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Peter Fechter (14 January 1944 – 17 August 1962) was a German bricklayer who became the twenty-seventh known person to die at the Berlin Wall.Fechter was 18 years old when he was shot and killed by East German border guards while trying to cross over to West Berlin.
At the Vienna summit on 4 June 1961, tensions rose. Meeting with US President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reissued the Soviet ultimatum to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and thus end the existing four-power agreements guaranteeing American, British, and French rights to access West Berlin and the occupation of East Berlin by Soviet forces. [1]
On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau journalist Kurt Lichtenstein was shot on the border near the village of Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany; he was a former parliamentary representative of the German Communist Party. [ 36 ]
In February 1989, Chris Gueffroy was the last person shot trying to escape East Germany; he was not, however, the last to die escaping. On 8 March 1989, Winfried Freudenberg became the last person to die in an attempt to escape from East Germany to West Berlin. Freudenberg fell from a hot-air balloon while trying to fly over the Berlin Wall.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Mielke led the process of forcibly forming collectivised farms from East Germany's family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany. In response, Mielke oversaw the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall and co-signed standing orders for the Border Guards to use lethal force against all East Germans ...
The state owned East German film company DEFA produced about 800 feature films between 1946 and 1992. Besides DEFA, the state broadcaster DFF and the Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst (now the Filmuniversität Babelsberg) [ 1 ] were the only other organizations in the GDR that produced feature films for cinematic release, although far fewer ...
On 15 August 1961, 19-year-old Schumann was sent to the corner of Ruppiner Straße and Bernauer Straße to guard what would become the Berlin Wall on its third day of construction. Schumann and his unit arrived at 4:30 a.m., where an officer ordered them to "take control and protect the border from the enemies of socialism."
Günter Litfin was born on 19 January 1937 in Berlin, along with a twin brother, Alois, who was murdered by a Nazi physician during World War II. [1] Litfin lived in East Germany, in the borough of Weißensee of East Berlin, and like his father Albert (a butcher) was a member of the illegal local branch of the Christian Democrats Union, the centre-right West German political party.