Norbert Wolscht

Norbert Wolscht (born October 27, 1943 in Greiffenberg ; † July 28, 1964 in Potsdam ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . He drowned while trying to escape from the GDR in the Havel .

Life

Norbert Wolscht was born in Greifenberg. After the Second World War, the family without their father, who was a prisoner of war, was expelled from the village, which was now part of Poland. Via a station in Görlitz they came to Freiberg , where relatives lived. In Freiberg he met his future fellow refugee Rainer Gneiser . After high school, he began an apprenticeship as a lathe operator. Norbert Wolscht dreamed of a life in South Africa. Since the summer of 1963, he and his friend Rainer Gneiser had been planning to flee the GDR. Gneiser had already tried a failed escape. Together they trained to swim and built diving equipment .

On July 25, 1964, on the pretext of wanting to camp, they drove away on a motorcycle from Freiberg towards Potsdam. Presumably they wanted to dive from the Tiefen See between Potsdam and Babelsberg under water along the Havel to West Berlin. GDR border troops found Norbert Wolscht's body on July 28th. Rainer Gneiser's body was found a week later on the Babelsberg bank of the Havel. The autopsies of the bodies revealed that Norbert Wolscht died of carbon dioxide poisoning at 2 a.m. on July 28 . The self-made regulator did not filter the carbon dioxide properly. The investigation of the People's Police District Office in Potsdam ended with the result that the two died in an accident.

The last documented sign of life is a bill of lading dated July 27, in which Norbert Wolscht sent his camping equipment back to his parents.

literature

Hans-Hermann Hertle , Maria Nooke : The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961 - 1989. A biographical handbook. Edited by the Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Berlin Wall Foundation. Links, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-517-1 .

Web links

• Portrait of Norbert Wolscht at chronik-der-mauer.de