Victims of the Wall

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Lothar Schleusener

1953–1966

Lothar Schleusener, a 13-year-old boy from Friedrichshain, was shot by border guards on 14 March 1966 at the border on Kiefholzstrasse together with a younger boy, and died the same night; his mother was given a falsified death certificate.

Dark grey metal sculpture of a broken wall with bullet holes and a child-shaped opening, beside an upright slab with an inscribed plaque, with flowers and candles at its foot
Memorial for Jörg Hartmann and Lothar Schleusener by Rüdiger Roehl and Jan Skuin (1999), Kiefholzstraße 333, Berlin-Plänterwald, photographed in 2011 Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lothar Schleusener was born in East Berlin on 14 January 1953 and grew up in Friedrichshain with his older sister. His father was an electrician and his mother a seamstress at the state-owned company "Fortschritt" in Lichtenberg. According to his sister, the family lived in a poor neighbourhood that everyone then called the "Hinterland". With both parents at work, the two children were often left to themselves, and they loved spending time at the family's allotment garden, where they kept animals and where they sometimes stayed overnight in summer. The parents divorced in 1965 but were still sharing the flat in March 1966.

His sister remembered him as a friendly, caring boy who was especially fond of animals and longed to be big and strong; he liked to picture himself one day driving his grandmother around in a car. The family had relatives in the West who had sent parcels at Christmas in the first years after the border was closed. According to her, not long before he went missing Lothar confided to her that he and a friend meant to visit relatives in West Berlin, and promised to bring her back something nice. She did not take him seriously at the time; only after the Wall fell did she understand that he had meant it.

On 14 March 1966 Lothar and Jörg Hartmann were in the border area at a place known as "Grenzknick". One of the guards later confessed that he and a fellow guard had shot at the children. By his account, from the observation tower he had seen a human shadow and thought someone was trying to climb out of the anti-vehicle trench; he sent the other guard down from the tower and opened fire, shooting forty rounds in all. When he came down from the tower after the firing stopped and saw that they were children, he was, as he later said, completely devastated.

The only official record of what happened speaks of two injured "Grenzverletzer" (border violators) taken to the People's Police Hospital, one of whom died. It does not say they were children or give their names, nor that Lothar, the older boy and the one allegedly fit to be questioned in hospital, also died that same night. The Stasi kept watch on the guards stationed there; one informer reported that the incident had become known in his platoon before the guards involved were sworn to silence, and that with attentive observation the crossing could have been prevented without the use of firearms.

Lothar had been missing for days before his mother was officially told that he had died of an electric shock in an accident in Espenhain near Leipzig; a death certificate issued by the registry office in Leipzig was meant to confirm this. His parents doubted this in private but, fearing trouble, did not dare say so openly. His sister believes their mother knew she was being lied to, since she knew of western radio reports that two children had been shot at the Wall on the day he vanished. His sister says that, out of grief and fear, their mother never wanted to talk about his death and told her to say nothing and ask no questions. He was buried at the cemetery on Friedensstrasse in Friedrichshain, with only his parents, grandparents and sister present.

In November 1997 the Berlin Regional Court convicted a former border guard of manslaughter for the deaths of both boys and gave him a 20-month suspended sentence; the second guard had died by then. Proceedings over the false death certificate were discontinued without result in August 1997 because no documents could be found that would prove the case against the suspected culprits. A memorial to the two boys was put up on Kiefholzstrasse in November 1999.

Grey stone plaque with capital letters naming Jörg Hartmann and Lothar Schleusener
Inscription on the memorial at Kiefholzstraße 333: fifteen people died at the Wall in Treptow, among them two children, Jörg Hartmann, aged 10, and Lothar Schleusener, aged 13, shot on 14 March 1966 Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Tall glass panel in a steel frame with text, a map and black-and-white photographs, including one of a small fair-haired child
Glass memorial panel at Kiefholzstraße 100, which includes a childhood photograph of Lothar Schleusener, photographed in 2014 Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Read more

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, “Lothar Schleusener”, 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 for Jörg Hartmann and Lothar Schleusener by Rüdiger Roehl and Jan Skuin (1999), Kiefholzstraße 333, Berlin-Plänterwald, photographed in 2011. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • Inscription on the memorial at Kiefholzstraße 333: fifteen people died at the Wall in Treptow, among them two children, Jörg Hartmann, aged 10, and Lothar Schleusener, aged 13, shot on 14 March 1966. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • Glass memorial panel at Kiefholzstraße 100, which includes a childhood photograph of Lothar Schleusener, photographed in 2014. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Cite this page

“Lothar Schleusener”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schleusener-lothar/

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.