Victims of the Wall

All 140 people

Leo Lis

1924–1969

Leo Lis, a 45-year-old dairy worker and father of seven from Hennersdorf in Saxony, was shot dead on 20 September 1969 while crossing the border strip near the Nordbahnhof station in Berlin-Mitte.

Leo Lis was born on 10 May 1924 in Beuthen in Upper Silesia, today Bytom in Poland. He lived in Hennersdorf in Saxony with his wife and their seven children, and worked as a dairy milker for an agricultural cooperative. What made him want to leave East Germany is not known.

On 19 September 1969 he left his family and took the train to East Berlin. The next evening, at about 8 p.m., he entered the border area near the Nordbahnhof station. He got round a dog run, but set off an alarm as he crawled under the signal fence. A guard came down from his tower but could not find him in the dark.

The guards on the two towers opposite opened uncontrolled fire; the soldier on the ground had to take cover, and one of the towers came under fire by mistake. A call to cease fire went unheard. The shooting stopped only when Leo Lis, who had got past the patrol road and the anti-tank obstacles, lay still. He had been critically wounded in the chest, and a paramedic pronounced him dead in the border strip. In all, 78 shots were fired. One bullet struck the garden window of a house in West Berlin, narrowly missing a retired couple watching television.

Residents on both sides watched from their windows and shouted at the guards. That night, in protest, young people threw stones at the border installations, shouting insults, and the French city commander condemned the shooting in the strongest terms as new proof of contempt for human life. The guards were decorated. When they were eventually called to account, the investigation was discontinued in April 1997, as prosecutors accepted they had believed their orders were lawful.

His wife was not told until 27 September 1969, after his body had already been cremated. A Stasi officer posing as a prosecutor's employee told her that her husband had been fatally injured while trying to leave East Germany illegally and, without further explanation, handed her the death certificate and a few of his belongings. She had to agree to invite only close family to the funeral and not to publish a death notice, and the family's post was watched afterwards. On 29 October 1969 his urn was buried in Kamenz, in the presence of his widow and children, his stepmother from West Germany, his sister and a few colleagues from his cooperative.

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

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. Udo Baron, “Leo Lis”, 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

“Leo Lis”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/lis-leo/

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.