Carsten Kühlmorgen

Carsten Kühlmorgen
Personal information
Surname:	Carsten Kühlmorgen
Nation:	German Democratic Republic ( formerly ) Germany
Swimming style (s) :	Freestyle, butterfly
Society:	SC Karl-Marx-Stadt
Birthday:	2nd October 1970
Place of birth:	Karl Marx City
Date of death:	June 7, 2003
Place of death:	Kabul
Medal table

Carsten Kühlmorgen (born October 2, 1970 in Karl-Marx-Stadt , † June 7, 2003 in Kabul ) was a German swimmer and soldier. He emerged from the GDR swimming championships in 1990 as the last GDR champion over 200 meters butterfly and was one of the first German soldiers to be killed in a suicide attack while the Bundeswehr was deployed abroad .

Life

Kühlmorgen spent his early childhood in Karl-Marx-Stadt, but then moved to Kirchberg with his mother after his parents separated . In 1977 he started swimming training. Because of his great talent, he went to the district's focus club , SC Karl-Marx-Stadt . He was a four-time winner of the 1985 children's and youth spartakiad and the following year he won the gold medal at the European Junior Swimming Championships in West Berlin with the 4 x 200 meter freestyle relay. Kühlmorgen trained 35 hours per week; his specialty courses were 400 meters and 1500 meters freestyle. On the latter distance, he reached third place at the GDR swimming championships in 1986 in East Berlin and in 1988 in Potsdam. At the last GDR swimming championships in Dresden in 1990, however, he won the 200-meter butterfly. His trainer, who looked after him from 1982 to 1991, explained this with the fact that Kühlmorgen “preferred butterfly series rather than freestyle series” in training.

In the early 1990s, Kühlmorgen did an apprenticeship as a car mechanic . After his company went bankrupt, he had to reorient himself. He ended his career as a swimmer in 1992 and began training with an insurance company. Soon afterwards he switched to the Bundeswehr , where he belonged to the EloKa telecommunications force . He lived privately in Marienberg and most recently served with the rank of sergeant major with the 320 telecommunications regiment in Frankenberg (Eder) in Hesse . At the end of 2002 he was transferred to Afghanistan for a six-month assignment abroad as part of his unit . In 2003 his unit went into the Electronic Warfare Battalion 932 .

Death in the attack in Kabul in 2003

On Whit Monday, June 7, 2003, the last day of his six-month deployment as part of the ISAF in Afghanistan , Kühlmorgen started his journey home. To do this, he drove with other soldiers in a bus from the Kabul Camp Warehouse , a German base at the time, through the city to Kabul Airport . At 7:58 a.m., a suicide bomber rammed the bus in a taxi that had a bomb inside. In the explosion and the subsequent fire, Kühlmorgen and three of his comrades from Hesse fell, and 29 other people were injured. It was by far the worst incident of the year by the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan, which is also the first fatal attack on German soldiers since the end of the Second World War . This makes Kühlmorgen one of the first Germans to be killed in an attack in this country. His body was transferred to Germany on June 10, 2003, where a memorial service was still taking place in the military part of the destination Cologne / Bonn airport . Relatives and friends said goodbye to him at another funeral service on June 16 in Marienberg. He was later buried in Munich near where his sister lived.

Commemoration

Memorial plaques commemorating Carsten Kühlmorgen and his fallen comrades are in Camp Warehouse in Kabul and at the entrance to the Burgwald barracks in Frankenberg (Eder). Kühlmorgen is also mentioned by name in the Bundeswehr Memorial in the Bendler Block in Berlin and in the Forest of Remembrance .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ON: Carsten: Last rest in Munich. In: sz-online.de, Chemnitz, June 11, 2003, accessed on November 23, 2013.
2. ↑ ON: Ex-swimming star dies in Kabul. Killed soldier was one of the last GDR champions. In: tagesspiegel.de, Berlin, June 16, 2003, accessed on November 23, 2013.
3. ↑ Hauke ​​Goos: Life after death. In: Der Spiegel 25/2008, June 16, 2008.
4. ^ Susanne Koelbl: Die for Kabul. In: Der Spiegel 47/2006, November 20, 2006.
5. ↑ Manfred S. Jerabek: … to defend the German people bravely! Our dead soldiers and police officers in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2011. epubli, Berlin 2012, p. 36 ( digitized version ).
6. ^ ON: Kabul (Camp Warehouse), Afghanistan. In: denkmalprojekt.org, Kabul 2008, accessed on November 23, 2013.
7. ^ ON: Deceased members of the armed forces named in the memorial of the armed forces. ( Memento of April 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 193 kB) In: bundeswehr.de, as of April 2016, accessed on July 3, 2019.
8. ^ R. Krukenberg: Geltow (Bundeswehr), community Schwielowsee, district Potsdam-Mittelmark, Brandenburg. Online project Fallen Memorials, Thilo C. Agthe editorial team, November 22, 2014, accessed on July 3, 2019 .