List of killings by law enforcement officers in pre-reunification Germany

Listed below are people killed by non-military law enforcement officers in Germany prior to reunification on 3 October 1990, whether or not in the line of duty, irrespective of reason or method. Included, too, are cases where individuals died in police custody due to applied techniques. Inclusion in the list implies neither wrongdoing nor justification on the part of the person killed or the officer involved. The listing simply documents occurrences of deaths and is not complete. It also includes some killings that occurred in the German colonial empire prior to its dissolution in 1920.

Year	Number killed by use of firearms (official statistics)^[1]^[2]	Number killed by any means (counted)^{[clarification needed]}	Number of shots fired on persons^[3]
1929	at least 46^[4]
1930	at least 29^[5]	34
1931	at least 34^[6]
1952	at least 31 (e.g., Philipp Müller [de])
1958	at least 5^[7]
1963	at least 4 (North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse only)
1964	at least 2 (NRW and Hesse only)
1965	at least 6 (NRW and Hesse only)
1966	at least 6 (Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, NRW and Hesse only)
1967	at least 5 (Benno Ohnesorg, otherwise Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, NRW and Hesse only)
1968	at least 10 (Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, NRW and Hesse only)^[8]
1969	at least 6 (Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, NRW and Hesse only)^[8]
1970	at least 11 (Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, NRW and Hesse only)^[8]
1971	at least 8 (e.g. Petra Schelm, Georg von Rauch [de])^[8]
1972	at least 4 (e.g. Tommy Weisbecker, Ian McLeod, Richard Epple [de], Theo Duifhus)
1973	at least 13 (e.g. Erich Dobhardt)^[9]
1974	10 (e.g. Günter Jendrian)
1975	15 (e.g. Werner Sauber [de])^[10]
1976	8		141
1977	17 (e.g. Helmut Schlaudraff)		160
1978	8 (e.g. Willi-Peter Stoll [de], Michael Knoll [de])		111
1979	11		104
1980	16 (e.g. Manfred Perder)		111
1981	17		93
1982	11		125
1983	24 (e.g. Jürgen Bergbauer)		53
1984	6		159^[11]
1985	10		203^[12]
1986	12		169^[13]
1987	7		165^[14]
1988	9^[15]		170^[16]
1989	10		161^[16]
1990	6 (pre-reunification)		At least 98
Sum	229 minimum (1965 to October 1990 in West Germany)

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Place	State	Summary of events
1908-09-27/28	N.N.	Rehoboth	Groß-Namaland, Deutsch-Südwestafrika	A police patrol consisting of two German colonial policemen and eight Baster auxiliaries ambushed a group of cattle thieves in the mountains, three armed with rifles. One San man was shot and killed, after which three other men, as well as 16 women and children were arrested.^[18]
1908-11-XX	N.N.	Ramansdrift	Klein-Namaland, Deutsch-Südwestafrika	Colonial police sergeant Johannes Becker and native policeman Abraham pursued two armed native men suspected of stealing a goat. One of them was killed with two gunshots.^[18]
1908-11-XX	N.N.	Ramansdrift	Klein-Namaland, Deutsch-Südwestafrika	A day after the previous shooting, officers Becker and Abraham encountered the surviving man again, still wielding a rifle. He fled on sight and did not stop after verbal command or warning shots. The man was shot five times, the last of which was fatal.^[18]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1914-02-11	Sefo	17-18	Malie	Upolu, Deutsch-Samoa	Four Samoan fitafita auxiliaries went on a "Cowboys and Indians"-style robbery spree around Apia, after being inspired by an American cowboy movie, targeting Chinese labourers as "Indians". On 8 February, after being admonished by their superintendent for robbing a meeting of Chinese card players, the group went rogue, robbing the home of police commissioner Pusch, stealing 300 rounds of ammunition. The next day, while looking for more Chinese labourers to rob, the outlaws fatally wounded 31-year-old German rancher Otto Treviranus and his assistant Wilhelm Schlitt when they objected to the harassment of their workers. The group were tracked to the hometown of their mothers. where, after a stand-off with police and locals, a shoot-out occurred. 24-year-old civilian volunteer Otto Hellige was fatally shot and officer Motzkus heavily injured before three of the robbers were killed by other fitafita. The remaining robber, Ao, was sentenced to death and hanged on 14 February.^[19]^[20]
	Fili
	Faalili

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1919-02-20/21	Steinicke, Moritz	15	Gelsenkirchen	Provinz Westfalen	A teenage USPD member was arrested without cause by two Reichwehr soldiers, two police officers, and a civilian. In Erle, a soldier and a police officer fatally shot the boy, reportedly when he tried to flee, common phrasing by government-aligned agencies at the time to excuse extrajudicial political murders. The soldier was found not guilty while the police officer was never charged.^[21]
1919-03-10	Jogiches, Leo	51	Berlin	Berlin	Jogiches, a Polish Jewish politician who founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, was arrested at his apartment in Neukölln in early March. He was extrajudicially killed in custody at Justizvollzugsanstalt Moabit [de] via gunshot to the back of the head by two police officers, 19-year-old Ernst Tamschick and 35-year-old Werner Grahn. It's suspected that Tamschick, a right-wing sympathiser with involvement in the Freikorps, had committed the murder as Jogiches was investigating the murders of Communist Party of Germany (KPD) co-founders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by Guards Cavalry Division following the failed Spartacist Uprising; Jogiches was planning to release the details of the killings and names of the shooters. Tamschick died of natural causes in the 1980s while Grahn was executed by hanging in 1947 at Landsberg Prison for his role in the Mauthausen concentration camp.^[22]^[23]
1919-03-11	Borchard, Richard		Berlin	Berlin	Police searched the apartment of a man accused of firing a gun from a window. Officers arrested him when they found a Russian-made bullet casing, despite the item being a World War I souvenir from 1914. On 18 March, the man's wife received his body at the morgue. He had been shot in the head, and his new stockings and shoes had been removed. The man had no ties to any political groups, though opposed to the Spartacus Uprising, and was a civilian supporter of the Imperial German Army.^[21]
1919-05-04	Kling, Marie		München	Münchner Räterepublik	On 3 May, Weimar Republic police arrested a man because his daughter was carrying ammunition. His other daughter voluntarily joined her father at the police jail in Giesing. She was subsequently criminally charged for carrying a red flag, which an officer interpreted as a possible attack symbol. Both father and daughter were volunteer nurses for the Munich Republic Red Army. A jury exonerated her after convincing witness testimony the same day and she was set for release on 4 May. Without authorisation, police transported the daughter to Stadelheim Prison, where she was "used as a target practice dummy". She was shot in the foot, calf, thigh and finally the head. No one was charged because the case documents were lost.^[21]
1919-05-18	Dorrenbach, Heinrich [de]	31	Berlin	Berlin	Dorrenbach, a German military officer who helped organise the Volksmarinedivision and was a prominent Social Democratic Party of Germany politician, was arrested hiding at a supporter's house in early May for his role in the 1918 Christmas crisis and Spartacist uprising. He was extrajudicially killed in custody at Moabit Criminal Court via gunshot to the back of the head by police officer Ernst Tamschick, who claimed that Dorrenbach had attempted to escape.^[24]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1920-01-13	42 killed		Berlin	Berlin	The Reichstag Bloodbath (German: Blutbad vor dem Reichstag) occurred in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin during negotiations by the Weimar National Assembly on the Works Council Act (German: Betriebsrätegesetz). Sicherheitspolizei shot into a crowd of protesters, killing a minimum of 20 people, but modern estimates place the number of dead at 42. It is regarded as the bloodiest demonstration in modern German history. The event was overshadowed two months later by the Kapp Putsch but remained in the collective memory of Berlin's labour movement and security forces.^[25]
1920-12-29	Hoffmann, Paul		Flensburg	Provinz Schleswig-Holstein	On 28 December, a communist was arrested after being implicated by an informant for allegedly planning a coup. The following morning, the prisoner was shot twice in the back while reportedly assaulting an officer and attempting to flee. The unit commander, von Plüskow, was investigated and transferred with no other penalties.^[21]

List of killings by law enforcement officers in pre-reunification Germany

Cases

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

Post-reunification

See also

References

Related Articles

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1921-03-23	19 killed		Hamburg	Hamburg	March Action: A communist-organized rally consisting of 15,000 to 20,000 unemployed labourers occupied the shipyards of Vulcan and Blohm+Voss at Steinwerder, as protest and to force the employers to hire more workers. Police barricaded and patrolled the streets using armored vehicles and heavy weaponry. At Elbe Tunnel, where 2,000 Vulcan employees had gathered in support of the communists, police fatally shot four workers. Later at Millerntor, police opened fire on a crowd of labourers, killing 15 of them. Returning fire by armed protesters also killed one policeman .
1921-03-24	11 killed		Eisleben	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: Five Schutzpolizei Hundertschaften launched a raid in Helfta, which had been largely occupied by militant workers. Police regained control of the district following several shootouts that left 11 labourers and four police officers dead.
1921-03-26	Müller, Paul		Klostermansfeld	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: The local community leader led a troop of Schupo officers from Düsseldorf into town, where they were fired upon despite the leader previously negotiating a ceasefire. He was arrested in the evening since he was also a KPD member, supposedly for detention at a jail. The following morning, he was found dead by gunshot in a field outside of Leimbach, where no jail was located, with significant blunt head injuries. On 21 April, a court ruled that the man was "probably shot during escape", but later chose to reinvestigate.^[21]
1921-03-27	Herzau, Kurt	18	Beesenstedt	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: Police shot and killed a paramedic and a labourer.^[21]
	Thielke, Gustav		Beesenstedt	Provinz Sachsen
	Pawlack, Walter	18	Bischofrode	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: Police summarily executed eight prisoners. Two of the identified dead were from Helbra.^[21]^[26]
	Weiner, Stefan
	Dietrich
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
1921-03-28	Deutsch, Martin		Schraplau		March Action: Police summarily executed six prisoners in a lime kiln. No reason was given for the killings, although police briefly spread the false rumour that the group had raped a pregnant woman to death as justification.^[21]^[27]
	Müller
	Poblentz
	Trautmann
	N.N.
	N.N.
	Peter		Querfurt		March Action: Düsseldorf Schupo under police major Bernhard Graf Poninski tortured and killed three prisoners. The second of the dead was a storekeeper for a local communist union, whose shop was looted by the officers.^[21]
	Straube
	N.N.
	18 killed		Essen	Rheinprovinz	March Action: After a conference between the KPD and the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD) ended, a group of labourers attempted to stage a protest on the Burgplatz. Police opened fire, killing 19 people.
1921-03-29	Lederer, Walter		Leuna	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: 21 Schutzpolizei Hundertschaften, led by police major Graf Poninski, stormed the occupied Leuna works, housing 1,500 communist militants. Officer Alfred Axtmann was killed and several other officers wounded. Around 1,300 militants were arrested of which around 100 were locked in nitrogen silos and tortured at the scene. At least 9 were killed by police by shooting, bludgeoning, or forced gunshot suicide. Modern sources estimate between 31 and 70 militants died in total through police killing or drowning in the nearby Saale. At least ten dead labourers were retrieved from the river and also had gunshot wounds, but it's uncertain if they were killed by police, since other survivors were beaten to death by supporting right-wing civilians on the riverbank.^[28]
	Isecke
	Zillmann
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
	Schneidewind		Halle		March Action: In the evening, Schutzpolizei raided a VKPD radio station, killing the two workers manning it.
	Harzdorf		Halle
	5 killed		Mannheim	Republik Baden	March Action: During KPD-led protests against police deployment against militant activity, Schutzpolizei opened fire on the crowd, killing five people.
	2 killed		Karlsruhe	Republik Baden	March Action: During KPD-led protests against police deployment against militant activity, Schutzpolizei opened fire on the crowd, killing two people.
	30 killed		Gevelsberg	Provinz Westfalen	March Action: Members of the militant Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) disarmed a police troop and locked them in a building at the trainyard. The KAPD members stole funds from the office, as well as vehicles to disrupt the train traffic. Backup Schutzpolizei from Barmen and Hagen eventually arrived, killing 30 militants.
1921-03-30	Ludy, Johannes		Leuna	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: Four communists attempted to free prisoners at the Leuna works. The rescue failed and two of them were killed by police.^[28]
	Steinbrück, Albert		Leuna	Provinz Sachsen
	8 killed		Bachra	Land Thüringen	March Action: Around 150 workers who managed to escape the Leuna works raid was ambushed by 200 Schutzpolizei officers during a night march. Eight militants were killed while 60 were arrested, 16 of whom suffered heavy injuries.
1921-03-31	Mosenhauer		Schkeuditz	Provinz Sachsen	March Action: The KPD-aligned community leader of Osmünde was arrested. During the drive to Schkeuditz, the officers led the man into a field, beat him, and had an officer from a different troop, Rudolf Böhm, fatally shoot the prisoner in the heart. Böhm was found not guilty on 31 October.^[21]
1921-04-01	Sült, Wilhelm [de]	33	Berlin	Berlin	A KPD politician and union leader was arrested on 30 March and held without charge for inciting workers to revolt. While being escorted up a set of stairs at the Alexanderplatz police station, officer Albert Jannicke shot the prisoner in the back. The man was left on the stairs and not attended to for several hours, with several police officers walking by and one shouting for him to die. He died on 2 April at Charité. Jannicke claimed that the prisoner attempted escape, and despite the court acknowledging that it was "highly unbelievable" that he would attempt to escape into the upper floors, as described by the officer, he was not charged.
1921-06-13	Buchholz, Johannes		Berlin	Berlin	A police officer was found dead from a gunshot to the back of the head in the Charlottenburg police barracks. The precinct claimed he had committed suicide to avoid being arrested for defalcation, but no such investigation had been conducted against the officer. It was heavily suspected at the time and later by historians that the officer was either investigating or part of the internal unit faction "Ringmannen", led by Walther Stennes, who used funneled police funds to Baltic German regions to cause military unrest. He was most likely killed for preparing to expose the group's corruption. Officers Erren and Meyer were tried but found not guilty on 2 December of the same year.^[21]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1922-03-22	Graff, Joseph Félicien	23	Hamborn	Rheinprovinz	Schupo officers Kaws, Engeler, and Schwirrat fatally shot a Belgian police officer on a tram in a case of mistaken identity. The shooting was believed to have been a revenge killing, as on 20 March, German-born Belgian police officer Schmidt had shot and killed Schupo officer Franz Chmielewski outside jurisdiction in the French-Belgian-occupation zone. Schmidt was sentenced to one year imprisonment and a fine, reduced later to six months. The officers had waited for Schmidt to enter the tram, but a different Belgian lieutenant boarded instead. As the shooters had fled, in their place superior officer Reinhardt and colleagues Riebke and Klein were sentenced to death for incitment. Grabert and Tremöwer were given 20 years imprisonment. The shooters turned themselves in on 9 January 1923. In Stettin, Kaws and Engeler were sentenced to death for being the shooters and Schwirrat was given a 20 year prison sentence. They were handed in to Belgian authorities for their sentences, but in November 1925, the officers received a pardon by King Albert I after year-long negotiations and repatriated.^[29]^[30]^[31]^[32]
1922-07-17	Kern, Erwin [de]	23	Saaleck	Provinz Sachsen	A member of the ultranationalist terrorist group Organisation Consul and one of the assassins of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. Kern and fellow member Hermann Fischer had been hiding out in Saaleck Castle for a day when two police officers were alerted to their presence by travellers who had noticed the light on inside. During the following shootout, Kern was fatally shot, after which Fischer retreated with his compatriot's body and killed himself by gunshot.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1923-07-17	Allfarth, Felix [de]	22	München	Bayern	Beer Hall Putsch: Fourteen people were shot by Bavarian police on the Odeonsplatz during the attempted coup led by the Nazi Party in Munich. Four police officers were killed during the fire exchange. Two others (Theodor Casella and Martin Faust [de]) were killed earlier during a shootout with Reichswehr soldiers. Although all 16 dead are commonly remembered as either SA or NSDAP members, one of them, Karl Kuhn, was not a participant in the coup and instead an onlooker who was accidentally shot in the crossfire. Adolf Hitler falsely claimed that Kuhn was a Freikorps Oberland member in Mein Kampf to use his memory as a Blutzeuge for popular support. A relative seeking to clear Kuhn's name in the 1980s researched his history and found that Kuhn was working as a waiter at the time of the coup, having been shot when he stepped outside the café to investigate the noise.
	Bauriedl, Andreas	44
	Ehrlich, Wilhem [de]	29
	Hechenberger, Anton [de]	21
	Körner, Oskar [de]	48
	Laforce, Karl [de]	19
	Neubauer, Kurt [de]	24
	von Pape, Klaus [de]	19
	von der Pfordten, Theodor [de]	50
	Rickmers, Johann [de]	42
	von Scheubner-Richter, Max Erwin	39
	Ritter von Stransky-Griffenfeld, Lorenz	34
	Wolf, Wilhelm	25
	Kuhn, Karl [de]	26

