Between Propaganda and Memory: Reinhold Huhn, Egon Schultz, and the Question of Justice

A lecture by Dietmar Arnold (Berliner Unterwelten e.V.) as part of “Rename?!”

Dietmar Arnold (Berliner Unterwelten e.V.) – Portraitfotografie von Dietmar Arnold.

“In both cases, a very young person lost their life, and for that reason, one could certainly have considered whether to retain the name Egon-Schultz-Straße in light of the events, just as Reinhold-Huhn-Straße was retained.” — Dietmar Arnold

Between 1948 and 1989, a total of eight GDR border guards lost their lives while on duty in Berlin, mostly in connection with escape attempts. In the GDR, many of them were portrayed as heroes: streets, schools, and other public buildings were named after them, and their deaths were presented as deliberate murders carried out by the West German government.

One of these border guards was Reinhold Huhn (1942–1962). In June 1962, Huhn was shot and killed by Rudolf Müller during the Müller family’s tunnel escape. In the late 1990s, Müller was initially convicted of manslaughter; in an appeal hearing in 2000, he was ultimately found guilty of murder and sentenced to one year’s probation. In its ruling, the court cited the “overriding importance of the legal right to life.”

Egon Schultz (1943–1964) was killed during an exchange of gunfire with escape helpers, accidentally struck by a colleague’s gunfire. Although this was known, for decades the SED government blamed Schultz’s death on the West Berlin escape aiders, characterizing it as a treacherous murder. His alleged killer never learned that the fatal shot did not come from him.

On August 12, 1966, Strelitzer Straße and Schützenstraße were renamed Egon-Schultz-Straße and Reinhold-Huhn-Straße. After reunification, the goal was to eliminate, above all, “street names from the period 1945 to 1989 that were named after active opponents of democracy and advocates of Stalinist tyranny, the GDR regime, and other unjust communist regimes.” The streets named after the slain border guards were also renamed back to their original names.

Dietmar Arnold, chairman of the association Berliner Unterwelten e.V., discusses the events that led to the deaths of the two border guards and provides historical context for both the renamings of 1966 and the subsequent renaming back to their original names.Translated with DeepL

Price info: Admission is free; no registration is required.

Next date:

• Date Thursday, 20/August/2026 18:00 bis 20:00
• Venue Mitte Museum
• Address Pankstraße 47, 13357 Berlin-Wedding