Victims of the Wall

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Peter Grohganz

1948–1980

Peter Grohganz, a 32-year-old metalworker and father of two born in Premnitz, drowned in the Spree east of the Oberbaum Bridge in the winter of 1980–81, apparently while trying to reach West Berlin; his body was found on 9 February 1981.

Peter Grohganz was born in Premnitz on 25 September 1948. Both his parents worked at the town's synthetic fibre plant, his mother in the rayon department and his father, a former police officer, in plant security. Both were members of the ruling SED, yet evidently the family had not broken off contact with relatives in the West, including an aunt in Hamburg. Peter trained as a metalworker, finishing in mid-1966, and later wrote that his mother had brought him up with socialist values; he had become a Young Pioneer at seven and joined the FDJ youth organisation at 14.

At 17 he was recruited by the Stasi as an informant under the code name "Runge", and he continued in this role during his military service, which included a posting to an officers' school. What drew him to the Stasi is not clear. In 1969 he was himself accused of stealing state property while on guard duty; he was dismissed from the officers' school, and a week later a military court sentenced him to four months in prison, suspended with a year's probation. The Stasi ended its cooperation with him on 30 October 1969. That same year he married, and he and his wife had two children.

Little is known of the next decade. Though trained as a metalworker, he worked on a construction site. He was fined in 1975 after he had grabbed the deputy mayor of the town where he lived by the jacket during the official's office hours, angry about an earlier fine; he apologised. By then he had a criminal record. In March 1980 he divorced; the family flat went to his former wife and children, and with long housing waiting lists he had little prospect of a home of his own. On 5 April 1980 he wrote by hand to Erich Honecker asking to be allowed to leave East Germany. He no longer wanted to give his labour to a state that had nothing left to spare for him, he wrote, adding that he was still young enough to start a new life.

Such letters were passed straight to the Stasi. Over the following months he went repeatedly to the district council's department of internal affairs, where no one could find his request, and on 2 May 1980 he visited the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic in East Berlin. Local officials believed he had applied to leave in order to speed up his housing application, and decided not to give way on the flat, fearing that this would only encourage further such petitions. Summoned to a fifth meeting, he withdrew his application, saying he had made it out of annoyance. On 23 September he told the Stasi he hoped to start afresh as a driver for the central circus; he had been promised a flat, and he had always wanted to work with animals. He asked for help in getting a regular identity card instead of the restrictive substitute card issued to him because of his criminal record, but was told only that he could rely on the full support of the state once he had shown that he had broken with the past.

In October 1980 he moved to a job as a metalworker at the VEB Steel Plant in Brandenburg and took a second residence there. He worked until 10 December, then took three days off and did not come back. On leaving, he left a letter with a colleague, quoted in a Stasi report, saying she would be surprised when he did not come back, asking that his belongings be given away and that the rest of his wages go to his children.

On the morning of 9 February 1981 the crew of an East German border boat found his body caught in a water barrier in the Spree near the Flutgraben channel, east of the Oberbaum Bridge. Papers in his trouser pocket identified him. He was 32 years old. How and exactly when he entered the ice-cold river is not known; the biography dates his death to some time between 10 December 1980 and 9 February 1981, and frames it as an attempt to flee to West Berlin.

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Also died on the sector border between Berlin-Friedrichshain and Berlin-Kreuzberg

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. Text: Hans-Hermann Hertle, translated by Miriamne Fields, “Peter Grohganz”, 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.

Cite this page

“Peter Grohganz”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/grohganz-peter/

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.