14 Facts About Marienetta Jirkowsky

Marienetta "Micki" Jirkowsky was a German woman who became the one-hundred and twenty-fifth known person to die 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 Furstenwalde, a tyre manufacturing plant.

In 1979, Marienetta Jirkowsky 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 Jirkowsky met Peter Wiesner together in spring 1980, discovered that Wiesner disliked the conditions in the country.

When Marienetta Jirkowsky 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.

The larger restaurant ladder was used to get over the next obstacle, a 2.5 meter high signal fence, which the two men overcame without activating the alarm, but when Marienetta Jirkowsky followed them, the alarm was triggered.

Vogt had already jumped down to the West Berlin side, but Wiesner lay down on his stomach on top of the wall because Marienetta Jirkowsky, who was standing on the top rung of the ladder, was too short to grasp the wall with her hands.

Marienetta Jirkowsky had already reached the top of the wall with her hands when she was struck by a bullet and fell off the ladder, while Wiesner fell down on the West Berlin side.

Marienetta Jirkowsky died at the hospital at 11:30 AM from a gunshot wound through her abdomen.

On behalf of all the Allied city commanders, the French city commander protested that very day against Marienetta Jirkowsky's shooting and demanded that East Germany finally put a stop to their "inhuman practices" regarding escapees.

Under no circumstances was a photograph of the dead woman to be published and many photographs of Marienetta Jirkowsky were confiscated from her friends and relatives.

Fifteen years later, one of the border guards that shot at Vogt, Wiesner, and Marienetta Jirkowsky was tried for a "less serious case of manslaughter" and sentenced as a youth by the Neuruppin district court to a prison term of one year and three months, which was commuted to probation.

In 2009, Hohen Neuendorf city council introduced legislation to rename a traffic circle connected to Florastrasse to commemorate Marienetta Jirkowsky, but was vehemently rejected by her aunt and mother's sister, Barbel Kultus.

Marienetta Jirkowsky attempted to act as the spokesperson for the family, since both of Jirkowsky's parents had since died, insisting that there was no merit to have died at the Berlin Wall, and that mourning was a private family matter.