A main target of the 100 miles Berlin is the remembrance of the people who have lost their lives at the Berlin wall. This year, the 100 miles Berlin will commemorate Jörg Hartmann, the youngest victim of the Berlin wall.

Jörg Hartmann was only 10 years old, when he, together with his 13-years-old friend Lothar Schleusener, was shot by a border guard at the border area in Berlin-Treptow. Tomorrow, it is the 58th anniversary of Jörg’s death.

Jörg lived with his two younger siblings in Berlin-Friedrichshain at his grandma’s. In the morning of the 14th March 1966, Jörg did not return home. He had left the house to get fresh bread from the bakery. When his class teacher heard in the radio news about two children being shot at the border area, she became suspicious. Ursula Mörs learned from Jörg’s class mates that Jörg wanted to go to his father who lived in West-Berlin. Worried that Jörg could be one of the children that had been shot at the border area, his teacher went to see Jörg’s grandmother. She explained to Ursula Mörs that Jörg had asked under a pretext for his father’s address in West-Berlin before he disappeared.

Two weeks after his death, Jörg’s grandmother received the official message from the East-Berlin attorney general that Jörg had died by drowning. His dead body would have been found in a lake in Berlin Köpenick on 17th March.

For many years, the deaths of Jörg Hartmann and his friend Lothar were obfuscated by the GDR-regime. Only in the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin wall, it was revealed that Jörg and his friend have been casualties of the GDR border system.