Peter Döbler

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Peter Döbler (center) being greeted by fellow countrymen living in Kiel (1971)

Peter Döbler (* 1940 in Rostock ) is a German doctor who became famous in July 1971 for his escape from the GDR , during which he swam 48 kilometers from Kühlungsborn to Fehmarn .

Life in the GDR

Peter Döbler would not have received a place at the university if his father, who worked as a self-employed tax advisor, had not died within the enrollment period and the son's status had changed. This experience led Döbler to a critical attitude towards the GDR , which stood in the way of his professional advancement and even prevented him from being assigned an apartment, although he was already married and had a child.

During his service as a doctor, Döbler rode a national herring catcher at the age of 27 . As an enthusiastic sport angler who had already been the GDR youth district champion in coarse fishing , he caught a blue shark from this factory ship .

Escape

For his escape he considered different routes: from Poland with a folding boat , from Bulgaria to Greece or swimming from the Darss . These routes seemed to Döbler, however, more carefully monitored than the route from Kühlungsborn to Fehmarn. Döbler completed a two-year fitness training by swimming in the Baltic Sea and the Warnow , obtained information about the border boats in the region concerned and checked the visibility in the area of ​​the GDR border lights. He divorced the year before he fled. He reduced contact with his mother in order not to make her an accomplice. Before he left, he wrote her a letter instructing her to report him for fleeing the republic so that she would not suffer from his undertaking. His mother followed this instruction and was able to make credible during the interrogations by the Stasi that she had not been informed about the escape plans.

That someone must have tried to escape was noticed in Kühlungsborn on July 25, 1971 at around 11 p.m. when Döbler's clothes were found, which he had left hidden in a bush late that afternoon. Combat swimmers and boats scanned the sea. At around midnight, Döbler saw the searchlights, but managed to save himself by diving.

Döbler oriented himself by the starry sky and with a compass . He wore a wet suit, hand and foot fins, and was armed with an inflatable swim ring, chocolate, painkillers, and methamphetamine . He carried his certificates in his belt so that he could work as a doctor in the Federal Republic of Germany. After about a day, he was picked up by a yacht outside Staberhuk and taken to the police. The distance that Peter Döbler had covered is the longest that a GDR refugee has ever swum overcame.

After the escape

In the Federal Republic of Germany he initially lived with a relative in Kiel . He quickly found a job at the university hospital there. He later settled in Hamburg as a urologist , where he also received his doctorate. His hobby, fishing , he pursued on numerous trips, first to the Maldives and then to the Cape Verde Islands . Together with Alexander Kölbing, he wrote a book about deep sea fishing. In 1974 he helped his friend Erhard Schelter to flee as well.

After selling his practice in 1994, he moved to Cape Verde in 1995, where he lived off fishing and fishing tourism in the summer. Döbler guaranteed its charter guests a marlin catch from his boat "Bebiche". He spent the winters in Germany and took over emergency services as a doctor . In 2007 he moved back to Hamburg with his second wife and their son, where he lives from emergency services again.

The documentary, first shown on television in January 2011, Freedom at all costs. The most spectacular escape attempts from the GDR also deal with Döbler's escape.

Works

  • Albert Kölbing, Peter Döbler: Big Marlin: deep sea fishing in all oceans. BLV-Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich / Vienna / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-405-13231-2 ( picture ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/3-20-jahre-mauerfall-spektakulaere-flucht-der-arzt-der-ins-wasser-ging-1514671.html
  2. ↑ http://www.ostseeflucht.de/oktober-2000/erhard-schelter
  3. ↑ http://bluemarlinmindelo.tripod.com/blinker.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.fischundfang.de/Service/Aktuelle-Mommunikations/Zurueck-in-die-Tiefe
  5. ↑ http://www.bilderfest.de/31-0-Freiheit-um-jeden-Preis.html
personal data
SURNAME Döbler, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and GDR refugee
DATE OF BIRTH 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock