Horst Kutscher (July 5, 1931 – January 15, 1963) was a German coal apprentice and
the 36th person to die trying to cross the
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...
from
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
to
West Berlin.
Early life
Kutscher was born on July 5, 1931, in
Treptow, the fourth of 13 children to a mechanical engineer and a flower seller.
Biography
In April 1956, he fled to West Germany, with his wife and children later following him. A year later, he and his family returned to
Berlin-Treptow
Treptow () was a former borough in the southeast of Berlin. It merged with Köpenick to form Treptow-Köpenick in 2001.
Geography
The district was composed by the localities of Alt-Treptow, Plänterwald, Baumschulenweg, Niederschöneweide, J ...
. He worked as a
"border-crosser" in the West until the border was closed in August 1961.
Death
On January 15, 1963, at the border near Rudower Strasse at the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln, Kutscher slid under the barbed-wire fence and then along the security trenches with 25 meters left when he was fatally shot in the head.
After the collapse of East Germany, Kutscher’s ex-wife was a witness in the trial against the guard who shot Kutscher. In August 1997, the former guard was sentenced to one year and three months' probation.
See also
*
List of deaths at the Berlin Wall
*
Berlin Crisis of 1961
The Berlin Crisis of 1961 (german: Berlin-Krise) occurred between 4 June – 9 November 1961, and was the last major European politico-military incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of po ...
References
External links
*
Berlin Wall Memorial - Horst Kutscher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kutscher, Horst
1931 births
1963 deaths
Deaths at the Berlin Wall
People from East Berlin
Deaths by firearm in East Germany
People from Treptow-Köpenick
East German defectors