There were numerous deaths at the Berlin Wall, which stood as a barrier between West Berlin and East Berlin from 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989. Before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin. From there they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such emigration.Church, George. Freedom! The Berlin Wall. Time, 20 November 1989. Accessed 3 September 2011.
The state-funded Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam has confirmed that "at least 140 people were killed at the Berlin Wall or died under circumstances directly connected with the GDR border regime", including people attempting to escape, border guards, and innocent parties; however, researchers at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum have estimated the death toll to be significantly higher.
Escape attempts claimed the lives of many, from a child as young as one to an 80-year-old woman, and many died because of the accidental or illegal actions of the guards. In numerous legal cases throughout the 1990s, several border guards, along with political officials responsible for the defence policies, were found guilty of manslaughter and served probation or were jailed for their role in the Berlin Wall deaths.
Background
The Berlin Wall was constructed during the Cold War. East Germany sought to cut down on emigration to the Western Bloc (, ). During the night of 12 to 13 August 1961 the National People's Army, the German Border Police, the Volkspolizei, and the Combat Groups of the Working Class locked down passage between East Berlin and West Berlin; construction of the Berlin Wall and its related facilities began. Emigrants ran the risk of being detected by soldiers monitoring the wall who were given orders to shoot "defectors". Restrictions on passage would last until November 1989, and the Wall itself was torn down in 1990–1994 as a result of German reunification.
Identifying the death toll
Identifying deaths specifically attributable to the Berlin Wall is not straightforward. Although East Germans were aware of deaths on the Wall from West German media broadcasts which they were able to receive, reliable information was closely held by the East German authorities. A number of different West German institutions kept their own records. These included the West Berlin police, the Central Registry of State Judicial Administrations in Salzgitter (which tracked all border fatalities) and the Arbeitsgruppe 13 August (Working Group 13 August), a West Berlin association. Within the jurisdiction of the West-Berlin police, the State Security Department was responsible for the registration of known incidents. The records distinguish between individuals who died at the outer border of West-Berlin (80 incidents), unclear incidents (with 5 possible wall victims) and border guards who were shot. The Central Registry of State Judicial Administrations in Salzgitter, was also given a mandate to collect evidence of actual or attempted murder in the GDR. In 1991, it published the "Salzgitter-Report" with the names of 78 victims. However, since the Registration Agency had no access to the GDR archives, the data was regarded as incomplete. Both agencies mainly listed incidents that could have been observed from West-Berlin or had been reported by fugitives or border patrols who left the GDR.
After the fall of the Wall, criminal investigations into border killings were launched by the (ZERV) and the Berlin public prosecutor's office. Each of these institutions used different criteria to count deaths. In 2000, the ZERV compared data from the central registration office in Salzgitter with findings in GDR archives and made a total of 122 cases of targeted killing by GDR state organs at the border to West-Berlin. This list was a pre-inquiry for the prosecution departments of Berlin and Neuruppin, which in turn gave attention to legal processing. The Salzgitter registry recorded incidents in which "suspicion of a criminal act was justified", while the Arbeitsgruppe 13 August, which also manages the house at Checkpoint Charlie and is run by the artist Alexandra Hildebrandt, widow of the founder Rainer Hildebrandt, counted "all victims who died in connection with flight and/or the border regime", including deaths by accidents or drowning, or deaths of border soldiers and policemen in suicides or firearms accidents. This gave them the figure of 235 deaths compared to the significantly lower number of 78 according to the Salzgitter registry.Hertle & Nooke (2011), p. 15
The results, which are described as "temporary" by the working group, are regularly presented at press conferences on 13 August. The list is consistently revised with new cases being included and old ones abandoned. The Checkpoint Charlie Museum gives the number at 245 deaths, though this includes suicides by border guards and bodies found in the water even when there was no obvious link to them being an escapee. They also state that the first person to die at the Wall was in fact an East German officer who committed suicide.Hecht, Patricia. Schlegel, Matthias. Geschichte Unterschiedliche Ergebnisse: Wieviele Opfer gab es an der Mauer? (History of Differing Results: How many victims there were on the wall?). 11 August 2009. Accessed 25 August 2011.
