# Who Were the First Victims of the Berlin Wall?

> Ida Siekmann was the first person to die at the Berlin Wall, on 22 August 1961; Günter Litfin was the first to be shot dead. Twelve people died there in 1961.

Published 24 September 2026, updated 27 September 2026. Web page: https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/first-victims-of-the-berlin-wall/

The first person to die at the Berlin Wall was [Ida Siekmann](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/siekmann-ida/), who jumped from her third-floor window on Bernauer Strasse on 22 August 1961, nine days after the border was sealed. The first person to be shot dead was [Günter Litfin](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/litfin-guenter/), killed in the Humboldt Harbor two days later, on 24 August 1961. By the end of that year twelve people had died at the Wall.

Their deaths fell in the first weeks and months after the East German leadership sealed the sector border on 13 August 1961. In the first few days the border was not yet completely guarded, and many East Berliners still found ways across. The researchers who established the total of [140 victims](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/how-many-people-died-at-the-berlin-wall/) note that, in the first period after the Wall was built, most escapees belonged to the war and post-war generation: they had known the open border, and many had relatives in the West or, before the border was closed, had lived in the East and worked in the West.

## Bernauer Strasse: the first deaths

Bernauer Strasse was one of the first places where the new border took lives. The apartment buildings on its south side stood in the East Berlin district of Mitte, but the street and the pavement in front of their doors belonged to Wedding, in West Berlin. After 13 August residents tried to flee from these border houses. From 18 August the authorities began nailing up or bricking in the front doors that opened onto the western pavement and making new entrances through the back courtyards, and members of the factory militias and the police checked everyone who wanted to enter a building or flat. Many residents jumped from their windows or let themselves down on ropes, while West Berlin firemen held rescue nets below.

### Rudolf Urban

[Rudolf Urban](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/urban-rudolf/), a 47-year-old driver, lived with his wife at Bernauer Strasse 1, the building in which he had been born. According to his wife, the decision to leave came on the evening of 18 August, when the couple heard the building's front door being nailed shut. The next day, 19 August 1961, they tied a rope to their window frame and let themselves down to the street, but both slipped and were injured. Rudolf Urban had crushed his heel bone. He caught pneumonia in the West Berlin Lazarus Hospital and died there on 17 September 1961. Although he was hurt three days before Ida Siekmann's fall, he died almost four weeks after her.

### Ida Siekmann

Ida Siekmann, born on 23 August 1902 in Gorken, a village then in West Prussia and now in Poland, lived alone at Bernauer Strasse 48. Her sister lived just a few blocks away in West Berlin. On 21 August she saw the entrance to her building barricaded. Early on 22 August she threw her bedding and a few possessions out of the window, then jumped from the third floor herself, before the West Berlin fire brigade could come to her aid with a jumping sheet. She died on the way to the nearby Lazarus Hospital, a day before she would have turned 59. In West Berlin her death caused widespread indignation; her funeral on 29 August, at the Municipal Cemetery on Seestrasse in Wedding, was attended by many West Berliners.

### Olga Segler

[Olga Segler](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/segler-olga/) was 80 years old and lived at Bernauer Strasse 34; her daughter lived a short distance away in West Berlin. In September the situation on Bernauer Strasse grew worse: on the morning of 24 September a large-scale clearance began, and 2,000 people were to leave their homes, most of them against their will. The next day Olga Segler jumped from her second-floor window as her daughter waited on the pavement below. The firemen caught her in their net, but she injured her back and was taken to the Lazarus Hospital. She died the following day, 26 September 1961, of a heart condition that the agitation of the escape had made fatal.

### Bernd Lünser

[Bernd Lünser](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/luenser-bernd/), a 22-year-old from Friedrichshain, had been studying at an engineering school in West Berlin when the border was closed; according to his father, he was determined to finish his studies there. On the evening of 4 October 1961 he climbed onto the rooftops, planning to reach the corner of Bernauer Strasse and let himself down on a clothes line, but border guards discovered him. After a struggle with one of his pursuers on the roof of Bernauer Strasse 44, he jumped, missed the firemen's net by a few metres and died instantly. Shots were fired during the pursuit, and for the first time since the Wall was built, West Berlin police fired at East Berlin border guards. According to the West Berlin police, they returned fire only after shots from the other side had endangered police officers, firemen and residents; East Berlin police and Stasi reports claimed instead that the West Berlin police had opened fire without any shot having been fired towards the West. Even the investigations opened in 1990 could not establish exactly how the exchange of fire unfolded.

