Dimitri Todorov

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Dimitri Todorov (* 1947 in Graz ) was - together with his accomplice Hans Georg Rammelmayr  - the first bank robber in post-war German history who jointly took hostages when the crime was committed .

Bank robbery

On August 4, 1971 at 3:55 p.m. Todorov and Rammelmayr attacked a branch of Deutsche Bank on Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich . In order to emphasize their demand for two million German marks and a getaway car, they took the 18 people present in the bank hostage , a novelty in German post-war history. In the course of the evening around 5000 spectators appeared, some of whom were completely unprotected and followed the action.

After negotiations with the police, the requested sum and an escape vehicle were made available around 11 p.m. First, a female hostage left the bank with a bank clerk and was put in the getaway vehicle, then the bank clerk - the cashier - returned to the bank. Shortly afterwards, Rammelmayr left the bank and joined the hostage in the vehicle provided. The snipers and the police armed with submachine guns then fired several times into the vehicle, although the hostage was right next to the robber. Rammelmayr was fatally injured, the immediate rescue of the hostage from the car by Munich Mayor Hans Steinkohl could not save her life; she died after being shot five times in hospital despite emergency surgery.

At this point, Todorov was still in the bank with the rest of the hostages. During the storming of the building, there was a shooting between Todorov and police officers, with no injuries. He was eventually trapped under a desk and could be arrested.

The act attracted particular public attention because, for the first time in the history of German television, a hostage-taking including the exchange of fire and the storming of the bank was broadcast live.

From the windows of the fine Feinkost Käfer restaurant across from the bank, guests, including Franz Josef Strauss and then Secretary of State for the Interior, Erich Kiesl , watched the scene. Franz Josef Strauss is said to have offered his own hunting rifle to solve the case, with the words: "I'll shoot these pigs personally."

Police operation - criticism and consequences

Since the robbery is considered to be the first bank robbery with hostage-taking and ransom demand in post-war Germany, the police at the time had little experience of how to act in such cases. Thus, there were significant problems that led to the tragic outcome of the hostage-taking and were then discussed controversially in public:

  • The chief public prosecutor Erich Sechser took over the management of the police at an early stage . The action scenarios played out up to then were then given up in favor of the approach that the perpetrators “are eliminated as quickly as possible”.
  • This tactic could only work if both hostage-takers were in access at the same time. In Munich, on the other hand, one of the hostage-takers remained in the bank with three hostages, while the other was under fire on the street - the hostages remaining in the bank were therefore at considerable risk.
  • There were no trained "precision shooters" in the ranks of the police , so officers with hunting experience were assigned. According to an NDR report, they completed shooting training in a gravel pit in order to prepare for their deployment.
  • The hostage taker's car was fired at a very late point in time: while he was walking uncovered for about 8 seconds on his way from the bank to the car, fire was only opened when he was at or in the vehicle and had access to the hostage waiting in the passenger seat. Those responsible later justified this with the fact that the officials u. a. first had to make sure that it was actually one of the two hostage-takers.
  • The hostage-taker was not taken under fire by individual shooters, but a whole series of shots by a large number of officials, so that a real hail of bullets developed.
  • The local police officers were not equipped with radios, so orders had to be passed word-of-mouth. To this day, it cannot be ruled out that the order to storm the bank did not come from an official position, but was triggered by the exclamation of an onlookers present.

As a result of the events (and partly in conjunction with the hostage-taking in Munich that took place a year later ) a number of measures were taken:

  • Special task forces (SEK) as specially trained units for corresponding operations were founded,
  • trained snipers were integrated into the SEKs,
  • the organizational responsibilities were defined (definition of the operational management in the hands of the police).

process

The process met with great media coverage in Germany because of the hostage-taking. Todorov was to life imprisonment convicted predatory hostage-taking and five counts of attempted murder.

Todorov was imprisoned for 22 years before being released early. Gerhard Mauz commented on the sentence in the Spiegel with the words: "Where there is the will to live, there is a way."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gisela Friedrichsen: Coined by prolonged imprisonment . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1998, pp. 76 f . ( online ).
  2. ↑ Todorov's long years in jail . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 14, 2002
  3. ↑ Yes, of course . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1971, p. 27 ( online ).
  4. ^ The fatal shot of Munich (2nd part of the series "Geld her"); a film by Tom Ockers , first broadcast on June 25, 2007 on Das Erste
  5. ↑ Special units of the Bavarian police to fight serious violent crime - section "History" . Homepage of the Bavarian Police
  6. ^ Get the money - the big bank robberies . (PDF; 92 kB) NDR press kit
personal data
SURNAME Todorov, Dimitri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian bank robber and hostage taker
DATE OF BIRTH 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz