Conny Wessmann

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Memorial stone and sculpture for Conny Wessmann in Weender Landstrasse in Göttingen (2014)

Kornelia "Conny" Wessmann (born March 9, 1965 in Lingen (Ems) ; † November 17, 1989 in Göttingen ) was a German student. At the age of 24 she was killed in a traffic accident on the edge of a police operation in Göttingen .

death

On November 17, 1989 members of the right-wing extremist skinhead scene rioted in Göttingen Burgstrasse. Thereupon groups of different composition, including members of the autonomous scene , spontaneously confronted them; Conny Wessmann from Lingen (Ems) also belonged to one of these groups.

The autonomous scene in the city mobilized support via telephone chains. The Antifa group, to which Conny Wessmann belonged, no longer encountered the neo-Nazis , who had been escorted to a bus stop by the police and expelled from the city, but were in turn observed by the police and followed through the city. In a cul-de-sac behind the Iduna center on Weender Landstrasse, the group supposedly wanted to break up in order to go home separately, but was expected by a civil patrol car. Wessmann fled to the busy Weender Landstrasse, where she was hit by a car and died.

Since then, the Autonomous have made the police responsible for Wessmann's death, who drove the student to her death through their surprising action in the narrow passage. Many of them even see their deaths as political murder by the state . In a radio conversation recorded by the left and later publicly documented, police officers had agreed to literally "crush" the group to which Conny Wessmann belonged. In an interview with NDR television, the then senior public prosecutor in Göttingen, Jabel, later stated that “flattening” was police jargon for a personal identification in which suspects were forced to lie flat on the floor.

An investigation by the Göttingen public prosecutor's office against the police officers involved was discontinued in 1990 : neither the police officers nor the driver's fault could be proven. Members of the autonomous scene denied such research results. Because the Antifa members involved in the conflict did not want to reveal their anonymity, only testimony from police officers was recorded.

Wessmann's death was ranked in left-wing circles with the deaths of Olaf Ritzmann , Klaus-Jürgen Rattay and Günter Sare , all of the demonstrators who had died in connection with police operations in the 1980s.

Commemoration

Conny-Wessmann-Haus of the Association for the Promotion of Alternative Youth Work in Großenhain, Saxony (2012)

On November 25, 1989, 16,000 people, including 2,500 autonomous people, demonstrated for almost five hours through Göttingen. After the demonstration, street battles broke out in front of the inner city youth center.

Initially monthly commemorative events took place for Conny Wessmann, but since the mid-1990s there have been mainly annual demonstrations on the day of her death with strongly fluctuating numbers of participants, which in the past also resulted in violent clashes between autonomous groups and the police. An association in Grossenhain , Saxony , has named its alternative youth center , a former Hitler Youth Home , after its Conny-Wessmann-Haus since 1996 .

The playwright Lutz Hübner dealt with the death of Conny Wessmann and its consequences in his play exceptional , which premiered in 2001 at the Deutsches Theater Göttingen .

At the place where Wessmann died ⊙ there has been a memorial since 1990.

Web links

Commons : Conny Wessmann  - Collection of images

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörn Barke: Conny W. died 25 years ago . Göttinger Tageblatt , November 16, 2014.
  2. ↑ Göttingen recall the killed student Conny Wessmann hna.de on December 14, 2014
  3. ↑ Violence breaks out again and again by Klaus Pokatzky, in Die Zeit , No. 5. 1990 of January 26, 1990, on zeit.de, seen July 15, 2009
  4. ^ Death of Conny Wessmann. The Göttingen public prosecutor closed the investigation against the police officers involved . taz of June 26, 1990. Online .
  5. ↑ Conny died on the turn: Street battles were the result of hna.de on November 18, 2014
  6. ↑ Jan Hendrik Schulz: On the history of the Red Army Faction (RAF) and its contexts: A chronicle (revised chronicle from 2007). Online on contemporary history online .
  7. ↑ a b c Conny W. died 25 years ago goettinger-tageblatt.de on November 16, 2014
  8. ↑ Göttingen remember the killed student Conny Wessmann. In: HNA . December 14, 2014, accessed December 15, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Mandy Sucher and Susann Klöditz: Grossenhain: A meeting for alternative youth work . In: Saxon newspaper . DD + V, Dresden December 19, 2003.
  10. ↑ A scar in the asphalt. In: Jungle World . November 12, 2009. Retrieved December 15, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Wessmann, Conny
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wessmann, Kornelia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German student, regarded by parts of the left-wing scene as a kind of martyr
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Lingen
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1989
Place of death Goettingen