Anton Waltz
Anton Walzer (born April 27, 1902 in Weiler near Ravensburg , † October 8, 1962 in Berlin ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . Members of the GDR border troops shot him while trying to escape from Friedrichshain to Kreuzberg in the Spree near the Oberbaum Bridge .
Life
Anton Walzer was born in Weiler near Ravensburg. He learned the job of a painter. In the mid-1920s he married his first wife, with whom he had two children. You lived in Berlin-Weißensee . After 1945 he married again and in 1955 decided to leave the GDR and go to West Germany. Because of a serious illness of his mother-in-law, he returned to East Berlin in 1958. As a returnees he was considered “politically unreliable” in the GDR and was disadvantaged when it came to the allocation of a job. He was allowed to start again in his previous company, but in a less qualified position. Dissatisfied with his situation, he began to drink alcohol frequently. His second marriage fell apart.
Attempted escape
On the evening of October 8, 1962, he went to the bank of the Spree near the Oberbaum Bridge to swim to West Berlin. He sneaked onto a barge moored there and went into the water around 10:15 p.m. Border guards discovered the fugitive and opened fire on him. They also met the West Berlin Gröbenufer . A policeman standing there started shooting at the border guards. Meanwhile Anton Walzer swam on towards the other bank. One of the 18 shots fired by the border guard Arno O. hit the swimmer in the head. Anton Walzer died immediately and sank into the water.
The border guards looked for the corpse in a boat, shouting "Murderer, murderer" from the Kreuzberg bank, without finding it in the dark. The next morning the East Berlin water police and fire brigade arrived with divers. When they found the dead person around 8:30 a.m., they positioned a rescue boat so that the rescue from West Berlin could not be seen or photographed. This tactic was ordered after the death of Peter Fechter in order to avoid negative headlines. Protests against the border regime took place on the bank for several days.
The GDR authorities presented the incident as an armed provocation. The border guards involved had tactically acted correctly. After German reunification, there were proceedings against the wall riflemen , which ended on August 12, 1994 with a sentence of 18 months' suspended prison sentence by the Berlin Regional Court .
literature
- Christine Brecht : Anton Walzer , in: The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Links, Berlin 2009, pp. 112–114.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Waltz, Anton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German casualty from the Berlin Wall |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 27, 1902 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamlet near Ravensburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 8, 1962 |
| Place of death | Berlin |