Hans Räwel – New Year's morning in the icy Spree
After a New Year's Eve party, 21-year-old baker Hans Räwel swam into the freezing Spree and was shot at close range from a border boat about 35 metres from the western bank.
Hans Räwel was born on 11 December 1941 in Stralsund, grew up on Rügen and moved to East Berlin with his family in 1957, where his parents ran a bakery in Rahnsdorf. He had completed a baker's apprenticeship and was training as a confectioner.
He spent New Year's Eve 1962 with his girlfriend at the Plänterwald venue in Treptow; they parted around 4 a.m. She was not involved in what followed.
In temperatures below minus 10 °C he entered the Spree near the Oberbaumbrücke. Around 6.15 a.m. a GDR border patrol boat spotted him. He tried to shake it off by diving under the wooden pilings in the middle of the river, but the boat came round and the crew fired at close range. He was killed about 35 metres from the western bank; border troops recovered his body on 2 January.
His mother only learned after the fall of the Wall that he had been shot rather than drowned, as GDR authorities had claimed. Three former crew members were charged in 1994, and the two who fired were convicted of manslaughter in March 1996.
Sources
- Räwel, HansChronik der Mauer
- Hans RäwelWikipedia (de)
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