# Günter Litfin (1937–1961)

> A 24-year-old tailor from Berlin-Weissensee who worked in West Berlin, Günter Litfin was shot by transport police on 24 August 1961 after jumping into the Humboldt Harbor, just short of the West Berlin bank.

- Born: 19 January 1937
- Died: 24 August 1961
- Age at death: 24
- Cause of death: Shot
- Circumstances: Died trying to escape
- Place and circumstances as recorded: In the Humboldt Harbor near Charité Hospital; At the sector border between Berlin-Mitte and Berlin-Tiergarten
- Map position (approximate): 52.52477, 13.37167
- Area: inner-city border between East and West Berlin
- Web page: https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/litfin-guenter/

## Story

Günter Litfin was born in Berlin on 19 January 1937 and lived in the Weissensee district; he was one of four sons. His father Albert, a butcher, had helped found the local CDU chapter in 1945, and his mother Margarete also joined. The boys were baptised Catholic and attended the St. Joseph School in Weissensee. In 1957 Günter and his younger brother Jürgen became members of the West Berlin CDU, which, in contrast to the East German bloc party of the same name, was still active illegally in the eastern half of the city.

After training as a tailor he found work in a West Berlin tailoring workshop near Bahnhof Zoo. He dressed with care and hoped one day to make costumes for the theatre. As pressure grew on so-called border-crossers, he found a flat in Charlottenburg but did not register it, since that would have made him a 'republic fugitive' and cut him off from his family in the East. His brother remembered him as the calm one in the family, the person everyone confided in. When their father died in May 1961, Günter felt he should stay near his mother, and he put off moving west for good.

On Saturday 12 August 1961 he spent the day with his mother and brother visiting relatives in the West, returning to Weissensee late that evening. The next morning the radio reported that the sector border had been sealed overnight. Unable to accept it, Günter began looking for a way out.

Shortly after 4 p.m. on 24 August 1961 he tried to get from East to West Berlin between the Friedrichstrasse and Lehrter stations. According to East Berlin police reports, he made his way from the grounds of Charité Hospital over a boundary wall to the bank of the Spree, where transport police spotted him. From a railway bridge they ordered him to stop and fired warning shots, then shot at him as he jumped into the Humboldt Harbor. He was only a short distance from the western bank when a bullet hit him in the back of the head and fatally wounded him. East Berlin firemen recovered his body three hours later. It was the first time the deadly consequences of the new border regime had been seen.

Hundreds of West Berliners watched from their side of the harbour as his body was taken away, and his death prompted outrage and protests in the West; a year later a memorial stone was placed there. The East Berlin press portrayed him as a criminal. Stasi staff harassed and intimidated the family. His brother, who did not know what had happened, was arrested on 25 August and questioned all night, and on the same day his mother's flat was searched without explanation. Neither was told what had happened; they learned of his death from the West Berlin programme 'Abendschau' on 26 August.

The family was ordered to keep silent, and so in the death notice they wrote, ambiguously, that he had died suddenly and unexpectedly in an accident. He was buried on 31 August at the St. Hedwig Cemetery in Weissensee, with Stasi personnel present. According to his brother Jürgen, the funeral became a farce because most of the mourners knew it had not been an accident.

In 1997 two of the men who had fired at him were convicted of joint manslaughter by the Berlin Regional Court and sentenced to one year and to one year and six months respectively, both suspended on probation. At his brother's initiative, a former border command post on the Spandau shipping canal became a memorial to Günter Litfin; the watchtower passed to the Berlin Wall Foundation in 2017. In 2000 a street in Weissensee was named after him, and a memorial stone on Kapelle-Ufer in Mitte, near the escape site, commemorates him as the first person in Berlin to be killed under the order to shoot.

## Sources

1. Christine Brecht, “Günter Litfin”, biography in Chronik der Mauer, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Deutschlandradio. Accessed 23 September 2026. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180480/litfin-guenter
2. German version of the same biography. Accessed 23 September 2026. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/todesopfer/171441/litfin-guenter
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.
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. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/2017_08_08_140%20Victims_at_the_Wall_List_Internet_engl_FINAL.pdf
5. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke, “The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings of a Research Project”, August 2017. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/2017_08_08_Hertle_Nooke_140_Victims_Berlin_Wall_FINAL_0.pdf

This profile is a summary written for this site; every fact in it is taken from source 1.

Cite as: “Günter Litfin”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/litfin-guenter/