Arno Funke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arno Funke at the Leipzig Book Fair (2015)

Arno Martin Franz Funke (born March 14, 1950 in Berlin ) is an author , graphic artist and DJ from Germany . He committed bombings and arson attacks to blackmail department stores in 1988 and from 1992 to 1994 ; with the latter he became known nationwide under his blackmail pseudonym Dagobert . The blackmail as Dagobert became the longest and most complex blackmail case in German criminal history. Funke's actions showed imagination, technical ability, tactical caution and an (albeit unsuccessful) effort to avoid personal injury, which, combined with the press-reported failures of the police in trying to arrest him, earned him a certain amount of public sympathy .

Life before "Dagobert"

Funke is the son of a Norwegian born in Haugesund and a man born in Berlin , who left the family at an early age. He grew up in Berlin-Rudow and at times attended the Rütli School in Neukölln. He was already engaged in painting in childhood. After a discontinued apprenticeship as a photographer , Funke completed an apprenticeship as a sign and light advertising maker in 1969. Until 1980 he worked in various jobs, such as B. as a sign painter, disc jockey, driver for a beverage company and construction worker.

Again and again he tried his hand at creative professions. From 1976 to 1977 he worked part-time as a press photographer. 1980 to 1993 he worked as a freelance painter and photographer. He tried to gain a foothold as an artist with a few exhibitions, but never made a breakthrough. Since he couldn't make a living with art, Funke worked full-time as an art painter in a car workshop.

For years, Funke breathed in solvents while painting . The organic brain damage caused by this, combined with an identity crisis and private problems, is said to have led to a severe depression , which was recognized as reducing guilt in the second trial before the Berlin Regional Court in 1996 .

Due to lack of money and in search of self-affirmation, he decided in the late 1980s to blackmail department stores.

Department store blackmail

KaDeWe 1988

In 1988 Arno Funke blackmailed the Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin for 500,000  DM . To do this, he deposited a bomb on May 10, 1988, which was supposed to detonate at night, but failed. After a failed money handover, he detonated a bomb in the department store at night on May 25, 1988, the enormous force of which caused property damage amounting to 250,000 DM. When the money was handed over, he received the required amount of money, on which he lived for a few years.

Karstadt 1992–1994

After the money from the first extortion ran out and Funke was close to suicide due to depression , he decided to try the tried and tested method again. In the second attempt at extortion in 1992 he tried to extort DM 1 million and later DM 1.4 million from the Karstadt group. Because the willingness to hand over the money was to be signaled by a newspaper advertisement alluding to the comic figure Dagobert Duck with the text "Dagobert greets his nephew", Funke has since been referred to by the media as Dagobert . To underline the seriousness of his demands, he committed five bomb attacks and one arson attack against Karstadt department stores, in which one person was slightly injured.

  • The series of bombs began on the night of June 13, 1992 in a department store in Hamburg . A pipe bomb detonated there , causing considerable property damage.
  • On September 9, 1992, Funke set off an incendiary bomb in a Bremen department store . The water damage caused by the sprinkler system amounted to six million DM.
  • A week later, a bomb detonated in a department store in Hanover during opening hours in an elevator. However, no one was injured.
  • On November 3 in a storage room of a department store in lit Magdeburg an incendiary device , the damage turned out low.
  • On the night of May 19, 1993, a bomb detonated in a department store in Bielefeld .
  • On December 6, 1993, a pipe bomb exploded in the elevator of a Berlin department store during opening hours.

Funke became known for the sophistication of his technical constructions, with which he misled the police during the 30 attempted money transfers. This resulted in positive popularity among the public, despite the apparent criminal activity. The following events are worth mentioning:

