Karl-Heinz Kurras

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Karl-Heinz Kurras as a defendant in court (1967)

Karl-Heinz Kurras (born December 1, 1927 in Barten , East Prussia , † December 16, 2014 in Berlin ) was a German police officer who worked in West Berlin . From 1955 to at least 1967 he was also an unofficial employee (IM) of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR . From 1964 he was also a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).

During a police operation during the demonstration on June 2, 1967 in West Berlin , the then Chief Detective Kurras killed the FU student Benno Ohnesorg with his service weapon with a targeted shot in the back of the head. In the subsequent criminal trials, Kurras was acquitted of suspicion of negligent homicide despite rebuttal of the self-defense situation he claimed . This contributed significantly to the radicalization of the West German student movement . The later founded terror groups Red Army Faction and Movement June 2nd also referred to this act.

Kurras' IM activity, which became known in May 2009, sparked a new public prosecutor's investigation into his fatal shot and a new debate about its causes and consequences. There were no indications of a murder order by the Stasi, but new evidence that Kurras had shot Ohnesorg unperturbed and purposefully from a short distance and was observed by surrounding police officers and his superior. However, the evidence was not considered sufficient to allow his trial to be reopened. The investigation into the suspicion of murder was closed in November 2011. Kurras' motive for the act therefore remains unknown.

Youth and education

Karl-Heinz Kurras was born the son of a police officer in East Prussia . His father died as a soldier in the Wehrmacht in World War II . Kurras attended high school and enlisted in 1944 - like most of his year after Notabitur - as a volunteer for military service. He was wounded and was in Berlin as a soldier at the end of the war.

There he began an administration apprenticeship and probably became a member of the KPD in the Soviet Zone , which was forcibly united with the local SPD to form the SED in April 1946 .

Detention in the Soviet occupation zone

In December 1946 the Soviet secret police arrested MWD Kurras for illegally possessing weapons. His personal details and party membership were ascertained, checked and recorded in Soviet military files. Historians recognize their information as reliable. On January 9, 1947, a Soviet military tribunal in Berlin sentenced Kurras under Article 58 , Paragraph 14 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (“Counter-Revolutionary Sabotage”, here: “Failure to fulfill an obligation”, namely the ban on weapons) for “intent to use the government and to shake the functioning of the state apparatus ”, to ten years in prison. As a result, Kurras lost his SED membership. He was imprisoned in special camp No. 7 Sachsenhausen . According to his later résumé for the MfS, the camp commandant used him as a “helper for personal services” until his release. When the special camps were closed in February 1950, he was one of the prisoners who were released.

The historian Sven Felix Kellerhoff suspected on May 26, 2009 based on Soviet files that Kurras could have been used as an informant against fellow prisoners during his imprisonment from 1946 to 1949. This could also explain his early release and later participation in the MfS. Certainty about this could only be given by further records.

In March 1950, Kurras joined the West Berlin police and worked as a police master in the Charlottenburg district . In 1959 he was promoted to chief detective .

MfS informers in West Berlin

In spring 1955 a colleague reported to the West Berlin police that Kurras sympathized with the KPD. On April 19, 1955, he reported to the building of the Central Committee of the SED in East Berlin and informed an MfS representative of his wish to live in the GDR and work for the People's Police . He realized that as a member of the silent police he was not serving a good cause and decided to “make his labor available to the peace camp”. His interlocutor convinced him in “a thorough discussion” to stay with the West Berlin police and to work there as an “unofficial employee” for the MfS. On April 26, 1955, Kurras signed his declaration of commitment.

From then on he worked as an agent in Department IV of the Greater Berlin Administration of the State Security under the self-chosen code name "Otto Bohl" in the West Berlin police. There he was supposed to penetrate their Department I, in which, according to the historians Helmut Müller-Enbergs and Cornelia Jabs, "all threads in matters of state security, espionage and defectors came together in West Berlin, which also cooperated with the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Allied security officers" .

His commanding officer in East Berlin was later Werner Eiserbeck from the MfS's "Line VII" responsible for the West Berlin police. Until 1965, Charlotte Müller , who was imprisoned as a communist resistance fighter in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , served as the courier . Kurras met her regularly in the “Schleusenkrug” in West Berlin's Tiergarten . In 1956, 40 meetings took place in a “conspiratorial apartment” in East Berlin, at which Kurras wrote written reports for the MfS and sometimes brought classified information with him for immediate copying. On February 10, 1956, he reported on the ongoing investigation by the West Berlin criminal police into Robert Bialek , whom the MfS had kidnapped on February 4 and who later died under unexplained circumstances. In 1961, shortly before the Berlin Wall was erected , Kurras received a radio set with which he received weekly orders and delivered reports.

Kurras wrote or dictated at least 152 reports on internals from the West Berlin police. He also passed copies of original materials on to his command officer, including a list of aliases for the West Berlin police for their telephone traffic and a file for police officers who were to be promoted. He also researched for the MfS in the West Berlin population register and the license plate file. In 1960, Kurras was transferred to the West Berlin criminal police and reported internals from the state criminal investigation office, for example about "personnel problems" and police measures on the Berlin Wall.