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Place	State	Summary of events
1929-03-29	Reh, Kurt		Freistaat Preußen	A drunk Schupo officer shot and killed a labourer. Despite ample evidence and witness testimony, the officer was not indicted.^[33]
1929-05-03	33 killed	Berlin	Berlin	Blutmai riots: An unscheduled Labour Day protest was suppressed by baton-wielding officers, after which Berlin Police Chief Karl Zörgiebel deployed 13,000 officers to conduct a police raid in Wedding and Neukölln, predominantly left wing-leaning voting blocks. In the ensuing street riots, police killed 33 people, all of them being civilians without affiliation to the left-wing rioters, of whom 1,300 were arrested. The first killed was 53-year-old plumber Max Gemeinhardt on 1 May, who was shot in the head on his balcony for not closing his apartment window on police orders. In one instance, police opened fire on a crowd without provocation, killing 26-year-old labourer Ernst Mai with a shot in the neck. The last death was 53-year-old journalist Charles Mackay who had been working as a correspondent for The Sunday Express after he was ousted from his homecountry of New Zealand for the attempted murder of D'Arcy Cresswell. Mackay was shot by police who had mistaken him for a rioter after he ignored commands to vacate a street. Nearly all the deceased were shot, many from behind, with one exception, Otto Querner, who was instead run over and crushed to death by an armored vehicle. A total of 10,981 gunshots were fired by police over the course of three days. The incident further increased tensions between the KPD and the SPD, as the chief of police was a member of the SPD.^[34]^[35]^[36]^[37]^[38]^[39]^[40]
1929-XX-XX	12 killed			A document signed by state minister Albert Grzesinski in the Landtag of Prussia lists 46 killings related to police.^[4]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1930-01-01	Kobitsch-Meyer, Herbert	29	Berlin	Berlin	An inmate convicted of serial robbery during the March Action as a member of the Plättner Gruppe in 1925 began showing signs of illness, including muscle atrophy and weight loss. Prison and government officials denied requests to be given a medical checkup for months before being granted an examination, during which the doctor found him "fit to serve his sentence" and did not require treatment. Three weeks later, his condition worsened and was hospitalized on 31 December before dying the next day. He had lost 40 pounds within less than a year.^[41]^[42]
1930-01-14	Horn, Hans	16	Worms	Rheinhessen Provinz	Darmstadt police opened fire on an unemployment protest, killing a teenage boy via headshot and injuring several more participants.
1930-01-15	Görschler, Johannes		Hartmannsdorf	Provinz Sachsen	During a 5,000 person strike at the Recenia textile factory, five workers were fatally shot by police and twenty more injured. Three died in Chemnitz, one died in Röhrsdorf and another died in Freiberg. 17 more were injured. In 1945, East German authorities renamed the factory VEB Feinwäsche "Bruno Freitag", after one of the deceased.^[43]^[44]
	Freitag, Bruno
	Gröger, Walter
	Hänze, Richard
	Thomas, Kurt
1930-01-17	Winterstein, Karl		Lübeck	Freie und Hansestadt Lübeck	Several labourers were embroiled in an argument on the sidewalk. A Schupo officer shot into the crowd from across the street, striking one man in the liver, causing his death at a hospital a few hours later.
1930-01-30	Sell, Walter	16	Hamburg	Hamburg	A teenage labourer was shot in the forehead during a police raid in the narrow alleys of Gängeviertel in Neustadt. He died during transport to a hospital.
1930-03-06	Frischmann, Erich	26	Berlin	Berlin	During a protest for the International Day of the Unemployed, a labourer was shot in the chest and arm by a police officer with dum-dum rounds. He died 26 March.
	Krakowsky, Georg	19			During a protest for the International Day of the Unemployed, a former member of the Spartacus League who led the Lichtenberg youth wing of the Roter Frontkämpferbund paramilitary was shot in the back by police while in Berlin-Mitte. He died the same day. The shooting occurred around 90 minutes after the previous one.
	Peschke, Franz	25			A police officer was shooting at protesters when a ricochet struck an uninvolved passerby in the abdomen. He died 18 March.
	Fröhder, Karl		Ammendorf	Provinz Sachsen	During a protest for the International Day of the Unemployed, a labourer was killed with a shot in the heart by police.
	Orlik, Paul		Döllnitz		An uninvolved passerby was shot in the head by police.
1930-03-13	Kißling, Paul		Dresden		A citizen journalist was taking photos of a KPD-organized hunger march across Saxony when police interrupted the proceedings with armored vehicles and beat the participants with batons. As several officers were blocking off the street from pedestrians, the journalist tried to get a better look by stepping through them while showing off his press pass. He was then beaten with batons by the officers and died 20 March in a hospital from blunt trauma.
1930-04-03	Brillert		Danzig	Freie Stadt Danzig	A farm worker was one of around fifty labourers participating in a protest march from Stutthof to Danzig. On a country road, police surrounded the protesters and fired several shots at them to break up the march, aided by local land owner Hans Wiebe who rode his horse into the group. The farm worker was chased by a Schupo officer and drowned in the Weichsel, being prevented from returning to land by gunfire. Seven other protesters were injured by gunshots or blunt trauma.
1930-04-20	Dyba, Otto		Berlin	Berlin	A private car was trying to drive through a street at Jüdenstraße, which was blocked by a labour protest. Schupo officer Galle made efforts to disperse the crowd by firing his sidearm. A teenage labourer was killed and three others injured. Galle was stabbed to death with several flagpoles by a mob of protesters who witnessed the shooting.^[45]
1930-04-21	Zahnke, Gustav [de]	22	Leipzig	Provinz Sachsen	During the fifth annual Reich Youth Day, two protesters were chased by a police officer, who turned off the safety on his gun during the pursuit. One of the men ran for a basement entrance, when the revolver was aimed at him, at which point the officer caught up to the fleeing protester. The officer hit him with a baton and dragged him back up the stairs, shooting the man twice in the back. He died on 25 April.
1930-05-27	Kliche, Walter	22	Ketzin an der Havel	Provinz Brandenburg	Two brothers and their friend, all members of the Roter Frontkämpferbund, were greeting other members with the identifying phrase "Rot Front!" on the street when a police officer ran towards the group. The officer fired several shots in the air before shooting one of the brothers in the throat before putting the three men under arrest. The wounded man died shortly after at a hospital.
1930-06-16	Lillienthal, Ernst		Hamburg	Hamburg	A middle-aged dock worker was shot by police while protesting at the Port of Hamburg. He died the same day at a nearby hospital despite emergency surgery.^[33]
1930-06-23	Gozdzikowski, Lothar		Berlin	Berlin	Schupo officer Oskar Kärgel confronted a man illegally bathing in the Hohenzollernkanal in Saatwinkel. During the verbal argument, Kärgel fired several shots in the air before shooting the man, who was dressed only in swimming trunks and had kept his arms crossed. He died at a hospital. Police arrested communist community leader Willi Koska [de], who had been one of many witnesses to the shooting and asked Kärgel what gave him the authority to aim his gun at an unarmed man, and charged him with obstruction.
1930-08-23	Haubner, Paul		Bunzlau	Provinz Niederschlesien	Police were guarding a Nazi Party meeting from leftist counter-protesters. Officers eventually opened fire, killing three members of the crowd, two labourers and a business owner. None of the officers were charged, but eight protesters were sentenced to a minimum of one year imprisonment.
	Schirmer, Reinhold
	Teubner, Oskar
1930-09-13	Hanert		Berlin	Berlin	Police and Nazis were occupying the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, which was the headquarters of the KPD. Officers broke up the interior and fired several shots at a group of protesters outside, killing one.
1930-09-19	Fischer	16	Kottbus	Provinz Brandenburg	Police officer Heinrich shot and killed a teenage labourer under unclear circumstances.
1930-11-09	Mühlig, Julius		Hilden	Rheinprovinz	During a protest march held in response to a Nazi attack on local communists, police arrested several members of the crowd. A contributor to the Rote Hilfe newspaper was forced against a wall and killed with several gunshots to the chest. Another protester was shot in the head behind the right ear and killed instantly. Several protesters and uninvolved passerby were also injured.^[46]
1930-11-09	Schwab, Wilhelm	60	Hilden	Rheinprovinz
1930-12-03	Tauber, Alfred	21	Zwenkau	Provinz Sachsen	A hunger march came under gunfire by police. Chief of Police Heinrich Fleißner had previously issued a protest ban, but the communist organisers circumvented it by holding the march just ourside the city. Three people were killed and nine were heavily injured by two salvos from police carabiniers.
	Cymborowski, Bruno	27	Leipzig
	Kießling, Arno	26	Leipzig
1930-12-09	Engel, Wilhelm	19	Hamburg	Hamburg	A forbidden protest march in St. Pauli was broken up by police, who beat protesters with batons and fired several gunshots into the crowd. One man was killed and six were heavily injured.
1930-12-19	Altmann, Helmut		Berlin	Berlin	Two police officers argued with several communist activists putting up political posters in an eastern borough. Without warning, they opened fire with their sidearms, striking one in the abdomen. The man died of his injuries on 21 December.^[47]
1930-12-28	Padowski		Salzwedel	Provinz Sachsen	A KPD member was arrested by police while returning from an informal party meeting. He was booked on suspicion of riding a bicycle drunk, despite witnesses stating that he did not appear intoxicated. The man was locked in a cell and found dead the next day. Police officially logged his cause of death as a heart attack, but an independent medical examination found that the man's body bore signs of blunt force trauma.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1931-01-02	Tannert		Husum	Provinz Schleswig-Holstein	Two labourers were loudly arguing on a street, due to which police officer Holm put one of them under arrest. When the man refused to leave with Holm, the officer fatally shot him.
1931-01-02	Hackstein, Jakob		Moers	Rheinprovinz	Police shot at labourers during a strike by miners protesting a planned mass layoff. A stray bullet killed an uninvolved platelayer working on the nearby railroad.
1931-01-03	Steffensdorfer, Wilhelm	17	Lintfort	Provinz Westfalen	During a remembrance march for the Ruhrkampf, police opened fire, killing a teenage worker with a gunshot to the head. He had reportedly been shot accidentally when a crowd was attempting to free two communist prisoners from police custody.
1931-01-03	Schramowski, Josef	22	Mengede	Provinz Westfalen	A remembrance rally for the Ruhrkampf held by KPD-affiliated labourers was disrupted by a Nazi counter-protest. The Nazis eventually opened fire on the crowd, during which police also shot at the workers. A labourer with the Catholic youth order was fatally struck in the crossfire.
1931-01-06	Wilms, Peter		Solingen	Rheinprovinz	Police broke up a strike by miners, during which a labourer was killed by an officer via blunt head trauma.
1931-01-13	Hoffmann, Hugo	28	Erfurt	Land Thüringen	Police were dispatched to a metal good factory, where workers on strike were clashing with scabs. Officers immediately opened fire upon arrival, killing a worker with a shot in the abdomen and injuring two more.
1931-01-26	Benthin, Alfons	18	Geesthacht	Provinz Schleswig-Holstein	Two labourers from Hamburg attended a Communist counter-protest of roughly a hundred people to a Nazi rally. The Nazis alerted police, who opened fire on the counter-protesters, killing the two Hamburg workers and injuring at least three.^[48]
1931-01-26	Geick, Bernhard	23	Geesthacht	Provinz Schleswig-Holstein
1931-02-03	Kolb, Georg		Nürnberg	Bayern	A group of labourers were singing loudly on their way home from a pub. A state police officer attempted to arrest them and when one of the men resisted, he was shot in the heart.
1931-02-12	Weil	20	Kaiserslautern	Saargebiet	A carpenter was arrested by German police and extrajudicially killed on a military training grounds.^[49]
1931-02-12	Müller	31	Mainz	Volksstaat Hessen	During a skirmish between left-wing and Nazi protesters, a communist was shot and killed by police.^[49]
1931-02-25	Hertel, Hans	24	Leipzig	Provinz Sachsen	Police opened fire on a social democrat and communist unemployment protest, killing four and injuring several others. Some newspapers list five deaths, but all only name four victims.^[49]
	Hödlich, Hermann	24
	Ludwig, Otto	25
	Burkert, Walter	37
1931-03-18	Marzi, Valentin	37	Düsseldorf	Rheinprovinz	Communist protesters used stones and firearms against police, injuring four officers. Police indiscriminately opened fire on the crowd, injuring seven. Of the three heavily wounded protesters, two died.^[49]
1931-03-18	Hansen, Hubert	22	Düsseldorf	Rheinprovinz
1931-03-21	Riis, Krey	19	Barmbeck	Hamburg	During protests following the funeral of KPD politician Ernst Henning [de], who was killed by SA members, a Roter Frontkämpferbund unit of the banned KPD attacked police with knives, during which several officers were injured and one KPD member from Flensburg was killed by a police gunshot.^[50]
1931-04-06	Funke, Willi		Berlin	Berlin	A man was shot by Schupo in the hallway of his apartment building in Neukölln.^[49]
1931-04-19	Funke, Anton	20	Hamm	Rheinprovinz	Three protesters, one from Beckum, one from Dortmund and one from Hamm's Braam-Ostvennmar district, were shot by police.^[49]
	Menne, Hugo	25
	Machallek, Ernst	55
1931-04-26	Freyburger, Karl	26	Deutsch Eylau	Provinz Westpreußen	Three members of the NSDAP were causing a disturbance while wandering a street in an intoxicated state. A police patrol stopped them and attempted to perform arrests when one of them, a cattleman with the rank of SA-Sturmbannführer, physically assaulted an officer, who then pulled out his sidearm. The officer was then hit in the arm by another Nazi, causing an accidental discharge that struck the initial attacker in the head. The officer in question pleaded self-defense in his trial and was acquitted. Several streets were named after the deceased during the Third Reich as a martyr, under the false narrative that he died while "fighting for a better Germany".
1931-05-17	Reidel		Heidelberg	Republik Baden	Police shot a man in his apartment under unclear circumstances.^[49]
1931-05-25	Deglau, Otto		Essen	Rheinprovinz	A communist militant threw rocks at police and was fatally shot during his escape.^[49]^[6]
1931-06-10	Mengel, Heinrich	18	Kassel	Provinz Hessen-Nassau	During a communist protest, a public square was being forcefully cleared after a police officer, surnamed Kuhlmann, was killed by blunt trauma from thrown bottles and stones. A protester was subsequently shot and died two days later. Police attributed the gunshots to friendly fire from the communists and no investigation was held.
1931-06-11	Nau, Anton	90			During the ongoing unrest, a cobbler was killed by a stray shot fired by police into his apartment.^[6]^[49]
	Dominikowski, Franz				Shortly before midnight, police shot three protesters during a forced clearing. One man died of his injuries the following morning.^[49]
	Lange, Emil	26	Lauenburg	Herzogtum Sachsen-Lauenburg	A metal worker was shot by police during a sanctioned protest.^[51]
1931-06-12	Marienberg, Albert	41	Lüneburg	Provinz Hannover	A KPD member was shot by police while walking home. He died of his injuries on 10 July.^[49]
1931-06-15	Bögel, Georg	28	Hamburg	Hamburg	A baker was shot in the chest by police.^[49]
1931-06-22	Krause, Kurt	23	Magdeburg	Provinz Sachsen	A protester was shot in the abdomen by police and died of his injuries in a hospital.^[49]
1931-06-30	Sievert, August	20	Peine	Provinz Hannover	A shootout between Nazi and communist paramilitary groups was broken up by Hannover police officers, during which a gunshot injured a SA-Mann, a pastry chef by trade, who died on 2 July. A street was partially named after him in 1938.
1931-07-14	Nietz, Richard		Berlin	Berlin	In Neukölln, a KPD member was shot while fleeing the site of an ambush on NSDAP members.^[6]
1931-07-15	Weinhold, Willi		Schwerte	Rheinprovinz	^[49]
1931-07-15	Hoffmann, Jakob		Dortmund	Rheinprovinz	In Kirchhörde, Landjäger gendarme Marschall shot and killed a man for stealing flowers. The shot was fired at a distance of 5 meters.^[49]
1931-07-17	Schmitz, Karl		Krefeld	Rheinprovinz	Two communist militants were cornered by a policeman after one of the two men had fired a gunshot in public. The officer was shot in the knee and killed the attacker with returning fire. The date is alternatively given as 1 August, with the deceased's name as Karl Schmidt.^[6]^[49]
