Christian Buttkus – a snowstorm escape at Kleinmachnow
After abandoning plans to dive through the Teltow Canal, Christian Buttkus and his fiancée Ilse P. tried to cross at Kleinmachnow in a snowstorm; he was killed at the last fence and she was wounded and jailed.
Christian Buttkus, born in Tilsit on 21 February 1944, grew up in Berlin-Niederschönhausen and worked as a chemical worker in Adlershof. He rejected the closing of the border and did not want to swear the NVA oath. From August 1964 he and his fiancée Ilse P. built diving equipment and even an underwater vehicle to cross the Teltow Canal in summer 1965, but the vehicle proved useless.
When his call-up for 1 May 1965 arrived, they brought the escape forward. On 3 March 1965 a forecast of heavy snow and strong wind decided them to go overland that same night. Wearing white coats as camouflage and carrying two wire cutters, they took the S-Bahn and bus to Kleinmachnow, where Ilse P. had grown up.
At 1.15 a.m. they set off an acoustic signal device after crossing the vehicle ditch, then ran across the cleared strip towards the three-row barbed-wire fence. A pair of sentries fired warning shots while a patrol fired directly at them.
Before they could cut through the fence, Buttkus was hit by 25 bullets in the right side of his chest and died at once. Ilse P. was grazed on the leg by one of the 199 rounds fired. She was sentenced to one year and eight months and learned only at her trial that her fiancé was dead.
In December 1994 the Potsdam regional court gave the former patrol guard a suspended sentence of one year and six months for manslaughter.
Sources
- Buttkus, ChristianChronik der Mauer
- Dokumentation: Sie starben an der Berliner MauerDer Tagesspiegel
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