September is a tad on the hectic side for me this year. I have barely finished my work in Dresden, collecting interviews and impressions for a radio feature on the music inspired by the devastation of the city in 1945, and my mind already turns to a different German tragedy.
On a cold February night in 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall crumbled into history, a young man named Chris Gueffroy lost his life trying to cross it. He was just 20 years old. His death was not the beginning of a revolution or the end of a war. It was quiet, tragic, and deeply human – one more loss in a long line of them.
I am travelling to the Channel Island of Guernsey this coming week to talk about Chris Gueffroy, who was the last person to be shot trying to cross from East Berlin to West Berlin. I’ve been invited to attend the Guernsey premiere of a biopic about him, called Whispers of Freedom, on which I served as Lead Historical Adviser. I look forward to seeing the outcome of our work and discussing it with the Guernsey-born writer and director, Brandon Ashplant, as well as other members of his team and the Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey. But it will be a sobering evening. Chris Gueffroy died far too young and entirely needlessly. His is a devastating story about the last months of the Cold War.
Chris Gueffroy was born on June 21, 1968, in Pasewalk and moved to Berlin with his mother when he was five years old. As a child, he trained as a gymnast at SC Dynamo Berlin but left the sports school after several years. Later, he completed an apprenticeship in hospitality and worked in several restaurants in East Berlin. By 1988, he was working as a waiter and earning relatively good wages, but he had grown uneasy about the limits he saw around him.
Life just didn’t seem to lead anywhere for Chris. The stagnation and limitations to ambition and self-development he was experiencing in the GDR were beginning to feel stifling. When he was informed in January 1989 that he would be drafted into military service that May, he and his friend Christian Gaudian decided to leave East Germany.
Unlike an increasing number of people around that time, they chose not to apply for exit visas. Both feared the attention such a request might bring from the authorities. The application itself – whether successful or not – often had devastating consequences for the individual who filed it and their families, friends and colleagues. Career opportunities, study places and travel permits could be curtailed and Stasi repression ramped up for all involved.
Instead, the two friends made plans to cross the border illegally. They had heard reports and rumours suggesting that the order to use firearms at the border had been lifted. They also knew that the Swedish prime minister was due to visit East Berlin soon and believed the border guards would be less likely to fire during an official visit. If caught, they thought, the worst outcome might be deportation or imprisonment.
On the night of 5 February 1989, the two young men left their apartments after telling friends and family they were heading to Prague. Around 10:30 p.m., they arrived at a garden allotment near the border in Berlin-Treptow and hid in a tool shed for around an hour, waiting for the right moment. Just after 11:30 p.m., they approached the border near the Britzer Zweigkanal, which separated East and West Berlin.
They had brought two makeshift climbing hooks. Using one, they scaled the inner wall, then crawled forward across the ground, triggering a signal fence which set off alarms. They ran forward, hoping to reach the last barrier, but one of the climbing hooks had been lost. As they tried to climb the final metal fence, they were fired on by border guards.
A guard aimed first at Chris’s legs. When he didn’t stop, the guard aimed higher. Chris was struck in the chest and collapsed near the fence. He died within minutes. Christian was injured and arrested. In May 1989, he was sentenced to three years in prison for an attempted illegal border crossing. He was released in September and transferred to West Berlin on October 17, just a few weeks before the Wall fell.
News of Chris’s death reached his mother slowly. She was questioned by the authorities and told that he had died while attacking a military security zone. A death notice appeared later in the East Berlin papers, calling the incident a tragic accident. Chris was buried at Baumschulenweg Cemetery on February 23. Over a hundred people came to the funeral. The same day, a memorial cross was erected on the West Berlin side of the canal, facing the place where he fell.
Chris Gueffroy was only 20 years old when he died. I hope people will feel that our film treats his story with respect and dignity. Chris's mother, Karin Gueffroy, graciously gave her permission to tell her son's story, but understandably didn’t want to be involved in the making of Whispers of Freedom. So the research had to be extra thorough. Other than by myself, the team was also supported by the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship and the DDR Museum in Berlin. The short film is dedicated to all victims of the Berlin Wall.
If you would like to see it, the Guernsey Premiere and the subsequent panel discussion with me and others is open to all on 12 September. The trailer is on YouTube.
I’m glad Chris’s story is being shared to remind everyone what’s at stake in the war of freedom vs. repression.
Sounds like an interesting and sad project to be involved in ,did you have to do much research into it or was the tragic story fairly well known .I always think it's important to remember these victims of the system.