Peter Fechter

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Peter Fechter, around 1961
Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Behaimstrasse 11, in Berlin-Weißensee
General view of the fencer memorial (details: front , back )
The first cross was erected the day after his death, in 1962
Gravestone for Peter Fechter ( All unforgotten ) on the Resurrection Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee
Memorial on the Berlin Wall, photo from May 1, 1984
1988 memorial
Memorial cross in the Freedom Memorial , 2005 (now removed)

Peter Fechter (born January 14, 1944 in Berlin ; † August 17, 1962 there ) was a German fatality on the Berlin Wall .

biography

Peter Fechter grew up as the third of four children and the only son of the family in the Berlin district of Weißensee . The father was a mechanical engineer, the mother a saleswoman. He finished school at the age of 14 and trained as a bricklayer . His married eldest sister lived in West Berlin , where her parents and siblings are said to have visited her regularly until the Wall was built. Fechter's colleague Helmut Kulbeik later stated that both had been thinking about escape for a long time. They also explored the border fortifications, but did not undertake any concrete planning. Despite a good assessment, Fechter was refused a trip to West Germany by his company.

Fechter's death at the Berlin Wall

On Friday, August 17, 1962 at around 2:15 p.m., a good year after the Berlin Wall was erected , the 18-year-old fencer and his 18-year-old friend and work colleague Helmut Kulbeik tried the wall in Zimmerstrasse in the immediate vicinity of Checkpoint Charlie to climb over. While Kulbeik succeeded in doing this, Fechter was hit by several shots on the wall without warning by the shooters Rolf F. (then 26 years old), Erich S. (then 20 years old) and a third shooter in front of a number of witnesses, and fell back East Berlin area and remained unable to move for almost an hour in the death strip.

Peter Fechter began to scream loudly for help, so that a crowd soon formed on both sides of the wall. On the east side it was immediately dispersed by law enforcement officers, and a sizeable police force was also drawn up on the west side . The police did set up a ladder and threw Fechter bandages, but were not allowed to help further because Fechter was on the territory of the GDR. Neither the GDR - border guards still on duty at Checkpoint Charlie US soldiers came to his aid, although a growing crowd on the west side it called loudly so. Accompanied by angry killer shouts, border guards of the GDR finally took him from the death strip. Peter Fechter bled to death and died around 5 p.m. in the hospital. According to the judgment of the Berlin Regional Court 35 years later, he would have died even with immediate medical attention.

Reactions

The death of Peter Fechter showed the world public the cruelty of the order to shoot with unprecedented clarity . Immediately after the incident and in the days that followed, there were several protest rallies by angry West Berliners, some of whom could only be prevented from penetrating the wall by police force. A bus occupied by Soviet soldiers was pelted with stones. US occupation soldiers were attacked verbally and physically for not intervening.

The platoon leader of the GDR border guards stated that he had not intervened because he feared that the police officers gathered on the west side would shoot the soldiers. In fact, only three days earlier, the GDR border soldier Rudi Arnstadt had been shot dead by a West German border official at the inner-German border . The death of the East German border guard Reinhold Huhn , who was shot by a West Berlin escort, was only two months ago, and the death of Private Peter Göring was still present; he was shot dead by West Berlin police on May 23, 1962 in a border shoot-out.

A US lieutenant stated that he had received the following answer to a telephone request from Major General Albert Watson II , Commander of the American Sector in Berlin from May 4, 1961 to January 2, 1963: Lieutenant, you have your orders. Almost stood. Do nothing. ( Lieutenant, you have your instructions. Stand firm. Do nothing. )

Philibert Tsiranana , President of Madagascar , laid a wreath at the memorial for Peter Fechter during the state visit on August 29, 1962. The Federal Minister for Pan-German Issues , Erich Mende , visited the memorial in October 1963.

On August 27, 1962, Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler described Fechter in the GDR propaganda program The Black Canal as "a shot criminal". He justified the actions of the armed border guards with the words: "And if such an element (...) is then wounded directly at the border and not immediately rescued - then the shouting is great. (…) The life of every single one of our brave boys in uniform is worth more to us than the life of a lawbreaker. Should you stay away from our state border - then you can save yourself blood, tears and screams. "

The story of Peter Fechter was the cover story of the American news magazine Time on August 31, 1962 . Willy Brandt's word about the "wall of shame" became internationally synonymous with the wall in this article as the "Wall of Shame" .

In 1965 the picture Peter Fechter by Wolf Vostell was created , a blurring of photographs of Fechter's death on the Berlin Wall. The picture is part of the art collection in the Ludwig Forum for International Art .

The Spanish pop star Nino Bravo (1944–1973) inspired Fechter's death in 1972 to write the song Libre (German: free).