## Günter Litfin: the first person shot dead

Günter Litfin was born in Berlin on 19 January 1937 and lived in Weissensee. A trained tailor, he worked in a West Berlin workshop and dreamed of making costumes for the theatre. He had taken a flat in Charlottenburg, but after his father died in May 1961, his brother later said, he felt a particular duty to stand by their mother, and he put off the move. The Wall ended those plans.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on 24 August 1961 he tried to get from East to West Berlin between Friedrichstrasse and Lehrter Bahnhof stations. According to East Berlin police reports, he crossed the grounds of the Charité Hospital and climbed a wall to the bank of the Spree, where transport police spotted him. From a railway bridge they called on him to stop and fired warning shots, then opened fire when he jumped into the Humboldt Harbor. He was hit in the back of the head just before he reached the West Berlin bank. Crowds of West Berliners gathered on the far side of the harbour and saw the body removed. The East Berlin press portrayed him as a criminal. The Stasi harassed his family: his brother was arrested and interrogated all night, and his mother's flat was searched. They first learned that he had been shot dead from the West Berlin news programme *Abendschau*, which reported his death on 26 August.

In 1997 the Berlin Regional Court found two former transport policemen who had fired at him guilty of joint manslaughter and gave them suspended sentences of one year and of one year and six months. A memorial stone on Kapelle-Ufer in Mitte, near the place where he tried to escape, remembers him as the first victim of the order to shoot in Berlin. At the initiative of his brother Jürgen, the former command post of the border troops by the Spandau shipping canal was turned into a memorial site that keeps his memory alive, and in 2000 a street in Weissensee was named after him.

## Roland Hoff in the Teltow Canal

Five days later, on 29 August 1961, [Roland Hoff](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/hoff-roland/) became the third person to die at the Wall. Born in Hanover on 19 March 1934, he had moved to East Germany in June 1961 and soon wrote to his mother that he was thinking of coming back. He apparently spoke out against the border closure at work and was dismissed. In Teltow, according to a police report, he must have managed to mingle with the workers clearing the canal bank and so reach the water; he jumped into the Teltow Canal at about 2 p.m. and swam towards Lichterfelde in West Berlin. When the first shots were fired he called out to the border police not to shoot, but four of them kept firing until he was hit in the head.

The East German authorities knew who he was but never revealed his name, and his family was not told. A West Berlin newspaper reported the death of an unknown fugitive, and a year later a memorial stone to the unknown refugee was unveiled on the western bank. Only after the East German archives were opened was the dead man identified as Roland Hoff. After the Wall fell, three former border guards were tried, but the court could not establish which of them had fired the fatal shot.

## Autumn and winter 1961: the rivers and canals

From October, most of the deaths happened in the water.

- **[Udo Düllick](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/duellick-udo/)**, a 25-year-old engineer with the East German railway, tried to swim across the Spree near the Oberbaum Bridge late on 5 October 1961. Border guards fired at him and a boat pursued him. He sank just short of the western bank; his body had no bullet wounds; according to the post-mortem, he had drowned from exhaustion after the pursuit. At least 2,500 people gathered for a memorial service for the then unidentified man on the Gröbenufer in Kreuzberg on 7 October.
- **[Werner Probst](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/probst-werner/)**, 25, entered the Spree beneath the Schilling Bridge on the evening of 14 October 1961. Border guards opened fire on him as he swam. Already wounded in the temple and thigh, he reached the ladder on the West Berlin quay wall and was pulling himself up the rungs when he was fatally hit and collapsed. In 1995 the Berlin Regional Court convicted three former border guards of joint manslaughter.
- **[Lothar Lehmann](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/lehmann-lothar/)**, 19, had begun his military service in September 1961 and was serving in a police unit that guarded the border between the Potsdam district and West Berlin. On 26 November 1961, while repairing boats on the Havel at Sacrow, he entered the water in a life jacket to swim to West Berlin. The cold water evidently caused a shock and he lost consciousness; border guards pulled him out of the water, and he died that evening on the way to hospital. His parents were told not to speak about the escape attempt, and at his funeral his death could only be spoken of as an accident.
- **[Ingo Krüger](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/krueger-ingo/)**, 21, a trained cook and a sport diver, was engaged to a woman in West Berlin. Late on 10 December 1961 he entered the Spree in a diving suit. From the West Berlin bank his fiancée watched East German customs officials search the water from a boat and pull a body out; according to East Berlin border police reports, he was already dead when he was recovered near the Marschall Bridge. The records differ on whether he died on 10 or 11 December, and the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear: Stasi investigations reportedly found that his breathing apparatus had failed, while investigations in the 1990s concluded that he died of a cold shock.
- **[Georg Feldhahn](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/feldhahn-georg/)**, 20, was a border policeman who disappeared from his post near the Massante Bridge on the Teltow Canal while trying to desert. He is recorded as having drowned on 19 December 1961. His body was found in the canal on 11 March 1962, and even his sister did not learn of his death until the 1990s.

