Thirty years ago, border guards gunned down Chris Gueffroy as he attempted to flee across the Berlin Wall into West Germany. The 20-year-old was the last person to be shot trying to escape the East German dictatorship.
Following a prayer service at a church on the former death strip, local dignitaries laid a wreath at the site where the 20-year-old launched his escape attempt 30 years ago.
The Berlin Wall separated communist East Germany (GDR) from West Germany between 1961 and 1989. In that period, at least 140 people were fatally shot as they tried to leave the GDR illegally via the notorious border fence. Gueffroy was the last of those victims.
"Their fates show how great the suffering and how strong their desire for freedom must have been," Axel Klausmeier, the director of the Berlin Wall Memorial, told DW.
On February 5, 1989, Gueffroy and his friend Christian Gaudian crept under cover of darkness towards Berlin's Britz canal, where they hoped to slip across the border. At midnight, they began to scale the 3-meter (9.8-foot) wall undetected. Having safely made it over, they approached the last metal fence separating them from West Germany. That's when things went wrong.
The flood lights came on, sirens started screeching, and the border guards opened fire. Gueffroy was hit twice in the chest and died instantly. His death came just nine months before the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989.
Gaudian, who survived with serious injuries, was arrested and later sentenced to three years in prison for attempted illegal border-crossing.
East Germany was a repressive state that kept tabs on its population with the help of an extensive surveillance network and the secret police, or Stasi. Citizens could be persecuted or locked up for showing disloyalty to the state, with offenses ranging from listening to subversive music to planning an escape to the West.
It's unclear just how many people were killed at the frontier because the Stasi often sought to cover the deaths up or coerce victims' families into silence. They also tried — and failed — to keep Gueffroy's killing a secret.
His case led to international protests, prompting GDR leader Erich Honecker to announce an end to the policy of shooting would-be escapees.
Klausmeier, of the Berlin Wall Foundation, told DW that the wall's remnants serve as a reminder that "dictatorships can be peacefully overcome, if the political conditions allow it."
Berlin's former Stasi slammer
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen is where the former East German secret state police, the "Stasi," had their central remand center. Today it is a memorial site to those who suffered persecution under the Communist dictatorship.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Old building with a dark history
In 1945 the Soviet occupying forces turned the former commercial kitchen compound into an internment camp. The cellar was converted by the prisoners into a remand center. Victims reported that they were tormented by sleep deprivation, beatings, kickings, being forced to stand for hours or subjected to water torture. Food, clothing, and hygiene standards were terrible. Some 1,000 people died.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Prison known as 'U-Boot'
In 1951 the newly-formed East German secret state police, the Stasi, took over the prison. During the 50s most inmates were those opposed to the communist dictatorship, such as reformers and strike leaders involved in the 17 June 1953 uprising. As there was never any daylight in the damp cells, the inmates nick-named the prison 'U-Boot," German for submarine.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
New building
At the end of the 50s a new building with more than 200 cells and interrogation rooms replaced the old cellar jail. Physical violence was replaced by psychological torture. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 most inmates were those who had attempted to escape or leave East Germany, but also writers and civil rights activists.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Disguised prisoner transports
In the 70s most prisoners were brought through the city to the jail in Hohenschönhausen in these Barkas B 1000 vehicles. Made to appear outwardly as fish or vegetable delivery vans, these vehicles had five tiny windowless cells, which meant inmates had no idea where they had been taken. The Stasi succeeded in pressuring 90 percent of inmates to make damning statements in their first interrogation.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Loneliness of a cell block
In prison every inmate was addressed not by name but by their cell number. To socially ostracize them they were often put into isolation cells for months, where even talking to the guards was forbidden. The only human contact was therefore with the interrogator - an insidious way to make inmates talk.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Prison cell
Up to three inmates were housed in the different sized cells. They were unable to see anything through the cell windows, which were made of glass blocks. A mirror and hot water was only made available as of 1983. During the day inmates were not allowed to lie on their cots, at night they had to assume the same position: lying on their backs, facing the door with their hands on top of the blanket.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Spy in the door
Inmates found being permanently watched in their cells through the spy hole in the door very stressful. Guards would keep a check on the prisoners even when they were washing or using the toilet. At night the lights would be switched on every ten to twelve minutes. Heating and light could only be controlled from outside the cells. This all served to make the inmates feel utterly powerless.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Alarm system
A wire was mounted along the walls of the cell block corridor. When a prisoner was taken from his cell to be interrogated, the guards pulled the wire, which made red warning lights light up. Any inmate in the corridor would then have to face the wall immediately. This was intended to prevent prisoners encountering one another.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Interrogation block
The cell block and the interrogation rooms where separated by barred doors. To this day the linoleum floor still smells of the disinfectant used in East Germany. All 120 interrogation rooms were equipped with double padded doors, behind which inmates where subjected to hours of questioning over several months. Prisoners were expected to incriminate themselves so that they could be sentenced.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Interrogation
Stasi police used elaborate psychological interrogation methods. Initially they would threaten the inmate with long prison terms or the arrest of their family members. Panic and uncertainty were intended to wear them down. Those who cooperated were promised an easing of detention conditions: medical attention, a book, or half an hour of yard exercise.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Prison yard
In these cell-like compounds inmates could see the sky and breathe some fresh air. They themselves called the yards "tiger cages." It was forbidden to talk, sing, stop, or to go anywhere near the four-meter (4.1-yard) prison wall. An armed guard was always on patrol above the wire mesh.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Memorial site
The fall of the Berlin Wall put an end to the Stasi remand center. But only few interrogators were ever made accountable for what had happened behind these walls, and none were sent to jail. As the prison buildings and the interior survived unharmed, today's memorial site of Hohenschönhausen gives an authentic insight into the former East German justice system.
Gueffroy grew up under the watchful eye of the GDR authorities with dreams of becoming an actor or a pilot. But after finishing school he refused to choose a career in the National People's Army and, as a result, was denied the right to go to university, severely limiting his options.
He worked as a waiter for many years, but in January 1989, when he learned he was going to be conscripted into the army, he hatched an escape plan. His decision to make the crossing on February 5 was based on a false rumor that the order to shoot people attempting to cross illegally had been suspended.
While he was the last person to be shot at the Wall, he was not the last individual to die in an attempted escape. Just over a month after Gueffroy's death, another young man, Winfried Freudenberg was killed when he fell from an improvised gas balloon traveling high over West Berlin.