1931-07-21	Klein, Albert	32	Dortmund	Rheinprovinz	A plainclothed Schupo officer fatally shot a man.
1931-07-22	Dehnke, Willy	27	Dortmund	Rheinprovinz	A plainclothed Schupo officer fatally shot a man from Danzig.
1931-07-29	Kukies, Hermann		Berlin	Berlin	A man was beaten to death by officers at a police station in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.^[49]
1931-08-01	Toffel, Rudi		Berlin	Berlin	A protester was shot in the heart by police during an anti-war demonstration in Lichtenberg.^[49]
1931-08-03	Kilian, Paul		Gräben bei Striegau	Provinz Schlesien	A pair of brothers, both members of the SPD, started two drunken fights due to their opposition to the 1931 Prussian Landtag dissolution referendum. They first verbally argued with pub owner Aloe, a member of the Nazi Party, before starting another argument with Rohner and his wife, both members of the KPD. The brothers were beating up the couple when an off-duty Landjäger gendarme intervened. The attackers repeatedly struck and kicked the officer's police dog, took his rubber baton, and attempted to strangle him. The gendarme issued several warnings during the attack before using his sidearm to kill the brothers in self-defense with one shot each.^[6]
1931-08-03	Kilian, Heinrich		Gräben bei Striegau	Provinz Schlesien
1931-08-08	Auge, Fritz	19	Berlin	Berlin	A plumber was shot by police while walking home past the Karl-Liebrecht-Haus. His death is commonly cited as the one that convinced KPD leadership to order the assassination of high-ranking police officer Paul Anlauf in the Bülowplatz murders.^[52]
1931-08-09	Bolle, Gerhard	16
1931-08-09	Stern, Max	53			Immediately after the Bülowplatz murders, injured policeman August Willig and several of his colleagues opened fire on a crowd of supposed "ruffians". 22 people were injured including two children. A teenage boy died shortly the same day from a gunshot to the head while a businessman died of his injuries on 13 August.^[53]^[54]
1931-10-30	Borowski, Bruno		Hamburg	Hamburg	Around 30 to 50 Nazis passed through a predominantly communist quarter to pass around flyers advertising their party. A communist counter-protest formed and assaulted the opposing group. During the brawl, police arrived and attempted to break up the fight, but were kept at bay with stone throws. Officers then opened fire on the communists, killing two.
1931-10-30	Schwarz, Heinrich		Hamburg	Hamburg
1931-XX-XX	Oster				Police officer Bienert was involved in a shootout with communist militants when he accidentally shot and killed a passerby. A court found the officer not guilty.^[6]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1932-02-21	Büder, Hans	28	Berlin	Berlin	As a locale in Reinickendorf frequented by labourers was being forcefully vacated by a police force, a patron was mortally wounded by a police officer and died days later on 25 February.
1932-05-06/20	Kaufmann, Oskar		Waltershausen	Land Thüringen	A middle-aged labourer, who was a volunteer in various socialist organisations, was shot in the head by police during a protest against welfare reduction. 9 others, including two children, were injured by police gunfire. Images of the man's bloodied body were widely published in newspapers to rally against the government. A street was named in his honor after World War II.^[55]^[56]^[57]
1932-07-15	2 killed		Langenselbold	Provinz Hessen-Nassau	Two female labourers were shot by police during an unemployment march.^[58]
1932-07-15	Kanitz, Erich [de]	32	Weißwasser	Provinz Sachsen	During a rally of the Communist International group Workers International Relief, a shootout between workers and police ensued, during which the chairman of the WIR was shot and killed.
1932-07-17	Fühler, Emil	72	Altona	Provinz Schleswig-Holstein	Altona Bloody Sunday: A recruitment march by the Sturmabteilung led to violent clashes between SA members, communist counter-protesters and police. A total of 18 people died, 16 of whom were killed by police fire from a sniper battalion positioned on rooftops; the remaining two were SA-Männer shot by communist militants. The deaths consisted of fifteen uninvolved residents and one visitor, the wife of a participant in the march. The event was used by Franz von Papen and Paul von Hindenburg to initiate the Preußenschlag. Police used forged evidence and coerced testimony to shift blame for the civilian casualties on fifteen communist activists, four of whom were indicted. Following the Machtergreifung in 1933, Bruno Tesch, Walter Möller [de], Karl Wolff [de], and August Lütgens were given a show trial and subsequently executed by beheading. One of the dead was Anna Raeschke, mother of boxer Ferdinand Raeschke. She was killed via headshot while in her kitchen with only a piece of bread in her mouth while making dinner for her then-12-year-old son. The only non-resident civilian death was Helene Winkler, wife of one of the participants in the Nazi march, who along with the killed Nazis Heinrich Koch and Peter Büddig, was declared a Blutzeuge by the Nazi government.^[59]^[60]
	Fydrich, Emil	29
	Gehrke, Walter	21
	Gess, Erwin	23
	Hagen, Adolf	35
	Jackisch, Walter	46
	Kalinowski, Franz	48
	Kerpl, Emil	57
	Miersch, Willi	25
	Ragotzki, Hermann	48
	Raeschke, Anna	33
	Rasch, Karl	28
	Schmitz, Hans	79
	Sommer, Erna	19
	Würz, Emma	33
	Winkler, Helene	44
1932-07-31	Schrön, Friedrich	19	Essen	Rheinprovinz	A business student and SA-Mann was fatally shot by police during a confrontation between Nazi and communist paramilitaries.
1932-07-20	Krull, Karl [de]	26	Stralsund	Provinz Pommern	A SPD member was killed during a police raid on a KPD protest tent city.
1932-02-04	Staroch, Nikolaus	32	Stettin	Provinz Pommern	An Austrian national from Garsten attempted to ambush a courier of the Reichsbank, but was chased off by a policeman and several bystanders. During the pursuit, the robber fired several gunshots, heavily injuring three uninvolved passersby, before failing to carjack a vehicle occupied by two women. During the subsequent firefight, one officer was injured before the robber was hit by numerous shots from police. He died at a hospital the same day. A cyclist was also injured when a special anti-robbery unit accidentally ran him over while en route to the scene.^[61]
1932-10-23	Barm, Helmut	18	Bochum	Provinz Westfalen	Following a skirmish with police, a SA-Mann was shot by a 25-year-old Schutzpolizei officer, surnamed Buschenhofen, in Langendreer while on his way to the group barracks. He died of his wounds the next day. Buschenhofen was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment for the shooting. As with other police killings, the Nazi Party claimed that the officer was a Marxist and had targeted the deceased for his political beliefs. Several streets in NRW were named after the deceased as well as an airplane of the Luftwaffe.
1932-11-04	4 killed		Berlin	Berlin	1932 Berlin transport strike: During a labour strike in Schöneberg by employees of the BVG, four people were killed and another two injured by police sent to break up the protest after it was declared illegal. The dead consisted of three protesters and one uninvolved woman. 46-year-old Kurt Reppich, a customs officer and SA-Scharführer who was shot in the head, was later extensively featured in Nazi propaganda and had his role exaggerated as a main organizer. He was memorialised by the later Nazi government, with a customs boat, a border camp and a school being among the things named after him.
1932-11-27	Elbrächter, Eduard	41	Bielefeld	Provinz Westfalen	A SA-Truppführer got into an argument with a police recruit, surnamed Lutterklas, in a pub in Brackwede. Lutterklas left the pub and returned shortly after with his sidearm, shooting the other man twice in the abdomen, leading to his death the next day. A SA unit was named after the deceased in 1936.
1932-12-07	Bich, Ernst	26	Barmen	Rheinprovinz	Police were called to due to reports of a quarrel involving a large group in a street. One of the participants, a waiter and SA-Scharführer, attempted to escape and fired a revolver shot at the pursuing officers, who subsequently shot him in the stomach, from which the man died two days later in a hospital. The Nazi government would later instead claim that he died from an attack by social democrats and named a street in Neuss-Reuschenberg after him in December 1937.
1932-XX-XX	N.N.		Schweidnitz	Provinz Niederschlesien	A member of Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold was shot by police.^[62]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1933-03-21	Wenzel, Wilhelm		Essen	Gau Essen	A Hilfspolizei officer was attacked by a crowd of left-wing labourers while at a restaurant in Borbeck. The officer fired one shot into the group, striking a man in the chest, who died of the wound at a hospital.
1933-04-27	Funk, Albert	38	Recklinghausen	Gau Westfalen-Süd	A prominent KPD politician was arrested on 16 April without cause following Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He was tortured at a Gestapo station and died after sustaining fatal injuries during a fall from a third story window. A court found in 1949 that Funk was either pushed or committed suicide due to the intensity of the injuries inflicted during his detainment. The Gestapo officer in charge of his interrogation was found guilty in 47 cases of assault as an officer and received 12 years imprisonment.
1933-04-30	Hackstein, Karl		Grevenbroich	Gau Düsseldorf	A KPD functionary who had gone into hiding to avoid political repression was arrested by police and SA-Hilfspolizei. The officers claimed that the functionary attempted to flee shortly after, which they killed him with several times gunshots to the head and back.^[63]
1933-06-21/22	May, Arthur [de]	31	Bourheim	Gau Köln-Aachen	A journalist and KPD member critical of the Nazi Party was targeted by the Gestapo after they liquidated his newspaper. He was arrested on 16 June and tortured in police custody at the Yellow Barracks. The journalist was handed to SS troops, working as Hilfspolizei, who intended to interrogate him further in Jülich. The officers in charge of his transport shot and killed him en route, claiming the prisoner had attempted escape.
1933-07-30	N.N.		Iserlohn	Gau Westfalen-Süd	A KPD member was fatally shot by Hilfspolizei while fleeing from the scene of a raid in Obergüne.
1933-09-02	Handschuch, Hugo	23	München	Gau München-Oberbayern	On 23 August, a member of the SA was uncovered as a KPD infiltrator. The man was tortured at the Brown House before being transferred to Dachau concentration camp where he died over a week later. His official cause of death was a heart attack, but an independent medical examination determined that he died by head trauma causing brain damage.^[64]
1933-09-29	Axen, Rolf [de]	21	Dresden	Gau Sachsen	The underground leader of the East Saxony branch of the KPD was arrested by police and died during torture at the police station. He was the older brother of resistance fighter Hermann Axen.
1933-11-11	Konrad		Flensburg	Gau Schleswig-Holstein	A worker handing out political flyers was shot while fleeing.^[65]
1933-12-12	von der Reith, Diedrich	33	Hamburg	Gau Hamburg	A KPD member was arrested by Gestapo on 30 September and transferred to Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp on 9 October. He died after lengthy torture by Gestapo officers, who tried to cover up the death as a suicide by hanging. The medical examiner, however, refused to issue a death certificate after viewing the maimed body.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1934-02-01	Schehr, John	37	Berlin	Gau Berlin	Four prominent members of the KPD were transported from Columbia concentration camp by Gestapo and summarily executed on Wannsee Island. Nazi authorities framed the transport as a transfer to another facility and the fatal shootings as resulting from an escape attempt by the prisoners, when in reality, the killings were retaliatory for the murder of the recently identified Gestapo informant Alfred Kattner [de] by his former KPD constituents. It was later determined by SED that Bruno Sattler, who later served as chief of Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Serbia during World War II, was either one of the shooters or the commanding officer in the murders. Sattler was kidnapped by Stasi in 1947, his death being faked while he was sentenced to hard labour for life before being executed in 1972.
	Schönhaar, Eugen	35
	Schwarz, Rudolf	29
	Steinfurth, Erich [de]	37
1934-11-27	Naujack, Karl Leopold	47	Hamburg	Gau Hamburg	A painter was arrested by Sicherheitspolizei and beaten severely with a baton during custody at Untersuchungshaftanstalt Hamburg [de]. He died at the nursing station from blunt trauma to the head, spine, glutes, and thighs.
1934-11-27	Springer, Wilhelm	40	Hamburg	Gau Hamburg	A KPD member active in German resistance to Nazism was arrested by Gestapo at his workplace on 8 November. He died after prolonged tortured by Gestapo officers at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1944-03-19	50 killed		Sagan	Gau Niederschlesien	Stalag Luft III murders: During the escape of 76 Allied servicemen from the Stalag Luft III prisoner-of-war camp, 73 escapees were recaptured, of whom 50 were summarily executed by Gestapo on direct order of Adolf Hitler.
1944-09-22	Lindemann, Fritz	50	Berlin	Gau Berlin	A German Army general and co-conspirator in the failed 20 July plot. Gestapo went to arrest Lindemann at a hide-out in Westend and shot him in the leg and stomach when he tried to escape by jumping through a window, dying at a hospital later on.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1945-03-12	36 killed		Essen	Gau Essen	Montagsloch: Gestapo and Essen Kripo officers summarily executed at least 35 forced labourers from the Soviet Union in Grugapark. A possible 36th individual, whose body was not found, may have also been executed at the spot. All remain unidentified.^[67]
1945-03-21	33 killed		Wuppertal	Gau Düsseldorf	Burgholz massacre [de]: Twelve to fifteen Gestapo officers and ten Wuppertal Kripo officers summarily executed 30 Soviet forced labourers in Burgholz forest. They were all shot in the neck and buried in a mass grave in Küllenhahn. The victims, 24 men and six women, were involved in covert partisan activity and accused of participating in an ambush on a supply train that killed a train worker. During the group's capture the same day, three men, two Russians and one Ukrainian, were fatally shot. Only one body was ever identified, that being Ukrainian teacher Helena Matrosowa. A month later, one of the shooters, Peter Schäfer, a Schutzpolizei first lieutenant, was also executed at the site on the orders of SS and police leader Karl Gutenberger for making "dissenting statements". In 1948, 14 of the shooters and three commanding officers were indicted by a British military court in Hamburg. At least two of the accused committed suicide before conviction. Five officers ended up being sentenced to death and the rest received varying prison terms, but all were pardoned in 1952.
1945-03-24	Forman, William H.		Bensheim	Gau Kurhessen	Two U.S. Army paratroopers were taken captive and summarily executed by Gestapo. The two shooters, Franz Karl Stattmann and Michael Raaf, as well as two commanding officers who gave the order, Richard Fritz Girke and Heinz Hellenbroich, were sentenced to death and hanged at Landsberg Prison in 1948.^[68]^[69]
	McDonald, Robert T.
	Maraldo, Gretel	21			Due to approaching Allied forces, Gestapo planned the summary execution of the 20 remaining prisoners at Bensheim jail. Four German men from Groß-Rohrheim, including a SPD politician, were released for unknown reasons while the other rest were forced to march to Edelmannsgrund at Kirchberg. On the way, two prisoners, Soviet officer Alexander Romanow and German resistance member Gretel Maraldo, were shot while attempting to flee. Maraldo was killed while Romanow was able to escape injured after attempting to drag Maraldo to safety. The killed victims included three German Jews, including a Christian convert, a deserter, a KPD member, two French soldiers, a Dutch resistance member, and three unidentified Ostarbeiter. There was one survivor, 34-year old Johann Goral, a Polish labourer who had only been grazed in the head, played dead, and crawled out of the ditch as the shooters executed the other prisoners.^[70]^[68]
	Bertram, Rosa [de]	46
	Salomon, Erich	55
	Bechstein, Lina	50
	Hangen, Walter	24
	Gramlich, Jakob	50
	Dumas, Eugène
	Delauney, Lothaire
	Roolker, Frederik	38-39
	N.N.
	N.N.
	N.N.
