Victims of the Wall

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Lutz Schmidt

1962–1987

Lutz Schmidt, a 24-year-old driver and father of two from Mahlow, was shot dead by border guards on 12 February 1987 near Rheingoldstrasse between Altglienicke and Rudow, moments after helping his friend onto the top of the Wall; the friend reached West Berlin.

Black-and-white portrait of a smiling young man with short hair, in a jacket with a flower at the lapel, with a caption strip below
Lutz Schmidt, photographed from the portrait on the memorial column in the Landschaftspark Rudow-Altglienicke (the panel gives the original photo's date as unknown) Photo: SCIdude, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lutz Schmidt was born in Zittau on 8 July 1962. A keen cycle racer whom his sports club considered very talented, he was sent at 14 to the SC Dynamo Berlin youth sports school in East Berlin, finished school there and hoped to race professionally as a sprinter. As he grew older he was less willing to meet the political demands of his trainer, and when he refused to join the SED, the ruling party, he fell out with his club and his sporting career came to an abrupt end.

At 18 he met Karin, and they married soon afterwards. He brought up her young daughter, Viktoria, as his own, and a son, Karsten, followed. He trained as an assembly metal worker, served in the National People's Army as a mechanic and driver until April 1984, and then became a driver for the state-owned firm "Autotrans", hoping this would help him obtain scarce materials for the family's planned house in Mahlow.

Contact with relatives in West Germany and the United States showed the couple how different life in the West was, and they wanted better chances for their children. Fearing disadvantages, they did not apply to leave. When his requests to visit relatives in the West were repeatedly refused, they agreed that he would escape alone and bring the family over later. He and a colleague, Peter Sch., who also wanted to leave, spent weeks using work trips near the border to choose a place. Karin did not want to know the date; they agreed that if his car was in the garage in the morning, he had gone.

Thursday 12 February 1987 was cold and foggy, with visibility under 40 metres. They hoped that the weather would help them, and that there would be no shooting at the border because two West German state premiers were due to visit Erich Honecker the next day. They drove a truck carrying two ladders to Rheingoldstrasse, where the death strip between Altglienicke and Rudow was no more than 50 metres wide. At about 9:20 p.m. they nearly collided with a police car, ran off the road and got stuck, then ran into the fog with the ladders.

Crossing the signal fence set off an alarm, and one ladder was lost in the barbed wire. The other slipped into the soft clay at the foot of the 3.6-metre wall and ended two metres short of the top. Lutz Schmidt, the stronger of the two, pushed his friend up onto the wall, but Peter Sch. could not pull him up after him. Meanwhile two guards ran towards the alarm and, once they could make out the two men in the thick fog, opened fire at close range. Crouching on the Wall, Peter Sch. managed to grasp his friend's hands, but as he pulled he lost his balance and fell to the western side. Lutz Schmidt fell back into East German territory, calling out as he fell: "Peter, hau ab!" ("Peter, get away!"). As he stood up, a bullet struck his chest and heart, and he died in the death strip.

Next morning Karin saw his car in the garage, heard on West German television that only one of two drivers had reached West Berlin, and reported him missing. The following day, at a military prosecutor's office in East Berlin, a military prosecutor and a Stasi officer told her and her father-in-law that he had been shot. The Stasi demanded that they tell everyone he had died in a car accident, and threatened that if they did not cooperate her children would be taken away for adoption and she would be committed to a psychiatric institution. Stasi informers were set on her, and her post and telephone calls were monitored. He was buried on 25 February 1987 in the family grave in Zittau, against her wishes. After American authorities made his death public in mid-March, the Stasi insisted that she and the children leave Mahlow, and the family moved hastily to Zittau that month. Only in the 1990s did his children learn the truth, and Karin discovered that her father-in-law had been a Stasi informant since 1975 and had been used in the cover-up.

Karin Schmidt sought justice as early as February 1990. On 21 March 1995 the Berlin Regional Court convicted the two guards of joint manslaughter and gave each of them a suspended sentence of two years, one a youth sentence and the other a prison sentence; they also had to pay her a symbolic fine. On 13 August 2009 a street in Altglienicke was renamed Lutz-Schmidt-Strasse.

Tall orange column with the names Christel und Eckhard Wehage and Lutz Schmidt, beside grey posts with text panels, one with a portrait, in tall grass
Memorial stele for Christel and Eckhard Wehage and Lutz Schmidt in the Landschaftspark Rudow-Altglienicke Photo: SCIdude, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
White metal plaque with cut-out lettering: "An dieser Stelle versuchten am 12. Februar 1987 zwei junge Männer die Flucht ... Lutz Schmidt, 24 Jahre alt"
Memorial plaque on Lutz-Schmidt-Straße in Berlin-Altglienicke Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Two white crosses on a mesh fence, hung with flowers; the left one lettered "Lutz Schmidt Feb. 1987", the right one with Chris Gueffroy's name (misspelled) and a date
White memorial crosses for Lutz Schmidt and Chris Gueffroy at the Berlin Wall, photographed on 28 December 1989 Photo: Aad van der Drift, CC BY 2.0, 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. Udo Baron/Hans-Hermann Hertle, “Lutz Schmidt”, 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

  • Lutz Schmidt, photographed from the portrait on the memorial column in the Landschaftspark Rudow-Altglienicke (the panel gives the original photo's date as unknown). SCIdude, CC0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • Memorial stele for Christel and Eckhard Wehage and Lutz Schmidt in the Landschaftspark Rudow-Altglienicke. SCIdude, CC0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • Memorial plaque on Lutz-Schmidt-Straße in Berlin-Altglienicke. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • White memorial crosses for Lutz Schmidt and Chris Gueffroy at the Berlin Wall, photographed on 28 December 1989. Aad van der Drift, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Cite this page

“Lutz Schmidt”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schmidt-lutz/

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.