Hartmut Richter

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Memorial plaque , Hauptstrasse 8, in Berlin-Rummelsburg

Hartmut Richter (* 1948 in Glindow ) is a former GDR refugee and escape helper.

Career

Hartmut Richter was born in Glindow (Brandenburg) in 1948. His father was a fruit grower, his mother a housewife. After elementary school he went to advanced high school, where he sang in the choir. Shortly before graduating from high school, at the age of 18, he tried to cross the Czech-Austrian border into the west in January 1966. But the attempt to escape failed.

Hartmut Richter, who opposed the SED regime, was arrested, spent three months in custody and in May 1966 was sentenced to ten months probation by the Potsdam district court. Another attempt to escape at the end of August 1966 succeeds: Hartmut Richter swims near Dreilinden through the Teltow Canal to West Berlin, where he has to stay in the water for a long time. The escape experience shapes him all his life. Hartmut Richter travels the world as a ship steward until 1972. When he returned to West Berlin, the transit agreement between the Federal Republic and the GDR came into force. This makes it easier to hide refugees from the GDR in West German vehicles and bring them to the West via the transit routes.

In the same year Hartmut Richter, a refugee from the republic, was allowed to return to the GDR due to an amnesty . In 1973 an acquaintance asked him to look for a suitable escape helper for a friend from the GDR. Hartmut Richter decides to take over the escape assistance himself. His hometown Glindow is located directly on the Hanover-Berlin transit motorway, and the woman who is willing to flee is expected to wait for him in a shed on his parents' property, where he will pick her up and bring her to West Berlin in the trunk of his car. The plan works, the escape succeeds. This first escape aid will be followed by others. Hartmut Richter soon realizes that his client regards escape aid as a business and earns money from it.

He does not find this offensive, because preparing for an escape is time-consuming and the risk for the escape helper is high. However, the requested amounts of money seem disproportionately high to him and he does not take any further orders. Instead, Hartmut Richter independently helps friends and acquaintances to flee the GDR. He picks up the refugees in the established way in Glindow or at a bus stop near Finkenkrug.

While trying to bring his sister to West Germany, he was arrested in 1975 and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. In 1980 he was ransomed by the Federal Republic of Germany.

A total of 33 people reached the West with his help.

Richter has lived in Berlin since 1966. Today he works as a contemporary witness for the federal foundation for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship and also guides through the memorial in Hohenschönhausen. In 2012, he received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his work as an escape helper.

He has been a visitor advisor at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial since 1999 .

Honors

Web links

Commons : Hartmut Richter  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Judge, Hartmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German GDR refugee and escape helper
DATE OF BIRTH 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Glindow