Victims of the Wall

All 140 people

Paul Schultz

1945–1963

Paul Schultz, an 18-year-old electrician's apprentice from Neubrandenburg, was shot by border guards on Christmas Day 1963 as he climbed the Wall at the corner of Melchiorstrasse and Bethaniendamm, and died that same evening in a Kreuzberg hospital.

Paul Schultz was born in Neubrandenburg in October 1945, the youngest of three brothers. He never knew his father, who was killed in the Second World War. He grew up with his friend Hartmut D., who later told the West Berlin police that Paul was his best friend; both left school after the 10th grade, and in September 1962 Paul began an apprenticeship with a private electrician. The two were almost the same age and celebrated their 18th birthdays together in October 1963.

That evening, Hartmut D. later said, they made the plan to escape to West Berlin and go on from there to West Germany. They knowingly took the risk of being shot at the Wall, on the principle of all or nothing. Early on Christmas Day 1963 they left home, telling their parents they were visiting friends, took the train to East Berlin and walked for hours along the inner-city border looking for a place to cross. As dusk was falling they chose the corner of Melchiorstrasse and Bethaniendamm, where the strip seemed narrower, and watched the patrols before making their attempt.

They climbed the inner fence and ran through the barriers. According to border troop and Stasi files, at the very moment they entered the strip a pair of guards patrolling between the border sections that evening happened to be nearby, and they opened fire without hesitation. As the boys were getting through the last fence before the Wall, Hartmut D. recalled, the guards shouted "Halt!" and began shooting straight away. The two got up onto the wall, which was topped with barbed wire; Hartmut D. dropped unhurt to the western side, but Paul was fatally wounded in the hail of bullets before he fell to the ground on West Berlin territory. A police constable from nearby Mariannenplatz ran to help him, and Paul told him he had been hit in the back. He died that same evening in the Bethanien Hospital in Kreuzberg from a bullet through the lung. Seeing his friend die right beside him left Hartmut D. in severe shock; looking back, he said that for years he could not get over it.

That same month, a border pass agreement had been reached under which West Berliners could, for the first time since the Wall was built, visit relatives in the East. His death overshadowed not only Christmas but also the pass agreement itself, and doubts were voiced on all sides about negotiating with representatives of the regime responsible for the shootings at the Wall. There were protests at Mariannenplatz for days, and opponents of the East German regime set up a wooden cross with his photograph where he was shot. The two guards were later commended by the NVA city commander and given a briefcase and a wristwatch respectively.

In the East, his mother and brothers learned of his death from RIAS radio and were placed under Stasi surveillance. The Stasi found nothing against them, and blamed western radio and his friend for leading him astray. On 28 December a West Berlin police escort accompanied the hearse to the Heinrich-Heine-Strasse crossing. The funeral in Neubrandenburg two days later had been set for the morning and was then officially postponed to the afternoon, but, as his friends found out in a roundabout way, only as a ruse to keep them away; in the end friends and workmates did attend. One friend recalled that the speech, given by a relative who he thought may have been a member of the local SED leadership, culminated in the words "Paul, wir vergeben Dir Deine Tat" ("Paul, we forgive you your deed"), a sentence he never forgot.

In 1995 the Berlin Regional Court found that both guards had been determined to stop the escape and had accepted that the boys might die. One had died by then; the other was convicted of joint manslaughter and given an 18-month suspended sentence.

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

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, “Paul Schultz”, 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

Cite this page

“Paul Schultz”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schultz-paul/

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.