Peter Fechter was buried in the Resurrection Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee . Both the red-red Berlin Senate in December 2005 and the red-black successor government in 2012 refused to make his grave a grave of honor because the conditions for it were not met. His grave is recognized as the burial place of a victim of war and tyranny .

In Berlin's Zimmerstrasse near Checkpoint Charlie , roughly at the point where he died, a memorial by the sculptor Karl Biedermann in the form of a brown stele has been commemorating the events of the failed escape since August 13, 1999 . A second memorial was erected on June 11, 2011 in Bernauer Strasse. A sculpture showed the dead fencer in the arms of a border guard. It was destroyed on June 24, 2011.

The installation with the memorial crosses on the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse was removed on July 5, 2005 following an eviction action by the property owner.

That of Herbert Ernst film shot salvage the murdered Peter Fechter took the 2010 UNESCO into the World Soundtrack Awards on.

Consequences for the family

Fechter's death also had serious consequences for his family. The father died bitterly, the mother became mentally ill. The family was harassed by the GDR authorities for decades. They were repeatedly monitored by the Stasi , their apartments were searched and family members were banned from working. According to MDR research, however, Fechter's mother remained loyal to the system even after her son was shot. This is underpinned by the BStU's records and statements by Fechter's niece.

Legal consequences

After the fall of the wall or after reunification , there were several wall rifle trials . The two former border guards who shot Peter Fechter in 1962 were also charged. The court found the two guilty of manslaughter in March 1997 . It sentenced them to 20 and 21 months' imprisonment; these were suspended on probation. The two men had confessed to firing shots at fencers, but denied any intention to kill. The trial could not clarify whether the fatal shot was fired by one of the two defendants or a third border guard who had since died. The court further ruled that Fechter had died from the gunfire and not from failure to provide assistance.

Movies

Honors

literature

Web links

Commons : Peter Fechter  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hellmuth Vensky: GDR refugee: When the world saw Peter Fechter die on the wall , ZEIT-ONLINE story, August 17, 2012
  2. ↑ Peter Fechter on Chronicle of the Wall Center for Contemporary Historical Research / Federal Agency for Civic Education / Deutschlandradio, accessed on January 17, 2014.
  3. ↑ Peter Fechter lies dying on August 17, 1962, on the concrete wall reinforced with barbed wire, a photo on p. 743 in Our Century in the Picture , C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh, 1964.
  4. ↑ Demonstrations: Stupidity in front of the enemy. Berlin . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1962, pp. 14-16 ( online ).
  5. ^ State visit to Madagascar: Wreath-laying. ad memorial f. Peter Fechter, Berlin, August 29, 1962, photographer: Ludwig Wegmann, signature: B 145 Bild-F013785-0009, Federal Archives.
  6. ↑ Erich Mende, Federal Minister for All-German Issues, visits the memorial for Peter Fechter, who died at the Wall, in Zimmerstrasse, Berlin, October 20, 1963, photographer: Gert Schütz, signature: B 145 Bild-00086291, Federal Archives.
  7. ^ Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, opening times .
  8. ↑ Schwarzer Kanal, GDR television, August 27, 1962, s. also chronicle of the wall
  9. ↑ transmission manuscript of the Black channel from 27 August 1962 from the German Broadcasting Archive, Signature: E065-02-04 / 0001/128, especially where handwritten pagination, page. 6
  10. ↑ World: Wall of Shame . August 31, 1962.
  11. ^ Daniel Benjamin: Wall Of Shame 1961-1989 . November 20, 1989.
  12. ↑ Wolf Vostell. Retrospective 92nd Edition Braus, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-925520-44-9 .
  13. ↑ ¿Por qué nadie ayudó a Peter Fechter? . Article in El Mundo of August 18, 2012
  14. ↑ a b Sabine Flatau: Wall victim Peter Fechter does not get a grave of honor. In: www.morgenpost.de. October 30, 2012, accessed November 9, 2019 .
  15. ^ Memorial for Peter Fechter desecrated BZ June 24, 2011
  16. ↑ Mechthild Küpper: A victory for freedom that came too late for some , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 4
  17. ↑ WDR ZeitZeichen August 17, 2007
  18. ^ Rainer Erices and Jan Schönfelder, Two Dead in the Cold War , MDR August 13, 2011.
  19. ↑ Suspended sentences for wall shooters in the fencing trial Die Welt, March 6, 1997, accessed on January 7, 2014.
  20. ↑ Wreaths for Peter Fechter RP online, August 16, 2002, accessed on January 7, 2013.
  21. ↑ ... a certain Peter Fechter summary on the website of the producer
  22. ^ Street names in the Calenberger Neustadt in Hanover
personal data
SURNAME Fencer, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German casualty from the Berlin Wall
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 17th August 1962
Place of death Berlin