1945-03-26	34 killed		Hildesheim	Gau Ost-Hannover	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: Following extensive Allied bombing on 22 March, forced labourers were accused of looting food from destroyed stores. Gestapo raided several supposed hide-outs to no result on 25 March, after which the lead officer Heinrich Huck had four prisoners sent in from a Gestapo facility. After personally killing the sole German prisoner upon arrival, Huck had the three others publicly hanged in the market square, at behest of the town mayor Georg Schrader. The same day, at least 30 labourers, most Italian, were sent by upper command with additional food supplies, but finding the goods to be insufficient and of subpar quality, the labourers were also accused of looting and hanged in a public ceremony.^[71]^[72]
1945-03-27	Hähnel, Albert	41	Chemnitz	Gau Sachsen	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: Gestapo summarily executed seven anti-fascist prisoners who had escaped temporary holding at Kaßbau prison on 5 March after Allied bombing damaged the jail and caused a fire. The victims, six KPD members and one SPD member, were shot in Hutholz forest near Neukirchen.^[73]
	Reinel, Willy	48
	Pech, Alfons [de]	50
	Klippel, Walter	58
	Krusche, Kurt	42
	Brand, Max	62
	Junghans, Albert	41
1945-03-30	12 killed		Kassel	Gau Kurhessen	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: Gestapo summarily executed twelve prisoners, including a Wehrmacht deserter, from Justizvollzugsanstalt Kassel I [de] in Wehlheiden cemetery. Eight of the victims were identified.^[74]
1945-03-31	79 killed		Kassel	Gau Kurhessen	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: A Gestapo troop led by Franz Marmon [de] summarily executed 79 forced labourers belonging to a railway construction crew at Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe station. The labourers had been abandoned by their guards and were caught looting food supplies from a train cart after several starving German civilians had broken it open and invited the workers to partake, as Allied troops were expected to liberate the city within days. An unknown person reported the looting to Gestapo, after which the labourers were put under arrest, searched and questioned by an interpreter, who was poorly trained, which likely caused miscommunications. The labourers were divided into groups of eight which were then brought into the railyard and executed via gunshots to the head. All the victims were male, aged 20 to 39, and nearly all were Italian, most from Northern Italy, while one unidentified victim was Russian.^[75]^[76]
1945-04-05	162 killed		Weimar	Gau Thüringen	Endphaseverbrechen [de]: Following the liberation of nearby Buchenwald concentration camp a day earlier, eleven Gestapo officers summarily executed 149 inmates of Weimar prison, consisting of 142 men and seven women, in Webicht forest by the command of senior government councilor Hans Helmut Wolff [de] and buried their bodies in explosion craters. The officers were then ordered to pull back to Böhmen in occupied Czechoslovakia, on their way killing 13 more people, described as "military and civilian individuals, escaped labourers, and prisoners". After the war, only 43 victims were identified by name.
1945-04-06	11 killed		Düsseldorf	Gau Düsseldorf	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: Gestapo officers summarily executed eleven forced labourers, ten men and one woman, all from the Soviet Union and the Netherlands, in Kalkum forest. Only six victims were identified after the war. Police officer Victor Harnischfeger was determined to have been the leading officer during the killings. Harnischfeger was found not guilty of war crimes by a British military tribunal in Hamburg in 1947, but sentenced to death the next year for a different crime, for participating in the murder of Allied civilian personnel and personally killing two forced labourers. He was pardoned in 1952 and maintained his position as a high-ranking police official until his death in the 1980s.^[77]
1945-04-11	9 killed		Hemer	Gau Westfalen-Süd	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: Gestapo officers who had fled their post in Dortmund on government orders due to the Ruhr pocket found nine prisoners in an abandoned Gestapo jail outpost on 10 April. The prisoners, eight Slavs and one Frenchman, were summarily executed the next night.^[78]
1945-04-12	12 killed		Hagen	Gau Westfalen-Süd	Endphasenverbrechen [de]: Gestapo summarily executed twelve people from various prisons in Hagen in Donnerkuhle quarry. Of the victims, eight Germans and four Slav forced labourers, only the Germans could be identified, being six civilians from Altena, Düsseldorf, Wermelskirchen und Wuppertal, such as 45-year-old Bothe Braune, as well as two "Wehrmacht deserters", really conscientious objecters, such as 20-year-old Eduard Dunker.
1945-04-13	71 killed		Langenfeld	Gau Westmark	Wenzelnbergschlucht massacre [de]: Due to Allied approach, Karl Gutenberger and Walter Model ordered the execution of several political prisoners from regional facilities through over two dozen officers from Gestapo and Kripo of the Solingen and Wuppertal police departments. 60 were from Justizvollzugsanstalt Remscheid [de], four from JVA Wuppertal-Bendahl [de], three from Ronsdorf jailhouse [de] while three were unidentified and of unknown origin. The majority of the identified victims were Germans, while three were Soviet and one was Polish. Director of JVA Remscheid Karl Engelhardt had been able to negotiate the initial demand of 600 inmates to 90, finally only delivering 55 by redirecting 35 to a forced labour division. An additional five detainees were added to JVA Remscheid numbers after being delivered by Wuppertal police the day of the killings, though a sixth had managed to escape on the way. Engelhardt had also misrepresented regular criminal offenders as political prisoners.^[79]^[80]
1945-04-14	8 killed		Neumünster	Gau Schleswig-Holstein	SS and Gestapo were escorting inmates of Justizvollzugsanstalt Fuhlsbüttel [de] in Hamburg to Arbeitserziehungslager Nordmark [de] in Kiel on a 100 km death march, during which Gestapo officers shot at least eight prisoners. Most were shot because they were too slow from exhaustion, while one, 46-year-old Richard Hartmann, a former Gestapo officer who was denounced just weeks earlier for openly objecting to the organisation's torture and secretly treating prisoners well, was killed for "animating others to escape". Hartmann was shot in the neck in Wittorf, after which the same officer killed resistance fighter turned Nazi informer Maurice Sachs on the same spot.^[81]^[82]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1949-01-23	Wolf, Kurt Erwin [de]	45	East Berlin	Berlin	During the Berlin Blockade, which heavily restricted trade by the Soviet occupation sector to the other three, a truck was shot at by border police in Prenzlauer Berg after failing to respond to a signal to stop, leading to a trucker in the passenger seat being killed by three shots to the head. The company was shipping firewood into West Berlin without a permit and the driver, who was arrested upon his return to East Berlin, had ignored the officers' command to avoid the scheme being uncovered.
1949-02-17	Ryll, Helmut [de]	40	East Berlin	Berlin	Two Volkspolizei officers stopped a car carrying two people on Oberbaum Bridge because he was driving towards Kreuzberg in West Berlin. The officers entered the vehicle and not realizing the driver, a resident of West Berlin, was drunk, they ordered him to drive back towards East Berlin. When he did not turn around and ignored further commands by the officers, one of them fired two fatal shots at the driver. The car crashed just past the border and West German authorities arrested one of the officers while the other managed to flee back into East Berlin. As they were unable to prove that the arrested VP officer was the shooter, the West German police did not charge him and allowed him to return.
1949-05-23	Neumann, Bernhard	15	East Berlin	Berlin	During clashes between Volkspolizei and protesters at Zoo train station, an officer shot a teenager from Charlottenburg in the head from around seven meters distance.^[90]^[91]
1949-10-18	Albrecht, Kurt	32	Frankfurt am Main	Hessen	A couple was being harassed near Frankfurter Hauptbahnhof by a drunk off-duty police officer, 25-year-old Walter Schneider, who pressed the pair for their Kennkarten. Taxi drivers from the nearby depot joined to separate the officer, who suddenly pulled out a gun and hit several people with it. Another cabby had the gun aimed at his face and pushed the officer's arm aside as he pulled the trigger, the shot instead fatally striking another taxi driver in the chest. American MPs arrested the officer, who was charged with manslaughter.^[92]
1949-12-08	Zimmermann, Kurt	36	Großensee	Land Thüringen	Two border police officers spotted a man walking towards the Hessian border. When the man quickened his pace after a verbal command and warning shot, the lower-ranked of the two officers fired a shot into the man's back. It was found that the deceased, who had accepted a job offer in West Germany, had previously smuggled his wife and daughter over the border and was attempting to join them without paying a smuggler. The officer responsible, then-21-year-old Emil Günter K. later stated that he had no killing intentions and was aiming for the legs; K. claimed his resignation from the service in 1950 was motivated by his guilty conscience. In May 1997, he was sentenced to 15 months probation and a fine of 1,200 DM.^[93]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1950-03-24	Meyer, Hermann [de]	40	Drewitz	Land Brandenburg	A farmer and his companion transporting a slaughtered calf were ordered to stop by East German border police because they suspected, due to the proximity to the border, that they were trying to smuggle the meat into West Germany to sell at a higher profit. Both men fled and were pursued on foot by officers. The companion stopped after four warning shots were fired into the air, while the farmer ignored them and a further three warning shots before the officer chasing him shot him three times in the back.
1950-06-09	Fertig, Oskar Johannes	45	Hohengandern	Land Thüringen	Four border policemen spotted a man from Friedrichroda walking towards the Hessian border into West Germany. The man did not respond to whistling and a warning shot, after which he was shot in the back and bled out seconds later. Post-reunification investigation assume that the man, who lacked an interzone passport, had wanted to bypass border security to visit his mother in Wilhelmshaven. The four officers involved were not named in reports and could not be identified after reunification.^[94]
1950-06-18	Wulff, Ernst [de]	63	Schildow	Land Brandenburg	A cattle truck attempted to pass by an East German checkpoint with the lights off in order to illegally sell the cattle in West Germany. A border police unit noticed this and pursued the truck in a requisitioned taxi. Several verbal warnings were issued before shots were fired at the vehicle as a warning to halt, one of the shots fatally striking the passenger of the truck in the head. The truck eventually became stuck on a dirt road and the driver was arrested.
1950-07-25	Kirsch, Paul	23	Neustadt an der Donau	Bayern	During a police operation involving a group of Roma youths outside of a pub, a Czechoslovak Rom man from Oloví was shot after grabbing an officer's rifle. Two other men were given 3 and 5-month prison sentences for assault. Accounts differ on the incident that led to police intervention. Official records state that the pub owner had called police about a brawl in front of the establishment, that the attackers had been drunk and that the deceased had chambered a round and aimed at an officer. The deceased's grandniece, interviewed in 2020, claimed that the group included teens who had played bowling on a street in front of the pub and asked the deceased to help set the pins up. A disagreement ensued between the teens, which the pub owner observed, misinterpreted as becoming physical, and called police for. When the deceased tried to leave due to not being involved, he was stopped by an officer, leading to a scuffle between them during which the deceased got a hold of the gun and was shot by another officer, Johann A., in response. The other Roma participants subsequently attacked officers with sticks and stones, later receiving up to five months of jail for drunkenness.^[95]
1950-08-29	Blumberger, Horst [de]	20	East Berlin	Berlin	Two brothers-in-law from Lichtenrade in West Berlin unknowingly trespassed into East Berlin territory to try out what they believed to be an air rifle, but after firing it once, they found that it was a loaded .22 sports rifle. After firing another shot, nearby Volkspolizei called out to them and attempted to arrest the pair. Both men fled and as they climbed a fence to the West German side, the younger man was shot twice in the back and bled out shortly after crossing over. The surviving man contacted West German police, and upon arriving at the scene, they found that the body had been turned on his back, presumably by the East German officers who stepped over the border to check whether the deceased was injured or dead.
1950-09-03	Vogt, Erwin	30	Wehnde	Land Thüringen	^[96]
1950-10-13	Fräßdorf, Gerd [de]	23	Kleinmachnow	Land Brandenburg	An office worker from East German Coswig got lost while driving in East Berlin after carpooling some business associates and passed a checkpoint on a road that was often used by people who wanted to cross into West Berlin without being searched. as he did not stop, border police signalled him and subsequently fired two warning shots, both to no response, after which the worker was shot and killed by an aimed shot to the head. He presumably did not hear the officers' commands or the gunshots because of his loud engine.
1950-10-28	Walter, Anneliese	30	Wasserleben	Bezirk Erfurt	Two border police officers had arrested nine undocumented bordercrossers when they noticed the footprints of five other people, belonging to a group of locals that illegally went shopping for groceries in West German Vienenburg. As the group had been alerted to the officers' presence by a previously fired warning shot, all were running back towards the border. The officers fired twice on the group, striking two women. One officer left to call an ambulance while another provided first aid, leaving the remaining twelve bordercrossers free to flee. After one of the women died at a hospital the same day, the superior of the two officers, Manfred S., was investigated for manslaughter, but not indicted. After reunification, S. reinvestigated in 1993, and claimed that the fatal shot he fired was meant as a warning shot. The other officer, Franz M., was not tracked down.^[97]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1951-03-12	Heyduck, Albert [de]	50	Schöneiche	Land Brandenburg	A cyclist was shot in the back of the head by a border policeman who mistook him for a metal smuggler, as he was carrying several wrapped packages on his bike. He did not follow commands to stop and ignored a warning shot, presumably because he was hard of hearing, before the officer fired an aimed shot. The officer was identified after German reunification and claimed in a 1997 interview, contrary to initial reporting, that the aimed shot was directed at the mudguard, but he accidentally hit the cyclist due to having little practical experience with firearms. He was not charged because authorities were unable to prove intent to kill.
1951-04-30	Heinicke, Walter [de]	48	Potsdam	Land Brandenburg	Three farmers were travelling through the Babelsberg area by bicycle to trade grain for goods, which was illegal in the GDR. They were spotted by four Volkspolizei officers, who ordered them to stop for a search, but the group instead accelerated to flee. One officer then fired a warning shot at the group, which struck one of the farmers in the head who died at a hospital. The other two men were able to escape to West Berlin. The officer who fired the killing shots was identified as Werner W. through contemporary reports after reunification, but he denied the charge and claimed one of his three colleagues, who were left unnamed, had instead opened fire. He was not charged because there was reasonable doubt for his claim.
1951-07-14	Pokrzywinski, Arthur [de]	45	Schönefeld	Land Brandenburg	A suspected smuggler was able to escape custody shortly after arrest. Two officers pursued the man as he was heading towards West Berlin, but as one of them caught up, a scuffle occurred. Because the officer believed the smuggler was about to grab his gun, he fired a shot that killed the suspect.
1951-07-29	Zelsmann, Egon	20	Mendhausen	Land Thüringen	A border police troop attempted to arrest a man who stepped over the border from Bavaria. When he ran, an officer fired three shots in his direction, the third fatally hitting him from a distance of 400 meters. It's suspected that the man wanted to visit his wife, who was due to give birth in Crimmitschau, without a passport. The shooter was identified as Hans R., who claimed he fired with intent to disable and aimed for the legs. He was not charged because no premeditation could be proven.^[98]
