Mathias Rust

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Mathias Rust (2012)

Mathias Rust (born June 1, 1968 in Wedel ) became known as a German private pilot when he landed on May 28, 1987 in a Cessna 172 P aircraft on the Great Moskva Bridge not far from Red Square in Moscow .

education

Rust attended the Ernst Barlach secondary school in Wedel. He obtained his license from the Aero Club Hamburg after completing the required 40 flight hours from September 1985 to August 1986. He passed the exam flawlessly.

Flight history and landing

Approximate flight route

Rust, who withheld the plans for his flights from his family (“He suspects that they would advise against the daring flight”, wrote the star in August 1988) and only told his brother that he wanted “to Iceland, Scandinavia and Helsinki “, Chartered the Cessna 172 P from a Hamburg aviation club for a“ sightseeing flight over the North Sea ”and took off from Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel . During a stopover at the Uetersen airfield near Hamburg, he removed the rear seat bench of the four-seater aircraft to make room for additional fuel canisters and flew to the Faroe Islands on May 13, 1987. In the days that followed, Rust flew to Keflavík (Iceland), near Reykjavík , the location of the last American-Soviet summit meeting at which Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in October 1986. He then flew via Bergen (Norway) to Finland , where he landed at Malmi Airport in Helsinki on May 25, 1987. From there, on May 28, he flew over the Finnish-Soviet border towards Leningrad and from there followed the railway line to Moscow . He was captured by the Soviet air defense early on . There was no immediate defense reaction. According to the star , Rust turned off the transponder , put on a motorcycle helmet in the event of a crash and was mostly not in low flight, but only steered the aircraft down three times to a height of around 300 meters because of the threat of icing on the wings. Because of the good visibility and sufficient map material, he flew on sight. Programs broadcast on television showed MiG-23 fighter jets flying in parallel . He was so determined at this point that he would have dared anything, Rust later told Stern when asked how he would have acted if he had been asked to land by the Soviet fighter pilots. Decisions have not been made and Rust finally reached after about five and a half hour flight to Moscow, where he faced 18:15 several rounds over the Red Square and the Kremlin turned. Since there were too many people in the square, he landed at around 6:40 p.m. on the nearby Great Moscow Bridge ( 55 ° 44 ′ 52.4 ″  N , 37 ° 37 ′ 28.6 ″  E ) . He brought the plane to a stop in the parking lot for coaches on Wassili-Abhang ( Wassilewski spusk ) next to St. Basil's Cathedral directly on Red Square. Rust had leaflets with him, but he didn't distribute them after landing. He planned until the landing, not beyond that. After getting out of the car, he signed autographs and was given bread by a woman before he was arrested.

His landing in the Soviet capital on the Russian Border Guard's Day sparked international attention and led to domestic political consequences in the Soviet Union. Defense Minister Sergei Sokolow and the head of Soviet air defense , Alexander Koldunow , were made responsible by Mikhail Gorbachev and released "at his own request into well-deserved early retirement". In addition, Gorbachev used the event to part with over 300 other anti-perestroika and anti - glasnost generals. On July 6, 1987, Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker and Federal Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher paid a state visit to Moscow, which actually dealt with the subject of the dismantling of medium-range missiles in Europe, but which also addressed the Rust case. "I personally asked for understanding, but it was just as important to me that we do not interrupt a promising policy now," said Genscher later about his efforts in favor of Rust during this Moscow trip.

Rust's motivation for the flight and personality

After his flight, Rust said that he had taken it for “ world peace ” and “ understanding between our peoples ”, although he said on the other hand that he had taken the flight “for fun”. After his release from Soviet custody in August 1988, Rust told the weekly Stern , which acquired the world exclusive rights to report on Rust's flight, that German-Soviet relations remained close to his heart. He believes that through his ideas, through his peace and disarmament initiative, he has brought about a positive rethink in some people, says Rust. "The real consequences may only be seen much later," he told the star . In the same publication, Rust is described as follows:

