Johannes Lange (victim of the wall)

Johannes Lange (born December 17, 1940 in Dresden , † April 9, 1969 in East Berlin ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . Members of the GDR border troops shot him while trying to escape.

Life

Johannes Lange was born in Dresden. After finishing school, he completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter and volunteered for the People's Police . He had to give up the latter when he became a criminal. In 1959 he fled to the Federal Republic of Germany, but returned before the Wall was built in 1961, allegedly to avoid military service. He was sentenced to one year imprisonment in 1962 for illegally leaving the republic. Following the sentence, he moved in with his girlfriend and her children. He later had his own child with her. In the summer of 1968 he separated from his girlfriend and was drafted into the National People's Army . He decided to try to escape again. The first attempt to escape across the border between Czechoslovakia and the Federal Republic of Germany failed. In court he was banned from traveling and given a suspended sentence of 15 months. He was last seen in Dresden on March 30, 1969.

On April 9, 1969, border guards observed Johannes Lange as he scouted the border area in Berlin-Mitte at the Bethanien Hospital . He left the premises and returned to Adalbertstrasse around 10 p.m. Having got over the hinterland wall and the anti-tank barriers, he set off the alarm when he touched the signal fence. From two watchtowers, eight border guards fired a total of 148 shots at Johannes Lange, who was running towards the last wall. Five bullets hit him from behind in the head, neck and thigh. He died on the spot.

In order to hide the body from view from West Berlin , the border guards brought it behind one of the watchtowers. Several projectiles hit apartments and a hospital in West Berlin. There were no injuries there. In the days that followed, the border guards received awards and promotions.

The central registration office in Salzgitter documented the shots. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she handed the case over to the responsible authorities in Berlin. The resulting investigations led to a wall rifle trial in which one of the shooters, who was 19 years old at the time of the offense , was sentenced to a youth penalty of 15 months on probation by the Berlin district court for attempted manslaughter . The other shooters could not be proven that they had targeted Johannes Lange. The convicted wall gunner was the only one of the accused wall gunmen who was willing to make statements about the incident. He was also one of those who did not receive any distinction, and the records of the trial also show that he was mentally ill and had to seek medical care.

literature

• Hans-Hermann Hertle, Maria Nooke : The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989. A biographical manual . Ch. Links, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-517-1 .

Web links

• Portrait of Johannes Lange at chronik-der-mauer.de