Burkhard Niering
Burkhard Niering (born September 1, 1950 , † January 5, 1974 in Berlin ) was a people's police officer and the only known victim of the Berlin Wall from the ranks of the people's police. He tried to escape via the Friedrichstrasse / Zimmerstrasse checkpoint on the Berlin sector border and was shot dead.
Life
Niering was a candidate for the People's Police and was stationed in Basdorf , north of Berlin . On the evening of January 5, 1974, while on duty, he went unnoticed to the checkpoint on Friedrichstrasse , the so-called Checkpoint Charlie between the Soviet and American sectors. In uniform and armed with a submachine gun, he took an employee of the passport control unit (PKE) hostage in order to be able to cross the sector border. At first the armed MfS employees did not shoot at the checkpoint; the people's policeman then had to bend down to get under the last barrier; two employees of the MfS used the resulting distance between Niering and his hostage to fire several shots. Burkhard Niering was hit and died of gunshot wounds in hospital about an hour later.
Niering's attempt to escape is part of the multimedia city tour Walk the Wall in Berlin. It is told from the perspective of the State Security , which produced an educational film for border guards from the incident. A memorial cross for Niering was erected in 1991 in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene.
Niering's mother, Ursula Jünemann, opened the freedom memorial at the former Checkpoint Charlie on October 31, 2004 together with Sergei Khrushchev . There was a cross with a photo of Niering on it.
literature
- Christopher Hilton: The wall: the people's story . Sutton, 2001, p. 218 ( ISBN 0-7509-2756-9 )
- Hans-Hermann Hertle : The fall of the wall: the unintended self-dissolution of the SED state . Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996, p. 189 ( ISBN 3-531-12927-9 )
- Filmer / Schwan: Victims of the Wall , Bertelsmann, 1991, p. 139 ( ISBN 3-570-02319-2 )
- Heiner Sauer, Hans Plumeyer: The Salzgitter Report . Bechtle Verlag, Esslingen 1991, ISBN 3-7628-0497-4 , p. 302
Web links
- Brief portrait on www.chronik-der-mauer.de
- Photo of the memorial plaque for Burkhard Niering
Individual evidence
- ↑ Laura Wieland: On to the history round . In: "Der Tagesspiegel" from April 22, 2008, ZDB -ID 125917-9 .
- ^ Ingeborg Siggelkow: Memory, Culture and Politics , Volume I., 2006, ISBN 978-3-86596-057-3 , p. 115.
- ↑ Anna Reimann: Wall memorial in the tourist hype . In: "Der Spiegel" of October 31, 2004, ISSN 0038-7452 .
- ↑ The wall is back. Controversial memorial opened at the checkpoint . In: "Der Tagesspiegel" from November 1, 2004, ZDB -ID 125917-9 .
- ↑ Uwe Aulich and Anne Vorbringer: 1065 crosses remember victims of the Wall . In: "Berliner Zeitung" of November 1, 2004, ISSN 0947-174X .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Niering, Burkhard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German police officer and victim of the Berlin Wall |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 1, 1950 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th January 1974 |
| Place of death | Berlin |