  • When the money was planned to be handed over, the blackmailer gave instructions through telephone calls during which he played a tape with a computer voice. The conversations were conducted from public card phones. Since the times of the calls were known, the Berlin police once had 1,100 telephones monitored in vain, and another time 3,900 telephones. The deployment of several thousand police officers was enormous. Coincidentally, in one case, Funke was using an unsupervised telephone.
  • On August 14, 1992, Funke ordered the police to hide the money in a device and to attach it to a train. The device was equipped with suction cups and so held on the outside of the train. The Intercity "Käthe Kollwitz" left Hamburg at 16:40 for Berlin. The dropping device had a timer that the police used to determine the time of the dropping and thus the location. Several police officers were posted there, about 100 kilometers behind Hamburg. But the timer turned out to be a trick: Funke dropped the money package with a remote control, shortly after the Hamburg city limits. However, it only contained scraps of paper.
  • When the money was handed over on October 29, 1992, Funke rode his bicycle to the drop-off point for the money package on a railway line in Berlin-Charlottenburg . He left the package with scraps of paper thrown off the train for fear of being arrested because he heard calls from the train. He was seen by two MEK officers observing outdoors . An officer pursued him and slipped on wet leaves just before Spark. However, the newspapers later reported incorrectly about dog poop on which the policeman slipped. Funke was able to escape on his bike and also avoid the second officer on the narrow street. The failed arrest went through the press as a dog poop aria .
  • Since the beginning of 1993, a Conrad Electronic shop was observed by police forces for several months . The police assumed that the perpetrator bought the electronic components of his handicrafts there. On May 8, 1993, Funke had an electronic timer handed out from a showcase, which drew the attention of the observation forces. Although he was already being followed, he managed to escape through an emergency exit door.
  • On April 19, 1993, the money was to be handed over again in Berlin. The perpetrator referred by phone to a train station locker with further instructions. There was a key for a sand box. The money package was supposed to be put in the box that was at the Britz-Süd underground station in Berlin and the blackmailer announced that he would pick it up. Despite closer investigation, the police did not find the surface covered with concrete by Funke, under which there was an access shaft to a rainwater sewer. As a precaution, he monitored the box with a radio microphone. After hearing the package drop, Funke smashed the thin concrete underground and was able to take the package with scraps of paper without being noticed. He had previously prepared the handover point for days as a construction worker.
  • Another handover attempt with 1.4 million DM on January 22, 1994 took place with a self-made miniature rail vehicle. The money messenger was directed to a disused railway line where the mini-cart was. The money package was placed in the vehicle, which then took off. Funke expected the rail vehicle a kilometer away. Tracking was hardly possible in the dark and the confusing track bed. Nevertheless, Funke had built in several trip wires that ignited firecrackers when touched. Funke waited in his hiding place for the cart, but his pursuers were already moving quickly towards him with flashlights, so that he fled. A short time later, the cart derailed. The triggering of the tripwires by police officers and the associated rise of red flares into the night sky so astonished the pursuers that Funke gained a decisive time advantage to escape in this handover attempt.

Arrest and conviction

Chest tag from the Berlin and Hamburg criminal police for the Dagobert special commission

The Hamburg and Berlin police had set up the Dagobert special commission to arrest the blackmailer.

Funke was caught in the spring of 1994. On April 20, he phoned the blackmailed company. Since he announced his contacts, card phones were again monitored by surveillance forces in the blackmailer's preferred calling areas in the south of Berlin. A suspicious vehicle was spotted containing the bike he had fled on when the money was handed over in April 1993. An owner's finding revealed that it was a rental car that Arno Funke had rented. From then on, he was observed and arrested during a blackmail call from a card phone on April 22nd in the Johannisthal district of Berlin .

Funke had caused damage amounting to ten million DM. The costs of the extensive police operations have not been determined, but estimates suggest that they are still well above the total damage. The police telephone costs alone, etc. a. for interception circuits , amounted to 150,000 DM.

In the first instance, Funke was sentenced to seven years and nine months in prison on March 14, 1995 for aggravated extortion by robbery ; the public prosecutor's office went into appeal. On June 14, 1996 the Berlin Regional Court imposed an increased prison sentence of nine years in the second instance; In addition, Funke was sentenced to pay compensation of 2.5 million DM to Karstadt. After six years and four months in the Plötzensee correctional facility , Funke was released on August 13, 2000 for good conduct.

