Kurt Lichtenstein
Kurt Lichtenstein was a German communist journalist, born December 1, 1911, in Berlin. He died October 12, 1961, at the inner German border near Klötze, after being shot by East German border guards while reporting along the border. He is often noted as the first person shot on the inner border after the Berlin Wall was built in August 1961. A 1997 criminal trial about the shooting ended with an acquittal for the shooter.
Lichtenstein came from a Jewish family. His parents were Georg and Henriette Lichtenstein, and his sister was deported to Auschwitz in 1941, where they are presumed to have died. He grew up in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin, left school to work as an errand boy and later trained as a tool maker. After a period of unemployment in 1932–1933, he emigrated for political reasons.
He joined the Communist Youth League in 1928 and the Communist Party in 1931. In 1933 he fled to the Soviet Union due to persecution. He later worked with the Communist movement in Saarland, Paris, and Spain. In the Spanish Civil War (1936–1938) he served as a political commissar in the Thälmann Battalion and participated in the Ebro battles, where he was wounded. He was briefly demoted for cowardice near the end of the war and then fled to France.
During World War II, France interned him as an enemy alien. Fearing the Vichy regime would hand control of camps to the Gestapo, he joined the French Resistance in Toulouse and worked under false identities in France. In 1945 he was handed over to French forces and interned as a suspected Nazi, but the French Communist Party helped secure his release, and he returned to Germany.
After the war, Lichtenstein worked as a journalist for communist-oriented newspapers in the Ruhr area and edited the Neuen Volkszeitung. He served as a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament from 1947 to 1950. In 1953 he was expelled from the Communist Party for anti-party activities and lost his position as editor of the Neuen Volkszeitung. He then worked various jobs before joining the SPD. In 1958 he got a journalism post with the SPD-aligned Westfälische Rundschau in Dortmund.
In October 1961 Lichtenstein was reporting on the inner German border. He began his journey in Lübeck and by October 12 had reached Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony. After a stop near Brome-Zicherie, he crossed the border ditch and a border control strip while trying to film along the East–West border. Border guards shouted at him; as he ran toward West Germany, they fired with submachine guns. His body lay in the border ditch, with part on the West German side. East German border guards moved him to a hospital, where he died. His body was cremated, and his ashes were sent to his widow by post. A funeral was held in Dortmund, attended by notable politicians, including Ernst Lemmer and Herbert Wehner.
Lichtenstein’s death occurred during a period of intense Cold War tension and was used by both sides for political purposes. A memorial was placed near the site of his death, featuring a cross and an explanatory sign, and it became a focus for demonstrations. In the 1990s the border guard who fired at him stood trial for homicide and was acquitted, with the court noting that he was following orders and had no intent to kill.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 17:59 (CET).