On December 15, 1962, he applied for membership in the SED on the grounds that it "embodied the true democratic will to create a democratic Germany". His courier Müller and his later command officer were the guarantors. On January 16, 1964, the SED accepted him after a successful candidate period. As a camouflage he joined the West Berlin SPD almost at the same time. Kurras' SED party ID has been on display in the exhibition at the German Spy Museum in Berlin since January 2020 .

In January 1965, Kurras was transferred to Department I for State Security of the Criminal Police in West Berlin and worked there in a special investigation group that dealt with the "search for traitors in one's own ranks", ie was supposed to expose MfS informers. In this position he also had to interrogate arrested members of the MfS. The courier dissipated any remorse that had arisen by referring to Richard Sorge as a role model . When one of the arrested people immediately confessed to Kurras and gave the code name of his courier, he offered the Stasi: Give me the order, I would kill her, such a traitor.

The MfS equipped him with a radio and eavesdropping devices that he used to eavesdrop on superiors. He was also given a mini camera to take photos of documents, which he was allowed to take into his home with the permission of the State Security because of his zeal for service. He was also responsible for the evidence and the evaluation of the intercepted Stasi radio traffic.

From his department, Kurras delivered about five files with secret documents to the MfS, including lists of the IMs who had been exposed and arrested in the West, as well as of defectors and escape helpers. These include 24 reports of arrested Stasi spies with details of at least five "deserted MfS members" such as the 22-year-old West Berliners Bernd Ohnesorge . He had spied for the MfS, but admitted this to the British secret service in January 1967 , which informed the West Berlin criminal police. Kurras investigated him and reported him to the MfS as a defector. In 1984, Unesorge was arrested as a spy for the CIA in the People's Republic of Bulgaria and sentenced to 15 years in prison in Stara Sagora , probably because of the Kurras report in a secret military trial. In 1987 he committed suicide there by pouring detergent over himself and setting himself on fire. Many details of Kurras' reports about such defectors were made unrecognizable in the MfS, so that the resulting damage for other people cannot be ascertained.

Kurras received monthly amounts of money increasing slowly to several hundred DM , which by 1967 added up to almost 20,000 DM.

In 1965, the West Berlin criminal police suspected Kurras and eleven other state security employees of having warned an exposed Eastern agent about her planned arrest. In the secret operation "Abendrot" their alibi for the period in question was checked without the suspicion of Kurras being confirmed. This reported to the MfS about this process.

Gun collector and marksman

Kurras wanted to keep a weapon from the war days in the post-war period : That was the reason for his arrest in the Soviet zone of occupation in 1946. He has been collecting firearms since the beginning of his police career and was therefore considered a “gun fanatic” who practiced shooting every day and “would have done anything” for it. He is said to have given his 10-year-old son a gun for his birthday. In West Berlin he belonged to the police sports club and the hunting club, spent most of his free time on the shooting range, spent up to DM 400 a month on ammunition and was the best shooter in the West Berlin criminal police for several years in a row.

He used his additional salary from the MfS to finance his hobby and asked the MfS for certain types of pistols for his private collection. In 1961 he exchanged one weapon for another with the MfS, and in 1965 the MfS gave him money to buy another weapon. In an internal evaluation from 8./9. In June 1967, the MfS therefore described him as “very much in love with guns” and “a fanatical supporter of shooting sports.” He had “an excessive tendency towards guns and uniforms” and was at the same time indisciplinary: he gave a child a pistol and took it "Regularly with target practice".

The shooting of Benno Ohnesorg

On June 2, 1967, Kurras was used as a civilian "grabber" during a demonstration against the state visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the Deutsche Oper . The police measure, which had been in preparation for months, envisaged encircling the demonstrators in a confined space, then driving them apart from the center with batons and mounted police and receiving them at the outer edges with water cannons. Individuals regarded as “ringleaders” were to be arrested in a further phase of action called “hunting foxes”. In order to find them, plainclothes police officers were mixed with the demonstrators; Kurras was one of them. As a service weapon he carried a Walther PPK pistol , caliber 7.65 mm.

Contrary to the instructions of the Governing Mayor Heinrich Albertz , the police dissolution of the registered meeting only began during the opera performance and without the prescribed eviction order. The police first beat individuals, then entire groups, including those sitting on the ground, with batons and then chased those fleeing into back streets and house entrances. Kurras and around ten uniformed police officers confronted some escaped demonstrators in the courtyard of the house at Krumme Strasse 66/67.

Benno Ohnesorg followed them to observe what would happen to the refugees. When the police beat up some of those present and drove the others out, he too wanted to leave the courtyard. He was held by three officers in the police handle and beaten. In this situation, Kurras shot Ohnesorg from close range in the back of the head at 8:30 p.m. Several eyewitnesses a few meters away saw the muzzle flash at a height of about 150 cm, heard the sound of the shooting and saw Ohnesorg fall to the ground. Some witnesses heard a police colleague dialogue with Kurras:

"Are you crazy to shoot here?" - "It went off me."