Cartoonist and author

'Last Supper' by Arno Funke

The well thought-out, ingeniously elaborate attempts to hand over money for his extortion indicated an above-average intelligence. In fact, Funke received an IQ of 120 and even 145 (maximum value) in a test without language. He is considered highly gifted and versatile. His explosives indicated good craftsmanship and in-depth knowledge of electronics.

During his imprisonment, he drew caricatures for the satirical magazine Eulenspiegel . While he initially only drew by hand, today he mainly creates his caricatures with a computer. In the meantime, Funke is also working as an author for Eulenspiegel-Verlag . In 1998 he published an autobiography (Mein Leben als Dagobert) and in 2004 a book with caricatures and stories (Ente kross) in which he settles accounts with the cartoon character with whom he is still associated to this day. For the cover picture of Eulenspiegel in September 2003, Funke drew a portrait of Michel Friedman on the occasion of the so-called Friedman affair , which has been criticized on various occasions as anti-Semitic .

Funke also draws cartoon posters for the election campaign of the party Die Linke .

The police work undertaken after the extortion was filmed in 1994 under the title The Phantom - The Hunt for Dagobert . After the police seized Funke the day after the script was completed, the script was rewritten accordingly and Funke's cousin Klaus Funke was hired for the role of Dagobert.

In March 2007 Funke was on stage with the multimedia program “Vomiting is not worthwhile”. The show in the Berlin Tempodrom (as an alternative to the Tränenpalast ) consisted of a mixture of satirical stories, caricatures and film spots.

Others

In 1999 the ARD showed the scene of Dagobert's grandson . In the film, an extortion group named itself after Funke.

In 2004, Funke appeared again in the role of the blackmailer on the reality show The Heist, produced for the English television channel Channel 4 .

At the end of 2008, Funke performed at a concert by the band Ton Steine ​​Scherben in Berlin, where he sang the title “Let's turn the thing”. In 2013 he assumed I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here! and The Perfect Celebrity Dinner .

Works

  • My life as a Dagobert. The confessions of the department store blackmailer . Ch. Links, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-164-X .
  • Crispy duck. Cartoons and stories . Eulenspiegel, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-359-01489-8 .

literature

  • The Duck Hunt Dagobert. In: der kriminalist , No. 2, 3, 5, 2004, ISSN  0722-3501
  • Claudia Brockmann (with Bernd Volland): Why people kill: A police psychologist is investigating. Ullstein Buchverlage, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86493-017-1 , Chapter 5: Dagobert , pp. 155–202.

Documentation

Web links

Commons : Arno Funke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jutta Schütz: "Dagobert" is 65 - but has no desire to retire . In: Berliner Morgenpost . March 14, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b Dagobert - longer behind bars and high debts . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 15, 1996.
  3. ^ Judgment of the Federal Court of Justice v. November 30, 1995 jurion.de, last accessed December 4, 2017.
  4. ↑ Excerpts from My Life as Dagobert ( Memento from July 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) on bmp.de.
  5. ↑ “ Gewisse Erleichterung ” , Der Spiegel 17/1994 of April 25, 1994, accessed on August 23, 2019
  6. ↑ Arno Funke has been behind bars for almost eight years . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 15, 1995.
  7. ↑ Sylke Heun: The spark jumped over with Dagobert . In: Die Welt , April 14, 2004, accessed December 4, 2017. - Book presentation “Ente kross”.
  8. ↑ Gudrun Schroeter: Limits of Satire: Eulenspiegel uses the striker , on HaGalil , September 23, 2003
  9. ↑ Esther Schapira : Hooked noses instead of swastikas , in: taz - the daily newspaper of September 26, 2003
  10. ↑ Greece - Cradle and Grave of Democracy? In: diether-dehm.de. Office Diether Dehm , accessed on August 9, 2016 .
  11. ^ Arno Funke with a multimedia satire . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 8, 2007.
  12. ↑ Department store blackmailer Dagobert wants to "do a new thing" . on tagesspiegel.de, September 9, 2008; with current photo from Funke.
  13. ↑ Jungle Camp 2013: candidate Arno Funke on RTL.de from January 7, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Spark, Arno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dagobert (blackmailer pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist, author and former department store blackmailer
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin