Victims of the Wall

All 140 people

Manfred Gertzki

1942–1973

Manfred Gertzki, a 30-year-old engineer from Karl-Marx-Stadt, was shot by the Spree near the Reichstag on 27 April 1973 despite home-made body armour; a Stasi report says an officer then pushed him into the river. He was cremated as an unknown man.

Manfred Gertzki was born in Danzig on 17 May 1942. He lost his father and brother in the Second World War, and in 1945 his mother fled with him to Eisenach; they later settled in Chemnitz, then Karl-Marx-Stadt, where he trained as a sheet metal worker. After air force service he studied mechanical engineering, worked at the state-owned Robotron research centre, and in 1972 completed evening studies at the city's technical university, graduating as a qualified engineer with the top grade.

He was a track and field athlete who won prizes in the discus and shot put at district championships between 1967 and 1973, and, as his friends later recalled, he created the rotating sun for the Galilei sculpture in the Stadthalle, Chemnitz's civic hall. After his mother died in 1967, his only close relatives lived in West Germany. How and when he decided to start a new life in the West cannot be traced, but he planned meticulously, sending some belongings to the West in advance.

He made a bullet-proof vest by riveting 2-millimetre metal plates onto oilcloth and sewing it into his jacket, and fixed a movable steel face mask to a motorcycle helmet, carrying 50 kilograms of equipment in all. He was confident it would protect him. His friends knew of his plan and had scouted the border with him. Two days before he fled, he left a letter for his relatives with a friend, to be sent if there was no news of him after four weeks.

Early in the evening of 27 April 1973 he entered the border area close to the Reichstag, where the Spree Canal was being enlarged and the border installations were temporarily under construction. He broke the lock of the inner fence gate and, sheltered by the embankment, made his way along the Spree towards the Wall. For a few metres he would be visible from a watchtower close by; he probably did not expect the part played by a second tower about 300 metres away at the Kronprinzen Bridge.

Guards in the near tower fired on him at close range. He fell, or threw himself, to the ground and seemed to be hit, but crawled on and got over the next-to-last fence. Then shots came from the tower across the river, and, hit, he collapsed at the water's edge and lay motionless, two metres from the last fence and the West Berlin line. Passers-by, British military personnel and West Berlin police gathered on the Spree bank close by, shouting their disgust, but no one dared to intervene. According to a Stasi report, an officer who had given him no first aid then pushed him into the Spree, and the weight of his equipment took him to the bottom. About two hours later, at around 7:40 p.m., fire brigade divers recovered his body.

The western press reported the shooting at the Reichstag the next day. Because no one in East Germany appeared to be missing him, the Stasi had him registered as an unknown man; a false death certificate was issued on 14 May 1973, and on 15 May he was cremated at Baumschulenweg as an unknown dead man and buried anonymously in the urn grove there.

The Stasi's belief that no one knew was mistaken. His friend mailed the letter, which reached his uncle and aunt in early July 1973, and the next day sent an anonymous note telling them Manfred was no longer alive. In autumn 1997 three former guards were tried; as there had been no post-mortem, it was unclear whether he died from his wounds or drowned. Two were acquitted, and the guard leader who had fired from 300 metres, then 19, was convicted of attempted manslaughter with conditional intent and, under juvenile law, sentenced to one year, suspended on probation. On 27 April 2013, the 40th anniversary of his death, a memorial notice from his friends Gerhard, Hartwig and Roland appeared in the Freie Presse Chemnitz.

Also died on the sector border between Berlin-Mitte and Berlin-Tiergarten

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. Martin Ahrends/Udo Baron/Hans-Hermann Hertle, “Manfred Gertzki”, 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

Cite this page

“Manfred Gertzki”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/gertzki-manfred/

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.