Seconds before and after the shot, Kurras can be seen in photographs in a clean suit. A shot can be clearly heard on a tape recording of the scene, followed by the command:

“Kurras, right back! Come on! Away quickly!"

Ohnesorg died after police officers refused to give a doctor first aid , probably while being transported to a West Berlin hospital. On the instructions of the chief physician, a doctor stated that the cause of death in the death certificate was a "skull injury caused by violence with a blunt object". At Ohnesorg's autopsy the following morning, the doctor in charge found that the deadly bullet had been left in the brain, but that the skull with the bullet hole had been sawn out and the skin sewn up over it. An immediately initiated search for the skull remained inconclusive.

Contrary to the code of criminal procedure at the time, Kurras was allowed to inspect Ohnesorg's body that night. Looking at the bruises of the man who had been killed, he said that in view of the beating he had received, he must have been “a very bad one”.

consequences

Criminal trials

In the first days after June 2, 1967, Kurras gave the media three different versions of the crime: a warning shot , two warning shots, a warning shot and a second accidentally fired shot. A little later he added the statement that he had been attacked lying on the ground by a group of demonstrators armed with knives. He held on to it until his trial. In an interview in July 1967 he said:

"If I had fired properly, as it would have been my duty, at least 18 men would have been dead."

Kurras was charged with negligent homicide; charges of murder or manslaughter were not admitted. The union donated DM 60,000 to the police for his defense . The public prosecutor took the case when the criminal police wanted to question von Kurras' colleagues, who had been direct witnesses and involved in the incident in the courtyard on Krummen Strasse. They were no longer questioned in the main proceedings and were not admitted as witnesses.

On the first day of the main hearing in November 1967, Kurras also announced his previous detention in the Sachsenhausen camp and portrayed it as persecution for “anti-Soviet propaganda”. He testified that he was trying to arrest an “unscrupulous ringleader” “suddenly was surrounded [...] on all sides [...] ": That was a" trap set ". "That's the cop, kill him," he heard. Then he was "brutally beaten down by ten or eleven people":

"I was physically abused, and I imagined that I had suffered enough now, and while lying down I pulled out my service pistol [...]"

When asked whether he had been lying on his back or kneeling, he could not answer. When asked about a warning call, he replied:

"My tongue was paralyzed [...] after the blows I received."

He saw "knife-armed men" in "threatening posture". He then fired one or two warning shots: The second shot was "released by adding the others", who had come up with fixed knives "within a very short stabbing distance".

“When I came to, what did I notice? Nobody was there!"

None of 83 witnesses, including none of the Kurras colleagues involved, heard a warning shot, saw knives, a scuffle and Kurras lying on the floor. None of those arrested had knives or other weapons with them. A forensic investigation at the crime scene had not taken place; the Kurras pistol magazine had been replaced immediately. A second projectile and a case could not be found. The sawed-out piece of skull also disappeared. While police chief Erich Duensing claimed that Kurras looked like "rolled through the dirt twice" when he arrived at the presidium, department head Alfred Eitzner testified that at around 11 p.m. he did not notice any blood or grass stains on Kurras' suit. Kurras had brought his uniforms to a dry cleaner on the evening of June 2, 1967.

Only the wife of a police officer who lived in the house above the courtyard confirmed the accused's version of the crime. She only reported shortly before the end of the trial and claimed that she had not been asked about her observations in the courtyard during the interrogation. The interrogator denied this. The testimony of a nine-year-old boy was classified as untrustworthy: he had observed the fatal shot from the kitchen window of his apartment and could clearly identify Kurras and Ohnesorg by their clothes. He saw neither knives nor a fight between kurras and students. The tape of a journalist, on which only one shot could be heard, was also not admitted as evidence; who gave the order to Kurras was not identified. Kurras refused a psychological test. The expert could therefore not determine anything certain about a “potentially aggressive behavior” of the accused.

On November 21, 1967, the 14th Large Criminal Chamber of the Moabit Regional Court acquitted him. In the grounds of the judgment, Judge Friedrich Geus stated:

"The killing was clearly illegal."

Objectively, Kurras acted wrongly. The conditions for self-defense , emergency or putative self-defense , i.e. the assumption of mortal danger, did not exist. Ohnesorg himself was on the ground:

“Unfortunately, there is a strong suspicion that Ohnesorg was hit even after he was fatally wounded on the ground [...] Kurras knows more than he says, and he leaves the impression that he has been untruthful in many things Has."

But it is "not refutable that he believed he was in a life-threatening situation". The court found "no evidence of intentional homicide or intentional bodily harm by a targeted shot":

"It could not even be ruled out that the triggering of the pistol was an uncontrolled misconduct that was not controlled by the will of the accused."

In doing so, the judge followed a psychiatric report which Kurras attested to having been "considerably limited in his ability to criticize and judge" so that "it was impossible for him to consider and process the events carefully."

