Chris Gueffroy (21 June 1968 – 6 February 1989) was the last person to be shot and the second-last to die in an escape attempt while trying to escape from East Berlin to

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

across the Berlin Wall.

Biography

Chris Gueffroy was born in

Pasewalk Pasewalk () is a town in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany. Located on the Uecker river, it is the capital of the former Uecker-Randow district, and the seat of the Uecker-Randow-Tal ''Amt'', o ...

, Bezirk Neubrandenburg (present-day

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV; ; nds, Mäkelborg-Vörpommern), also known by its anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ranks 14th in po ...

) on 21 June 1968. He had an older brother, Stefan Gueffroy. He moved to

Schwedt Schwedt (or Schwedt/Oder; ) is a town in Brandenburg, in northeastern Germany. With the official status of a ''Große Kreisstadt, Große kreisangehörige Stadt'' (major district town), it is the largest town of the Uckermark (district), Uckermark ...

in 1970, the same year that his mother, Karin Gueffroy, and his father, Allois Gueffroy, divorced. Three years later, when he was five years old, he moved to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

with his mother and his brother. When he was in the third grade, he was sent to the youth sports school SC Dynamo Berlin, based on his gymnastic talent. After he finished school he refused to pursue an officer’s career track in the National People’s Army and was consequently denied the right to study at university, ending his dream of becoming an actor or a pilot. In September 1985 he began an apprenticeship in the Schönefeld airport restaurant near Berlin after which he worked in a number of different restaurants.NBC News Article
Victims of the Berlin Wall Never Forgotten, Andy Eckardt, 12 November 2004
, extracted 19 June 2015
extracted 19 June 2015 Chris Gueffroy, ''Curriculum Vitae'' (text)
written in 1988. Extracted 19 June 2015 Chris Gueffroy, ''Curriculum Vitae'' (handwritten)
written in 1988. Extracted 19 June 2015 As a waiter, his income was better than average, and he had a strong degree of freedom, but he was disgusted by the widespread corruption in the restaurant business. His friend Christian Gaudian, whom he had met at gastronomy school, shared his feelings. At twenty, he found it increasingly unbearable to think that he would remain locked up with the knowledge that it would always be this way and that he would never have the freedom to decide for himself where he wanted to live. In mid-January 1989, upon learning that he was to be conscripted into the East German army the following May, he and Gaudian decided to leave East Germany.

Death

Gueffroy and Gaudian based their decision to try to flee over the wall on mistaken beliefs that the ''

Schießbefehl (; German for "order to fire") was the term in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) for standing orders authorizing the use of lethal force by the Border Troops to prevent (defection) at the Inner German border from 1960 to 1989 ...

'', the standing order to shoot anyone who attempted to cross the wall, had been lifted (it had not), and that the Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson was to pay a state visit to East Berlin (he had already left when they attempted their escape). Their attempted escape from East Berlin to

, along the Britz district canal would take place on the night of 5–6 February 1989, about two kilometres (1¼ miles) from what would be Gueffroy's last residence on Südostallee 218, Johannisthal,

Treptow Treptow () was a former borough in the southeast of Berlin. It merged with Köpenick to form Treptow-Köpenick in 2001. Geography The district was composed by the localities of Alt-Treptow, Plänterwald, Baumschulenweg, Niederschöneweide, J ...

, East Berlin.Roman Grafe, "Deutsche Gerechtigkeit: Prozesse gegen DDR-Grenzschützen und ihre Befehlsgeber" (pg 12), September 21, 2004, Siedler, Climbing the last metal lattice fence, the two were discovered and came under fire from the NVA border troops. Gueffroy was hit in the chest by two shots and died in the border strip. Gaudian, badly but not fatally injured, was arrested and was sentenced on 24 May 1989 to imprisonment of three years by the

Pankow Pankow () is the most populous and the second-largest borough by area of Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow. ...

district court for attempted illegal border-crossing of the first degree ("''versuchten ungesetzlichen Grenzübertritts im schweren Fall''"). In September 1989 Gaudian was freed on bail by the East German government, and on 17 October 1989 he was transferred to West Berlin. Chris Gueffroy is often erroneously named as the last person to die in the attempt to cross the wall, but he was in fact only the last to be killed through the use of weapons, and the second-last to die in an escape attempt. Winfried Freudenberg died in the crash of an improvised balloon aircraft by which he crossed the border into West Berlin on 8 March 1989.

