Berlin · DE
True Crime Berlin
Assassins, spies, heists and a show trial - nine real cases in the heart of Mitte.
What's the walk about?
Welcome to Berlin, a city that has reinvented itself more often than any other capital in Europe — royal residence, Weimar metropolis, divided Cold War frontier, reunited hipster heartland. But every version of Berlin produced its own crimes, and in the historic heart of Mitte they lie layered on top of each other: pistol shots at Prussian kings, a Stasi officer defecting through a border checkpoint, a show trial in a university lecture hall, a gold coin wheeled out of a museum, a fur coat that toppled a mayor. On this walk we follow the trail of Berlin's most notorious real cases, standing on the exact spots where they happened.
What you'll see
-
1
The Spy Who Walked Out - Tränenpalast
Museum
Beneath the glass and steel of the Palace of Tears, the exit hall of the Friedrichstraße border crossing, Stasi first lieutenant Werner Stiller walked out of East Berlin on 19 January 1979 with a bundle of secret files, setting off the biggest spy scandal of the Cold War.
Read the full story → -
2
Shots on the Boulevard - Unter den Linden
Boulevard
On the afternoon of 2 June 1878, from a second floor window of the house then numbered Unter den Linden 18, Dr. Karl Eduard Nobiling fired a shotgun into the open carriage of 81 year old Kaiser Wilhelm I, the second assassination attempt on this boulevard in three weeks.
Read the full story → -
3
The Philosopher's Show Trial - Humboldt-Universität
University
Behind the marble Humboldt brothers at Unter den Linden 6, philosophy professor Wolfgang Harich drafted a reform platform that called for Walter Ulbricht's removal. The Stasi arrested him on 29 November 1956, and a show trial handed him ten years in prison.
Read the full story → -
4
The 100-Kilo Coin - Bode-Museum
Museum
Beneath the grand copper dome of the Bode Museum lies one of the world's largest coin collections, and in the early hours of 27 March 2017 thieves climbed in from the railway viaduct behind it, carried off a 100 kilogram Canadian gold coin worth some 3.75 million euros, and wheeled it into the night in a wheelbarrow.
Read the full story → -
5
The Unsolved Attack - Neues Museum
Museum
On the Day of German Unity, 3 October 2020, someone walked unnoticed through the Neues Museum, the Pergamonmuseum and the Alte Nationalgalerie and splashed at least 70 ancient sarcophagi, sculptures and paintings with an oily liquid. It was the worst attack on Berlin's state museums since the Second World War, and nobody has ever been charged.
Read the full story → -
6
Two Shots at the King - Humboldt Forum
Palace
Behind the freshly carved baroque facade of the Humboldt Forum lies the footprint of the Berlin Palace, where on the morning of 26 July 1844 a dismissed small town mayor fired both barrels of a pistol into the royal carriage of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. It was the first assassination attempt on a Prussian king, and Berlin answered it with a song.
Read the full story → -
7
The Fur Coat Affair - Rotes Rathaus
Town hall
Berlin's red brick city hall was the stage for the Weimar Republic's biggest corruption scandal: in 1929 the Sklarek brothers' invoice fraud cost the city over ten million Reichsmark, and a discounted fur coat for the Lord Mayor's wife toppled Gustav Böss himself.
Read the full story → -
8
A Hand in Brass - Rathausstraße
Memorial
A small brass plate set into the pavement in front of the Rathauspassagen at Rathausstraße 13 carries the cast of a young man's hand: here, in the early hours of 14 October 2012, twenty year old Jonny K. was beaten to death for stepping in to help a friend.
Read the full story → -
9
Buddha of the Murder Squad - Alexanderplatz
Memorial
Where the pink Alexa mall now stands rose the Rote Burg, the block sized red brick Polizeipraesidium of 1890, from whose first floor the 120 kilo Kriminalkommissar Ernst Gennat, nicknamed Buddha, invented the modern homicide squad in 1926 and hunted Berlin's serial killers.
Read the full story →