Detlev Rohwedder

Detlev Rohwedder (1990)

Rohwedder's birthplace in Gotha, Bahnhofstrasse

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (born October 16, 1932 in Gotha ; † April 1, 1991 in Düsseldorf ) was a German manager and politician who was murdered by a sniper in his house as president of the Treuhandanstalt . The left- wing terrorist Red Army faction committed itself to the act; the perpetrators are still unknown today.

Life

After graduating from high school in Meldorf in 1953 , Detlev Rohwedder, son of a bookseller and grandson of a publisher, studied law and political science in Hamburg and Mainz, where he became a member of the Leipzig University Choir of St. Pauli in Mainz . In 1961 he was promoted to Dr. jur. doctorate, he passed his assessor exam in 1962. He then became a co-owner in a trust and auditing company in Düsseldorf. From 1969 to 1978 Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was State Secretary of the SPD in the Federal Ministry of Economics in Bonn .

In 1979 he was appointed head of the Dortmund steel group Hoesch . There he successfully managed the restructuring and realignment of the company. The restructuring included the liquidation of the Estel Group, a merger between the Dutch steel producer Hoogovens and Hoesch that has existed since 1973 . He initiated a future-oriented concept for the continued existence of the Hoesch Group and was elected Manager of the Year in 1983. In 1985 the Ruhr Press Association awarded Rohwedder the "Iron Reinoldus" award (named after the patron saint of the city of Dortmund ). In 1991 the Krupp Group acquired the majority of shares in Hoesch.

Rohwedder was appointed chairman of the Treuhandanstalt by the GDR Council of Ministers on July 3, 1990 ; On January 1, 1991, he took over the office of President of the Treuhandanstalt, which he had held on a provisional basis since August 1990. Its task was to secure, reorganize and privatize the assets of the GDR's state- owned enterprises . In November 1990 he was again named Manager of the Year .

Rohwedder was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit and the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (1990) and had been a member of the SPD since 1971 .

assassination

State act in the theater on Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin

Rohwedder's grave in Düsseldorf's North Cemetery

Rohwedder's Düsseldorf house in the Niederkassel district ( Lage ) was only equipped with bulletproof glass windows on the ground floor. He received death threats. Four days before the attack, Rohwedder's wife Hergard turned to the police with a request for increased police protection, which the authorities failed to comply with.

On Easter Monday, April 1, 1991, around 11:30 p.m., Rohwedder was killed through the window on the first floor of his apartment building with the first of three rifle shots. The second shot injured his wife's arm, and the third hit a bookcase. The shots were fired from 63 meters distance from a diagonally opposite allotments, of a rifle of the type FN FAL in the NATO standard calibers mm 7.62 × 51 . The same type of weapon had already been used in an attack by the RAF on the US embassy in Deichmannsaue Castle in Bonn on February 13, 1991. A few days before the attack, strategy papers that announced new activities had been found on arrested RAF terrorists.

Three minutes after the shooting, the Düsseldorf police started a large manhunt, but the perpetrator and the murder weapon were not found.

At the scene of the crime there were three cartridge cases, a plastic chair, a towel and a letter of confession signed by the Red Army Fraction Commando Ulrich Wessel . There were also binoculars and three cigarette butts.

The perpetrator (s) could not be identified. In 1992 the RAF claimed responsibility for the murder again.

According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, hair marks on the towel at the crime scene could be unequivocally assigned to the RAF member Wolfgang Grams , who had died in the meantime, thanks to a DNA analysis made possible in 2001 thanks to new technology . The federal prosecutor's office did not name Grams as a suspect, however, as they did not consider this evidence to be sufficient. The blood group determination of the cigarette butts resulted in blood group A , which does not match Grams.

Like the other eight murders of the third generation of the RAF, the Rohwedder murder has not been solved to this day.

Rohwedder's widow Hergard died on May 2, 2019.

Attempts to explain

According to Hergard Rohwedder, planning and involvement of the Stasi can be assumed, as the Treuhand and her husband were on the verge of finding the SED's disappeared party assets . "Actually, all politicians who had something to do with the former GDR " would assume that the Stasi had planned the attack. According to security experts, the perfect planning speaks for the Stasi.

Honors

Detlev Rohwedder House (2019)

On April 10, 1991 Rohwedder was honored with an act of mourning in Berlin, at which the Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker , the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Johannes Rau and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Treuhandanstalt, Jens Odewald , spoke.

