Victims of the Wall

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Jörgen Schmidtchen

1941–1962

Jörgen Schmidtchen, a 20-year-old border policeman from Leipzig, was shot dead on 18 April 1962 by a fleeing cadet at the Gleisdreieck post near Griebnitzsee, the first border policeman killed on duty at the West Berlin border after the Wall was built.

Grey stele with a black-and-white portrait of a young man at the top and German and English text below
Memorial stele for Jörgen Schmidtchen with his portrait (photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung, Berlin), Stubenrauchstrasse 35, Babelsberg Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Jörgen Schmidtchen was born on 28 June 1941. According to official East German accounts, he was born and raised in Leipzig and trained as a galvanizer after leaving school; he then worked as a skilled labourer at the state-owned industrial plant in Ludwigsfelde, where he was recognised as a young activist. At 19 he joined the German Border Police and was posted to the "Grenzbereitschaft Blankenfelde", a unit stationed in the south of Berlin that guarded the border between West Berlin and the district of Potsdam.

On the night leading into 18 April 1962, by now promoted to lance corporal, he was on guard with another soldier at a post called "Gleisdreieck" in Potsdam-Babelsberg, on disused S-Bahn land next to the West Berlin housing settlement of Kohlhasenbrück. Their shift began at one o'clock in the morning. They had been told that a search was under way in and around Potsdam for two armed members of the National People's Army who had disappeared from an officers' school.

At around 2:30 a.m. the two guards heard a noise, apparently without linking it to the warning, and left the old railway gatehouse to look. They met two men in uniform. According to the statement his fellow guard later gave, Jörgen Schmidtchen, the guard leader, believed them to be a patrol, walked up to them unsuspectingly and spoke to them, and then shots were suddenly fired. They came, as was later established, from the weapon of a 19-year-old cadet who was trying to flee to West Berlin with a comrade. Jörgen Schmidtchen fell and presumably died at once. His fellow guard returned fire; in the exchange the cadet was also fatally wounded, while his comrade reached West Berlin unhurt.

Internally, the commander of the 2nd Border Brigade concluded that he had acted imprudently in approaching the men unguarded despite the warnings he had received. Nothing of this was said publicly. The day after his death he was promoted to the NCO rank of Unteroffizier, and his parents received a one-off payment of 500 marks. He was buried with full military honours at the Leipzig-Schönefeld Cemetery.

East Germany's official account claimed he had been murdered by agents while trying to prevent an armed border breach, and he was held up as a martyr. Streets and schools were named after him, among them the 33rd Polytechnic secondary school in Potsdam, and a memorial room and commemorative grove kept his name before later generations of border soldiers. Behind this use of his death for propaganda, the young man himself largely disappeared from view.

Orange post inscribed with three names beside four grey steles, two of them with portraits, on grass in front of trees
Memorial for Peter Böhme, Jörgen Schmidtchen and Willi Marzahn, Stubenrauchstrasse 35, Babelsberg Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Read more

Also died on the outer ring between Berlin-Zehlendorf and Potsdam-Babelsberg

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, “Jörgen Schmidtchen”, 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 stele for Jörgen Schmidtchen with his portrait (photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung, Berlin), Stubenrauchstrasse 35, Babelsberg. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • Memorial for Peter Böhme, Jörgen Schmidtchen and Willi Marzahn, Stubenrauchstrasse 35, Babelsberg. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Cite this page

“Jörgen Schmidtchen”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schmidtchen-joergen/

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.