Chris Gueffroy’s name is a mere footnote now, but Gueffroy has the dubious honor of having been the last of the hundreds of people killed while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall separating communist East Germany from the free sector of the city. Gueffroy was shot 10 times in a maze of concrete and razor wire, just a stone’s throw from freedom.

Gueffroy’s life is lost to history now, but we do have one small clue as to what kind of man he was. “In his passport photo, he wore a small hoop earring, an act of nonconformity in a country that prized conformity above all else,” Michael Moynihan said in a recent article for Reason magazine.