the roof was wounded in the thigh. The investigations into the border guards that began in 1990 ended with the acquittal of the only defendant, and they could not clarify exactly how this first exchange of fire at the Wall had unfolded. The East Berlin authorities refused to let his mother attend his funeral in West Berlin; a telegram from her was read out at the grave. ## 1962: Ernst Mundt at the Sophien Cemetery The Sophien Parish cemetery in East Berlin ran along Bernauer Strasse, and after the Wall was built border guards patrolled among its graves. Ernst Mundt, born in 1921, was a carpenter who had given up his trade because of poor health and, drawing a disability pension, lived in a one-room flat in Prenzlauer Berg. The Wall had separated him from his family in West Berlin. He rode his bicycle to the cemetery on the afternoon of 4 September 1962 and left it on Bergstrasse, where barbed wire blocked the way. From there he got up onto the cemetery wall, which was topped with broken glass, and ran along it towards the border. According to eyewitness reports, when cemetery visitors and border guards told him to come down, he replied: "I won't get down. I am on duty." He had nearly reached the border when two members of the transport police, posted on the Nordbahnhof railway site some hundred metres away, became aware of the escape attempt. In quick succession one of the two fired a warning shot and then a shot aimed at him. It hit Ernst Mundt in the head, and the 40-year-old was killed instantly. He was the third escapee shot dead at the Wall in less than three weeks, after [Peter Fechter](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/fechter-peter/) on 17 August and [Hans-Dieter Wesa](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/wesa-hans-dieter/) on 23 August. The border troop leadership rated the quick removal of his body a military success, in line with Order 56/62, issued in response to Peter Fechter's death to keep killed or wounded escapees out of sight of the western public. When his brother travelled from Krefeld to East Berlin in early November, an East Berlin state prosecutor told him curtly that Ernst had been injured in a "border provocation" and had died of his injuries. By then the Stasi had already arranged his cremation and an anonymous burial. In 1994 the Berlin Regional Court convicted the man who fired of manslaughter and gave him a two-year suspended sentence. Passers-by laid flowers and wreaths at a cross set up where Bergstrasse meets Bernauer Strasse; the Wedding district office later put a memorial of logs and barbed wire in its place. When his biography was written, a pavement plate inscribed "Dem unbekannten Opfer der Schandmauer" ("to the unknown victim of the wall of shame") and the date 4 September 1962 still marked the place. ## 1964: Egon Schultz and Tunnel 57 Egon Schultz, born in 1943, had taken on a first-year class in Rostock on 1 September 1963, and soon afterwards received his call-up to the National People's Army. He committed himself to three years' service and in November joined the border troops. Working in secret for months, a group of West Berlin students had driven a 145-metre tunnel under the border. Its western entrance was in a disused bakery on Bernauer Strasse; it came up in an outhouse in the courtyard of Strelitzer Strasse 55. It became known as "Tunnel 57", after the number of people who escaped through it. The Stasi learned of the operation from informants. Around midnight on 4 October 1964 a Stasi officer called in border soldiers, among them Egon Schultz, who were not told the real purpose. At about half past midnight, now 5 October, two Stasi men who had earlier met two of the escape helpers in the building's hallway, and taken them for refugees, returned to Strelitzer Strasse 55 with the soldiers. Shots rang out in the dark. The escape helpers got back to the West. Egon Schultz had been hit ten times; he was 21, and he died before reaching the People's Police Hospital. East Germany blamed "West Berlin agents", gave him a state funeral and renamed Strelitzer Strasse after him in 1966. The results of its own investigations, by the East Berlin city command and the Stasi, were kept top secret, because the fatal shots had come from a comrade's Kalashnikov. Investigations opened in 1992 established the sequence beyond doubt. An escape helper had fired first, and his bullet lodged in Egon Schultz's lung. The shots that killed him were fired by a fellow border soldier, who had shot into the dark courtyard as a Stasi officer instructed and hit him by accident. Prosecutors accepted that he had acted in self-defence and in 1994 discontinued the proceedings against him, noting that he had moreover fired on orders. At the initiative of some of the escape helpers and a friend, a new plaque was later put up at Strelitzer Strasse 55 honouring him as a victim of the Wall. ## The Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse today The Foundation gives several reasons why the Berlin Wall Memorial was built on this street, among them how much had happened there while the Wall stood and the local people who saved a long stretch of it. Its monument to the victims of the Wall and the division of the city, the result of a design competition launched in 