Tragedy on Lake Dobbertin: vacationers dies while swimming!

Tragedy on Lake Dobbertin: vacationers dies while swimming!

Dobbertin, Deutschland - A tragic bathing accident recently occurred in the Dobbertian See in Mecklenburg. A 73-year-old vacationer from Schleswig-Holstein died. According to reports from NDR, his wife could no longer see him from land and chose the emergency call. A large contingent of rescue workers immediately set off to look for the missing man. After three hours in the water in which divers, drones and a police helicopter were used, the man was finally recovered dead.

This regrettable message is part of a worrying statistics: Last year, 29 people died in bathing accidents in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and the trend is rising. Compared to the previous year, the nine additional deaths meant. It is particularly alarming that according to the DLRG, most of these accidents take place by the sea. A recurring problem is to ignore bathing bans, which also contributes to the fact that people often underestimate the dangers of swimming.

drowning and their causes

The DLRG reports that 411 people in Germany drowned in 2023, which marked an increase of 31 deaths compared to the previous year. This is already the third year in a row in which the number of drowned people increases, and for the first time since 2019 the figures exceed the 400 mark. In addition, the weekend of June 26, 2025 was one of the deadliest bathing weekends in the last decade, with at least 15 deaths throughout Germany. These tragedies make it clear that it is urgently needed to raise more awareness of the dangers of bathing.

In this context, the DLRG calls for better references to dangers to water, ideally multilingual, since many people may not correctly assess the risks. More and more swimming spaces have been closed in the past 25 years, which means that many switch to dangerous places to cool off. The DLRG plans to point out the special risks in particular to parents of small children and hopes that people will be more mindful in the coming warm season.

For more information about the dangers of bathing and current statistics, the reports from NDR, DLRG and Tagesschau can be viewed: ndr , dlrg , Tagesschau .