Borderland Incident

GERMANY Borderland Incident

After a happy Christmas Eve visit with their grownup children, Mr. & Mrs. Willi Fehlauer were returning to their Berlin home in the early hours of Christmas morning. Millions of other people around the world were doing the same thing, but the difference in the Fehlauers' case was that their home lay in the Edelhofdamm, a street dividing West and East Berlin. The Fehlauers had almost reached their lodgings when three Russian soldiers guarding the end of the street took them into custody for no apparent reason. Old Mrs. Fehlauer fainted. Willi Fehlauer, a quick-witted former Wehrmacht colonel, told the Russians that it was a heart attack. Said he: "You don't want a dead woman on your hands; let us take her back." The Russians hesitated, but let Fehlauer have his way, following behind.

In his lodging-house apartment, Fehlauer quickly laid his wife down and slammed the door in the soldiers' faces. A neighbor, hearing angry Russian voices, called the West Berlin police. A patrol car swung into the Edelhofdamm, and out leaped Patrolman Herbert Bauer, his Browning drawn. The Russians took cover behind an oak tree outside the apartment house. One of the Russians dropped Bauer with four submachine gun slugs. Over his dead body that Christmas morning, police and Russians fought for 20 minutes until the carbines of the West's riot squad drove the Russians back into their own zone.

The scuffle burgeoned into an international incident. The French (in whose sector the shooting occurred) protested to the Russians, who sputtered back. The senate of West Berlin met in a special session to call a public "demonstration of grief" and Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter announced that he would attend Patrolman Bauer's funeral.