Assassination attempt on Wolfgang Schäuble

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In the assassination attempt on Wolfgang Schäuble on October 12, 1990, the mentally ill Dieter Kaufmann seriously injured the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, and another man during an election campaign in Oppenau with revolver shots.

Since the attack, Schäuble has been paralyzed from the third thoracic vertebra downwards and has to rely on a wheelchair .

Sequence of events

During the 1990 election campaign , the SPD candidate Oskar Lafontaine was assassinated on April 25 .

At an election event in his constituency, Schäuble gave a speech in front of 250 to 300 people. When Schäuble left the restaurant hall surrounded by numerous people, the perpetrator approached him. The attack took place around 10:04 p.m. The attacker aimed from behind and fired two shots at the politician from 50 centimeters away with a revolver ( Smith & Wesson , caliber .38). Schäuble was hit in the jaw and spinal cord and said immediately after the crime that he could no longer feel his legs. The bodyguard Klaus-Dieter Michalsky was injured in his attempt to knock the gun out of the hand of the perpetrator, with a third shot in the hand and stomach. The attacker was overwhelmed and arrested. He had stolen the murder weapon and the cartridges from his father's gun cabinet.

consequences

That night, Wolfgang Schäuble was flown to the Freiburg University Hospital . Doctors fought for Schäuble's life for several days. Since the attack, Schäuble has been paralyzed from the third thoracic vertebra downwards. He had previously been active in sports, including playing tennis .

Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the then SPD chancellor candidate Oskar Lafontaine, who had been assassinated in April of the same year at an election rally, came to Freiburg and were shocked.

Schäuble refused to say goodbye to politics, which his family advised him to take. After only six weeks, he continued his political career, but has been dependent on a wheelchair ever since.

The attacks in 1990 led the security authorities to rethink. Up until that point in time, terrorism , especially that perpetrated by the Red Army Faction (RAF), was considered the greatest threat to politicians. Since then, mentally ill individual perpetrators have also been perceived as a threat.

Schäuble became a member of the board of trustees of the German Paraplegia Foundation (DSQ) and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Research Institute for Paraplegiology, Zurich.

Assassin

Dieter Kaufmann, born in 1953, was the son of the former SPD mayor of Appenweier Günter Kaufmann (1969–1977). Kaufmann had been a drug addict for a long time and had already been admitted to psychiatric treatment after several suicide attempts. In order to settle debts from his self-employment as a pub owner, Kaufmann worked as a drug dealer. Wolfgang Schäuble worked to ensure that Dieter Kaufmann, who was arrested in Spain in 1982 for possessing 20 kg of hashish, could serve his sentence in Germany. He was imprisoned in Germany for drug trafficking until 1988. After his release he was convinced that the Federal German state threatened its citizens in general and him in particular. In his interrogation after the attack, he stated that the motive was that citizens were tortured using "electrical waves" and "sound technology" and that they were inflicted with "significant electrolytic pain", including "in the duodenum and head". Schäuble was one of the main people responsible, an alternative target was Chancellor Kohl. During the trial, Kaufmann was declared incapable of guilt due to paranoid-hallucinatory schizophrenia , was admitted to a clinic for an indefinite period, and was released in autumn 2004.

crime scene

The crime scene, the “Brauerei Bruder” inn, was converted into the “Brother Park”, a home for assisted living for senior citizens and those in need of care, after renovation work in 2001.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Assassin. Change the world with a ball. Böhlau, Cologne / Berlin / Weimer 2003, ISBN 3-412-03003-1 , p. 82 f.
  2. ^ A b Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Assassin. Change the world with a ball. Böhlau, Cologne / Berlin / Weimer 2003, ISBN 3-412-03003-1 , p. 84.
  3. ^ Assassination attempt on Wolfgang Schäuble - The bloody election campaign. In: Der Spiegel . October 12, 2009, accessed October 28, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Assassination attempt 26 years ago: Why Schäuble knew his assassin well , bild.de , February 3, 2016
  5. ↑ What drove the assassin to Wolfgang Schäuble . Die Welt , October 12, 2015