1951-08-14	Dunkel, Martin [de]	36	Schönefeld	Land Brandenburg	A farmer was arrested on suspicion of smuggling grain to West Berlin, but escaped as he was being escorted to a police station on foot. He ignored several warning shots before an officer fatally shot him from behind. Although reports gave the name of the shooter, Willi S., neither he or the others involved could not be tracked down following reunification, due to which the investigation was shut down.
1951-08-28	Stütz, Rudolf	30	East Berlin	Berlin	Shortly before the end of his shift, a West German police officer was shot in the stomach and thigh during a shootout with two border police officers and two Soviet soldiers at the Lichterfelde-Steglitz checkpoint and died a few days later on 2 September. There are conflicting accounts of the events. GDR records stated that the officer had crossed the border and shot at the guards, who returned fire. The officer claimed before his death that he had accompanied a woman who had asked for an escort to the checkpoint, where East German soldiers and police officers had tried to pull him over the turnpike into East Germany while shooting at him, to which he returned fire before being let go. Fellow colleagues testified that the officer had been drinking that night, with a suspect in the shooting, a former border officer questioned in 1993, saying that he and the deceased were drinking buddies, but that he had to turn him away several times before the same night when he came over to chat. The border officer claimed he was sleeping in the checkpoint at the time and not involved in the shooting. It remains unknown whether the West German officer stepped over the border or not.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1952-04-26	Gerbholz, Heinrich [de]	41	Großziehten	Land Brandenburg	A farmer was supposed to be arrested on suspicion of smuggling, as he was known to associate with the border police and traded with them, also taking them out to West Berlin, both against their regulations. The farmer attempted to flee and was shot in the stomach, apparently by a warning shot. The officers involved were transferred and after reunification, although their names were known, they could not be tracked down, thus the investigation was halted
1952-05-11	Müller, Philipp [de]	21	Essen	Nordrhein-Westfalen	During a forbidden protest against West Germany's rearmament organised by leftist and pacifist groups, police opened fire on the crowd, killing a member of the NRW Free German Youth, as well as injuring another two protesters. Police defended their actions, stating that they had been pelted with stones, later also alleging that officers believed that gunshots were being fired at them, with no evidence for the latter. Despite appeals for an investigative committee into the shooting by the Communist Party of Germany, the court of Dortmund deemed the use of deadly force as self-defense.^[99]
1952-06-02	Fickelschee, Gerhard	20	Klein Glienicke	Bezirk Potsdam	A commuter refused to show his papers at a checkpoint into West Berlin, where he worked, and tried to escape border police. After a warning shot was fired, the officers fatally shot him from behind.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1953-02-19	Fraunhofer, Ludwig [de]	24	East Berlin	Berlin	Two men from West Berlin travelled to East Berlin to go on a drinking binge, as alcohol was cheaper there. They later entered a checkpoint in Treptow to return, but one of the men could not state his reason for entering and was also unable to provide documents besides a POW release certificate; the man, originally from Rauheck, had eloped with his girlfriend from East German Zeitz a month earlier and only recently applied for new ID papers to travel back to Bavaria. He subsequently ran past the checkpoint to the West German side, chased by a Volkspolizei officer, who ordered him to stop and fired two warning shots before shooting the man in the back. He was declared dead at a police hospital. The officers involved were praised by their superiors, with the shooter receiving a salary bonus and extra vacation days. The shooter was identified after reunification and sentenced to one year imprisonment for manslaughter in 1996.
1953-02-21	Grubenstein, Willy [de]	48	East Berlin	Berlin	Two trucks approaching a Friedrichshain checkpoint into West Berlin were signalled to stop for a search, but instead slowed down slightly before accelerating again. Volkspolizei fired at both vehicles, injuring the female passenger of the first truck while killing the driver of the second. It was revealed that the trucks contained the belongings of a couple from Thuringia and that the deceased man was a gift shop owner who had agreed to help the couple escape East Germany. Despite attempts to find the shooter, the investigation was halted due to a lack of leads.
1953-06-17	Schmidt, Gerhard [de]	26	Halle	Bezirk Halle	During the East German uprising of June 1953, an agrarian doctorate student was accidentally fatally shot in the lung from a ricocheting bullet fired by police, who were trying to placate a crowd of protesters at Roter Ochse prison. SED officials used his death in propaganda, claiming that he had been killed by "fascist provocateurs" when he refused to participate in rioting. A total of 50 people were killed in total, excluding 5 executions headed by Soviet authorities, 33 of whom, including Schmidt, were killed by either Volkspolizei or Soviet troops, although only Schmidt could be definitively proven as a victim to police fire.
1953-06-23	Röhling, Wolfgang [de]	15	East Berlin	Berlin	A group of teenage boys were trying to gain access to the Berlin–Spandau Ship Canal for bathing, but were denied by the two guarding Volkspolizei officers, due to orders to temporarily block any possible way into West Berlin in the aftermath of the East German uprising of June 1953. Due to this, the teenagers began throwing stones from a distance and shouting insults at the officers. A troop of Kasernierte Volkspolizei from a neighbouring post saw this and threatened the group, most of whom took cover behind a stone wall, safe for one, who continued to stand by the riverside. A KVP officer then shot the remaining boy in the head, before another shot to the back of the head killed him as he tried to leave. A total of 21 shots were fired. The shooter was never identified.
1953-08-18	Schulz, Theodor [de]	51	East Berlin	Berlin	A man who was wanted for participating in protests against the SED was shot twice in the head by three KVP officers in Wedding. There are conflicting reports about the preceding events, with GDR records stating that he had assaulted officers with a briefcase after being asked to provide ID, while West Berlin police stated that he ran away from a search while trying to cross into West Berlin with several others.
1953-12-18	Prey, Richard [de]	45	East Berlin	Berlin	A man from West Berlin ran away from customs control at a checkpoint in Berlin-Mitte; he had bought cheaper groceries in East Berlin and was trying to bring them back over the border, which constituted as smuggling by East German authorities. After failing to respond to verbal commands and a warning shot, a Volkspolizei officer shot the man twice in the lower torso. He died the same night at a hospital despite emergency surgery. After reunification, the shooter, Alfred F., could not be tracked down and the investigation was halted.
1953-12-24	Scheugenpflug, Karl	73	München	Bayern	Munich Communal Police [de] officer Vogt was driving a police van when he struck an elderly pedestrian walking to Midnight Mass with his wife and step-son in Sendling. Vogt, who was on patrol, claimed that he had swerved to avoid a different pedestrian who had suddenly stepped on the road and that he drove at an acceptable speed of 40 km/h, despite the crash being severe enough to cause the van to overturn while also splitting open and uprooting a tree. Police conducted 17 alcohol tests on the victim before his death in the ambulance to prove he had been drunk at the time of the collision, 16 attempts yielding no results and the 17th showing he was sober. No such test was conducted on Vogt.^[100]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1954-05-01	Minckwitz, Alfred Hans	47	East Berlin	Berlin	A man tried to escape border police after being unable to provide identifying papers and after several warning shots, he was shot in the back, later dying at Charité hospital.
1954-08-10	Doebbecke, Conrad [de]	65	East Berlin	Berlin	A man from Wannsee in West Berlin drove into East German territory near the checkpoint Dreilinden, where he observed traffic for several minutes before driving back towards the highway. Although city commandant Pyotr Dibrova [de] had ordered a cessation of searches following backlash over the death of Joachim Wozniak [de] through drunk Soviet soldiers, two border policemen still tried to order the car to stop due to the suspicious incident, which instead accelerated. After a warning shot, four aimed gunshots were fired, three of which hit the driver in the left shoulder, left thigh and the hip. He was subsequently bandaged and brought to a hospital in Potsdam by the officers. Despite successful emergency surgery and a good prognosis, he died on 8 September from his wounds. The deceased had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease and was driving without a licence, as stated by his wife. His killing was widely publicised as he was a real estate owner in Berlin and also a famed antiques salesman and art collector, who sold over a hundred paintings to the Landesmuseum Hannover. It was not widely reported that he was an early member of the Nazi Party who had worked in the legal system as a jurist and obtained most of the artwork and land through seized property from Aryanisation.^[101]^[102] The officer who fired the killing shots was identified after reunification, but not charged as the statute of limitations had run out, since an investigation was already headed at the time of the shooting.
1954-11-15	Nettesheim, Helene	22	Düsseldorf	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A sports car did not stop after being signalled by a Bereitschaftspolizei officer due to a countrywide search for a gang of highway robbers. The officer fired a shot from his submachine gun at the fleeing vehicle, fatally striking the passenger, the wife of the driver, who later stated that he tried to avoid the traffic check because he was driving the car, which he was supposed to sell, without the owner's permission to attend his grandmother's 80th birthday and did not have papers for the vehicle. An article about the death inspired director Géza von Cziffra to make the 1955 film Bandits of the Autobahn.^[103]^[104]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1955-01-29	Meier, Johannes	69	Buckow	Bezirk Frankfurt	A man was found cowering by the border to West Berlin by two border police officers. After he did not respond to verbal commands, an officer shot the man in the chest from a distance of six meters. The deceased had fled the GDR in 1953 and resided in West Berlin as a tolerated refugee. He had suffered from psychosis and been released from a two-month stay at mental asylum after being on suicide watch 17 days earlier.^[105]
1955-04-21	Schwietzer, Wilhelm [de]	44	Kleinmachnow	Bezirk Potsdam	A man from West Berlin was arrested at Dreilinden S-Bahn by border police. He had formerly been a farmer in East German Cottbus, but moved away to avoid a fine illegal forest clearing to sell lumber in January 1950. Due to this, he was wanted and would have to serve 18 months in prison. Four police officer were escorting him to the station when he attempted to escape on foot and after a warning shot, at least two officers shot him 14 times in the back, after which he died at a hospital. Two of the officers were found after reunification, but they denied being the shooters. Since it could not be proven that they were responsible, the investigation was halted in December 1996.
1955-06-30	Bröker, Fredi [de]	29	East Berlin	Berlin	A car driving into East Berlin was stopped by a Volkspolizei officer for an ID check. Afterwards, the officer got into the passenger seat and asked the man to drive up to the Alt-Treptow checkpoint further up. Instead, the driver put the car in reverse in direction of Neukölln in West Berlin. The officer then shot the driver in the arm, piercing into his stomach before exiting the car via tuck and roll. Heavily injured, the man managed to maneuver his car into West Berlin, where police brought him to a hospital, where he died on 5 July. It was found that the deceased was a former GDR citizen who had escaped East Germany after being arrested during the 1953 protests and took up the false identity of "Wolfgang Pankow". Despite being unemployed, he lived a wealthy lifestyle, owning an expensive BMW and living in a large apartment with several others. A search of the home yielded a number of licence plates, photo developing equipment, and several boxes, the contents of which were not disclosed by police. It's suspected that he was a member of an anti-communist organisation or a spy for a West German government agency.
1955-09-18	Borstel, Otto	22	East Berlin	Berlin	A man was shot by a Volkspolizei officer during a car search in Berlin-Mitte.
1955-11-21	Runge, Wilhelm [de]	28	East Berlin	Berlin	A Volkspolizei officer was observing an abandoned property in Berlin-Mitte after he saw two men stealing scrap metal from there. He mistook two other men who had crossed over from West Berlin for the thieves and gave chase when they turned back to the border after spotting him. The officer fired a warning shot before shooting one of the men in the back. The man died on the way to the hospital. The shooter was identified, but could not be tracked down after reunification.
1955-12-30	Tögel, Walter [de]	34	East Berlin	Berlin	Volkspolizei stopped a cyclist for a search at a Berlin-Mitte checkpoint into West Berlin. Because he was trying to smuggle several pounds of sausage, ham, and butter in his backpack, the man attempted to evade the officers, but he was pushed of his bike during the struggle. The man attempted to cross the border, but an officer shot him after firing several warning shots. The man was still able to make it to West Berlin territory, where he was brought to a hospital where he died the same day.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1957-04-15	Auris, Else	48	Großbeeren	Bezirk Potsdam	A woman was shot in Osdorfer Forest by border police while fleeing towards West Berlin and died at the scene from her wounds.
1957-04-XX	N.N.		Hannover	Niedersachsen	Police fatally shot a homeless vagrant in shrubbery after mistaking him for a wanted criminal.^[106]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1958-01-10	N.N.		Mittenwald	Bayern	A 54-year-old police officer shot and killed a "drunken ruffian". He was put on trial on 29 September.^[106]
1958-06-05	N.N.	26	Neu-Ulm	Bayern	A man arrested for "approaching a woman in an indecent manner" was shot when he attempted to escape.^[106]
1958-08-13	Hettich, Peter	15	München	Bayern	A teenage apprentice was fatally shot after police caught him breaking into a youth center.^[106]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1959-12-06	Bartolmee, Roland	18	Frankfurt am Main	Hessen	Two plainclothed police officers on night patrol in Altstadt saw a teenager walking and shouted at the figure to stop, without identifying themselves as police. The teenager ran off, at which point 35-year-old officer Edgar Hüttig fired a warning shot, supposedly in the air, although it was later determined the round grazed the teenager in the heel. Having lost track of the suspect, the officers issued more verbal commands, with Hüttig eventually firing another shot, which struck the suspect, who had been hiding behind cars and leapt to the side to sprint away. An unloaded gas pistol and two rounds were found in his pants pocket afterwards. Hüttig and his partner, Rudi Pfeffer, changed several details when reporting the incident to their superiors, such as the deceased's age (19 instead of 18) and the location of the gunshot (neck instead of forehead). The officers also claimed they believed him to be a car thief because he was passing too closely by the parked cars, despite him not having any tool in his hands. Hüttig was subsequently tried for negligent homicide in 1960.^[106]
1959-12-09	N.N.	33	Ludwigshafen	Rheinland-Pfalz	Three police officers were transporting a convict when he managed to escape during the drive. The officers subsequently fired and hit the convict in the legs and arms. It is not specified whether the wounds were fatal.^[106]
1959-XX-XX	N.N.	24	Hamburg	Hamburg	A man was subjected to two CN gas canisters inside a basement during a police operation. After his arrest, he suffered from breathing difficulties and subsequently died from pulmonary edema at a hospital.