In 2005, the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Centre for Contemporary History and the Berlin Wall Memorial Site and Documentation Centre) established a research project to definitively "establish the number and identities of the individuals who died at the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989 and to document their lives and deaths through historical and biographical research". The project was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Deutschlandradio and the Federal Commissioner of Culture and Media. The results were published on the website www.chronik-der-mauer.de and in a book titled "Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer" (2009). The project outlines the victims' biographies, the causes of death and the sources that were used. At the time, no reliable or official information was available about the number of fatalities at the Wall. The project found that 136 people had died,Fatalities at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989 . Berlin.de. Accessed 23 August 2011.Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer (Deaths at the Berlin Wall). Centre for Contemporary History. 23 August 2011. using the criteria of "either an attempted escape or a temporal and spatial link between the death and the border regime". Not all had died one fatality occurred years and not all were caused by acts of violence. After reviewing 575 deaths, the project team found that at least 140 people died in shootings, were killed in accidents or committed suicide after failing to cross the Wall.Hertle, Hans-Hermann. Nooke, Maria. The Victims at the Berlin Wall, 1961–1989: Findings of a Research Project by the Centre for Research on Contemporary History Potsdam and the Berlin Wall Memorial Site and Documentation Centre . Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam. July 2011. Accessed 1 September 2011.
Criteria Every investigation committee had its own criteria of which cases could be counted as wall victims. The ZERV investigations focused on a working legal guilt, while the ZZF and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August developed their own criteria that went beyond purely legal guilt. The ZZF criteria required the victim to have a background for the attempted escape or to have both a temporal and a spatial connection to the border regime. Five groups were developed from the examined cases:
Fugitives shot and killed or fatally injured by East German security forces while trying to cross the Wall; Fugitives who died while attempting to cross the Wall, or who committed suicide when their attempt failed, or who suffered fatal injuries in the course of their attempt; People from East and West who were shot and killed or fatally injured by East German security forces; People from East and West who died or were fatally injured as a result of the actions or inaction of the East German security forces; Members of the East German border troops who were killed or suffered fatal injuries while on duty.Hertle & Nooke (2011), p. 17
The definition coined by the Arbeitsgruppe 13August reaches further. It includes border guards that committed suicide and cold cases involving bodies found in boundary waters.
However, a thorough investigation of all natural cases of death has not been completed yet. One third of all files from the police of transport are gone, while entire annual reports of the 1970s are missing. Analyzing the daily records of border guards and examining activities in areas that had been under surveillance might have presented an alternative, but could not be realized due to financial issues. Another 16 cases of drowning could not definitively be connected to the Wall. Many other travellers from East and West Germanies and Czechoslovakia died immediately before, during or after passing through checkpoints in Berlin, with a published figure of most were the result of cardiac arrest.
Controversy about the number of casualties The exact number of casualties is unknown. There are different numbers deriving from different investigations, each using its own definition of 'victim', making it difficult to compare their numbers. Moreover, in some cases investigations were interrupted, yielding only a provisional result. There is also a publicly held controversy between two groups regarding the number of victims. The opponents are the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August and the ZZF. The former's numbers are higher, as they include, according to ZZF's Hans-Hermann Hertle, victims with an unclear or unsure connection to the border regime. After the ZZF published its interim results in August 2006, Alexandra Hildebrandt of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft has accused them of withholding numbers to invoke a more positive picture of East Germany. She argues that the ZZF project was funded by a coalition of social democrats and leftists. In 2008 the Arbeitsgemeinschaft claimed that since 1961 222 people had died because of the Berlin Wall. Hertle doubted these numbers, as they evidently included some survivors. As of 2006, 36 survivors were listed as deceased because of the Wall, and some victims were mentioned more than once. Because of these shortcomings, he assessed the list as an "extensive record of suspected cases" that "failed to set up a scientifically verifiable standard". Berlin's Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit commented on the dispute with the words "Every single dead was one too many." In 2009, Hildebrandt reported of 245 dead caused by the Wall. According to her research, the first Wall victim was a suicidal GDR officer and not Ida Siekmann, as Hildebrandt also included border guards that committed suicide and cold cases of bodies found in boundary waters in her list. Another difference in Hertle's and Hildebrandt's list can be explained by the fact that Hertle had additional access to incomplete files from transport police. Therefore, their accounts vary in regard to the people that died of natural causes during border controls. Hurtle argues with a total of 251 of such cases, while Hildebrandt only compiled 38 of these cases.