Siegfried Selke

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Siegfried Selke (born October 7, 1946 in Neubrandenburg ; † June 1, 1966 at Schattin ) was a fatality on the inner-German border .

Life

Siegfried Selke grew up in a working class family in Neubrandenburg. After the 7th grade he learned lathe and worked at VEB Sirokko Heizgerätewerk , later at LPG as a blacksmith .

In his early youth he planned to flee the GDR . He did his military service as a non-commissioned officer with the GDR border troops . There he was considered undisciplined and politically dubious. On June 1, 1966, he tried to flee to the Federal Republic of Germany via the Wakenitz together with another NCO . Both opened a border fence and swam across the Wakenitz in full gear. While his colleague managed to escape, Selke drowned. A rescue attempt failed. Selke's body was recovered by the Lübeck fire brigade at 16:35. The death was the subject of western reporting in the Bild newspaper , the Lübecker Nachrichten and in the Tagesspiegel, among others .

On June 3, 1966, the customs border service tried to hand over his body to the GDR border troops. However, they refused to accept the body. Instead, Selke was cremated at the request of her parents. The funeral took place in Lübeck in the presence of a delegation from the Federal Border Guard . The urn was mailed to the parents by a funeral home on June 27, 1966.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Jochen Staadt , Klaus Schroeder (ed.): The victims of the GDR border regime on the inner-German border 1949–1989. A biographical manual . Wissenschaftsverlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2017, pp. 245–246 ISBN 978-3-7425-0119-6 (licensed edition for the Federal Agency for Civic Education )
personal data
SURNAME Selke, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German border soldier, fatality on the inner-German border
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Neubrandenburg
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1966
Place of death at Schattin