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1960-02-25	N.N.	33	Between Lünen and Dortmund	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A moped driver was fatally injured by a warning shot on a road, presumably on B236.^[106]
1960-03-XX	Beck, Ignaz	18	Frankfurt am Main	Hessen	Officer Werner Krug caught a burglar during a night-time break-in. The burglar fled and after firing a warning shot, Krug shot the man in the back of the head, later stating that he had missed and aimed for the legs.^[7]
1960-11-05	Czori, Joska [de]	27	Hamburg	Hamburg	A fight broke out at a butcher's shop in Niendorf between Polish Roma, store staff, and other patrons after a member of the Roma had cut in line and was punched in the face by the owner. Police were called about a "brawl with gypsy involvement" and after beating some of them with nightsticks, a 47-year-old officer fired on three of the Roma, killing two and injuring one, reportedly because one had grabbed an officer's baton.^[95]^[107]
1960-11-05	Kwiek, Karol	26	Hamburg	Hamburg

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1961-12-03	N.N.	21	Brühl	Nordrhein-Westfalen	Two car thieves were incidentally stopped by a police patrol near a forest as they were driving a vehicle they had stolen three weeks earlier. The officers were shot at with a hunting rifle, leading them to return fire, during which one of the thieves was fatally shot.^[108]
1961-12-14	N.N.	20	Düsseldorf	Nordrhein-Westfalen	Police caught a man in the process of stealing a car. Upon spotting the officers heading his way, he drove away, with the officers trying to stop him by shooting at the car's tires, but as they were aiming too high, the bullets struck the driver instead, causing his death.^[109]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1962-03-22	N.N.	23	Köln	Nordrhein-Westfalen	Passerby called police because a man was threatening his wife with a knife near the Aachener Weiher. Police arrived to find the man stabbing the woman, and after several verbal commands and warning shots, he was shot in the heart when he did not desist.^[110]
1962-05-23	Göring, Peter [de]	21	East Berlin	Berlin	A soldier of the Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic, who was part of a patrol group along the Berlin–Spandau Ship Canal near the Invalids' Cemetery between East and West Berlin. On 23 May 1962, he observed a 14-year-old boy within the currents trying to hide himself from the guards. To prevent him from committing Republikflucht, several GDR-border guards shot at the boy in the river, injuring him with eight gunshots to the back. Göring left his post in the guard tower despite superior orders in an attempt to get in position for a clearer shot on the boy, also disregarding the general policy of not shooting towards at West German territory. The shots rang past a West German police patrol that had coincidentally passed by and was attempting to assist the boy, which led the officers to return fire on the guards, fatally hitting Göring and injuring another guard. Two bullets hit Göring directly, the deadly wound was caused by another bullet's ricochet.^[111]
1962-05-XX	Diefenbacher, Volker		Bruchsal	Baden-Württemberg	Two police officers were cleaning their guns at the police station when the weapon of one accidentally misfired, killing the other.^[112]
1962-08-14	Arnstadt, Rudi	35	Wiesenfeld	Thüringen	Two soldiers of the Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic, Rudi Arnstadt and Karlheinz Roßner, encountered a West German Bundesgrenzschutz officer on East German territory and told him to leave. When the pair spotted another three BGS officers trespassing, they ambushed them with their guns drawn to put them under arrest. Roßner fired a warning shot and in reaction to this, one of the BGS officers, 23-year-old Hans Plüschke [de], then fatally shot Arnstadt above the right eye before returning to the West German side, telling his superiors they had been shot at. East German authorities sentenced Plüschke to 25 years imprisonment in absentia, but his extradition was not approved since Plüschke was not charged in West Germany, which deemed the shooting self-defense based on Plüschke's version of events. On 15 March 1998, 9 years after the dissolution of the SED and the reunification of Germany, Plüschke, who had now been working as a taxi driver, was found murdered on B84 near Hünfeld, around 10 km from Wiesenfeld, dead from a gunshot wound above the right eye. Plüschke had revealed his identity as the shooter in a RTL segment in 1993 and again in October 1997, due to which he had been receiving anonymous death threats. Former colleagues of Arnstadt, as well as his son and daughter were questioned, but no leads were obtained and the murder remains unsolved.
1962-XX-XX	N.N.		Hechingen	Baden-Württemberg	A police officer accidentally shot and killed a man. He was tried, but found not guilty of negligent homicide on 22 March 1963, partially because the court opined that a mechanical failure of the Beretta Model 38 he used could not be ruled out.^[113]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Place	State	Summary of events
1963-03-12	N.N.	Hamburg	Hamburg	Police shot and killed a painter who had killed a 76-year-old woman and her 64-year-old maid with scissors in a random attack during a work detail.^[114]
1963-07-10	N.N.	Hamburg	Hamburg	34-year-old police officer Karlheinz Weszel killed his wife and mother-in-law with his service pistol. Weszel and his wife were separated and while visiting the woman at her parents' home, she refused to let him accompany her to visit one of their children at a hospital. During the ensuing argument, the wife's mother took her daughter's side, at which point Weszel shot and killed both of them. The present father-in-law as well as the three other children, who were in a neighbouring room, were unharmed. Weszel was arrested and charged with murder.^[115]
1963-07-10	N.N.	Hamburg	Hamburg

