Window of Remembrance

After the city was divided, a guarded border strip was created on the former grounds of Sophien Cemetery. Along the sidewalk stands a steel wall with portraits of people who died at the Berlin Wall, and beneath the photographs are engraved names and years of life. Empty cells were left for people whose photographs have not yet been found and for those whose names researchers have yet to establish. Beside it, an old plaque is set into the pavement, where the person who died is called unknown.

On September fourth, nineteen sixty-two, forty-year-old Ernst Mundt came here by bicycle. A former carpenter, he could no longer work because of his health. He lived alone in a one-room apartment in Prenzlauer Berg and received a disability pension. His mother and other relatives found themselves in West Berlin. After the wall was built, he could not meet them; his mother supported her son with parcels of food and everyday items.

Mundt was planning to cross the border. Why he decided to do so on that particular day remains unknown, even from the records of the subsequent investigation. Neighbors could only say that he openly condemned the closure of the border.

On Bergstraße, barbed wire blocked the road. Mundt left his bicycle, climbed onto the fence of Sophien Cemetery, and walked along its crest toward Bernauer Straße. The top of the wall was covered with shards of glass. Below were graves, with border guards patrolling among them: after the city was divided, an ordinary parish cemetery became part of the guarded strip.

Visitors and guards demanded that Mundt come down. He kept walking. About one hundred meters from here, two members of the GDR Transport Police were on duty—an armed unit that guarded railway facilities and the border near Nordbahnhof. One of them first fired into the air, then took aim at the fugitive. The bullet struck Mundt in the head. He fell from the fence onto the cemetery side and died at the scene.

His cap flew across the border and landed in West Berlin. Forensic experts found traces of a gunshot wound on it. It was the only object from which people on the western side could judge what had happened: the border guards quickly carried the body away before police and journalists could get close to the site.

Mundt's mother sent inquiries but received no reply. Relatives in East Berlin learned only that the man killed was probably Ernst. His younger brother then came from Krefeld and secured a meeting with the prosecutor. He was told that Mundt had been wounded in a “border provocation” and had died. By that time, State Security officers had already ordered the body to be cremated and the urn buried without a name at Baumschulenweg Cemetery.

The shooter was awarded a medal and a cash bonus that same day. Thirty-two years later, a Berlin court found him guilty of manslaughter and gave him a suspended two-year prison sentence.

A cross was placed on the western sidewalk for a person whose name the witnesses did not yet know. Later, a plaque bearing the words “unknown victim of the wall” and the date of death was set into the pavement. The plaque remained here even after documents made it possible to establish that the man who died was named Ernst Mundt.

Beside it is the Window of Remembrance. Photographs of people who died at the Berlin Wall are set into a steel wall; names and dates of life are engraved beneath the portraits. Empty cells have been left for those whose photographs could not be found and for names that researchers may still establish. The memorial was erected on the former grounds of Sophien Cemetery, where the border ran and where Mundt was killed. His face and name are now in the steel, while beneath your feet the old plaque still calls him unknown.