Rudolf Urban

Page from 1943 Berlin address book, listing Rudolf Urban at Bernauer Strasse 1 (left column, lower half)

Bernauer Strasse 1, as it appeared in June 1962.

Memorial plaque in Bernauer Straße : "Dedicated to the victim of the Wall of Shame, Rudolf Urban, † September 17, 1961"

Grave of Rudolf Urban, Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II, Liesenstrasse 9, Berlin.

Rudolf Urban (born June 6, 1914 in Berlin ; † September 17, 1961 there ) died as a result of his flight from the GDR to the West, making him one of the victims of the Berlin Wall .

Urban lived in East Berlin in the house where he was born at Bernauer Straße 1 , the entrance of which looked out onto a West Berlin sidewalk. With the construction of the wall, among other things, guards were placed in the hallways to check who was entering the apartments. On August 18, five days after the Berlin Wall was erected, the entrance door was walled up. According to his wife, Ilse Urban, this was the decisive factor for the previously hesitant Urban: On the following day, the couple tried to escape with his friend Willy Kutzminski and his wife Irmgard. Although the ground floor windows at Bernauer Strasse 1 - in contrast to other houses in the border area - were not yet walled up, the guard would have noticed entering the ground floor apartment, which could accuse the ground floor residents of assisting them to escape. That's why the Urbans decided to rappel down from their apartment on the first floor onto the West Berlin sidewalk. However, both spouses slipped and injured themselves when they hit the sidewalk. In shock and injuries to hands, feet and a fracture of the calcaneus by Rudolf Urban they were Berlin West to the nearby Lazarus Hospital admitted. Urban's break was hospitalized. During his stay in hospital, Rudolf Urban contracted pneumonia , from which he died on September 17, 1961.

Rudolf Urban was the fourth known person to be killed on the Berlin Wall and was buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II . Even if he is the fourth known death, the date of his escape attempt, August 19, 1961, precedes the dates of the first three escape attempts and their directly resulting deaths ( Ida Siekmann , Günter Litfin and Roland Hoff ). A memorial stone on Bernauer Strasse, near Swinemünder Strasse, which the Wedding District Office had erected in 1982, commemorates his fate and the fate of nine other victims in Bernauer Strasse.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Christine Brecht ( undated ). Urban, Rudolf. Chronicle of the Wall (accessed November 17, 2009)
2. ^ The registration of Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II, Berlin-Wedding.
3. ↑ Jürgen Petschull, "The Wall" (Chapter 7), 1981, Lindhardt og Ringhof, ISBN 978-8-71146-043-6
4. ^ Hans-Dieter Grabe, documentary "Bernauer Straße 1–50: when the front door was nailed shut", 1980, ZDF
5. ↑ 140 fatalities at the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Center for Contemporary History Potsdam, August 2017

literature

• Christine Brecht: Rudolf Urban , in: The deaths of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Links, Berlin 2009, pp. 43–45, ISBN 978-3-86153-517-1 .

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Urban  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Brief portrait on www.chronik-der-mauer.de
• Memorial stone for victims of the Berlin Wall