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1964-03-04	Schulz, Werner	28	Frankfurt am Main	Hessen	A bank robber armed with a pistol held up a Volksbank in Sachsenhausen, fleeing with 8,925 DM when police arrived, alerted by a silent alarm. The robber fled over the fire escape of a neighboring building and was shot through the chest by an officer from below as he made his way across rooftops. He died from a pierced lung on 14 March.^[116]^[117]
1964-10-08	Aielle, Ercole	30	München	Bayern	Police were called to a milk shop after the owner saw a man attempting to get behind the store counter. The presumed robber, an Italian guest worker, fled the scene upon seeing the officers and during the foot chase, the man pulled out a knife and injured one officer with a stab wound to the abdomen. Two warning shot were fired by police, after which the man was shot for attempting to attack again, dying at a hospital the same day.^[118]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1968-01-30	N.N.		Homberg	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A burglar was spotted on the roof of a two-story apartment building by patrons of a nearby pub. Upon being confronted by police, the burglar disobeyed orders to stay put and broke into a flat, beating a 68-year-old man into submission before jumping from a window onto the nearby street after finding the door out locked. He was shot by a police officer when he attempted to attack him with a screwdriver, dying on the way to a hospital. He remained unidentified.^[110]
1968-02-XX	Rösender, Walter	31	München	Bayern	A painter attacked 27-year-old police officer Walter Birnhäupl while at the former's apartment, threatening him with a knife before pushing the officer onto a sofa. Binrhäupl, then shot the man five times, causing his death at a hospital the same day.^[123]
1968-12-14	Djurik, Dujan	22	Nürtingen	Baden-Württemberg	A mentally ill Serb Yugoslavian migrant worker from Zabrežje went on a stabbing spree in a tenement building in Raidwangen, killing a 6-year-old boy and a 69-year-old man, both German nationals. as well as injuring 5 more people. The attacker was shot by a police officer he tried to attack.^[124]^[125]
1968-12-29/30	N.N.		Konstanz	Baden-Württemberg	A burglar was shot after fleeing from and engaging in a physical struggle with a police officer. The officer was criminally investigated.^[126]
1968-12-30	Kopf, Herbert	48	Rastatt	Baden-Württemberg	After a bank robbery in Badenweiler, robber Bruno Mateyka fled in a getaway vehicle with the bank manager as a hostage, pressing a gun to his temple while driving. Pursuing police fired over 100 shots at the vehicle, injuring Mateyka, who shot his hostage point-blank in the head. Mateyka was convicted of the murder, but the coroner also noted that the hostage had also been hit by police fire and that one of the wounds to the shoulder would have been fatal. The officers were investigated for misconduct, but not charged.^[127]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1969-01-08	Stucke, Hans	29	Altbach	Baden-Württemberg	Two police officers searched the apartment of a previously convicted burglar suspected of stealing several pistols, a rifle, and ammo from a gun shop in Esslingen. After finding the loot under the bed, the officers waited for the man to come home and attempted to perform an arrest. Apparently aware of the police's presence, the man immediately fired a shot from a pistol upon arriving, killing 30-year-old officer Klaus Scharfenort. He was then shot and killed by the other officer.^[128]
1969-02-04	Witkowski, Friedhelm	21	Herne	Nordrhein-Westfalen	Three plainclothed police officers were tasked with apprehending a burglar at a homeless shelter. Two officers, 39-year-old Werner Bauland and 24-year-old Hans-Werner Grünberg, stayed outside the shelter while a third, 36-year-old Lothar Fülbier, entered dressed as a vagrant and asked around for the suspect in the barracks he was last recorded in. After locating the suspect lodging in an apartment leased by the family of his 18-year-old fiancée Dagmar Trzaskawka, Fülbier presented a gun in his coat, saying "Jetzt bist du dran" ("Now you're done for"). Trzaskawka, believing the officer to be a robber or criminal associate, then pushed her fiancé into the adjacent kitchen and shut the door on the officer, who fired four shots through the door, then another two through the door panel, narrowly missing Trzaskawka's parents and three of her younger siblings. The suspect tried to prevent Fülbier from entering by leaning against the door, but the officer broke through and immediately shot the man in the thigh. The man fled into another room, with Fülbier missing another shot just as Bauland, alerted by the gunfire, entered as well and fired a total of four shots, with one fatally injuring the suspect in the back. No one was charged, even after it was revealed that Fülbier had a blood alcohol level of 2,14 at the time of the operation.^[129]
1969-03-16	K., A.	26	Schleswig	Schleswig-Holstein	Three police officers saw a car run a stop sign and engaged in a car chase with the 28-year-old driver and his passenger, his fiancée. After being about to lose the car for the third time, an officer fired 16 shots at the vehicle, hitting the passenger in the hip and liver. The driver stopped the car on the side of the road and fled on foot. She was brought to a hospital in life-threatening condition and was alive as of 13 April, but no updates were made on her survival. The officer was to be indicted for negligent bodily harm.^[130]
1969-11-09	Ehlert, Bernd	9	Wolfach	Baden-Württemberg	A 37-year-old man, Bernhard Ehlert, threatened to kill his wife and children with a gun. When police stormed the apartment, a shot by police that injured the hostage taker passed through him and fatally struck one of his children.^[120]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1971-01-31	Braatz, Peter	27	West Berlin	Berlin	A car thief was caught in the act in front of the Theater des Westens and restrained by the owner of the vehicle and a taxi driver when he was shot in the neck by 38-year-old police officer Horst Salzwedel, also injuring the taxi driver. The officer variously stated that he wanted "quiet to come" or that the thief had reached into his pocket. Salzwedel claimed to have no recollection of shooting the suspect, but an investigation showed that the officer had held the pistol into the side of the man's neck at point-blank range. He was sentenced to seven months probation on 27 September.^[132]^[133]^[134]^[135]
1971-05-09/11	N.N.		Düsseldorf	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A burglar was fatally shot in the head by a police officer after he opened fire during his escape.^[8]^[136]
1971-05-20/21	N.N.		München	Bayern	Police were notified because a drunk migrant worker was wielding a gun in a bar. Officers shot the man in what they described as self-defense, after which the weapon was identified as a gas pistol.^[136]
1971-05-24	Albert, Hans	27	München	Bayern	A prison escapee was shot and killed by Kripo while driving in Schwabing. Ten shots were fired on the moving vehicle.^[133]
1971-05-28	N.N.		Hamburg	Hamburg	A drunk man was firing a gas pistol at his doorstep and then fatally shot in the head by plainclothed police as a result.^[136]
1971-06-09	N.N.	21	Herne	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A burglar was shot eleven times by two police officers and died several months later of his wounds after 23 August.^[136]
1971-07-07	Christ, Ernst	28	Mannheim	Baden-Württemberg	An inmate suffering from meningitis was pelted with stones in his cell because an officer was annoyed by his constant screaming. He was then locked in a holding cell for the night, with the heating turned up all the way during an outside temperature of 30 degrees Celsius. The inmate was found dead the next morning, but the officer was not charged.^[137]
1971-07-15	Schelm, Petra	20	Hamburg	Hamburg	A member of the RAF, Schelm was shot in the face while fleeing from police, after she and Werner Hoppe [de] had broken through a police road block in Bahrenfeld.^[138]
1971-08-04	Rammelmayr, Hans Georg [de]	31	München	Bayern	Two bank robbers, German national Hans Georg Rammelmayr and Austiran national Dimitri Todorov [de], held up a Deutsche Bank location in Prinzregentenstraße. Police had complied with their demands for two million mark and a getaway vehicle, but once Rammelmayr entered the car as the last one, police marksmen opened fire, striking him and one of the hostages, killing both. Police initially assumed that Rammelmayr had shot the hostage in his dying moments, but the attending medical team, which included the incumbent second mayor of Munich Hans Steinkohl [de], and the pathologist found that the caliber she had been shot with did not belong to the PPSh-41 he had been carrying.^[139]
1971-08-04	Reppel, Ingrid	20	München	Bayern
1971-08-10	N.N.		Münster	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A drunk man shot at police during a blood test. He was shot in the shoulder "to put him out of combat", but the man died of the wound before 23 August.^[8]
1971-08-XX	N.N.		Mühlheim	Hessen	During the pursuit of a burglar, a police officer aimed to shoot him in the legs, but instead fatally shot him in the stomach.^[133]
1971-08-XX	Kozinowski, Harald	32	St. Georgen	Baden-Württemberg	Police were congregating in front of an apartment building to deal with a resident who had taken his family at gunpoint. With commands to fire at will, an officer accidentally killed an uninvolved neighbor with a shot through the right eye, after the man, curious about the unannounced police presence, had opened his bedroom window for a better look.^[133]^[120]
1971-08-XX	Putra, Josip		München	Bayern	A Yugoslavian migrant worker was accidentally killed by police when an officer's sidearm discharged and hit him in the stomach.^[136]^[140]
1971-08-18/19	N.N.		Mannheim	Baden-Württemberg	A Greek national fled after he was caught attempting to sell hashish to an undercover officer and was subsequently shot in the chest when he stopped and pulled out a knife.^[136]^[8]
1971-10-25	N.N.	24	Tübingen	Baden-Württemberg	A police officer was sent to a building due to an argument during a party. The officer felt threatened and shot three Portuguese migrant workers, one of whom died from a pierced heart. The local attorney's office attributed the shooting to heightened police's fears over the murder of police officer Norbert Schmid [de] by RAF members three days earlier.^[141]
1971-11-09	N.N.		Sinsheim	Baden-Württemberg	A police officer shot a man after he attacked another officer.^[136]
1971-12-04	von Rauch, Georg	24	West Berlin	Berlin	A police cruiser was shadowing a car with a stolen licence plate, suspected to belong to members of the militant anarchist 2 June Movement. Police stopped the car and an associated van on the street in Schöneberg, during which the passenger of the main vehicle, 24-year-old Bommi Baumann, escaped. As one policeman chased after Baumann, the remaining officer, Hans-Joachim Schulz, took the driver of the car and the occupants of the van at gunpoint and ordered them to face the shuttered doors of a nearby furniture store for frisking. According to Schulz, he backed away from the arrestees upon realizing he was alone, at which point he claimed the men pulled out guns and shot at him. The driver of the car, identified as a wanted 2 June Movement fugitive, was fatally shot in the right eye. Schulz fired seven gunshots while fourteen shots were fired from five other weapons. Newspapers initially reported that two other anarchist gunmen had opened fire on Schulz from the opposite street, and that these gunmen had killed the victim, disproven by the ammunition type matching Schulz's. Police later admitted that four BfV officers were at the scene as part of the arrest, but claimed that they were unarmed. An eyewitness and an emergency call that captured audio of the shooting contradicted several details of Schulz's account, including the number of initial gunshots and their source. While the two men in the van were armed, no gun was found on the deceased. Representatives of the 2 June Movement alleged that Schulz had accidentally opened fire when he was startled by head movement of the suspect. The officer was found not guilty in a court ruling in 1972, citing self-defence, although the actual sequence of events was still questioned at the 1975 trial of Bommi Baumann.^[142]^[143]
1971-12-29	Vicenik, Kurt	44	Baltersweiler	Saarland	On 27 December, three bank robbers held up a Deutsche Bank location at the square of Cologne Cathedral. The robbers shot into the ceiling and forced their hostages against the wall as they retrieved 311,000 DM from the vault, but because an alarm system was activated, alerting a police troop from a nearby armored bank truck, the scene was surrounded by SEK, who shot out the tires of the getaway vehicle. After threatening the life of the hostages for two hours, a vehicle was provided, with two high-ranking police officials volunteering to replace two hostages they would take with them and drive the robbers south to the French border at their request. The eight-hour drive was always followed by police at a distance, as well as journalists, one of whom jumped on the car's windshield to take a photo during a red light and was nearly shot for it, but all lost track of the robbers when they passed through Saarbrücken. When the officer driving refused to drive into France, the robbers left on foot and took another car and the 21-year-old driver hostage. They were discovered after a 45-hour manhunt, driving north of Saarbrücken after apparently getting lost. The main robber demanded another police official in exchange for the hostage, for which Police Council Julius Groß was brought in via helicopter. While discussing the terms, Groß noticed he had a clear shot on the robber and the accomplices were distracted, pulling out his sidearm to command a surrender, shooting and injuring the robber in the torso as he reached for his own gun. Two stray shots were fired by the robber that almost hit the hostage motorist, but the shooting allowed for the arrest of all three suspects. The gang were identified as an Austrian and two French nationals, all with connections to "low-level organized crime" in Marseille. The Austrian ringleader died of his wounds fifteen days later on 13 January 1972.^[144]^[145]^[146]

