Heinz Hillegaart

Heinz Hillegaart (born April 10, 1911 in Hamburg , † April 24, 1975 in Stockholm ) was a German diplomat who was murdered by members of the left-wing extremist terrorist organization RAF .

Hillegaart studied in London , where he had graduated from high school in 1932, until 1936 economics and political science. He received his doctorate in 1943 as Dr. rer. pole. in Munich , where he studied economics from 1938 to 1939 . In the meantime he was in the war in 1940 and 1941.

After the war Hillegaart worked as a businessman . In 1951 he joined the Foreign Service. He worked in the then federal capital Bonn in the Foreign Office (1951/1952 and 1964–1969) as well as in Karachi , Calcutta , Gothenburg and Rangoon . He had two daughters, Viveka and Claudia, and a son, Oliver.

In February 1969 he went to the West German embassy in Stockholm as counselor for economics . On April 24, 1975, six RAF terrorists took twelve hostages there, barricaded themselves with them in the embassy and demanded the release of 26 arrested RAF supporters. They called on the Swedish police to withdraw and gave 2 p.m. as the ultimatum. At 2 p.m. two terrorists seriously injured military attaché Andreas von Mirbach with five shots; the attaché died a few hours later. After the federal government did not respond to the occupiers' ultimatum, Hillegaart was shot in public at an open window at around 10:20 p.m. Who did this remained unknown.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Hillegaart in the catalog of the German National Library
• photo
• Anne Siemens : The victims of the RAF

Individual evidence

1. ^ The hostage-taking of Stockholm . Federal Agency for Civic Education , April 21, 2015, accessed October 27, 2017.
2. ↑ Butz Peters : The Terror of Stockholm . welt.de , April 25, 2005, accessed October 27, 2017.