In 1968, at the request of the public prosecutor and the joint plaintiff, Ohnesorg's father, represented by his lawyer Otto Schily , an appeal hearing was held before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). In October 1968 the BGH overturned the judgment due to insufficient evidence. The federal judges also criticized the police operation as a whole: “This organization was suitable from the outset to provoke conflicts.” They considered Kurras “particularly unsuitable” for the operation ordered him.

In 1969 new proceedings began before the Berlin Regional Court. Since Horst Mahler , Ohnesorg's widow's lawyer, refused to appear there in his robe , the judge broke off the hearing.

On October 20, 1970, a new trial against Kurras began before the 10th criminal chamber of the Berlin Regional Court. In its renewed extensive gathering of evidence, the court also paid tribute to previously unused evidence and stated that there could have been no threat situation for Kurras from demonstrators armed with knives. However, there was also no evidence of an intentional killing of Ohnesorg. Kurras was acquitted again on December 22, 1970 despite continuing doubts about his portrayal. The presiding judge concluded with him:

“Human misconduct or moral guilt: you have to deal with yourself and the Lord God and bear the burden yourself. We were unable to prove that you were criminally guilty. "

After the acquittal

Kurras had already been suspended from the police service for his first trial in 1967 and worked as a security guard and department store detective in a wholesale market. According to his wife, he started drinking excessively at that time . He was fined 400 D-Marks for unauthorized possession of a weapon after a former fiancée found a box with a firearm and 1,460 rounds of ammunition in the former shared apartment and reported this.

From 1971 the West Berlin police took over Kurras in the office. He worked in the radio control center. In July 1971, he received his service weapon back without the police chief's knowledge. According to his own statements, he had reclaimed her because he feared acts of revenge by the RAF after the Hamburg police shot dead RAF terrorist Petra Schelm from his residential area of Berlin-Spandau . The police found his service weapon in his briefcase in August 1971 while Kurras was sleeping drunk on a park bench. Previously, he is said to have sexually molested a nine-year-old girl; however, his parents withdrew the complaint.

In May 1977, Kurras physically attacked a photographer who had photographed him in front of his house, called the police for help and reported him. A little later he forced a Czech housewife at gunpoint to sign a self-written testimony on the incident that was favorable to him. This revoked the forced statement in the trial against the photographer. The police officer who had confiscated his film on site was then convicted of perjury and confessed to it. The photographer was acquitted, but Kurras also remained unpunished. The Czech woman also described an earlier conversation with Kurras on ZDF at the end of May 2009, in which the latter reportedly described the fatal shot on Ohnesorg as a targeted execution and commented on it with “one scoundrel less”.

Kurras was promoted to chief detective and from 1987 received a civil servant's pension. He lived with his wife in a condominium in Berlin-Spandau until his death.

Reactions of the West German student movement

Ohnesorg's shooting and the acquittal of the shooter mobilized nationwide protests by the then West German student movement. The fact that Fritz Teufel , a member of Commune I , was imprisoned for months while Kurras was only on leave, outraged many. Theodor W. Adorno compared his statements in his first trial with the rhetoric of Nazi perpetrators accused in Nazi trials :

“That sounds as if an objective force majeure manifested itself on June 2nd and did not press Mr. Kurras, aiming or not, on the tap. Such language is, to the horror, similar to that which one hears in the trials against the tormentors of the concentration camps … The expression 'a student' in his sentence reminds of the use still today in trials and in public […] of the word Jew is made. Sacrifices are reduced to specimens of a species. "

This was followed by demonstrations and campaigns for the expropriation of the Axel Springer publishing house , for democratic reforms at universities and for police training. The date of Ohnesorg's death also served as a reference date for later terrorist groups , according to the June 2nd Movement . Ralf Reinders and Ronald Fritzsch explained their founding motives :

“The real politicization came with the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg on June 2, 1967. After all the beatings and beatings, we had the feeling that the cops had shot us all. You could defend yourself a bit against a beatings. The fact that someone is simply gunned down went a little further. "

Regarding the corresponding naming, it goes on to say: “Everyone knew what June 2nd meant. [...] With this date in the name it is always indicated that they shot first! "

Reactions in the GDR

The GDR press presented Kurras' fatal shot from June 2, 1967 on the instructions of the SED as an intended part of an "emergency exercise" covered by the federal government and planned for a long time by the entire West Berlin police. The semi-monthly magazine Forum was devoted to the title Ein Shot - Freedom in the neck of the perpetrator in July 1967:

“… Kurras certainly failed as a person, but not as a political criminal police master Duensings . [...] As the recipient of orders from the emergency dictators, he did what was expected of him, namely to give the civil war exercise with the man who had been shot the necessary psychological emphasis. According to the concept of the emergency pogrom, blood had to flow. [...] In this situation, Kurras found the format of a senior concentration camp murderer. He 'overcame the weaker self' and shot the student in the neck. "

According to the Stasi files found in 2009, the MfS reacted in surprise to the fatal shot by its agent and ordered a few days later as a radio message:

"Destroy material immediately. Stop working for now. Regard the event as a very unfortunate accident. "

Kurras replied: "Partly understood, all destroyed" and asked for money for his legal defense. The MfS puzzled over the motives for his act, as he had testimonies to the contrary from the course of the crime:

"It is currently difficult to understand how this GM could commit such an act, even if it was caused by affect or negligence, since it is a crime."

