Frank Boettcher

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Frank Böttcher (* 1980 ; † February 8, 1997 in Magdeburg ) was a youth from Magdeburg who was victim of an attack by right-wing extremists on the night of February 7th to 8th, 1997 . There was a dispute about how the act should be viewed as politically motivated and recorded in terms of police statistics. In memory of Böttcher's death, demonstrations against right-wing extremism are held regularly in Magdeburg.

Sequence of events

Frank Böttcher, who had recently been a member of the punk scene, took a tram to the hospital in Magdeburg's Neu Olvenstedt district on the afternoon of February 7, 1997 , to have a hand injury treated there. He told the nurses about a group of right-wing extremist skinheads who molested him on the way. On the way back, late in the evening of February 7th, at the terminus of the tram, he met one or more young people who attacked him because of his appearance as a punk. The perpetrator or perpetrators pulled him to the ground and kicked him. A short time later, Cooper was inflicted fatal injuries with seven knife wounds and kicks in the head.

Investigation and conviction

The police initially looked in different directions and also considered a robbery or a left-wing argument to be possible. According to information from skinhead circles, after eleven days, Marcus J., who was the same age as Böttcher, was identified as the perpetrator of the knife wounds. In front of the youth chamber of the Magdeburg Regional Court, he stated that he had “felt provoked” by the “external appearance” of the punk. Marcus J., who was heavily intoxicated during the act, was sentenced to a youth prison term of seven years for manslaughter . No further accomplices were identified by the police or the public prosecutor. The representation that there was a single perpetrator has been doubted several times.

The crime was not classified as a "right-wing extremist homicide" in the statistics of the Saxony-Anhalt criminal police. The Interior Minister Manfred Püchel justified this with nationwide guidelines. The motivation given by the perpetrator to have felt provoked by Frank Böttcher's appearance does not fall under this guideline, and the perpetrator did not belong to any right-wing extremist organization. A request from the PDS to include the crime in the statistics was rejected by a majority on September 4, 1997 by the state parliament.

More crimes and commemoration after the crime

After the crime, on January 3, 1998, the apartment of Frank's older brother Peter Böttcher was attacked by skinheads. Peter's acquaintance Gordon G. was seriously injured.

These events were part of a series of right-wing extremist acts of violence in Magdeburg. The 23-year-old Torsten Lamprecht was murdered back in 1992 .

In 1998 the Magdeburg Antifa erected a memorial stone for Frank Böttcher. This was violated several times by right-wing youths and finally stolen. In July 2005, a new memorial stone was erected by the Magdeburg Alliance against the right. At the beginning of June 2007, however, this stone memorial plaque was levered out of its anchoring using tools and brutal force and stolen.

Left-wing groups from Magdeburg regularly take Böttcher's death as an opportunity to call for a "Frank Böttcher memorial demonstration" against right-wing extremism. 2000 people took part in the demonstration against right-wing extremism on the first anniversary of Frank Böttcher's death on February 9, 1998. There were riots in downtown Magdeburg when autonomous and punks destroyed the windows of two bank branches, looted a gas station and damaged cars. They also threw stones at cameramen and press photographers. Almost a thousand people took part in the demonstration on February 10, 2001, of whom, according to the police, almost four hundred had come from outside the country.

On January 28, 2002, an arson attack was carried out on the Magdeburg restaurant Zum Reinheitsgebot , which was known as a meeting place for the right-wing extremist scene. A commitment to the attack appeared in the local scene magazine Sündenbock , which was signed "Antifascist cell Frank Böttcher".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Minutes of the meeting of the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt on September 4, 1997.
  2. ↑ WELT ONLINE : Riots during the memorial march
  3. ↑ RP-ONLINE : Magdeburg: Demo against right  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rp-online.de  
  4. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report 2002, page 62 Archive link ( Memento of the original of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.inneres.sachsen-anhalt.de

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Böttcher, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German punk, victim of a right-wing extremist assault
DATE OF BIRTH 1980
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1997
Place of death Magdeburg