Wolfgang Scheunemann

Memorial plaque on the Wolfgang Scheunemann House in Berlin-Moabit

Wolfgang Scheunemann (born April 4, 1933 in Berlin ; † September 9, 1948 there ) was the first victim of firearms use by the East Berlin People's Police (VP) at the sector border in Berlin. During the blockade of the western sectors of Berlin, he was shot dead during a deployment of the VP on Unter den Linden .

Life

Unter den Linden , Hotel Adlon (1950). Scheunemann was fatally shot in about the third alcove to the left of the entrance

The student Wolfgang Scheunemann lived in the Berlin district of Tiergarten in the British sector . He was group leader of the youth organization Die Falken , which belonged to the circle of the SPD .

On September 9, 1948, Scheunemann and 300,000 Berliners took part in a rally on the Platz der Republik . It was directed against the incipient split in Berlin through the blockade of the western sectors and the violent expulsion of the freely elected city councilors and members of the magistrate from their seats in the eastern sector by the SED and the Soviet occupying power . The Berlin police were already divided into a part under the "VP" -President Paul Markgraf , who was deposed by the Berlin magistrate but held in office by the Soviet city commandant in the Eastern Sector, and the police president Johannes Stumm , who was appointed by the magistrate .

In the immediate vicinity of the rally site at the sector border at the Brandenburg Gate, there had been fights between rally visitors and the VP. After the rally at which Ernst Reuter (SPD) gave his world-famous speech “You peoples of the world [...] look at this city!”, A procession formed under the SPD chairman Franz Neumann to give the Allied Control Council a protest resolution to deliver. The control council building was in the American sector on Potsdamer Strasse . Because of the crowds of people jammed in Ebertstrasse , numerous participants, including Scheunemann and a Falken member from Moabit , a 20-year-old nurse, made a detour through the Soviet sector. It was supposed to lead over the open Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz , Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse and Leipziger Strasse to Potsdamer Platz .

The VP had controlled vehicle and freight traffic on the border with the western sectors since the beginning of the blockade without rejecting pedestrians. When people's police now tried to push the pedestrians streaming across Pariser Platz back to the gate from the street Unter den Linden, they were insulted from the crowd and pelted with stones. The police initially responded with warning shots, then with shots at the crowd. In the ensuing tumult, police arrested demonstrators while they attacked individual police officers and removed the red flag from the Brandenburg Gate in order to hoist a black, red and gold one. Scheunemann, who had fled with the nurse from shots and stones thrown into a niche in the ruins of the Hotel Adlon , was shot in the stomach by a people's police officer. The VP's use of firearms resulted in another twelve injured. Scheunemann died while being transported to the Moabit hospital . Although the West Berlin police offered a high reward and interviewed numerous witnesses, they were unable to identify the perpetrator.

Scheunemann's death caused a great public stir in Berlin. The SPD-affiliated Telegraf emphasized that "angry" demonstrators did not want to accept the barriers by the East Berlin police. Scheunemann was a freedom fighter who tried to protect a young nurse from being shot by the VP. His death is taken by the hawks as an obligation "to fight for and defend [freedom]". In the centenary of the democratic March Revolution, a commemorative broadcast by the RIAS placed Scheunemann in a row with those who died in March 1848 .

The SED-controlled East Berlin press, especially the Berliner Zeitung , paid great attention to the incidents at the Brandenburg Gate. They appeared as a kind of social democratic coup attempt , mainly carried out by the falcons, organized by the " fascist provocateurs Reuter and Friedensburg ", who had "armed the thugs with firearms". She did not mention the death of 15-year-old Scheunemann.

Wolfgang Scheunemann was the only child of his parents. After his lying in state in front of the Rathaus Tiergarten where Franz Neumann said, about 10,000 people accompanied the dead to burial in the cemetery of St. John II in the lake road . A few weeks later, in obvious competition, the SED leadership dedicated a funeral to the people's police officer Fritz Maque , who had been the victim of a fatal incident at the sector border , a funeral that far exceeded that of Scheunemann in terms of scope and solemnity.

Honors

A youth leisure facility in Berlin-Moabit that was inaugurated in 1961 was named Wolfgang Scheunemann House. Since then, there has been a memorial plaque there.

literature

Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (eds.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch. Links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , pp. 161-166.
Gerhard Sälters, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: Wolfgang Scheunemann . In: dies .: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , pp. 243–248.
Heinrich Eppe (ed.): Socialist youth in the 20th century. Juventa, Weinheim / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7799-1136-4 , p. 276.

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Scheunemann - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Homepage of the Bredow meeting in the Wolfgang Scheunemann house

Individual evidence

↑ Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (ed.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch.links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , p. 162.
↑ Quotations at Gerhard Sälter: The Soviet blockade and the border regime in Berlin. From contemporary media discourses to collective memory of the Cold War . In: Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (eds.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch. Links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , p. 161 f.
↑ Contemporary witness report by Eberhard Grashoff ; see Andreas Förster: Wolfgang Scheunemann. The first death of the German division . Berliner Kurier from September 9, 2018
↑ For the competition see Gerhard Sälters: The Soviet Blockade and the Border Regime in Berlin. From contemporary media discourses to collective memory of the Cold War . In: Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (eds.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch. Links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , pp. 161-165.
↑ Wolfgang Scheunemann April 4, 1933 - September 9, 1948 . Information from the memorial plaques in Berlin .

personal data
SURNAME	Scheunemann, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German schoolchildren, victims of the People's Police
DATE OF BIRTH	April 4, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	September 9, 1948
Place of death	Berlin

[1] Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (ed.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch.links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , p. 162.

[2] Quotations at Gerhard Sälter: The Soviet blockade and the border regime in Berlin. From contemporary media discourses to collective memory of the Cold War . In: Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (eds.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch. Links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , p. 161 f.

[3] Contemporary witness report by Eberhard Grashoff ; see Andreas Förster: Wolfgang Scheunemann. The first death of the German division . Berliner Kurier from September 9, 2018

[4] For the competition see Gerhard Sälters: The Soviet Blockade and the Border Regime in Berlin. From contemporary media discourses to collective memory of the Cold War . In: Ulrich Pfeil , Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner (eds.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Ch. Links, 2018 ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , pp. 161-165.

[5] Wolfgang Scheunemann April 4, 1933 - September 9, 1948 . Information from the memorial plaques in Berlin .