A German hurdler practicing (1961) - eviltoast
  • Lauchs@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Actual info: The border policeman Conrad Schumann was 19 years old when he jumped over the rolls of barbed wire at the corner of Bernauer and Ruppiner Straße on the afternoon of August 15, 1961.

      • HBK@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, that’s sad :(

        After the fall of the Berlin Wall Schumann said, “Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free.” Even so, he continued to feel more at home in Bavaria than in his birthplace, citing old frictions with his former colleagues, and was even hesitant to visit his parents and siblings in Saxony. When he returned to East Germany after the reunification to visit his relatives, he was rejected by them. They saw him as a traitor who abandoned his family.

        On 20 June 1998, suffering from depression, he committed suicide, hanging himself in his orchard near the town of Kipfenberg in Upper Bavaria. His body was found by his wife a few hours later.[4]