Victims of the Wall

All 140 people

Rudolf Urban

1914–1961

Rudolf Urban, a 47-year-old driver, was injured on 19 August 1961 escaping by rope from his home at Bernauer Strasse 1; he caught pneumonia in a West Berlin hospital and died there on 17 September 1961.

Granite slab in the pavement engraved "Dem Opfer der Schandmauer Rudolf Urban † 17.9.1961 gewidmet", crossed by shadows
Memorial plaque for Rudolf Urban at Bernauer Strasse 2, Berlin-Mitte Photo: OTFW, Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Rudolf Urban was born on 6 June 1914 in the four-storey apartment building at Bernauer Strasse 1, near the Reconciliation Church, and was living there with his wife when the Wall was built. He worked as a driver. The buildings on the southern side of the street belonged to the East Berlin district of Mitte, yet their front doors opened onto a pavement that was part of West Berlin.

After the border was sealed on 13 August 1961, many people tried to flee to West Berlin from these houses, and the authorities responded by sealing entrances and windows and posting armed guards in the stairwells. His wife recalled in a 1980 interview that she had wanted to leave from the first day, but he hesitated: he did not want to give up what he had worked for over many years, and he insisted he had done nothing wrong. On the evening of 18 August the couple heard the building's front door onto the West Berlin pavement being nailed shut. According to his wife, that changed his mind, and he said that now they would go.

The next day, Saturday 19 August 1961, they fixed a rope to their window frame and let themselves down one after the other to Bernauer Strasse. His wife later said that, out of consideration for their neighbours, they could not take the safer route through a ground-floor window: with guards checking the stairwell, anyone climbing out that way would have exposed the residents to suspicion of helping an escape. Both slipped and injured their hands and feet, and they were taken to the nearby Lazarus Hospital. Two former nurses later recalled that both were in a state of severe shock; he was wearing several suits, one over another, apparently because he did not want to leave them behind in his East Berlin flat.

He had crushed his heel bone and remained in hospital. There he developed pneumonia, and he died at the Lazarus Hospital on 17 September 1961, aged 47. He was buried in the Dorotheen Cemetery on Liesenstrasse in Wedding. At first the West Berlin public knew nothing of his escape and his weeks in hospital; only after his death did the authorities and press draw attention to his fate.

In his memory, the borough of Wedding later put up a wooden memorial with barbed wire at the site of the accident at Bernauer Strasse 1; according to newspaper reports, East Berlin police insulted the workers putting it up and threw stones at them. As at other West Berlin memorials to victims of the Wall, commemorations were held there regularly on anniversaries of the day the Wall was built. When East Berlin crews began tearing the border houses down to the ground-floor façade in October 1965, the memorial was covered to protect it, and in 1980 the building he had fled from finally gave way to the expanded border installations.

Rusted steel stele framing a black-and-white photo of a house doorway with a cross and wreaths, captioned "Gedenkzeichen für Rudolf Urban, Juni 1962"
Rudolf Urban memorial stele at Bernauer Strasse 1, showing the memorial sign for him in June 1962 (photo: Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin) Photo: Brewer Bob, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Grey apartment building with bricked-up windows; at the door a cross, wreaths and flowers on the pavement
Bernauer Strasse 1 with the memorial for Rudolf Urban, photographed on 19 August 1963 Photo: Roger Wollstadt, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dark grave plate in grass and leaves inscribed "Rudolf Urban 6.6.1914 17.9.1961 Maueropfer"
Grave of Rudolf Urban, Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II, Liesenstrasse 9, Berlin Photo: Brewer Bob, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

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, “Rudolf Urban”, 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. West Berlin police, Wedding police inspectorate, report on members of the Volkspolizei and other persons who had fled since 13 August 1961, 14 November 1961 (Polizeihistorische Sammlung, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin), transcript on Chronik der Mauer. Accessed 5 October 2026. Read online. Source for: that he died in the Lazarus Hospital of injuries suffered while escaping.
  4. “Opfer der Mauer” (memorial stone at Bernauer Strasse and Swinemünder Strasse), Gedenktafeln in Berlin, with a quotation from the Berlin-ABC, p. 463. Accessed 5 October 2026. Read online. Source for: the date of his death, 17 September 1961, as inscribed on the Wedding memorial stone, and that he fell while escaping from the first floor of Bernauer Strasse 1.
  5. “Gedenkanlage für Opfer der Mauer” (the White Crosses; list of the crosses that stood on Paul-Löbe-Strasse before 1990), Gedenktafeln in Berlin. Accessed 5 October 2026. Read online. Source for: his dates of birth and death, 6 June 1914 and 17 September 1961.
  6. Federal Ministry for All-German Questions, Violations of Human Rights, Illegal Acts and Incidents at the Sector Border in Berlin since the Building of the Wall (13 August 1961 – 15 August 1962), Bonn and Berlin, 1962; full text on the Internet Archive. Accessed 5 October 2026. Read online. Source for: that he climbed down a rope fixed to the window of a first-floor flat.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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

Cite this page

“Rudolf Urban”, Victims of the Berlin Wall, Berlin Experiences. https://victimsofthewall.com/victims/urban-rudolf/

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.