Horst Plischke

Horst Plischke (born July 12, 1939 in Braunau , † November 19, 1962 in Berlin ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . He drowned while trying to escape from the GDR .

Life

Horst Plischke decided on the morning of November 19, 1962 to flee from Potsdam to West Berlin. North of the Glienicke Bridge , he went into the water of the Havel and tried to swim through it. He was discovered by border guards positioned nearby at around 3:30 a.m. They fired several shots at the fugitive without hitting him. A search operation subsequently initiated by the GDR border troops on the banks of the Havel was unsuccessful. Four months later, on March 16, 1963, two border guards discovered a body on the bank of the Jungfernsee . On the body they found Horst Plischke's identification papers and his draft order for military service with the National People's Army. After the autopsy, the GDR authorities found that Horst Plischke drowned without being hit by a bullet. The authorities determined that the refugee shot at on November 19 of the previous year was Horst Plischke. They took the dead watch's stopped watch as an indication.

There were press reports in West Berlin about the shots on the morning of November 19, 1962 at Jungfernsee, but no details such as the name of the refugee emerged. The death of Horst Plischke remained unknown both in public and with the West Berlin authorities. Only after German reunification were documents discovered about the incident in 1994. The public prosecutor's investigations were discontinued in 1995 with the result that there was no third-party fault.

literature

• Christine Brecht : Horst Plischke , in: The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Links, Berlin 2009, pp. 115–116.

Web links

• Portrait of Horst Plischke at chronik-der-mauer.de