Siegfried Kroboth

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Memorial plaque on May-Ayim-Ufer, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Siegfried Kroboth (born April 23, 1968 in Berlin ; † May 14, 1973 there ) was a child who had an accident while playing near the inner-German border and drowned in the Spree . The case and in particular the slow-moving rescue measures - due to the situation of the Berlin division - received great public attention at the time. Since then, Kroboth has been included in many lists of deaths at the Berlin Wall , in which he is considered the youngest wall victim ever.

The Siegfried Kroboth case

the accident

Siegfried Kroboth grew up in a family that had fled from East Berlin to West Berlin . On May 14, 1973, the five-year-old was playing with a friend on the banks of the Spree near the destroyed Brommy Bridge . He fell into the river around 11:50. Another child alerted the West Berlin police and fire brigade via a fire alarm . When they were on site with divers, they were not allowed to go into the water, as the Spree at the accident site belonged to East Berlin. Two GDR border boats approached the scene of the accident without responding to the calls for help; they were forbidden from contacting the West Berlin side. After the GDR border guards who were on the Oberbaum Bridge were informed by the fire department chief, alarmed divers from East Berlin went into the water at around 12:40 p.m. They found Siegfried Kroboth's body around 3:50 p.m.

The GDR authorities handed the body over to the dead man's parents on May 16, 1973 at the Oberbaumbrücke border crossing. Siegfried Kroboth's 21-year-old sister was murdered five years earlier in East Berlin and her body was thrown into the Spree.

Public response and consequences

The incident, which had preceded the death of Cengaver Katrancı in October 1972 under the same circumstances on the nearby Groebenufer area , strained intra-German relations, which had only recently eased due to the basic agreement. Eight days after Siegfried Kroboth's death, talks began between representatives of West Berlin and the GDR to find better ways to deal with such emergencies. In the spring of 1976, these discussions led to the erection of special emergency telephones (water accident alarms), which gave the GDR border organs optical and acoustic signals, whereupon they issued an exception permit for rescue measures from West Berlin in the same way. Up to this point in time, Giuseppe Savoca and Çetin Mert had died under similar circumstances, and Andreas Senk had died in a nearby location as early as 1966 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Siegfried Kroboth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mature stage . In: Der Spiegel . No.  28 , 1974, p. 49 ( online ). Quote: "And so on October 30, 1972 the Turkish student Cengaver Katranci, 8, and on May 14, 1973 the five-year-old Siegfried Kroboth drowned in the Spree."
  2. ↑ chronik-der-mauer.de
personal data
SURNAME Kroboth, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fatality on the Berlin Wall
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1973
Place of death Berlin