## Dieter Wohlfahrt, the escape helper

One of the twelve who died in 1961 was not trying to escape himself. [Dieter Wohlfahrt](https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/wohlfahrt-dieter/), a 20-year-old chemistry student at West Berlin's Technical University, held Austrian citizenship and could still cross the border. He joined a group of students who helped people escape. On 9 December 1961, at the corner of Bergstrasse and Hauptstrasse in Staaken, he and a friend set to work on the barbed-wire fence with bolt cutters and pliers to help a woman whose daughter had already fled. According to his friend, someone shouted a challenge and shots were fired at once; Dieter Wohlfahrt was hit and lay motionless on East German territory, a few metres from the border line. West Berlin police officers, who arrived soon afterwards, as did British military police, tried to reach him but were kept back by the border guards' threat to use their weapons, and he lay there for more than an hour before being taken away. East German military and Stasi reports claim that he was armed and fired first; his friends credibly stated that none of them was armed, and his biography considers it likely, though it cannot be proven, that the reports were falsified or manipulated for propaganda. Sebastian Haffner, a contemporary observer, pointed out at the time that his death was the first at the Wall to prompt protests against the political leadership in the West as well. The criminal investigation of the former border policemen who shot him was discontinued in 1996 on the grounds that, in case of doubt, they had to be assumed to have acted in self-defence.

## What the first deaths already showed

These first deaths already show some of the ways in which each side reacted to killings at the Wall. According to the study, when a killing was seen from West Berlin or otherwise became known, East German propaganda tended to call the dead "criminals"; Günter Litfin and Roland Hoff are among the examples it names. Some families were kept in the dark; others were told to stay silent. In West Berlin, the deaths of Günter Litfin, Udo Düllick and Dieter Wohlfahrt were followed by protests, and memorials of wood and barbed wire were put up for Ida Siekmann, Rudolf Urban, Olga Segler, Bernd Lünser and Udo Düllick. According to Roland Hoff's biography, from his death onwards the West Berlin authorities opened an investigation into the suspected perpetrators in every case. According to the researchers' count, roughly half of all 140 deaths happened in the first five years of the Wall's existence.

Several of these first victims are remembered near the places where they died, among them Günter Litfin on Kapelle-Ufer and Roland Hoff on the Teltow Canal; see [Berlin Wall victims memorials](https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/berlin-wall-victims-memorials/). Escapes from the same streets and waterways, including those that succeeded, are documented at [Berlin Wall Escapes](https://berlinwallescapes.com).

## Questions and answers

**Who was the first person to die at the Berlin Wall?**

Ida Siekmann, a 58-year-old woman who lived at Bernauer Strasse 48. She jumped from her third-floor window towards the West Berlin pavement on 22 August 1961 and died on the way to hospital, one day before her 59th birthday.

**Who was the first person shot dead at the Berlin Wall?**

Günter Litfin, a 24-year-old tailor from Weissensee. On 24 August 1961 transport police shot him in the Humboldt Harbor as he swam towards the West Berlin bank. A memorial stone on Kapelle-Ufer commemorates him as the first victim of the order to shoot in Berlin.

**How many people died at the Berlin Wall in 1961?**

Twelve people died at the Berlin Wall in 1961, between 22 August and 19 December. Eleven of them were trying to escape; the twelfth, Dieter Wohlfahrt, was a West Berlin student helping others to escape.

**Was Rudolf Urban the first victim of the Berlin Wall?**

Rudolf Urban was injured on 19 August 1961, three days before Ida Siekmann's fall, when he escaped by rope from his home on Bernauer Strasse. He caught pneumonia in a West Berlin hospital and died there on 17 September 1961. Ida Siekmann, who died on 22 August, is recorded as the first fatality.

## 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: Günter Litfin: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180480/litfin-guenter
4. Chronik der Mauer: Roland Hoff: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180481/hoff-roland
5. Chronik der Mauer: Rudolf Urban: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180482/urban-rudolf
6. Chronik der Mauer: Olga Segler: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180483/segler-olga
7. Chronik der Mauer: Bernd Lünser: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180484/luenser-bernd
8. Chronik der Mauer: Udo Düllick: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180485/duellick-udo
9. Chronik der Mauer: Werner Probst: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180486/probst-werner
10. Chronik der Mauer: Lothar Lehmann: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180487/lehmann-lothar
11. Chronik der Mauer: Dieter Wohlfahrt: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180488/wohlfahrt-dieter
12. Chronik der Mauer: Ingo Krüger: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180489/krueger-ingo
13. Chronik der Mauer: Georg Feldhahn: https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180490/feldhahn-georg

Cite as: “Who Were the First Victims of the Berlin Wall?”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/articles/first-victims-of-the-berlin-wall/