Date (YYYY-MM-TT)	Name	Age	Place	State	Summary of events
1972-01-01	Neumann, Robert	18	Hamburg	Hamburg	Police arrested a teenager in Farmsen because he was causing a disturbance during New Year's Eve. At the station, two police officers beat the teenager with batons while a third choked him, causing his death. Police claimed self-defense.^[147]
1972-01-31	Finnendahl, Gerhard Arnold	32	Mannheim	Baden-Württemberg	A car thief driving a stolen semi-trailer truck engaged police in a 60 km/h chase over the Mannheim Interchange [de] on either A6 or A656, ignoring commands and signals to stop. When the driver pulled over and attempted to flee on foot, an officer shot him in the back of the head in what was later deemed self-defense.^[120]
1972-02-07	Böse, Wilhelm		Regensburg	Bayern	Off-duty police officer Peter Gröbel killed a waiter who had refused to serve the drunk customer more alcohol. The officer used his sidearm, which he carried privately to "ward off thugs".^[141]^[148] In April 1973, Gröbel was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years imprisonment.^[149]
1972-02-18	Stelzer, Heinz	32		Hessen	Two men were being pursued by police on suspicion of committing a post office robbery in December 1971, stealing 41,000 DM. One of the suspects was fatally shot by an officer.^[141]
1972-02-27	N.N.		Nürnberg	Bayern	As police were pursuing an Italian national in a car chase, he shot and killed 29-year-old police officer Roland Luff before being fatally shot by his colleagues.^[150]
1972-03-01	Epple, Richard [de]	17	Herrenberg	Baden-Württemberg	A teenage mechanic from Breitenholz was driving the family car drunk and without a licence. He did not obey a police order to stop, unaware that they had only noticed his broken taillight. During the 20 km car chase over B28, the teenager broke through three street blockades. Police wrongly concluded that the driver may be an RAF terrorist and ordered officers to stop the car by all means. After three warning shots, 26-year-old officer Hans Jörg Geigis fired nine gunshots through the rear window. An investigation decided that the police response was in line with protocol, and no one was charged. The youth centre "Epplehaus" was named after the deceased. Geigis committed suicide with his sidearm in 1975.^[151]
1972-03-02	Weisbecker, Thomas	23	Augsburg	Bayern	Member of the 2 June Movement. Weisbecker was shot by police officers during an arrest attempt. The incident's details are unclear.^[152]
1972-03-27	N.N.	20-30	Bremen	Bremen	A burglar engaged police in a shootout and was by officers killed in self-defense.^[141]^[148]
1972-04-30	Braun, Burkhard	25	Gießen	Hessen	Two men were stopped for a traffic check while driving a stolen car and immediately opened fire, injuring one officer in the chest and shoulder. 25 officers ended up returning fire and killing the car's driver.^[153]
1972-05-18	N.N.	16	Landau	Rheinland-Pfalz	Police were called to a domestic incident because a teenage boy was arguing with his parents. Officers found the boy sitting at a table, holding two knives. At police's orders, he put one knife on the table and said "If you talk calmly to me, I'll put the other one away too". Immediately after, an officer fired two gunshots from a distance of three meters, instantly killing the boy.^[141]
1972-06-25	Macleod, Iain James Torquil	34	Stuttgart	Baden-Württemberg	The Federal Criminal Police Office incorrectly identified Iain Macleod (also Ian McLeod), a British citizen from Scotland, as a supporter of the RAF and launched a raid on his apartment in Asemwald. When the officers were about to force open the bedroom door, Macleod, who had been asleep until then, opened the door, screamed upon seeing the armed officers, and then shut it again. The head of the raid team fired two shots through the closed door, hitting Macleod in the back and killing him. The shooting was deemed self-defense and no investigation launched, though the deceased's mother received 135,000 DM in compensation.^[154]^[155]^[156]^[157]
1972-07-02	N.N.	22	Nürnberg	Bayern	A burglar was shot by police while breaking into a garden house. The offending officer stated the burglar had attacked him with an iron bar and claimed self-defense.^[148]
1972-07-04	Duifhuis, Paul Theodor	24	Duisburg	Nordrhein-Westfalen	A police patrol attempted to stop Theo Duifhuis (also Theo Doifhuis) for a traffic violation, causing him to flee. When he was eventually stopped and ordered to raise his hands by police officer Werner Terholt, he took his hand from a pocket and was shot, because the officer felt threatened.^[158]^[159]
1972-07-25	N.N.		München	Bayern	A burglar was shot by police because the officer claimed to have seen an unspecified weapon in his hand.^[148]
1972-07-XX	N.N.		Frankfurt am Main	Hessen	Two U.S. Army soldiers were seen trying to start their car while drunk. Police ordered the men to exit the vehicle, after which the officers opened fire, killing one of the men, who was African-American. The shooting was claimed as self-defense because the deceased had bent down to pull at a shoelace.^[148]
1972-09-06	Hamid, Afif Ahmed		Fürstenfeldbruck	Bayern	Munich massacre: During 1972 Olympic Games, eight members of the Black September Organization stormed the Olympic Village quarters of the Israeli Olympic team, killing two people and taking the remaining nine hostage. The terrorists demanded the release of hundreds of detainees from Israeli prison for their safety. Negotiations and a rescue effort at the village failed. Police attempted to secure the hostages at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield as their captors were there for a getaway plane, but the ensuing shootout resulted in the deaths of five of the terrorists by police marksmen, and the deaths of all the hostages and one police officer by the BSO militants. Three of the terrorists were arrested, but exchanged for the hostages of the Lufthansa Flight 615 hijacking a month later.
	Thaa, Ahmed Chic
	Afif, Luttif	27 or 35
	Jawad, Kahlid	18
	Nazzal, Yusuf	35
1972-10-24/25	N.N.		Kulmbach	Bayern	An off-duty police officer killed his wife's lover with his service pistol after catching them in a sex act in his car. The officer turned himself in and was charged with murder.^[160]
1972-10-25	N.N.		Rosenheim	Bayern	A police officer killed his father-in-law with his service pistol following an extensive dispute between the two men. The officer turned himself in and was charged with murder.^[160]
1972-11-25	Widera, Viktor	58	Frankfurt am Main	Hessen	On 24 November, a man dressed up as a cleaner entered Frankfurt Airport and loitered on the airfield. Coincidentally, an Air Canada DC‐8 bound for Montréal and Toronto was being emptied of passengers after a female passenger made a complaint about "suspicious looks" of other occupants and demanded all luggage be searched. Using the opportunity, the man rushed aboard and ordered the crew to leave the plane at gunpoint with a revolver, taking 31-year-old stewardess Margit Sommer as a hostage. During the 24-hour stand-off, the hostage-taker demanded the release of all Czechoslovak spies, German anarchist and communist terrorists, Lubomir Adamica, who was the ringleader of the 1972 Slov-Air hijacking [de], well as for "the bells of the Frankfurt Cathedral to be rung", otherwise threatening to blow up the plane. He was shot in the heart by SEK forces, to the applause of onlookers. It was noted that the perpetrator had a history of mental illness, had no known political activities and, contrary to initial assumptions and reports, was not of Czech origin (he was born in Beuthen, Upper Silesia which is now Poland).^[161]^[162]^[163]^[164]^[165]
1972-11-28	Didwiller, Fritz	48	Waiblingen/Urbach	Baden-Württemberg	Two men were caught attempting to break open a vending machine and fled from police. An officer fatally shot the elder of the two suspects in the back and injured the 18-year-old accomplice with two gunshots. The officer claimed self-defense and that he believed that the pipe wrench held by the deceased was a firearm. He also insisted that he only intended to fire one shot, but that the safety mechanism of his Beretta submachine gun failed, which was only confirmed in August 1973, when the manufacturer had already been cleared of responsibility.^[153]^[159]^[166]^[167]