10 Facts About Uwe Barschel

Uwe Barschel was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union who served as Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein from 1982 to 1987.

On 11 October 1987, nine days after his resignation, Uwe Barschel was found dead under mysterious circumstances at the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva, Switzerland.

Uwe Barschel, having assumed office of Minister-President at the age of 38 and died at 43, is to date the youngest head of government of a federal state in Germany and the youngest former Minister-President to die.

In 1963, Uwe Barschel was among a group of Geesthacht students who attended a school assembly which featured former admiral and convicted war criminal Karl Donitz, speaking at the invitation of a pro-Nazi history teacher.

Uwe Barschel studied public law, economics, political science and education at the University of Kiel.

Uwe Barschel was reportedly preparing to withdraw from politics in the middle of the 1987 legislative session, and had almost completed his habilitation thesis at the time of his death.

Uwe Barschel's autopsy uncovered a total of eight drugs in his system, including the sedatives lorazepam, diazepam, diphenhydramine, and perazine, along with the barbiturate cyclobarbitone and the sleep aid pyrithyldione.

The Geneva prosecutor determined that Uwe Barschel's death was self-inflicted, and that he overdosed on these medications before stepping into the bath.

Various mysteries around Uwe Barschel's death are discussed in a January 1995 Washington Post article based on German, Spanish and Swiss police investigations of the murder, and the possible motives for it.

The article reported that the Uwe Barschel case had been reopened as a murder investigation because of evidence of third-party involvement.