Erna Kelm

Erna Kelm in the memorial window of the Berlin Wall Memorial

Erna Kelm (born July 21, 1908 in Frankfurt an der Oder ; † June 11, 1962 in Berlin ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . At the age of 53, she drowned while trying to escape from the GDR in the Havel , over which she wanted to swim to West Berlin .

Life

Erna Kelm was born in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1908. She had at least two children. In 1947 , at the age of 39, she went from Potsdam to Lübeck without permission to work as a nurse. A year later, in 1948, she moved on to West Berlin and accepted a job as a nurse's helper in a children's home. Through her visits to her children living in Potsdam, she was suspected of working for a secret service, which led to an interrogation in December 1953. Then she moved back to Potsdam. There she last worked as a home manager.

A fisherman found her body floating on the morning of June 11, 1962 near Berlin-Zehlendorf in the Havel. She wore a swim belt under her clothes and her documents in a waterproof pouch. The border ran at the site in the middle of the river and separated Berlin-Zehlendorf from Potsdam. The investigation of the West Berlin police ended with the result that Erna Kelm drowned while trying to escape and that there was no fault of anyone else. Her body was transferred to Potsdam at the request of the relatives. There were several press reports about her death in West Berlin, but they received less attention in general coverage of the political situation at the time. Erna Kelm was included in the official list of the victims of the Berlin Wall and named in a brochure of the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues on the occasion of the first anniversary of the construction of the Wall.

literature

• Christine Brecht : Erna Kelm , in: The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Links, Berlin 2009, pp. 93–94.

Web links

• Portrait of Erna Kelm at chronik-der-mauer.de