Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Marienetta Jirkowsky
Summary
Marienetta "Micki" Jirkowsky (25 August 1962 – 22 November 1980) was a German woman who became the one-hundred and twenty-fifth known person to die at the Berlin Wall. Jirkowsky was shot and killed by East German border guards during an escape attempt, and at 18 years was one of the youngest victims and the youngest of the 8 women killed at the Berlin wall.
Marienetta Jirkowsky was born on 25 August 1962, in Bad Saarow, East Germany, the only child to Klaus Jirkowsky, a skilled bricklayer, and his wife, Astrid, employed by the Reifenkombinat Fürstenwalde, a tyre manufacturing plant. Marienetta grew up in Spreenhagen and last lived at Birkenweg 13, where she was nicknamed "Micki" by her friends, as she was a "small, free-spirited and fun-loving person." One of her friends, Falko Vogt, later explained she and her friends really "just wanted to live in peace, without any problems and without being forbidden to do anything." During the school year, Marienetta had little contact with other students. Instead, during her spare time, she helped in a retirement home in the neighboring village of Grünheide, where she was very popular with senior citizens. In 1979, Marienetta began her apprenticeship as a textile worker at the tyre factory where her mother worked.
Falko Vogt had been thinking about escaping East Germany for a long time, and when he and Marienetta met Peter Wiesner together in spring 1980, discovered that Wiesner also disliked the conditions in the country. Wiesner applied a number of times for an exit permit to leave East Germany. When Marienetta turned 18, the legal age of an adult under East German law, she became engaged to Peter Wiesner and they planned to move in together in the fall of 1980. However, this decision led to major conflicts with Marienetta's parents who were opposed to the relationship, fearing that they were going to lose their only child, particularly if she emigrated with Wiesner. Additionally, Wiesner was divorced, drank a lot, was violence prone, struggled to maintain consistent employment, and had a history of being in trouble with the police.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.