Victims of the Wall

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Dietmar Schulz

1939–1963

Dietmar Schulz, a 24-year-old from Pankow, was found fatally injured on the S-Bahn tracks north of Bornholmer Strasse station on 25 November 1963, apparently while trying to reach Wedding; the reports on how the accident happened contradict each other.

Large granite boulder on a cobbled base with engraved names and dates under the heading 'Den Opfern der Mauer'
Memorial stone 'Den Opfern der Mauer' at Bernauer Straße 69–70 in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen, listing Dietmar Schulz among others, photographed in 2012 Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dietmar Schulz was born on 21 October 1939 and lived with his fiancée in a flat on Gaillardstrasse in Pankow, a few minutes from the sector border along the S-Bahn tracks between Bornholmer Strasse and Wollankstrasse stations. He is said to have been thinking about leaving for a long time. In April 1963 he told a young West German he met in an East Berlin bar that he rejected the SED regime and meant to go West one day. His fiancée also suspected that he wanted to leave; she believed he feared being called up into the National People's Army.

Bornholmer Strasse station had been closed when the Wall was built, and West Berlin trains passed through it without stopping. The East Berlin line ran parallel on a new route inside a 100-metre prohibited zone, created in June 1963 officially to protect the border but in practice to stop people before they reached the barriers.

At around 7 p.m. on 25 November 1963 he left the flat; nothing suggested he meant to try that evening. Not entirely sober, he got onto the railway land in the border area apparently unnoticed. Later that evening border soldiers found him, unconscious and critically injured, on the S-Bahn land north of Bornholmer Strasse station. He had apparently been struck by a train while trying to cross the tracks towards Wedding, though the reports on how he entered the zone and how the accident happened disagree. He was taken to the People's Police Hospital, where he died a short time later.

According to one report from the East Berlin command, at 9:20 p.m. a man leapt from an S-Bahn train while it was moving, south of Maximilianstrasse. The transport police concluded instead that he had walked from home to the embankment and been run over in unknown circumstances; their report made no mention of an escape and recorded a personal accident.

His fiancée did not believe it was an accident and was convinced he had been shot. After his funeral in East Berlin on 2 December 1963 she contacted the West German he had met, who passed on what she knew. The Central Registry Office in Salzgitter opened an inquiry in April 1964, and the Berlin public prosecutor's office later reopened the case once the East German archives had been opened, but the suspicion that he had been shot could not be confirmed.

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, “Dietmar Schulz”, 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 stone 'Den Opfern der Mauer' at Bernauer Straße 69–70 in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen, listing Dietmar Schulz among others, photographed in 2012. OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Cite this page

“Dietmar Schulz”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/schulz-dietmar/

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.