Gedenkstätte Günter Litfin

Berlin


Just a few days after construction began on the Berlin Wall in August 1961, the 24-year-old tailor Günter Litfin became the first victim of the East German border guards' shoot-to-kill order as he tried to swim to freedom across a 40m-wide canal. This small exhibit in an old border watchtower keeps his legacy alive. Tours (in German, registration by phone required) take place at 3pm on Saturday.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Berlin attractions

2. Museum für Naturkunde

0.5 MILES

Fossils and minerals don’t quicken your pulse? Well, how about Tristan, the T-Rex? His skeleton is among the best-preserved in the world and, along with…

3. Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum

0.56 MILES

This Charité Hospital–run museum chronicles 300 years of medical history in an anatomical theatre, a pathologist's dissection room, a laboratory and a…

4. Brecht-Weigel Gedenkstätte

0.67 MILES

Playwright Bertolt Brecht lived in this apartment from 1953 until his death in 1956. Tours (in German) take you inside his office, a large library, and…

5. Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof I

0.71 MILES

This compact 18th-century cemetery is the place of perpetual slumber for a veritable roll-call of famous Germans, including the philosophers Hegel and…

6. Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer

0.77 MILES

For an insightful primer on the Berlin Wall, visit this outdoor memorial, which extends for 1.4km along Bernauer Strasse and integrates an original…

8. Bundeskanzleramt

0.94 MILES

The Federal Chancellery, Germany’s ‘White House’, is a sparkling, modern compound designed by Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank and consisting of two…