"He is intelligent and highly sensitive, probably also mentally unstable ('You could be right there,' says Rust) and in a dangerous way unworldly because he is shielded from the 'outside world' by an over-concerned family ('I have to strongly disagree', says Rust). Mathias Rust can be best characterized by what he is not: not a thoughtless daredevil who endangers others for purely selfish purposes. And certainly not a 'hero' or 'role model' either. "

Rust does not appear like a daredevil daredevil, but rather like an "ambitious senior prime minister" or "administrative officer in the middle service", with his narrow shoulders, glasses and correct clothing, the star described him in August 1988. His expression was "anciently splayed". “I just use a chosen language,” Rust was quoted by Stern as saying. In the same report, Rust's mother is portrayed as saying that her son was "a little adult" from a very early age. Before his flight to Moscow, Rust worked out a 20-page plan for the “ideal society Lagonia”, “a better, nuclear-free world”. The main features of this manuscript were written in 1986. Among other things, it included elements such as referendums and grassroots democracy. The society that Rust is striving for is "not even rudimentarily realized in any country on earth", says Rust on the part of Stern . "Like his own family, their security and being for one another - this is how the state he dreams of should be," it continues.

Arrest and imprisonment

After landing, Rust was arrested by employees of the Soviet secret service KGB . He was not exposed to threats during the interrogation, and he was repeatedly asked who was behind it, Rust told Stern in August 1988, looking back. His trial in the Supreme Court began on September 2, 1987. He was sentenced to four years in a labor camp on September 4th for illegal entry, violating international air traffic regulations, and serious hooliganism . Landing on the bridge could have injured people, the judge said. The relationship with his guards had become "more and more cordial" in the course of the detention, said Rust later. "To the extent that they trusted me and trusted my intentions for peace." During his stay in prison, Rust read works by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud as well as books from the Perry-Rhodan series. He worked in the prison library repairing books. After serving a prison sentence of 14 months in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, he was released early from prison on August 3, 1988 following a pardon by the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Andrei Gromyko , and was ordered to leave the Soviet Union immediately leave and return to Germany. The then Federal Foreign Minister Genscher had, among other things, advocated Rust's early release during talks with his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze in Moscow and, in return, promised not to make a public announcement of Rust's release.

Later headlines

In 1989, Rust hit the headlines again. During his community service , he stabbed a student nurse with a knife in the DRK hospital in Rissen on November 23, 1989 because she did not want to kiss him. He hurt her badly. On April 19, 1991, Rust was sentenced to a 30-month prison term for attempted manslaughter in a minor case. After 15 months in prison, he was released early in October 1993. In 1994 he worked as a waiter in Moscow.

In 2001 he came to court again for stealing a cashmere sweater in a Hamburg department store and was only sentenced to a fine of 10,000 DM, which was later reduced to 600 DM on appeal. In 2003 Rust pursued the Internet project “Orion and Isis”, in which he presented himself as a “source of peace”. In November 2005, he was fined 1,500 euros for continuing fraud because he wrote bad checks to a Hamburg forwarding agent. Furthermore, he was forced by a court order to surrender unpaid furniture.

In 2007 - 20 years after the flight - an ARD television documentary by Gabriele Denecke and the book by Ed Stuhler, which was developed at the same time, reconstructed the historical consequences of the flight. To do this, they interviewed Mathias Rust, the then Foreign Ministers Eduard Schewardnadse and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the BND boss Hans-Georg Wieck and the Soviet military.

Rust lived in Berlin around 2007 and claims to have made his living by playing poker professionally. In 2009 he stated in an interview with the Rheinische Post that he had financially provided and no longer had to pursue any regular work. According to his own statements, he works as an organizer of boat and car races in Estonia and is still active as a professional poker player. In May 2012 he said he was living as a financial analyst in Switzerland and was planning to open a yoga school.

Further use of the aircraft

Rust's Cessna 172 Skyhawk II "D-ECJB" in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin

The Cessna 172 P ( registration D-ECJB), more precisely a F 172 P Skyhawk II, since it was built under license from Reims Aviation , was bought by a Munich cosmetics company for twice the estimated value after Rust's flight while it was still in the USSR Taken back to Germany on October 19, 1987. It was later sold to a Japanese club and exhibited in the open air in an amusement park in Utsunomiya, near Tokyo.

