Dieter Beilig

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Dieter Beilig (born September 5, 1941 in Berlin ; † October 2, 1971 there ) was a West Berlin activist against the Berlin Wall and a victim of the GDR's border troops .

Life

The wall at the Brandenburg Gate. In the back left the studio building of the Akademie der Künste, behind it the Hotel Adlon. In 1971 the academy building was enclosed by a whitewashed wall. The windows of the base of the border troops, where Beilig was shot, were to the rear (photo from autumn 1961)

Beilig has protested against the Berlin Wall in a variety of ways since the first days of its existence . Among other things, he set up the first wooden crosses to commemorate the victims of the Berlin Wall . He founded the Peter Fechter Memorial Movement .

In 1962 he tried to damage the wall with explosives . He was then sentenced to a three-week youth penalty for violating the Explosives Act. After serving them, he organized further protests against the wall.

In 1964 the Ministry for State Security succeeded in seizing Beilig and bringing him to justice in East Berlin . On December 11, 1964, he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for " subversive agitation and terror" . After two years he was deported to West Berlin. There he continued his protests.

On October 2, 1971, at around 9.15 a.m., Dieter Beilig climbed the wall near the Brandenburg Gate . He ran about 30 meters on the top of the wall and called to the GDR border guards that both parts of Germany should be united. When West Berlin police tried to pull him down to them , he jumped down on the east side and was arrested by members of the border troops. After an initial search in an outbuilding of the Brandenburg Gate, border guards brought Beilig to their command point in the building of the Academy of the Arts, one hundred meters away . During the journey, Beilig made an unsuccessful attempt to escape. At the command point he was locked in a room with two armed guards. When he tried to open the unguided window, an officer shot him backwards. An ambulance brought Beilig, who was probably already dead, to the People's Police Hospital .

The Ministry for State Security (MfS) initially assumed that the incident would be made public from the west. It faked a case of self-defense, which also included putting fingerprints of Beilig's body on the service weapon of a border soldier. When it became clear that the fear was unfounded because Beilig's shooting had not been noticed in the West, MfS employees covered up all his traces, burned his body and buried it in an unknown location. Beilig's family was told he was missing.

After the German reunification , the fate of Beilig came to light as a result of the investigation into wall runners. The perpetrator died. A trial against three former members of the MfS, who were accused of having falsified evidence , ended with acquittals in June 1999.

The renovation of the exhibition rooms at Palais Arnim in 2003 made the death of Dieter Beilig known to a wider public. Since then, floor markings in the re-exposed throne room of Kaiser Wilhelm II have shown the room in which Beilig was shot.

literature

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Volker Müller: In 1971 a GDR officer shot and killed a wall jumper from the West in the Academy of the Arts. Then evidence was falsified, witnesses manipulated and the dead man was almost forgotten: The end of Dieter Beilig . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on April 9, 2017]).
  2. ^ MfS proposal to conceal the circumstances of death by Dieter Beilig, October 2, 1971
personal data
SURNAME Beilig, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German casualty from the Berlin Wall
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 2nd October 1971
Place of death Berlin