1994, was inaugurated on 13 August 1998. The overall concept for remembering the Berlin Wall, adopted by the Berlin Senate in 2006, made the memorial the city's central place of remembrance for its division. The details that follow are as described on the Berlin Wall Foundation's website and digital guide when we checked them in September 2026. The memorial takes in both sides of the street. On the old East Berlin side, in the former border strip, are the outdoor exhibition, the monument, the Chapel of Reconciliation and the Window of Remembrance. In the Window the people it commemorates are remembered one by one, with name and dates of birth and death, and a photograph where one could be found; some niches have been left empty in case further victims are identified. According to the Foundation's guide, markers on the memorial grounds tell the stories of the people who died on Bernauer Strasse where they tried to escape. Egon Schultz is not shown in the Window. The Foundation's committees chose to leave out the [eight border soldiers killed on duty](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/border-soldiers-killed-at-the-berlin-wall/), whose names appear instead on a separate column nearby. The core of the outdoor exhibition is the stretch of roughly 500 metres from Gartenstrasse to Strelitzer Strasse, the street where he was shot. In the Chapel of Reconciliation, short prayer services are held from Tuesday to Friday at midday, and at each one the biography of one of the 140 victims is read aloud. For getting there, admission and access, see [where to remember the victims of the Berlin Wall](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/berlin-wall-victims-memorials/). Stretches of the Wall that survive elsewhere, in Berlin and around the world, are mapped at [Where Is The Wall](https://whereisthewall.com). ## Questions and answers **Who died at the Berlin Wall on Bernauer Strasse?** Ida Siekmann, Rudolf Urban, Olga Segler and Bernd Lünser died after jumping or falling from the border houses in 1961, and Ernst Mundt was shot on the wall of the Sophien Cemetery in 1962. The border soldier Egon Schultz was fatally shot in 1964 in a courtyard on Strelitzer Strasse, very close to the barriers along Bernauer Strasse. **Why did people jump from windows on Bernauer Strasse?** The houses on the south side of the street stood in East Berlin, but the pavement in front of them belonged to West Berlin. After the border was sealed on 13 August 1961, and the front doors were nailed or walled shut from 18 August, many residents leapt from windows or let themselves down on ropes, while the West Berlin fire brigade tried to catch them in rescue nets. **Who was the first person to die on Bernauer Strasse?** Ida Siekmann, who jumped from her third-floor flat at Bernauer Strasse 48 on 22 August 1961. She did not live to reach the hospital; her 59th birthday would have been the next day. She was also the first person to die at the Berlin Wall. **Is Egon Schultz shown in the Window of Remembrance?** No. The Berlin Wall Foundation chose to leave the eight border soldiers killed on duty out of the Window of Remembrance. According to its digital guide, checked in September 2026, their names, including his, appear on a separate column nearby. ## Sources 1. Hertle/Nooke, The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings of a Research Project (2017): https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/ 2. Chronik der Mauer: Ida Siekmann: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180479/siekmann-ida 3. Chronik der Mauer: Rudolf Urban: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180482/urban-rudolf 4. Chronik der Mauer: Rudolf Urban (German): https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/todesopfer/171437/urban-rudolf 5. Chronik der Mauer: Olga Segler: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180483/segler-olga 6. Chronik der Mauer: Bernd Lünser: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180484/luenser-bernd 7. Chronik der Mauer: Bernd Lünser (German): https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/todesopfer/171442/luenser-bernd 8. Chronik der Mauer: Ernst Mundt: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180504/mundt-ernst 9. Chronik der Mauer: Ernst Mundt (German): https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/todesopfer/171417/mundt-ernst 10. Chronik der Mauer: Egon Schultz: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180610/schultz-egon 11. Chronik der Mauer: Egon Schultz (German): https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/todesopfer/171403/schultz-egon 12. Berlin Wall Foundation: The Berlin Wall Memorial: https://www.stiftung-berliner-mauer.de/en/berlin-wall-memorial/historical-site/memorial 13. Berlin Wall Foundation: Victims at the Berlin Wall: https://www.stiftung-berliner-mauer.de/en/topics/victims-berlin-wall 14. Berlin Wall Foundation, Digital Guide: Window of Remembrance: https://www.tourguide-gbm.de/en/node/5 15. Berlin Wall Foundation: Information for your visit: https://www.stiftung-berliner-mauer.de/en/berlin-wall-memorial/visit/information Cite as: “Who Died at the Berlin Wall on Bernauer Strasse?”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/bernauer-strasse-berlin-wall-deaths/