Thereupon the MfS checked on June 8th and 9th, 1967, whether Kurras "established the connection to the MfS as Agent Provocateur on behalf of an enemy agency ", ie was a double agent. There was no evidence of this. An internal memo dated June 8, 1967, states that his "weakness in character" for firearms was known but underestimated. On June 9, 1967, MfS employees called Kurras “murderer” and “criminal”. On the same day it was decided:

"The connection to the GM is temporarily terminated."

From then on, no more contribution stamps were stuck in Kurras' SED membership book. There were no party proceedings, no reprimand or punishment from the SED. Helmut Müller-Enbergs and Cornelia Jabs, the discoverers of the Kurras files, comment on this finding:

“It didn't take much to be expelled from the SED. The shooting of Benno Ohnesorg by Comrade Kurras apparently did not offer a sufficient reason. "

The file does not contain any further IM reports by Kurras, which “were kept largely exemplary until the spring of 1967, but were noticeably thinned out afterwards”. An otherwise customary final report is missing for an official end of his spying mission.

On November 9, 1967, the MfS interrogated a West Berliner who had been arrested in East Berlin and who, while in custody, presented himself as an eyewitness to Ohnesorg's shooting. He also testified to the West Berlin criminal police that "the students did not physically threaten the detective and that the detective did not pull his pistol and shoot at the group of 20 students in the backyard". About 14 days later he was arrested in West Berlin on charges of defamation and offered to drop the charge if he withdrew his testimony. He did this. Since the witness did not give the exact place and time of the fatal shot or gave it incorrectly, the MfS interrogators judged his testimony as not usable, but passed it on directly to Bruno Beater , Erich Mielke's first deputy . A reaction from Beater is not documented in the four-page log of the process.

The MfS had over 500 pages of the documents from the first trial against Kurras in November 1967, including a copy of the indictment of the then West Berlin Attorney General Hans Günther from July 10, 1967. It came from his office and fell to the GDR border authorities at one Transit control in the hands of one of his employees on August 6, 1967.

After June 2, 1967, only one meeting between Kurras and his former commanding officer is documented: on March 24, 1976, he again offered Eiserbeck the opportunity to pass on West Berlin internals. This advocated this subject to the approval of the MfS; this is not documented in the files found. Kurras tried to explain his behavior shown on June 2, 1967 according to the minutes of the interview as follows:

“The situation became a mere existential question, whether life or death. That is why he did so. His life was endangered by the radical attacking with an open knife. Basically, the Kurras said that he had nothing to reproach himself and that he had no regrets. [...] He presented his statements on the known incident very impulsively. From the manner of his remarks it can be concluded that the Kurras is convinced of the correctness of his conduct, has no pity in any form and condemns the actions of the other persons involved. "

Kurras presented the situation to the MfS as a self-defense as well as in his criminal proceedings.

A six-page file of the MfS with the title “Advance”, created in 1987 and completed in 1989, contains the real name, date of birth and registration number of Kurras. According to this, Gerhard Neiber , Erich Mielke's deputy, ordered a “backup process” on December 11, 1987 “for operational reasons / interest”. In February 1989, Neiber handed this process over to the former command officer Werner Eiserbeck. On November 29, 1989, he tried to have the files destroyed with the note “Loss of operational reasons”. What kind of these were is unclear: Kurras had retired in 1987 and left the West Berlin police service.

Discovery and evaluation of the Stasi files

As early as 2003, during her research, a doctoral student had requested the Kurras files as material for her dissertation from the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records (BStU), but then discontinued this work. At the end of April 2009, Cornelia Jabs , historian and employee of the BStU, discovered the IM files on Kurras during research for an investigation into the knowledge of the MfS about deaths at the Berlin Wall, which were exclusively via the BStU's internal database SAE (subject files indexing) over several Keywords could be found.

Unknown employees of the Birthler Authority made excerpts of their report planned for publication at the end of May available to the media on May 21, 2009. This triggered a new debate about the background to the shooting of Ohnesorg and the history of the West German student movement. The original report was published on May 28, 2009 in the journal Deutschland Archiv . On June 6th, 2009 the BStU published further MfS documents.

Cornelia Jabs and Helmut Müller-Enbergs stated that the Kurras personal file (named after the F16 card file) was no longer available at the BStU. The Federal Commissioner at the time, Marianne Birthler, contradicted this : The relevant index card was removed from the MfS in 1967, but was placed back in the F16 in 1987 after Kurras' retirement. Kurras was therefore easily researchable in 2009 on a person-by-person basis.

