Klaus Kratzel

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Klaus Kratzel (born March 3, 1940 in Berlin ; † August 8, 1965 there ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . While trying to overcome the wall between the districts of Pankow and Wedding , he was hit by an S-Bahn in the border area and fatally injured.

Life

Klaus Kratzel was born in Berlin and grew up in the Weißensee district . After finishing school, he completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer and then worked in this profession. He married in April 1961 after a daughter had previously been born. A few days after the Wall was built , Klaus Kratzel decided on August 18, 1961, at the urging of his in-laws, to flee to West Berlin with them, his wife and daughter . Like many other refugees, the family first moved to the Marienfelde emergency reception center , and only one year later did they move to their own apartment. A short time later the second daughter was born. In 1965, Kratzel ran into financial difficulties several times, which led to a dispute with his wife. He then left his wife, drove to the Friedrichstrasse train station and applied for re-entry into the GDR at the border crossing there . After the mandatory stay in a reception center for returnees in East Berlin, he regretted this decision and decided to flee again to West Berlin. This should be done using the tracks at Bornholmer Straße S-Bahn station . The local S-Bahn line ran between the Pankow and Schönhauser Allee stations on a section near the Bösebrücke directly through the border area. On August 8, 1965, a S-Bahn railcar driver reported at 11.30 p.m. that there was a male corpse in the tunnel near Görschbrücke. Investigations by the GDR border troops revealed that it was Klaus Kratzel, who was most likely hit by a S-Bahn in the tunnel and fatally injured while he was fleeing. On his way to this point he had apparently succeeded in overcoming the hinterland wall unnoticed. The body was found about 500 meters from the last border wall to West Berlin.

Since the investigations were classified as military secrets by the authorities of the GDR, the relatives only learned that he was fatally injured in a train accident. Since the family knew his intentions to flee, there was suspicion for many years that Klaus Kratzel had been shot at the Berlin Wall. Only after the German reunification did the relatives get access to the investigation files. In 1991, investigations by the Berlin public prosecutor confirmed the cause of death as a result of the accident.

Today at him at the memorial of remembrance window of the Berlin Wall Memorial remembers: in one of the windows there is a picture of him.

background

  • About 20 minutes after finding the body of Klaus Kratzel, the refugee Manfred L. managed to overcome the border fortifications to West Berlin just a few hundred meters further south.
  • The S-Bahn tunnel in question no longer exists today; After German reunification, the line leading from Pankow was re-threaded into Bornholmer Strasse station, with a new tunnel being built immediately north of the Bösebrücke.

See also

  • Dietmar Schulz , was hit and fatally injured by an S-Bahn during an attempt to escape in 1963 at almost the same spot, a few meters north of the S-Bahn tunnel in question.
  • Volker Frommann died in 1973 while trying to escape as a result of jumping out of a moving S-Bahn in the same section of the border.
  • Thomas Taubmann was run over and fatally injured by a moving freight train while attempting to escape in the same section of the border in 1981.
  • Ingolf Diederichs got stuck on the train while trying to escape in the same section of the border when he jumped from a moving S-Bahn and was fatally injured.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ disposal of the public prosecutor at the Court of Berlin (Az. 27/2 Js 197/91)
personal data
SURNAME Kratzel, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German casualty from the Berlin Wall
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1965
Place of death Berlin