Gerold von Braunmühl

Gerold (Gero) Hermann Johannes Edler von Braunmühl (born September 15, 1935 in Breslau ; † October 10, 1986 in Bonn ) was a high-ranking German diplomat in the Foreign Office who was murdered by terrorists from the Red Army Faction (RAF).

Live and act

Origin and studies

Gerold von Braunmühl came from a noble family of Swabian origin. He grew up in Mainz and attended the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium . After graduating from high school, he studied law at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz . He passed the first and second state exams and obtained his doctorate in 1963. jur. In 1964 he married Hilde, the daughter of a medicine professor at the Alice Hospital. He then studied international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna (1964–1965) and in Washington, DC (1965–1966) and received a Masters Degree.

Activity in the Foreign Office

Braunmühl had been a member of the Foreign Service since 1966 and worked as an attaché to the German embassy in Washington, from 1967 to 1971 he worked in the department for Germany and Berlin at the Bonn headquarters, where he finally became a ministerial director to one of the closest advisers to Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's rise. In 1985, as Head of Political Department II, he was responsible for European Political Cooperation, WEU and NATO , but also for relations with the Eastern Bloc , so that he was one of the most influential officials in the Foreign Office. Braunmühl played a key role in improving relations with the Soviet Union and Poland , which had cooled off since the Polish trade union movement was banned. He was considered a promising candidate for the office of State Secretary in the Foreign Office.

assassination

Gerold von Braunmühl was on the evening of October 10, 1986 in front of his residence in Bonn Ippendorf , the house number 39 on the Buchholzstraße, ' "52.3 50 ° 41  N , 3.5 7 ° 5'"  O shot of two people . He'd gotten home from work just after 9 p.m. in a taxi. While he got out and paid the driver, who also handed him his briefcase, a person wearing a woolen hat came up to him and shot him two bullets in the upper body. When von Braunmühl tried to flee behind a parked car, a second masked person appeared who shot him in the head at close range, snatched his briefcase and disappeared with the first person.

The perpetrators fled to Bonn- Endenich , where their escape vehicle was found four days later. At the Czechoslovak embassy in Bonn-Ippendorf, which is very close to the crime scene , they left a letter of confession in which a commando Ingrid Schubert of the Red Army faction accused themselves of the crime.

Grave of Gerold von Braunmühl in the Poppelsdorf cemetery

Memorial plaque at the crime scene in Bonn-Ippendorf

Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who had recently been released from the hospital, wrote in his memoirs that he had been called at around 9 p.m. by Mrs. Hilde von Braunmühl, who said to him: "My husband was shot". Genscher then drove to the house of his former office manager in Ippendorf. Genscher: “I'll never forget the picture of Gerold von Braunmühl lying in front of me on the street”.

According to the security authorities, Braunmühl was not one of the particularly endangered people and had no bodyguards . Barbara and Horst Ludwig Meyer were named as suspects, but there is no evidence of their involvement. In forensic examination of the projectiles was a murder weapon as a revolver of the type Smith & Wesson identified, with the most likely and the employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer was shot.

Braunmühl was married and had three children. Little known to his neighbors, he was viewed by them as calm and hardworking. His funeral service took place in Bonn 's Beethoven Hall. Gerold von Braunmühl was buried in the Poppelsdorf cemetery in Bonn.

At the scene of the crime at Buchholzstrasse 39, a commemorative plaque was placed in 1987 with the following text: “Here, on 10.10.1986, Dr. Gerold von Braunmühl, Political Director of the Foreign Office. He was murdered by terrorists. ” The Gerold von Braunmühl auditorium was dedicated to him in the Federal Foreign Office's training and further education facility (which has since been closed there) . The Foreign Office in Berlin uses a memorial wall in the house on Werderschen Markt to commemorate those members of the Foreign Service who perished in their service; thus also to von Braunmühl.

Open letter from the Braunmühl brothers to the RAF

In November 1986 the five brothers Gerold von Braunmühls wrote an open letter to the RAF entitled To our brother's murderers , on the one hand to get an answer to the question about the meaning and motives for this for them incomprehensible murder and on the other hand to talk to the RAF in to enter into some kind of "dialogue" to prevent further such acts. The Braunmühl brothers were awarded the Gustav Heinemann Citizens' Prize in 1987 for the initiative criticized by parts of the media and Federal Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann . In 1995 two of his brothers and Patrick von Braunmühl - one of Gerold von Braunmühl's three children - visited the former RAF member Birgit Hogefeld in prison to pursue the request for the open letter.

literature

• You murdered our brother. The answer of the brothers of Gerold von Braunmühl to the RAF. A documentation. Rowohlt TB-V, 1987, ISBN 3-499-12318-5 .

Web links

Commons : Gerold von Braunmühl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Interview with son Patrick von Braunmühl. one day , November 14, 2007

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1] , [2]
2. ↑ To our brother's murderers . In: taz , November 7, 1986
3. ↑ one day - "There was no effective strategy against the RAF" SPIEGEL interview with Patrick von Braunmühl on November 14, 2007.
4. ↑ 8.15 p.m. ARD. A letter and its consequences . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1988 ( online ).
5. ↑ No paper can replace a conversation . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1988 ( online - SPIEGEL interview with ex-terrorist Peter-Jürgen Boock ).