According to the discoverers, the documents found lacked any reference to a Kurras killing or escalation order from the Stasi, for example to destabilize West Berlin. This is unlikely because the MfS was surprised and lost a valuable employee.

In 2007, Kurras said in an interview with Uwe Soukup : Today's police officers use guns far too seldom. Back then he could have been hit only once or not several times: “Then the boy is out of the window. Error? I should have put off so that the scraps flew, not just once; I should have stopped five or six times. Whoever attacks me will be destroyed. Out. End of working day. That's how it is to be seen. "

Otto Schily therefore assumed in 2009 that Kurras had lied in his 1967 trial with the alleged self-defense or the accidental shot. Schily did not accept a murder order from the Stasi, but suspected an indirect influence on the behavior of Kurras on June 2, 1967:

"The decisive question for me is whether the police officer Kurras, because of his Stasi obligations, behaved differently in this crisis situation than he would otherwise have done."

Schily assumed that his West Berlin police colleagues were deliberately obstructing the investigation and agreed to meet to exonerate Kurras:

“One has to ask whether the disappearance of the evidence and the strange testimony of other police officers were all coincidences. If the police had known what this man was all about, they would have handled the case very differently. "

On May 23, 2009, Hans-Christian Ströbele , who worked in the Horst Mahler's law firm in 1967, called for an investigation into possible influences of the MfS on decision-makers in the West Berlin police and politics and thus on the criminal proceedings against Kurras:

“Was the Stasi also involved in preventing the investigation? How did all the false reports come about? [...] The Stasi would have had no interest in Kurras being convicted and then possibly revealing everything. "

On May 23, 2009, the political scientist Wolfgang Kraushaar pointed to attempts by the SED to instrumentalize and direct the student movement. He suspected that Kurras might have played a role. At the same time, he warned against speculation: Even after the files were found, the perpetrator's motives and the course of events were unclear. Whether "parts of a key history of the old Federal Republic should be rewritten" cannot be answered from this.

The then deputy head of the Berlin district administration of the Stasi, Wolfgang Schwanitz, responded on June 6, 2009 to the question about the Stasi to kill Kurras: “I don't know of any orders from the minister that violate the GDR laws or the statute of the Stasi would have. This did not include murder and other violent crimes. "

Stern editor Hans-Ulrich Jörges wrote on June 4, 2009: The Stasi files demanded a “reassessment of three decades of German history, the history of the 1968 movement and its terrorist aberrations”. The anti-authoritarian protest movement would have continued, but it would have turned out differently: There would not have been 60 murders of German terrorists and anti-terror laws that followed Ohnesorg's shooting. Kurras probably did not receive a murder order and did not shoot himself in the GDR's interests to escalate the situation in West Berlin, but out of “personal hatred of the protesting students”. This is supported by his statement from 2007. As an “authoritarian character, left- fascist in thinking, speaking and acting like Stasi boss Erich Mielke, almost model perpetrator German”, he “seized the opportunity to use his weapon against a 'rioter'. To finish him off, like in an SS manual , shot in the head from behind. "

New investigations and measures

After his IM activity became known in 2009, several criminal charges were filed against Kurras. Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel , the deputy federal chairman of the Association of Victims of Stalinism , for example, reported him on May 21, 2009 for murder; Rainer Wagner , chairman of the Union of Victims' Associations of Communist Tyranny , reported Kurras to espionage.

On May 24, 2009, Kurras admitted his membership in the SED and indirectly also his activity as an IM of the MfS, but not a murder assignment:

"What does that matter? That doesn't change anything."

According to an announcement by Berlin's Senator for the Interior Ehrhart Körting (SPD) on May 25, 2009, the Berlin police pulled in the allegedly only pistol Kurras owned on May 27, 2009. During a search on June 12, 2009, a Smith & Wesson caliber 38 special revolver with 171 associated cartridges was found in his house. On November 13, 2009, the Berlin-Tiergarten District Court sentenced Kurras to six months' imprisonment with a two-year probation period for illegal possession of this revolver, ammunition and a manslaughter . The defense attorney announced his appeal.

The Berlin Senate had it checked whether Kurras' pension could be revoked under the civil service law . The Berlin public prosecutor's office requested the investigation files in the state archive. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office used the Stasi files to check an initial suspicion of murder against Kurras and had one of the 17 files temporarily locked. In another proceeding, suspected treason is investigated.

According to the results of the investigation, which became known by July 2011, Kurras shot Ohnesorg probably unhindered and deliberately. This was referred to by means of new high-resolution methods that were used to review photographs and films from the time and were interviewed again, whose statements had not been taken into account in the earlier criminal trials against Kurras.

The Berlin public prosecutor's office closed the investigation against Kurras at the beginning of November 2011 with no result: There was no evidence of a murder order by the Stasi, since in the main administration of the GDR Ministry of State Security's investigation before reunification, almost all of the files had been destroyed, and too little Evidence of the suppression or manipulation of evidence of intentional or negligent homicide in his previous trials, so that the legal requirements for a reopening of the trial were lacking. The investigation by the Federal Prosecutor's Office on suspicion of treason is still ongoing.