In October 2008 the Cessna was brought back to Berlin and restored. Since May 28, 2009 it has been on display as a permanent exhibit in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin . The Cessna 172 was later to become part of a long-term planned special exhibition entitled "Flying over the Iron Curtain".

Artistic preparation

After landing on Red Square, the group Modern Trouble released the song Fly to Moscow in 1987 , which reached number 57 in the German charts.

The fictional Mathias Rust airport was named after him in the NDR comedy series Stenkelfeld . At times there was also a Mathias Rust Fan Club on the Internet. In the film The Man Who Loved Yngve , the protagonist is the singer of a fictional punk band called Mathias Rust Band .

On October 21, 2010, a play created by the Hamburg collective Studio Braun entitled Rust - Ein deutscher Messiah was premiered at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg .

Web links

Commons : Mathias Rust  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He's just doing everything according to plan . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1987, pp. 126 ( online - June 1, 1987 , interview with Rust's flight instructor Siegfried Heise).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Erich Follath: "Since Moscow I've been a different person" . In: Stern . tape 33 . Hamburg August 11, 1988, p. 18-29 .
  3. ^ A b Mathias Rust - Brennpunkt - The Cessna on the Red Square 1987 - compilation. In: youtube.com. Retrieved January 3, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Ralf E. Krüger, Anne Grages: Moscow flight: The Kremlin plane is playing poker. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung , May 25, 2007.
  5. ↑ a b c d Thomas Urban: The truth lies next to the square. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 28, 2007.
  6. ↑ RP Online : Hobby pilot lands on Red Square: How Mathias Rust Duped Moscow, Moscow, Doris Heimann, May 28, 2012
  7. ↑ dr.dk "Rust in Red Square - 20 years later" May 28, 2007.
  8. ↑ Stefan Locke: The long odyssey of the dove of peace. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 12, 2012.
  9. ↑ Frank Umbach , The Red Alliance. Development and disintegration of the Warsaw Pact 1955–1991, Ch. Links Verlag, April 2005, p. 339 f.
  10. ↑ Matthias Rust and the consequences. In: youtube.com. August 5, 2012, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  11. ^ Claus Menzel: Flight into the heart of the Soviet Union. In: Deutschlandfunk , May 28, 2007.
  12. ↑ a b Rust: A blow for the Russian soul . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1987, pp. 146-148 ( online - September 7, 1987 ).
  13. ^ The Mathias Rust case - a chronology on NDR.de from May 14, 2012
  14. ↑ Detlef Kuhlbrodt: Airmen, say hello to the Kremlin. In: the daily newspaper , May 28, 2009.
  15. ↑ a b Christoph Gunkel: The crash. In: one day , May 21, 2012.
  16. ↑ The Kremlin aviator Mathias Rust returns to NDR.de of 26 June 2009
  17. ^ A b Michael Laages: "Rust - a German Messiah" In: Deutschlandfunk , October 22, 2010.
  18. ↑ Ed Stuhler: The Kremlin Flier: Mathias Rust and the Consequences of an Adventure . Ch. Links Verlag, 2012. Documentation by Gabriele Denecke: The Kremlin Flyer - Mathias Rust and the landing on Red Square.
  19. ↑ "Won € 750,000 playing poker" In: Spiegel Online , June 6, 2009.
  20. ↑ Berliner Zeitung for the 50th birthday on June 1, 2018 , accessed on September 9, 2018
  21. ^ Welt : Kremlin flier plans yoga school in Hamburg , Hamburg, May 8, 2012
  22. ↑ a b Ascension to Red Square , Media Info German Museum of Technology Berlin from May 2009
  23. ↑ germancharts.com - Modern Trouble - Fly To Moscow
  24. ^ Rust - a German messiah at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg
  25. ↑ Ulrike Cordes: Mathias Rust, German philistines and the dream of world peace. In: Stern , October 22, 2010.
  26. ↑ Christoph Twickel: "If someone should go, then the Senator for Culture!" In: Spiegel Online , October 21, 2010 (interview with Rocko Schamoni and Jacques Palminger ).
personal data
SURNAME Rust, Mathias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pilot
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH frond