# Heinz Sokolowski (1917–1965)

> Heinz Sokolowski, a 47-year-old journalist and former political prisoner, was shot by a border guard on 25 November 1965 as he reached the Wall between the Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate, and died on the way to hospital.

- Born: 17 December 1917
- Died: 25 November 1965
- Age at death: 47
- Cause of death: Shot
- Circumstances: Died trying to escape
- Place and circumstances as recorded: Between the Reichstag Building and the Brandenburg Gate; On the sector border between Berlin-Mitte and Berlin-Tiergarten
- Map position (approximate): 52.5183, 13.37691
- Area: inner-city border between East and West Berlin
- Web page: https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/sokolowski-heinz/

## Story

Heinz Sokolowski was born on 17 December 1917 in Frankfurt an der Oder and grew up in modest circumstances. According to an account of his life he wrote later, he trained as a tailor after elementary school and attended a business school. In 1936 he was offered an editorial internship at the "Frankfurter Oderzeitung" and gave up studying for his university entrance qualification in favour of journalism. Called up two years later, he served in the Wehrmacht in various places during the Second World War, among other things as a war reporter, and finally as a lance corporal on the eastern front. At 26 he was taken into Russian captivity, went through anti-fascist training and, like many soldiers, was for a time won over to communism.

In 1946 he settled in the Soviet sector of Berlin and worked as a freelance journalist for radio and newspapers. In 1947 he married; he, his wife and their daughter made their home in Prenzlauer Berg until the couple divorced in 1951. Although not a party member, he worked for the communist-controlled media. In early 1953 came a break; the files do not show whether he had turned away or why he had fallen out of favour. He was arrested on 12 February 1953 and on 27 April 1953 a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to twenty years, reduced by a court of cassation to ten, for allegedly spying for the West and possessing anti-Soviet literature. After three years in a Soviet labour camp he was handed over to the East German authorities in 1956, in the last repatriation of German prisoners, as one of those not amnestied, and had to serve the rest of his sentence there, in Bautzen, Brandenburg and Waldheim, where he contracted tuberculosis in early 1960. He was released in February 1963, not to the West as he had hoped, but to East Berlin.

Out of touch with his family, in poor health and reduced to working as a lift operator in an industrial plant, he applied to leave East Germany, citing distant relatives in the West, but he soon had to recognise that the East Berlin authorities would not let him go at any price. In May 1965, according to the Stasi, he was dismissed without notice after refusing to work under new rules. He then began to prepare an escape, looking for a place along the border, gathering ropes and blankets to get over the wall and barbed wire, gradually selling his household goods and letting friends in West Berlin in on his plan. In October he wrote to a friend in West Berlin, whom he had met in Waldheim prison, that he could no longer bear living in East Berlin.

At around 5 a.m. on 25 November 1965, still in darkness, he approached the border from Clara-Zetkin-Strasse, today's Dorotheenstrasse. A guard in the watchtower at the corner of Ebertstrasse saw him and fired warning shots, but he kept going. He set off an alarm, bringing two more soldiers. He had reached the barbed-wire-topped wall when one of them opened aimed fire on him. Struck in the abdomen, he died shortly afterwards on the way to the hospital in Mitte. West Berlin police heard the shots and saw him being carried away.

His friend in the West learned of his death from a friend in East Berlin. He wrote that when they had read the press report of another fugitive shot near the Brandenburg Gate, they had feared it might be Heinz Sokolowski, and that they were deeply shaken. The following spring the "Working Group 13th of August" put up a three-metre wooden cross in his memory at the corner of Scheidemannstrasse and Ebertstrasse, opposite the place where he died. Its inscription recalled that he had been shot trying to escape after seven years in East German prisons.

## Sources

1. Christine Brecht, “Heinz Sokolowski”, biography in Chronik der Mauer, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and Deutschlandradio. Accessed 23 September 2026. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/en/victims/180536/sokolowski-heinz
2. German version of the same biography. Accessed 23 September 2026. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/todesopfer/171389/sokolowski-heinz
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.
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. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/2017_08_08_140%20Victims_at_the_Wall_List_Internet_engl_FINAL.pdf
5. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Maria Nooke, “The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings of a Research Project”, August 2017. https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/2017_08_08_Hertle_Nooke_140_Victims_Berlin_Wall_FINAL_0.pdf

This profile is a summary written for this site; every fact in it is taken from source 1.

Cite as: “Heinz Sokolowski”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/sokolowski-heinz/