According to a report in the magazine Der Spiegel from January 2012, the investigations of the federal prosecutor's office revealed new evidence of a targeted shooting of Ohnesorg and its cover-up by the West Berlin police at the time: on a previously unknown film by the SFB, Kurras can be seen in outline with a gun in hand , who, seconds before the shot, was moving towards Ohnesorg. A photograph shows Kurras firing with his right hand, supported by a police colleague who was never questioned. Another photograph shows Kurras and the head of operations, Helmut Starke, who only claimed to have noticed Kurras after he was shot dead.

literature

on June 2, 1967

on the Kurras trial 1967ff

  • Heinrich Hannover : The republic in court 1954–1995. Memories of an uncomfortable lawyer. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-7466-7053-5 ( Aufbau-Taschenbuch 7053).

to the Stasi files

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Sven Felix Kellerhoff: The Soviet files on Karl-Heinz Kurras . In: Die Welt , May 26, 2009
  2. ↑ Mike Schmeitzner: Comrades in court. The Soviet prosecution of members of the SED and their predecessor parties 1945–1954. In: Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner, Ute Schmidt (eds.): Soviet military tribunals. Volume 2: The conviction of German civilians 1945–1955. Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-412-06801-2 , pp. 265-344.
  3. ↑ Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic, translated by Dr. Wilhelm Gallas, Berlin 1953
  4. ↑ Andreas Hilger, Nikita Petrov: "Dealing with dirty work"? The Soviet judicial and security apparatus in Germany. In: Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner, Ute Schmidt (eds.): Soviet military tribunals. Volume 2: The conviction of German civilians 1945–1955. Cologne 2003, p. 147f.
  5. ↑ a b c Sven Felix Kellerhoff, Uwe Müller: Kurras turns out to be a Stasi spy in chord . In: Hamburger Morgenpost , June 4, 2009.
  6. ^ Bernhard Honnigfort: The Kurras case - Mielke's stroke of luck . In: Frankfurter Rundschau online , May 26, 2009
  7. ↑ A German double life. In: taz , May 22, 2009
  8. ↑ a b c d Dirk Kurbjuweit, Sven Röbel, Michael Sontheimer, Peter Wensierski: Treason before the shot . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 2009, p. 42-51 ( Online - May 25, 2009 ).
  9. ↑ a b c d Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Cornelia Jabs: June 2, 1967 and the State Security.
  10. ↑ a b Mechthild Küpper: Files found in the Birthler authority: Stasi employees shot Benno Ohnesorg . In: FAZ , May 21, 2009
  11. ↑ Uwe Soukup: Karl-Heinz Kurras' shot at Benno Ohnesorg: Stasi assignment seems impossible , Der Tagesspiegel, March 14, 2015
  12. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: SED ID card from the shooter Kurras comes to the museum. Retrieved June 29, 2020 .
  13. ↑ June 2, 1967. Ohnesorg-Todesschütze was a Stasi spy. Interview with Helmut Müller-Enbergs. In: Spiegel Online , May 25, 2009
  14. ↑ Benno Ohnesorg's shooter was IM . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/2009
  15. ↑ a b Agent Kurras betrayed more than two dozen spies . In: Spiegel Online , June 6, 2009
  16. ^ Stefan Appelius : The lonely death of a Hamburg CIA agent , Hamburger Abendblatt, December 12, 2007
  17. ↑ What the informant Kurras told the State Security. news.de.msn.com, May 24, 2009 archive.org ( Memento from May 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ Ohnesorg's shooter: State security was hot on the heels of Kurras in 1965 . In: [Spiegel Online] , May 29, 2009, archive.org ( Memento from June 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ^ East Berlin's cool calculation with the anger of the students . In: Hannoversche Allgemeine , May 22, 2009
  20. ↑ a b Who is Karl-Heinz Kurras? Title Thesen Temperamente , ARD , May 24, 2009: (Interview with Uwe Soukup) archive.org ( Memento from May 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ a b c Mechthild Küpper: Ohnesorgs death shooter Kurras admits IM activity . In: FAZ , May 24, 2009
  22. ↑ Uwe Soukup: How did Benno Ohnesorg die? June 2, 1967. May 2007, pp. 79–130.
  23. ↑ a b Shots at students: Berlin police hushed up the background of the Ohnesorg death . In: Spiegel Online , January 22, 2012
  24. ↑ a b Uwe Soukup: Uwe Soukup: The man who shot Benno Ohnesorg. In: stern.de. December 1, 2007, accessed February 20, 2019 .
  25. ↑ Quoted from Uwe Soukup: How did Benno Ohnesorg die? June 2, 1967. p. 106.
  26. ↑ all of the following quotes from Gerhard Mauz : Please, please, don't shoot! In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1967, p. 82 ( online ).
  27. ↑ Quote documented by Hans Magnus Enzensberger: The unexplained emergency: Documentation and analysis of a Berlin summer. Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968, p. 81.