In 1992 the former building of the Reich Aviation Ministry in Berlin , which in the 1990s was the headquarters of the Treuhandanstalt (corner Wilhelmstrasse 97 / Leipziger Strasse 5-7), was renamed Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus in his honor . Since 1999 it has been the seat of the Federal Ministry of Finance .

In 1999 the Detlev Rohwedder Prize was donated in his honor. In the Niederrhein Business Park in Duisburg-Rheinhausen, a Dr.-Detlev-Karsten-Rohwedder-Strasse was named after him.

Quotes

"Rohwedder was a tough guy, but when he said yes, he meant yes too."

- a long-time Hoesch works council chairman over the chairman of the Hoesch executive board

“Hardly anyone saw the difficulties as clearly as Rohwedder right from the start. He was fully aware of the enormous extent of the necessary changes with their time requirements and their far-reaching social effects. All the more forcefully he tried not to let people materially and emotionally get under the wheels. "

- Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker on April 10, 1991 about Detlev Rohwedder's activities at the Treuhandanstalt

literature

• Karl-Peter Ellerbrock:  Rohwedder, Detlev. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 7 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Peter Fiedler (editor): Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. A decade of structural change at Hoesch and in Dortmund. Ruhr-Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft, Dortmund undated , ISBN 3-9800721-7-7 .
• Otto Gellert : Detlev Rohwedder. An entrepreneurial personality. In: Otto Depenheuer , Karl-Heinz Paqué (Hrsg.): Unity, ownership, efficiency: balance of the Treuhandanstalt. Commemorative writing on the 20th anniversary of Dr. Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (= library of property. Volume 9). Springer, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-33114-5 , pp. 23–31 (preview).

Movie

• The assassination attempt . Two-part television film based on the events surrounding the Rohwedder murder, ZDF, 2018.
• Florian Hartung: The Assassination - The Documentation. ZDF, 2018 ( online until November 6, 2023 ).

Web links

Commons : Detlev Rohwedder  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Detlev Rohwedder in the catalog of the German National Library
• WDR current hour about the Rohwedder murder ( Memento from October 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Terrorism: The Secret of the RAF's Last Fatal Attack , Die Welt , April 1, 2011
• Tagesschau from April 2, 1991 on the murder of Rohwedder and the search measures

Individual evidence

1. ^ Publisher: Federal Ministry of Finance. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (German). 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Jens Bauszus: The perfect crime , in: focus , April 1, 2008.
3. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 . 
4. ↑ There's a nest somewhere . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1991, p. 18 ff . ( Online - April 8, 1991 ).
5. ↑ FOCUS Online: "Who does not fight, dies on installments". Retrieved April 27, 2019 . 
6. ^ Red Army Faction: Statement of attack from April 4, 1991 . Documented on rafinfo.de, accessed on June 26, 2017
7. ↑ Rohwedder murder unsolved after 25 years. March 31, 2016, accessed April 27, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Red Army Faction: To new ways . August 1992, printed in the Interim, documented by the Social History portal, accessed on June 26, 2017
9. ↑ The latest rumor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1998, pp. 32 ff . ( Online - Mar. 2, 1998 ).
10. ↑ Dirk Banse and Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The secret of the last fatal RAF attack. In: welt.de. April 1, 2011, accessed December 1, 2014 . 
11. ^ Rohwedder murder case: Hogefeld is to be questioned , WDR online, May 17, 2001 ( Memento of September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
12. ^ DW: Trace of the Rohwedder murder. In: welt.de. May 17, 2001, accessed December 1, 2014 . 
13. ↑ Rohwedder murder unsolved after 25 years. March 31, 2016, accessed April 27, 2019 . 
14. ↑ FOCUS Online: "Who does not fight, dies on installments". Retrieved April 27, 2019 . 
15. ↑ Interview with Hergard Rohwedder: widow of the Treuhand boss gives new clues about the murderer of her husband. Retrieved April 27, 2019 . 
16. ↑ Michael Jürgs: BKA: The hunters of evil . C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-641-06459-4 ( com.ph [accessed April 27, 2019]).
17. ↑ quoted from Peter Fiedler (editor): Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. A decade of structural change at Hoesch and in Dortmund. Ruhr-Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft, Dortmund undated , ISBN 3-9800721-7-7 , p. 29.
18. ↑ quoted from Peter Fiedler (editor): Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. A decade of structural change at Hoesch and in Dortmund. Ruhr-Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft, Dortmund undated , ISBN 3-9800721-7-7 , p. 75.