Uwe Barschel

Uwe Barschel (13 May 1944 – 11 October 1987) was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein from 1982 to 1987.

Barschel resigned as Minister-President shortly after he became embroiled in a scandal known as Waterkantgate for alleged spying on his Social Democrat rival during the 1987 state election. On 11 October 1987, nine days after his resignation, Barschel was found dead under mysterious circumstances at the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva, Switzerland. While a police investigation concluded that Barschel had committed suicide, the circumstances of his death remain controversial.

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, Barschel was among a group of Geesthacht students who attended a school assembly which featured former admiral and convicted war criminal Karl Dönitz, speaking at the invitation of a pro-Nazi history teacher. The event, during which Dönitz gave an apologia for Nazi ideology with no rebuttal from students and staff, caused a furore when it was reported by the West German and international press.

Barschel studied public law, economics, political science and education at the University of Kiel. Upon graduating in 1971, he was admitted to the bar and began working as a lawyer and notary. In addition to his legal and political activities, Barschel also developed an interest in science. He 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.

On 31 May 1987, shortly before the start of the 1987 state election campaign, a plane carrying Barschel and his bodyguard crashed on approach at Lübeck Airport. Both of the pilots, Elisabeth Friske and Michael Heise, were killed in the crash, and Barschel's bodyguard succumbed to his injuries at hospital a few days later.

On 13 September 1987, the day before the election, the magazine Der Spiegel reported an account by Reiner Pfeiffer, Barschel's media adviser, that Barschel had ordered him to spy on the SPD's top candidate, Björn Engholm, with the aim of embarking on a smear campaign implicating Engholm in tax evasion. Pfeiffer further claimed to have been ordered to install a bugging device in Barschel's phone and accuse the SPD of being the perpetrators. The subsequent scandal became known as the "Barschel affair" or "Waterkant-Gate" (an allusion to the Watergate scandal, with Waterkant (from Low German "waterside").

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 Barschel's death was self-inflicted, and that he overdosed on these medications before stepping into the bath. This method of suicide corresponded with a guide published by a German right to die advocacy group. However, Barschel's widow and four children did not agree with this interpretation of the facts and were convinced that he was actually murdered.

Various mysteries around 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 Barschel case had been reopened as a murder investigation because of evidence of third-party involvement.

On 12 June 2011, the Public Prosecution Department of Lübeck announced that the Barschel case would be re-opened and re-examined, with more sophisticated techniques such as DNA profiling being employed to find out the actual circumstances of the politician's demise.