  28. ↑ Uwe Soukup: How did Benno Ohnesorg die? June 2, 1967. May 2007, pp. 106-112.
  29. ↑ The dead man and the girl . In: Tagesspiegel , June 2, 2007
  30. ↑ Uwe Timm: The friend and the stranger . Munich 2007, p. 92.
  31. ↑ Judgment in the Twilight . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1967, p. 74 ( online - 27 November 1967 ).
  32. ↑ The Ohnesorg case: turning point for Otto Schily . In: FAZ , June 2, 2007
  33. ↑ Quoted from Moabiter Landrecht . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1968, p. 72-74 ( Online - Oct. 7, 1968 ).
  34. ↑ Do robes make lawyers? . In: Die Zeit , No. 18/1969
  35. ↑ Uwe Soukup: The man who shot Benno Ohnesorg . In: taz , November 20, 2007
  36. ↑ Quoted from: Kurras acquitted again. In: [Der Tagesspiegel | Tagesspiegel] , December 23, 1970
  37. ↑ Uwe Soukup: June 2, 1967: The hour of the witnesses . In: Tagesspiegel , June 2, 2009
  38. ↑ Murder without a murderer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1997, pp. 114-115 ( Online - June 2, 1997 ).
  39. ↑ Quoted from Reinhard Mohr: The discreet charm of rebellion. A life with the 68ers. 1st edition. wjs-Verlag, Berlin 2008, p. 122.
  40. ↑ Ralf Reinders, Ronald Fritzsch: The June 2nd Movement. Conversations about hash rebels, the Lorenz kidnapping, jail. (PDF; 856 kB) Edition ID archive, Berlin and Amsterdam 1995, blurb
  41. ↑ Ralf Reinders, Ronald Fritzsch: The Movement June 2nd: Conversations about hash rebels, the kidnapping of Lorenz, prison. Ed. ID archive, 1995 ISBN 3894080523 , p. 39
  42. ↑ Quoted from Mareike Witkowski: The SED and the APO. Reception of the student movement in the GDR press. BIS-Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8142-2116-8 , p. 58.
  43. ↑ New research: Ohnesorg's gunman is said to have been a Stasi spy . In: Spiegel Online , May 21, 2009:
  44. ↑ Stefan Reinicke: The subject . In: taz , May 25, 2009
  45. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Ohnesorg's death was a case for the Stasi top . In: Die Welt , June 1, 2009
  46. ↑ Kurras investigation. The Stasi knew all the details . In: Focus , June 6, 2009
  47. ^ Sven Röbel, Peter Wensierski : GDR spy: New Stasi files discovered by the shooter Kurras . In: Spiegel Online , May 30, 2009, archive.org ( Memento from June 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  48. ↑ Steffen Mayer: Press release of May 27, 2009 BStU ( archive.org ( Memento of June 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ))
  49. ^ Matthias Schlegel: Stasi processing: Kurras' file was a chance find . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/2009
  50. ↑ A chance find? The special way to the Kurras files . Federal Agency for Civic Education
  51. ↑ Renate Oschlies: Only one person should have asked . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 27, 2009
  52. ↑ Stefan Reinecke : The man who radicalized the students: Ohnesorg-Schütze was a Stasi spy . In: taz , May 22, 2009
  53. ↑ Maike Röttger: Schily surprised, Ströbele stunned . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , May 23, 2009
  54. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar : Maybe it wasn't the Nazi past . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 23, 2009
  55. ↑ Schwanitz: "The facts speak for us" . In: Junge Welt , June 6, 2009
  56. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Jörges: Interjection from Berlin - Comment of the week: The bloody confusion of history . In: Stern , No. 23/2009
  57. ↑ Kurras confesses IM activity . In: FAZ , May 24, 2009
  58. ↑ Berlin's Senator for the Interior, Körting, wants to pull in Kurras' weapon . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 25, 2009
  59. ↑ Illegal possession of weapons: Police find revolver at Stasi agent Kurras . In: Spiegel Online , June 12, 2009
  60. ↑ Suspended sentence: Kurras convicted of illegal possession of weapons . In: FAZ , November 13, 2009
  61. ↑ Kurras appeals suspended sentence . In: Berliner Morgenpost , November 16, 2009
  62. ^ The case of Karl-Heinz Kurras. Murder investigation possible . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 29, 2009
  63. ↑ Illegal possession of weapons: charges brought against Ohnesorg-Schützen Kurras . In: Die Welt , August 27, 2009
  64. ^ Jörn Hasselmann: New investigations against Kurras - because of treason . In: Tagesspiegel , October 25, 2009
  65. ↑ Ex-RAF terrorist Mahler: The lawyer and the Stasi . In: Spiegel Online , July 31, 2011. Was Horst Mahler a Stasi spy? Picture , July 31, 2011
  66. ↑ Proceedings against Kurras discontinued: Ohnesorg case filed . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 2, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Kurras, Karl-Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bohl, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Barten , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 2014
Place of death Berlin