# Border Soldiers Killed at the Berlin Wall: The Eight Guards

> Eight East German border soldiers died on duty at the Berlin Wall between 1962 and 1980. Who they were, how they died, and how the GDR used their deaths.

Published 24 September 2026, updated 27 September 2026. Web page: https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/border-soldiers-killed-at-the-berlin-wall/

Eight East German border soldiers were killed while on duty at the Berlin Wall. They died between April 1962 and November 1980 and are counted among the at least 140 people who lost their lives at the Wall. According to the research project of the Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Berlin Wall Foundation, they were killed by military deserters, by fellow soldiers, by escapees and an escape helper, and in one case by a bullet from a West Berlin police officer's gun.

The researchers point out that these men served the very system that sealed the border against escapes, while also being exposed to the dangers it created. After their deaths, all but one of them were turned into heroes by East German propaganda, often in versions that the state's own internal files contradicted.

## Eight of the 140: how the border soldiers are counted

The research project's 2017 findings divide the 140 victims into three groups: 101 escapees; 30 people from East and West Germany who had no intention of escaping, together with one Soviet soldier; and eight GDR border soldiers killed in service. Four of the eight died on the outer ring between Berlin and Brandenburg, the other four at the sector border inside the city. For the full breakdown, see [how many people died at the Berlin Wall](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/how-many-people-died-at-the-berlin-wall/).

The eight soldiers were:

- [Jörgen Schmidtchen](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schmidtchen-joergen/), 20, shot on 18 April 1962 at Gleisdreieck Griebnitzsee, between Potsdam-Babelsberg and Berlin-Zehlendorf
- [Peter Göring](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/goering-peter/), 21, killed on 23 May 1962 at the Spandauer Schifffahrts Canal near the Sandkrug Bridge
- [Reinhold Huhn](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/huhn-reinhold/), 20, shot on 18 June 1962 on the corner of Jerusalemer Strasse and Zimmerstrasse
- [Günter Seling](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/seling-guenter/), 22, shot on 29 September 1962 in Teltow-Seehof; he died the next day
- [Siegfried Widera](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/widera-siegfried/), 22, knocked down on 23 August 1963 near the Massante Bridge; he died on 8 September 1963
- [Egon Schultz](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schultz-egon/), 21, shot on 5 October 1964 in the courtyard of Strelitzer Strasse 55
- [Rolf Henniger](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/henniger-rolf/), 26, shot on 15 November 1968 in the Babelsberg Palace Park
- [Ulrich Steinhauer](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/steinhauer-ulrich/), 24, shot on 4 November 1980 near Schönwalde, across from Eiskeller

## Killed by deserters: Schmidtchen, Henniger and Steinhauer

Three of the soldiers were killed by armed deserters from East German forces. Two of those deserters were themselves shot dead, and both are counted among the 140 victims.

**Jörgen Schmidtchen**, according to official records, was born and raised in Leipzig and began an apprenticeship as a galvaniser. He joined the German Border Police at 19. On the night of 18 April 1962 he was on guard at a post called "Gleisdreieck" in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Before the shift, the guards had been told that two armed members of the National People's Army were missing from an officers' school. At around 2:30 a.m. he and his fellow guard heard noises, went out to look and came upon two men in uniform. According to what the fellow guard later stated, Schmidtchen took them for a patrol, went up to them unsuspectingly and spoke to them, and then shots were suddenly fired. He was shot by one of them, a 19-year-old cadet trying to reach West Berlin, and presumably died at once. His fellow guard returned fire, and the cadet was fatally wounded in the exchange; he too is [remembered among the victims of the Wall](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/boehme-peter/). The second deserter reached West Berlin unhurt. According to Schmidtchen's biography, he was the first border policeman killed on duty on the border with West Berlin after the Wall went up.

**Rolf Henniger** was born on 30 November 1941 in Saalfeld and trained as a train driver. He had just married when he was drafted into the border troops in November 1967. On the evening of 15 November 1968 he was driving his platoon leader through the Babelsberg Palace Park when a 21-year-old East German police constable, fleeing to West Berlin with a loaded machine pistol, opened fire on the vehicle. According to the Stasi's investigation report, whose account Berlin prosecutors later did not question, Henniger was killed at the wheel, while the platoon leader let himself drop out of the vehicle and shot the constable dead. The young policeman is also [remembered among the victims of the Wall](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/koerner-horst/). None of these details were made public at the time. Only when investigations opened in the 1990s did the background come to light. According to his biography, he had apparently told his immediate family that he meant to flee, and his closest relatives kept from the state the secret that he had probably been waiting for his own chance to escape.

