Abstract
After the reunification in 1990, Germany started prosecuting persons responsible for the inhumane border-policing regime in the former GDR, which had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of citizens attempting to flee the country. This article focuses on the conviction of a former GDR private border guard for homicide. The border guard brought the case before the German Constitutional Court, and later the Strasbourg Court, claming that his conviction violated the prohibition of retroactive punishment. Neither complaint succeeded. The article argues that, whilst formally upholding the absolute prohibition of retroactive punishment in Article 7 ECHR, the Strasbourg Court held in essence, as had the German Constitutional Court, that the prohibition of retroactivity had to yield to material justice in case of manifest violations of fundamental human rights, such as the right to life.