Victims of the Wall

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Reinhold Huhn

1942–1962

Reinhold Huhn, a 20-year-old East German border guard from Adorf in Saxony, was shot dead on 18 June 1962 at the corner of Jerusalemer Strasse and Zimmerstrasse by a West Berliner who was bringing his family out through a tunnel.

Dark plaque with raised letters stating that an East Berlin family escaped through a tunnel on 18 June 1962 and that the border soldier Reinhold Paul Huhn was shot
Plaque "Fluchttunnel" at Zimmerstrasse 54, Berlin-Mitte, naming the border soldier Reinhold Paul Huhn Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Reinhold Huhn was born on 8 March 1942, the youngest child of farmers in Braunsberg, East Prussia. He lost his mother in an accident at the age of three. At the end of 1946 the family was expelled from East Prussia, which by then belonged to Poland, and made a new home in Adorf in the Vogtland. After school he trained as a cattle breeder and worked on a state-owned farm in the Plauen district. At 18 he let himself be recruited into the Readiness Police (Bereitschaftspolizei), starting his service in Karl-Marx-Stadt, today Chemnitz, in September 1960. In June 1961 his unit was moved to East Berlin and helped build the Wall; afterwards he served in the East Berlin border brigade.

On the afternoon of 18 June 1962 he was on guard with his guard leader at the corner of Jerusalemer Strasse and Zimmerstrasse, in Berlin's old newspaper district, from 3 p.m. At about 5.20 p.m. they saw a man leave the border house at Zimmerstrasse 56 and head towards the city centre. An hour later he came back with two women and two children, and Reinhold Huhn was ordered to check their papers.

The man was a former cross-border commuter who had been separated from his family since the Wall was built. With his brothers and other helpers he had spent weeks digging a tunnel from the Springer publishing site in West Berlin to the cellar of Zimmerstrasse 56, and that afternoon he intended to bring his wife, two children and sister-in-law through it. According to the man's own later account, which the court that tried him largely accepted, he told the guard, who was carrying out the check alone, that they were going to a birthday party; when Reinhold Huhn went ahead with the check anyway, he drew a pistol and fired. Hit in the chest at close range, Reinhold Huhn fell and bled to death. His guard leader opened fire, but the family escaped through the tunnel.

East Berlin demanded the man's extradition, but the West Berlin Senate stood by him and he was flown to West Germany. He told the West Berlin police that he had only struck the guard, knocking him down, and that the fatal shot had come from the other guard firing after them. Western newspapers repeated this, and the investigation opened against him in West Berlin was discontinued in November 1962. In the East, Reinhold Huhn was presented as a victim of Western warmongers. His body lay in state in his unit's barracks, and he was buried with military honours in Adorf. A memorial plaque was placed at the spot, later expanded into a central memorial for border soldiers, and in 1966 nearby Schützenstrasse was renamed after him. After East Germany ceased to exist, the memorial was removed and the street was given back its old name.

In April 1999 the Berlin Regional Court convicted the man of manslaughter, after he admitted firing the shot but claimed self-defence; the court found that no attack on the life or health of him or his family had come from Reinhold Huhn, and sentenced him to a year in prison, suspended on probation. Both sides appealed. In July 2000 the Federal Court of Justice found him guilty of murder, because he had taken the lone guard by surprise, but it left the sentence unchanged. In November 2000 the Federal Constitutional Court declined to hear his constitutional complaint. The verdict remains disputed: he felt branded a cold-blooded murderer, while Reinhold Huhn's relatives questioned whether the urge for freedom should weigh more heavily than a human life.

Glass panel in a steel frame with text and small historical photos, street behind
Memorial panel for Reinhold Huhn at Zimmerstrasse 32, Berlin-Kreuzberg Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

Sources

This profile is a summary written for this site from the biography in source 1, which also gives the full account with archival references. Facts taken from other sources are listed below with what they support.

  1. Christine Brecht/Maria Nooke, “Reinhold Huhn”, biography in Chronik der Mauer, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Deutschlandradio. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online. The biography from which this profile was written, and the source of the dates and place of death.
  2. German version of the same biography. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online.
  3. Bundesgerichtshof, judgment of July 2000, 5 StR 629/99, text on HRR-Strafrecht. Accessed 29 September 2026. Read online. Source for: the murder verdict of July 2000 and its grounds.
  4. Bundesverfassungsgericht, order of 30 November 2000, 2 BvR 1473/00. Accessed 29 September 2026. Read online. Source for: that the trial court largely accepted his account, that the guard was alone, and the refusal to hear his complaint.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

Corrections

This profile was corrected on 24 and 28 September and 3 and 5 October 2026. Each round of corrections is described in the corrections log:

Image credits

Cite this page

“Reinhold Huhn”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/huhn-reinhold/

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.