**Ulrich Steinhauer** was born on 13 March 1956 in Behrenshagen near the Baltic coast, the third of six children, and worked as a carpenter. He was called up in November 1979. His sister later recalled that he wanted to finish his 18 months of service without ever having to shoot at anyone. On 4 November 1980 he was on duty as guard leader across from Eiskeller in Spandau. His junior guard, who was planning to flee, shot him; the fatal bullet struck him in the back and went through his heart. A letter he had written home on 2 November, ending with the words "Noch 172 Tage" (172 more days), reached the family three days after his death. In 1981 the youth chamber of the Berlin Regional Court convicted the deserter of manslaughter, stating that where freedom and life are in conflict, life comes first.

## Shot by comrades: Seling and Schultz

**Günter Seling**, born on 28 April 1940, came from Stahnsdorf and had served in the National People's Army since April 1959. At about 5 a.m. on 29 September 1962, in thick fog, he approached a 19-year-old guard to carry out an unannounced check. Apparently taking him for an escapee, the guard loaded his machine pistol, and a burst of four shots severely injured Seling in the head. East German documents describe what happened differently: one report treated the shots as accidental, another suggested they were fired deliberately without a warning. He died in the early hours of 30 September. His biography concludes that the pressure on guards to prevent escapes, with their weapons if necessary, was so great that in doubtful cases they even shot at their own comrades.

**Egon Schultz** was born in 1943 in Pomerania. At the age of seven he came with his family from Poland to East Germany, and he grew up near Rostock and then in the city itself, where he trained to become a primary school teacher and began teaching a first-year class on 1 September 1963. Soon afterwards he was conscripted. Around midnight on 4 October 1964 he was sent with other soldiers to Strelitzer Strasse 55, where West Berlin students had dug a 145-metre tunnel, later known as "Tunnel 57" after the 57 people who escaped through it. An escape helper fired first and wounded Schultz with a shot that lodged in his lung, but it did not kill him. The fatal shots came from the Kalashnikov of a fellow border soldier who, on the instruction of a Stasi officer, fired into the dark courtyard and hit Schultz by mistake. The East Berlin investigators established this, but the result was classified as top secret, and the Stasi made the autopsy files disappear from the Charité.

## Killed during escapes: Huhn, Widera and Göring

**Reinhold Huhn** was the youngest child of a farming family from Braunsberg in East Prussia; after the war the family found a new home in Adorf in the Vogtland, and he later trained as a cattle breeder. On 18 June 1962 he was guarding the corner of Jerusalemer Strasse and Zimmerstrasse when he tried to check the papers of a small group. They were on their way to a tunnel to the West, and the man leading them, a West Berliner bringing his family out, shot Huhn in the chest. In 1999 the Berlin Regional Court convicted the man of manslaughter; in 2000 the Federal Court of Justice found him guilty of murder but left the sentence unchanged. His biography notes that the decision remains controversial.

**Siegfried Widera**, born in 1941 in Silesia, had worked as a lathe operator. On the evening of 23 August 1963 he and a fellow guard were posted on the Massante Bridge between Treptow and Neukölln. Three construction workers who had access to the border area knocked both guards down and escaped to West Berlin. Widera suffered a fracture to the base of his skull and died on 8 September. He had married just weeks before, and his widow was expecting a child. One of the escapees later said it was a great misfortune for him to hear that a young man was said to have died through his actions. The West German investigation against them was discontinued in April 1969.

**Peter Göring** was born in December 1940. According to the official East German account of his life, which his biography describes as vague, he came from Dresden, lost his father in the war and grew up in a children's home. On 23 May 1962 border guards opened fire on a 14-year-old boy from Erfurt who was trying to reach the western bank of the Spandauer Schifffahrts Canal, and West Berlin police gave the boy covering fire. Göring was killed by a ricochet. East Germany called it murder, but its own military and judicial files showed that he had left his watchtower against his post leader's orders and was firing at the boy when he was hit. West Berlin's mayor, Willy Brandt, expressed regret over his death and said that the blame for his fate lay with those who had built the Wall.

## How the GDR used their deaths

With the exception of Günter Seling, the eight were made into propaganda heroes. Seling was buried with military honours, but unlike the others he was not publicly mourned; his biography suggests the circumstances of his death made that seem inopportune to the leadership.

