Volker Frommann

Volker Frommann was born on 23 April 1944 in Unterpörlitz, near Ilmenau in Thuringia, the only child of Marie and Heinrich Frommann. His father was a production manager at a state-owned machine works, and his mother worked from home for a doll factory. He grew up alongside a cousin in the house the family shared with his uncle, did well at school, and in summer 1960 graduated from the middle school in Ilmenau.

His closest friend was Rainer Michelidse, whose father had been denounced in 1945 and picked up by the Soviet secret service; the family lost all trace of him after he was interned without ever being sentenced. Both were active in the Protestant youth congregation, critical of the official youth organisation, and preferred western radio for news and music. In 1959 they travelled to East Berlin to visit West Berlin secretly. In April 1960, when the village was declared fully collectivised, the two believed the farmers had been pressured into joining. During the party celebration they slipped out unnoticed, threw an iron cow chain over the village's high-voltage line and caused a short circuit that plunged the festivities into darkness.

The Stasi arrested the two boys on 11 August 1960. Both 16 and defenceless against the Stasi's interrogation methods, they were played off against each other and pressed into "confessions". On 17 November 1960 the Suhl district court sentenced them under adult criminal law to three years' penal servitude for acts of violence endangering the state, plus six months for theft of public property: four tins of pineapple taken from the storeroom of the village cultural centre. The court dismissed his father's view that it had been a youthful prank; the total damage was no more than 320 marks. At the Torgau youth prison he was punished with days of solitary confinement in a basement cell for asking for a Bible. He trained there as a metalworker, read classical literature, painted and drew. After two years in prison he and his friend were amnestied and released from Torgau on 10 August 1962, on three years' probation.

Back home he continued his metalwork training. The following year he tried to escape from East Germany but was arrested in Czechoslovakia, handed back to East Germany and sentenced to another prison term, which he apparently served until 1964 in the Untermaßfeld penitentiary. Work as a fitter and later at a glass-painting firm left him unfulfilled; his cousin recalled that the daily routine was not his world. He read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kant and Plato and wrote about them to his friend. His applications to study theology and to attend the Dresden art school both failed, and in East Germany people with such a record often had a hard time professionally.

Besides his work, the psychological after-effects of prison apparently weighed more and more on him; he went into psychotherapy and learned autogenic training. In the second half of the 1960s he married a doctor; after some years away, the couple returned to Unterpörlitz in the early 1970s and lived a withdrawn life. Neither his friend nor his cousin knew what led him to try to escape again in 1973.

At about 12:45 a.m. on 1 March 1973 he jumped from a moving S-Bahn train between Pankow and Schönhauser Allee, about 50 metres from the border area, probably meaning to use the line's closeness to the border to reach West Berlin. He lay badly injured beside the tracks. Shortly afterwards a Volkspolizei patrol found him, no longer responsive, and an ambulance took him to the hospital in Berlin-Friedrichshain. First examinations showed a spinal injury and that his life was in acute danger. He died of his injuries on 5 March 1973.

Through a nurse at the hospital, who had attended the same nursing school as his wife and his cousin's wife, his family learned only vaguely that he had been found badly injured near the Wall. His parents came to the service at the Baumschulenweg Crematorium, and his father bribed a cemetery official to open the coffin once more before the cremation so they could say goodbye. He is buried in Unterpörlitz, in a grave he now shares with his parents. In the early 1990s his parents tried in vain to learn more about how he died.

Also died on the sector border between Berlin-Pankow and Berlin-Wedding

• Klaus Kratzel 8 August 1965

Sources

This profile is a summary written for this site. Every fact in it is taken from source 1, which also gives the full account with archival references.

1. Hans-Hermann Hertle, “Volker Frommann”, biography in Chronik der Mauer, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Deutschlandradio. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online. Basis for every fact in this profile, including the dates and place of death.
2. German version of the same biography. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online.
3. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke (eds.), The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: A Biographical Handbook. Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Berlin Wall Foundation, Berlin 2011. The printed handbook from which the online biography is taken.
4. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke, “140 Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989” (list), Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Berlin Wall Foundation, August 2017. PDF. Used to cross-check names and dates.
5. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke, “The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings of a Research Project”, August 2017. PDF. Source of the classification into escapees, people with no intent to escape, and border soldiers.

Further reading

• Wikipedia (Deutsch)

Cite this page

“Volker Frommann”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/frommann-volker/

Map

The pin position is based on the place of death described in source 1. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors; course of the Wall in 1989 from Geoportal Berlin (dl-de/zero-2.0). Accessed 23 September 2026.