Victims of the Wall

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Wolfgang Glöde

1949–1962

Wolfgang Glöde, a 13-year-old schoolboy from East Berlin, was fatally wounded on 11 June 1962 when a border policeman showing the boys his machine pistol accidentally fired a shot in the "Sorgenfrei" garden settlement in Treptow.

Glass panel in a steel frame with text and small photographs, grass and trees behind
Memorial panel at Kiefholzstrasse 100, Berlin-Plänterwald, for Wolfgang Glöde, Jörg Hartmann and Christian-Peter Friese Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wolfgang Glöde was born in East Berlin on 1 February 1949 and grew up in the "Sorgenfrei" garden settlement on Kiefholzstrasse in Treptow, where his family had lived since 1930. He had two older siblings. His father was a fitter at the Berlin machine repair works and his mother looked after the home. Because of the post-war housing shortage, the family, like many of their neighbours, had made their leased garden plot their permanent home.

The settlement lay directly on the boundary with the West Berlin district of Neukölln. Before 13 August 1961 many paths had led across into Neukölln; after the border was sealed they were all cut off. Guard posts, dogs, barbed wire, barriers and watchtowers gradually surrounded the gardens, outsiders were kept away, and armed patrols walked the paths between the plots day and night. The constant presence of armed men was a risk to residents that the political and military leadership tacitly accepted.

Whit Monday, 11 June 1962, Wolfgang spent with two friends of his own age from the settlement; in the afternoon the boys went to play football at the club ground. At around 6 p.m. two 19-year-old border policemen on patrol came by and, against regulations, let the children draw them into conversation. The boys asked how the guards' machine pistols worked, and the men agreed to show them. One of the guards took the safety catch off his Kalashnikov without removing the magazine, and while loading it he mistakenly set off the trigger. The bullet struck Wolfgang at close range and passed through a lung. His parents, alarmed by the shot, hurried to the spot and found him dying; he died shortly afterwards.

The records of the border police and the Stasi say nothing about how the residents reacted. They do record the East German authorities' efforts to stifle discontent and criticism from the start: the border police leadership, together with the SED district leadership in Treptow, decided on measures to prevent what they called false accounts of the incident spreading among the population, including additional guards and making contact with Wolfgang's parents and teachers. The commander of the 5th Border Detachment concluded that the guard who fired had acted with gross negligence; elsewhere in the records it was said that the accident showed that some guards handled their weapons irresponsibly and called for tough disciplinary and criminal action. The guard was arrested at the scene and a military prosecutor questioned him and opened an investigation for negligent homicide; whether he was ever tried or punished is not known.

In West Berlin the news spread very quickly. The authorities there at first relied on false information that the boy had been shot while trying to escape, and on 15 June 1962 the Senate issued a press release to that effect. Newspapers took up the story, and on 17 June 1962 both Chancellor Adenauer and the mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, mentioned Wolfgang by name in speeches. At some point the following year, law enforcement authorities in the West learned that he had in fact been killed in a firearms accident, and his name was taken off official lists of Wall victims.

Wolfgang Glöde was buried quietly, with his family present, at the Baumschulenweg Cemetery in Treptow. His gravestone remembers him as a dear son, brother and brother-in-law, and records that his family's hearts would stay with him to the end of their days.

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Also died on the sector border between Berlin-Neukölln and Berlin-Treptow

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. Christine Brecht, “Wolfgang Glöde”, 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

Image credits

  • Memorial panel at Kiefholzstrasse 100, Berlin-Plänterwald, for Wolfgang Glöde, Jörg Hartmann and Christian-Peter Friese. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Cite this page

“Wolfgang Glöde”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/gloede-wolfgang/

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.