The others were given funerals, most of them with military honours. Those of Reinhold Huhn and Egon Schultz were staged as political demonstrations, and Rolf Henniger was buried with great propaganda effort. Schmidtchen was promoted to sergeant the day after he died, and Göring, Widera, Henniger and Steinhauer were posthumously promoted to sergeant. Streets, schools and other institutions were named after several of them; Egon Schultz alone gave his name to more than a hundred collectives, schools and institutions, and Strelitzer Strasse was renamed Egon-Schultz-Strasse in 1966. Schützenstrasse, near where Reinhold Huhn died, became Reinhold-Huhn-Strasse, and in the 1970s the site of his death was expanded into a central memorial for border soldiers killed at the Wall.

Behind the public story, the internal verdicts were often different. The commander of Schmidtchen's brigade concluded that he had acted imprudently. A border troop report said Widera and his fellow guard had acted against their orders and been overly trusting. The truth about Schultz's death was concealed, and Henniger's family was not told that he had been shot by an East German policeman. Some families had no say: Henniger's relatives were not allowed to take part in the funeral arrangements, and Steinhauer's funeral was organised by the authorities. Göring's mother, by contrast, was drawn into the official commemoration and took an active part in it for the rest of her life. Steinhauer's sister Ilona said the state had taken him from the family a second time when it turned him into a hero.

## What later research found

The opening of the East German archives and the investigations of the 1990s brought many of these facts to light. After the GDR ended, the memorial on Jerusalemer Strasse was removed and Reinhold-Huhn-Strasse became Schützenstrasse again. At Strelitzer Strasse 55, a new plaque placed by some of the escape helpers and a friend now honours Egon Schultz as a victim of the Wall. Photographs in their biographies show commemorative columns for Jörgen Schmidtchen at the Griebnitz Lake and for Günter Seling and Rolf Henniger on the Teltow Canal; see [memorials to the victims of the Berlin Wall](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/berlin-wall-victims-memorials/).

The researchers note that opinion in the West was split: some held that escapees were entitled to defend themselves against the guards, others that a guard's life came first, as the Berlin court decided in Ulrich Steinhauer's case. Their stated aim was to give the victims a face and a story, and in the case of the border soldiers to free them from the regime's attempts to co-opt them after their deaths.

For the rules the guards themselves served under, see [was there a shoot-to-kill order at the Berlin Wall?](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/shoot-to-kill-order-berlin-wall/), and for the court cases after 1990, [the Berlin Wall shooting trials](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/berlin-wall-shooting-trials/).

## Questions and answers

**How many border soldiers were killed at the Berlin Wall?**

Eight East German border soldiers were killed in service at the Berlin Wall. They are counted among the at least 140 people who died at the Wall between 1961 and 1989.

**Who was the first border guard killed at the Berlin Wall?**

Jörgen Schmidtchen was shot on 18 April 1962 near Griebnitzsee by an army cadet who was deserting to West Berlin. According to his biography, he was the first border policeman killed on duty on the border with West Berlin after the Wall went up.

**Who was the last border soldier killed at the Berlin Wall?**

Ulrich Steinhauer was shot on 4 November 1980 near Schönwalde by the junior guard on his patrol, who was deserting to the West. He was 24.

**Were border soldiers at the Berlin Wall killed by their own side?**

Yes. Günter Seling was shot by a fellow soldier who mistook him for an escapee in thick fog, and the fatal shots that killed Egon Schultz came from a comrade's Kalashnikov and hit him by mistake. Three others were killed by deserters from East German forces.

**How did East Germany use the deaths of its border soldiers?**

With the exception of Günter Seling, the GDR turned them into propaganda heroes, naming streets, schools and other institutions after several of them, while in several cases keeping internal findings about how they died secret.

## Sources

1. Hertle/Nooke, The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings (2017): https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/
2. Chronik der Mauer: Jörgen Schmidtchen: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180605/schmidtchen-joergen
3. Chronik der Mauer: Peter Göring: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180606/goering-peter
4. Chronik der Mauer: Reinhold Huhn: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180607/huhn-reinhold
5. Chronik der Mauer: Günter Seling: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180608/seling-guenter
6. Chronik der Mauer: Siegfried Widera: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180609/widera-siegfried
7. Chronik der Mauer: Egon Schultz: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180610/schultz-egon
8. Chronik der Mauer: Rolf Henniger: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180611/henniger-rolf
9. Chronik der Mauer: Ulrich Steinhauer: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180612/steinhauer-ulrich

Cite as: “Border Soldiers Killed at the Berlin Wall: The Eight Guards”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/border-soldiers-killed-at-the-berlin-wall/