Siegfried Noffke
Siegfried Noffke (born December 9, 1939 in Berlin ; † June 28, 1962 there ) was a victim of the Berlin Wall . While trying to get family members to West Berlin through an escape tunnel , Stasi employees shot the then 22-year-old.
Life
Siegfried Noffke was born in Berlin and grew up in an area that was later controlled by the Soviet Union. There he completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer. At the end of the 1950s he moved to Berlin-Kreuzberg , a district in the western sectors. In May 1961 he married Hannelore, with whom he had already had a son. Hannelore lived in East Berlin in the Prenzlauer Berg district . The GDR authorities did not approve an application for the wife and child to move before the construction of the Wall began on August 13, 1961.
One year after the lockdown, Noffke met Dieter Hötger at a meeting with his wife at the border facility , who offered him to participate in an escape aid project through a tunnel. His wife was also left behind in East Berlin. In the basement of a house on Sebastianstraße , Noffke and two other men began to dig the tunnel towards East Berlin with the planned exit in the basement of the Heinrich-Heine-Straße 48/49 building . In 1962 there were several attempts to dig escape tunnels, some of which were discovered. In March 1962 the escape helper Heinz Jercha was shot dead at the end of a tunnel and in June 1962 the border police officer Reinhold Huhn was shot dead by an escape helper in Jerusalemer Strasse.
One of the women who was supposed to be brought to the West let her brother, who worked as an unofficial employee "Pankow" for the GDR State Security, about the escape plans. This revealed the plans, whereupon the escape project was observed with the aim of arresting everyone involved if the tunnel breakthrough occurred. IM Pankow also pretended to be willing to flee in order to get detailed information from the group. After several attempts to initiate the breakthrough were canceled, IM Pankow helped the escape helpers on the East Berlin side on June 28, 1962. The State Security intended to arrest the escape workers and had arrested units positioned in the basement, the stairwell and a nearby shed. They bored a hole in the door to the cellar so that they could watch what was going on. When the breakthrough succeeded and Siegfried Noffke entered the cellar with another escape helper, Dieter Hötger , one of the Stasi employees tore open the door and opened fire from his submachine gun. Three other Stasi employees also fired shots. Siegfried Noffke, Dieter Hötger and IM Pankow were hit several times by gunshots and ricochets. The MfS employee who fired first also got a gunshot wound. A waiting ambulance brought IM Pankow and the MfS employee to the People's Police Hospital . Dieter Hötger was taken from the cellar and questioned in a nearby gym. Noffke was refused first aid, he was seriously injured and interrogated in the basement. He died during the subsequent transport to hospital. He did not get a grave.
Those who wanted to flee were sentenced to prison terms for “ illegally crossing the border ”. In October 1962, the injured escape helper was sentenced to nine years in prison for “acts of violence that endanger the state” and for “inducing him to leave the GDR”. IM Pankow, who had to be operated on because of his injuries, was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit of the National People's Army and a bonus of 3,000 marks was paid out. The exact course of events in the basement of Heinrich-Heine-Strasse remained unclear until German reunification . Even after the end of the SED dictatorship, neither the shooter Lehmann nor the traitor IM “Pankow” were punished for the murder of Noffke.
Since August 12, 2009 a memorial plaque in Sebastianstrasse has been commemorating the failed tunnel and Siegfried Noffke.
literature
- Christine Brecht : Siegfried Noffke , in: The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989. Edited by the Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Berlin Wall Foundation. Links, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-517-1 , pp. 99-100.
- Dietmar Arnold , Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The escape tunnel from Berlin . 2nd Edition. List, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-548-60934-8 , pp. 105–116 (first edition: 2009).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : "The Stasi was waiting at the end of the tunnel" , Berliner Morgenpost , August 10, 2009
- ^ A failed tunnel escape , Berliner Morgenpost, August 13, 2009
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Noffke, Siegfried |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German casualty from the Berlin Wall |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 9, 1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 28, 1962 |
| Place of death | Berlin |