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Biography
Udo Düllick (August 3, 1936, Werder – October 5, 1961, Berlin) was one of the first to die at the Berlin wall. He drowned while fleeing in the Spree river between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg near the Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin, Germany.
Life
Düllick studied engineering in Dresden and was employed by the Reichsbahn. He lived with his parents in Werder, near Strausberg, east of Berlin. There, he grew up with his older brother in a Catholic family. The father remarried after the death of the mother. His brother went to West Germany in 1959.
On the evening of October 5, 1961, he attended a company party of the Reichsbahn. There he came into conflict with a supervisor, where he tore off the Shoulder marks of his Reichsbahn uniform. He was then fired on the spot. With a taxi he drove northward to Berlin's East Port and jumped into the water. While he was swimming towards the west, the border guards gave first warning shots. Finally, they shot deliberately at the fugitive. He drowned without getting hit. The fire department of West Berlin recovered the corpse of the fugitive, whose name was unknown at that moment.
During the escape, people from West-Berlin watched the action. However, they had to stay on the wharf because the Spree fully belonged to the territory of East Berlin. The day after his death, 2.500 people from West Berlin gathered at Gröbenufer, for a funeral. The brother of Udo Düllick, who was living in the West, identified the corpse. The funeral service was on October 18, 1961 on the Jerusalem cemetery in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Gröbenufer today has a memorial stone, which was erected the same year. A cross of the memorial White Crosses on Reichstagufer commemorates Udo Düllick.
Literature
- Christine Brecht: Udo Düllick , in: Die Toten an der Berliner Mauer. Ein biographisches Handbuch 1961–1989 , Links, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-517-1, pp 51–53.