Victims of the Wall

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Klaus Schröter

1940–1963

Klaus Schröter, a 23-year-old electrical engineer working in East Berlin, was shot at by border guards while diving under the Spree near the Reichstag building in scuba gear; a bullet grazed his head and he drowned. He died on 4 November 1963.

Row of white crosses on dark perforated panels, each with a small black-and-white portrait photograph and a text
The 'White Crosses' memorial for victims of the Berlin Wall, with a cross for Klaus Schröter bearing his photograph and dates Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Klaus Schröter was born on 21 February 1940 in Friedersdorf near Bitterfeld and grew up there with two brothers; according to a Stasi report written after his death, one of them had already fled East Germany for West Germany by way of Sweden. His parents had a small house on a housing estate, which in East German times had to make way for lignite mining. Drawn to technology from an early age, he trained as an electrician at the Agfa film factory in nearby Wolfen. At 18 he was sent by the firm to study electrical engineering at the engineering school in Velten, in Brandenburg, named after Hanno Günther.

In September 1961, a few weeks after the Wall was built, he began work as an electrical engineer with VEB Starkstromanlagenbau, a state-owned electrical installation firm on Schlegelstrasse in Berlin-Mitte. His career went well: he started a further degree and taught on the side at Pankow's adult education centre. In April 1963, disappointed that his firm would not let him make a change of job he had hoped for, he handed in his notice, but the management refused to accept it and forced him to withdraw it. Friends and colleagues believed this pushed him to act on a plan to escape that he had long been considering. His mother said he never hid his rejection of the SED and its regime from her.

He prepared with great care and told no one the details. A friend he visited the evening before later recalled knowing that he meant to flee at some point, but not that it would be the following night; Klaus had not wanted to tell him the exact date, the friend said, so as not to get him into trouble. He planned a route under the water of the Spree, sold his television to buy scuba equipment, had compressed air tanks delivered to his flat and sewed his own diving suit, weighted with lead.

Before sunrise he cycled with his equipment to Mitte and left his bicycle on the Marschall Bridge, which crosses the Spree between Reichstagsufer and Schiffbauerdamm close to the sector border. Beneath the bridge he cut through the barbed wire, went down the steps in the embankment and entered the river. A guard in the watchtower at the corner of Reichstagsufer and Ebertstrasse saw him, and he and two other guards fired as soon as he dived. According to a 2001 booklet by Saxony-Anhalt's Stasi records commissioner, drawing on the border regiment's report and the court's judgment, he had covered about 200 metres westwards in the river and was still some 50 metres from West Berlin when he was hit; 29 shots were fired in all. A bullet grazed the back of his head; he lost consciousness and drowned. His body was recovered after a long search at around 7.45 a.m., while an East Berlin fire boat hung out a curtain of water to screen the scene from the western bank.

East Germany denied that he had been shot; yet that same November, after an inquiry into the incident, the soldiers who had fired were awarded the Medal for Exemplary Border Service. A Stasi officer, posing as a state prosecutor, told his mother he had drowned after a brain contusion and pressed her to agree to cremation. When she went to the public prosecutor's office a few days later and asked to see the coffin at least once more, she was told, according to a Stasi report, that he had already been cremated. According to Stasi reports, at a meeting in late November his colleagues' trade union group called on the works union leadership to say where and how he had died and where and when he would be buried. In December a meeting was organised at his workplace to stop rumours of a shooting, but his colleagues did not believe the official version; they had heard on West Berlin radio of shots on the Reichstagsufer that morning. His mother, who was also told that wearing black was no longer the fashion, later said that she had worn mourning clothes for a whole year as an act of opposition.

Despite the intimidation, friends and colleagues travelled to Friedersdorf for his funeral on 14 December 1963, where the urn was buried in his father's grave. At his mother's request, the minister later recalled, he did not mention how Klaus had died, but he chose as the text for his sermon a verse from the Epistle to the Romans. Some thirty years later the truth came out, and in 1994 the three soldiers who had fired stood trial in Berlin. They denied guilt, saying they had fired into the water without aiming so as not to be punished for refusing orders. On 17 November 1994 the Berlin Regional Court found it proven that the lance corporal who had led the two-man post had acted with conditional intent to kill; it convicted him of manslaughter and gave him eighteen months' youth custody, suspended on probation. The other two were acquitted.

Several white crosses on dark perforated panels in a row along the riverbank
White crosses for victims of the Berlin Wall at the Reichstagsufer in Berlin-Tiergarten, including one for Klaus Schröter, photographed in 2009 Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

Sources

This profile is a summary written for this site from the biography in source 1, which also gives the full account with archival references. Facts taken from other sources are listed below with what they support.

  1. Christine Brecht, “Klaus Schröter”, biography in Chronik der Mauer, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Deutschlandradio. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online. The biography from which this profile was written, and the source of the dates and place of death.
  2. German version of the same biography. Accessed 23 September 2026. Read online.
  3. Die Landesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR in Sachsen-Anhalt (ed.), “Tod in der Spree. Zur Erinnerung an Klaus Schröter, erschossen auf der Flucht am 4. 11. 1963”, text by Wolfgang Laßleben, Magdeburg, August 2001 (PDF). Accessed 3 October 2026. Read online. Source for: the 1994 verdicts, the medals, the distance swum and shots fired, the union demand, the cremation, his mother’s request, and his brother’s escape.
  4. West Berlin police radio messages on his escape attempt and the recovery of his body, 4 November 1963 (Polizeihistorische Sammlung/Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin), transcript in Chronik der Mauer. Accessed 3 October 2026. Read online. Source for: the time of the shots, and the fire boat’s curtain of water screening the recovery from the western bank.
  5. Stasi (MfS) report on the escape attempt (Leichensache), 6 November 1963 (BStU, MfS, AS 754/70, Bd. 2, Nr. 4, Bl. 4-6), transcript in Chronik der Mauer. Accessed 3 October 2026. Read online. Source for: that a graze to the head was followed by drowning, and the Stasi’s plan to have his mother give up his body.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.

Corrections

This profile was corrected on 28 September and 3 October 2026. Each round of corrections is described in the corrections log:

Further reading

Image credits

  • The 'White Crosses' memorial for victims of the Berlin Wall, with a cross for Klaus Schröter bearing his photograph and dates. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
  • White crosses for victims of the Berlin Wall at the Reichstagsufer in Berlin-Tiergarten, including one for Klaus Schröter, photographed in 2009. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Cite this page

“Klaus Schröter”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schroeter-klaus/

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.