Rainer Dellmuth

Rainer Dellmuth was born in Berlin in 1948 and comes from a Christian family. He was already targeted by the Stasi during his apprenticeship as a letterpress printer due to his political views. At the age of 18, he was arrested for an "attempted escape from the Republic" and "incitement to hatred endangering the state". In December 1967, the Berlin-Köpenick District Court sentenced him to one year in prison.

After his release from prison, he finished his apprenticeship and started to catch up on his A-levels. Even before completing his school education, he was arrested again in October 1971 for "attempted unlawful border crossing in a particularly serious case" and sentenced. He spent his time in prison in the remand and penal centres in Berlin, Gera, Cottbus and Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz). In November 1972, Rainer Dellmuth was released to West Germany as part of a prisoner release programme and subsequently lived in West Berlin.
He initially worked there as a proofreader in the publishing industry, then as a nurse and actor. He published two autobiographical books about his experiences in prison. Rainer Dellmuth has been guiding groups of visitors through the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial site from 1997 to 2024 and has been working for the Coordinating Office of Contemporary Witnesses at schools and educational institutions since 2011.