Aftermath

As compensation for her loss, the East German government allowed Karin Gueffroy to emigrate to West Berlin and visit Chris's grave in Baumschulenweg weekly, with the condition that she did not speak to western media about the incident. She would take residence in the West Berlin district of

Moabit Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood i ...

, on Oldenburger Straße 36.Detroit Free Press News Article
Germany: Border guards facing trial, Julie Wodow, 1 September 1991Extract from 1990 West Berlin telephone Book
accessed 16 August 2017 The four border guards involved at the time at first obtained an award (''Leistungsabzeichen der Grenztruppen'') from the chief of the ''Grenzkommandos Mitte'' border guards, Erich Wöllner, and a prize of 150 East German Marks each. However, after the

reunification A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities, or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal governm ...

of East and West Germany, they were prosecuted by the Berlin regional court. Two of the former border guards, Mike Schmidt (now a millwright with two children), and Peter Schmett (now an electrician with three children), were acquitted and released in January 1992, because the presiding judge, Theodor Seidel, ruled that they "did not kill and did not intend to kill". A third former border guard, Andreas Kuehnpast (now unemployed), received a suspended sentence of two years. The fourth former border guard, Ingo Heinrich (now an electronic engineer), who was responsible for the mortal shot in the heart, was at first sentenced to three and a half years of jail.Los Angeles Times article
"E. German Guards on Trial: Can Justice Scale the Wall?", Tamara Jones, 17 September 1991Los Angeles Times article
"Wall Guards Convicted in Berlin Death", Tyler Marshall, 21 January 1992
"2 East German Guards Convicted Of Killing Man as He Fled to West", Stephen Kinser, 21 January 1992 On appeal, the Bundesgerichtshof (High Court of Justice) in 1994 reduced the penalty to a suspended sentence of two years. In 2000, two

SED sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

functionaries, Siegfried Lorenz and Hans-Joachim Böhme, were tried for the death of Gueffroy and two other young men, but acquitted as the judge could find no evidence that they might have been able to lift the shoot-to-kill order. The case was retried on 7 August 2004, and the two men were found guilty and given suspended sentences of 15 months each. The judge explained that the short sentences were due to the length of time since the events. This was the last case concerning deaths on the inner German border. On 21 June 2003, which would have been his 35th birthday, a monument to Gueffroy was erected on the bank of the Britz district canal. The monument was designed by Berlin artist Karl Biedermann. One of the crosses at the White Crosses memorial site next to the Reichstag building is devoted to him. On 13 August 2010 the Britzer Allee between

and Neukölln was renamed Chris-Gueffroy-Allee.

References

Memorials

Memorials to his death are located in the "White Crosses" memorial, next to the Reichstag building, in the "Window Of Remembrance" of the Berlin Wall Memorial in

and near the former scene of the attempted escape, on the Teltow Canal. File:Chris Gueffroy.jpg, Commemorative tablet to Chris Gueffroy. In the background is the partly destroyed Wall, near Reichstag. Winter 1989/90. File:Chris Gueffroey Stele Berlin.jpg, Monument erected in 2003 at the Britz district canal in

's Treptow-Köpenick borough. File:Chris Gueffroey Stele Distant.JPG, Distant view of the Chris Gueffroy Steele, showing what was Chris' "letzte Blick" (last view) as he attempted to escape from Berlin. File:Chris Gueffroey Gedenktafel Front.JPG, Berliner Mauerweg memorial to Chris Gueffroy, looking from Chris-Gueffroy-Allee, a few hundred meters from where he attempted his escape in 1989. File:Chris Gueffroey Gedenktafel Rear.JPG, Berliner Mauerweg memorial to Chris Gueffroy, looking towards Chris-Gueffroy-Allee, a few hundred meters from where he attempted his escape in 1989.

External links