Katrin Reemtsma

Katrin Reemtsma (born August 30, 1958 in Lüneburg , † June 9, 1997 in Berlin ) was a German ethnologist and human rights activist who was primarily committed to the Roma . She was stabbed to death by her long-time partner Asmet S., a Rom, after the separation. In 2007 the Romanian-German writer Richard Wagner published the key novel Das rich Mädchen , in which he discussed the clash of different cultures based on Reemtsma's life.

Life

Katrin Reemtsma came from the industrial family Reemtsma and was the niece of the literary scholar and patron Jan Philipp Reemtsma . Katrin Reemtsma studied ethnology and folklore in Hamburg , Göttingen and Berkeley .

At the age of 18 she was already involved in the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) for ethnic minorities .

In the early 1980s she worked in the organization of the 3rd World Roma Congress, which took place in Göttingen. She then worked from 1981 to 1987 in Göttingen for the GfbV as a consultant for Sinti and Roma. Since 1987 she has been the voluntary coordinator of the GfbV for Sinti and Roma in Berlin.

At the beginning of the 1990s she lived with Asmet S., a Serbian Rom. Asmet S. came to Berlin as a refugee from what was then Yugoslavia . Reemtsma and Asmet S. had two children together, a daughter and a son, who were five and three years old in 1997.

In Berlin, Reemtsma worked as a freelance ethnologist and wrote expert opinions for courts and the European Parliament. Over the years she wrote numerous articles for the journal of the Society for Threatened Peoples, Pogrom , and was responsible for several special editions of this journal, including on Afghanistan .

Reemtsma's death and the trial

On June 9, 1997, Reemtsma was stabbed to death by her partner in their shared apartment in Berlin-Friedenau. The reasons for this ultimately remained unclear in the trial that took place at the Berlin district court in October 1997 . Asmet S. was sentenced to 12 years in prison for manslaughter . Maybe he didn't want to accept the announced separation. According to the court, Reemtsma had transferred almost 200,000 Deutschmarks to her partner between May 1996 and February 1997. Asmet S. did not answer questions about the whereabouts of the money in court. The psychological state of the partner also remained unclear: According to media reports, he served the court with “confused stories” [...] “of telepathy, of electricity and (of) the fact that Katrin Reemtsma is 'still alive'”. An expert from the court, however, confirmed that Asmet S. was neither delusional nor an acute mental disorder.

Processing in the novel and film

Even the Serbian writer and Roma functionary Rajko Đurić , who was chairman of the International Roma Union at the time, said in a personal obituary published in the TAZ in 1997 that the death of Reemtsma and the “personal, family, psychosocial, historical and political Ways and Moments ”that crossed in the death drama about Katrin Reemtsma,“ could be the motive for a political-sociological novel ”.

In 2007, the novel Das rich Mädchen by the Romanian German writer Richard Wagner was published , in which he dealt with Reemtsma's death. Volker Müller, the reviewer of the Berliner Zeitung , writes about the novel: “Your fate stands for the fact that the clash of traditional and modern cultures is more dissonant than well-intentioned multicultural harmonies. (…) For Wagner, the gruesome death of the Berlin Roma expert is a case study of where that cultural tolerance leads, which reveals European principles of democracy and individual freedom with the hegemony of the enlightened. ”In 1999 the director Ulrike Rode made a film Who was Katrin Reemtsma?

Publications (selection)

• Sinti and Roma: culture, history, present. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39255-5 (= Beck'sche series , 1155).
• Gypsies in ethnographic literature: the "gypsies" of ethnographers. Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt am Main 1996 (= materials from the Fritz Bauer Institute, Study and Documentation Center on the History and Effects of the Holocaust , Volume 16).
• Roma in Yugoslavia, Minority Report. Published by the Society for Threatened Peoples , ZDWF, Central Documentation Center of the Free Welfare Care for Refugees e. V., Bonn 1990, DNB 900879173 (= ZDWF series of publications , volume 37).

Sources / literature

• Barbara Bollwahn : A life for the disenfranchised. In: the daily newspaper , October 25, 1997, p. 7.
• Barbara Bollwahn: A death without explanation , in: TAZ October 25, 1997, pp. 6-7.
• Jens Rübsam: One judgment, many question marks: Berlin district court sentenced Katrin Reemtsma's partner for manslaughter to 12 years in prison. The motive for the crime remains unclear. In: TAZ , November 1, 1997, p. 6.
• Barbara Bollwahn: The tragic death of Katrin Reemtsma in court. The significant other contradicts himself. He's serving up confused stories to the court. In: TAZ , October 28, 1997. p. 6.
• On the death of Katrin Reemtsma: The Tragedy: A personal obituary by Rajko Djuric. In: TAZ, June 16, 1997, p. 5.
• Tilman Zülch, Yvonne Bangert: Farewell to Katrin Reemtsma. In: Pogrom , 251, 6/2008 ( 40 years of the Society for Threatened Peoples )

Belletristic representation

• Richard Wagner : The rich girl. Structure , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-03226-5 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Katrin Reemtsma in the catalog of the German National Library
• Review notes for The Rich Girl at perlentaucher.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara Bollwahn: The tragic death of Katrin Reemtsma in court. The significant other contradicts himself. He's serving up confused stories to the court. In: TAZ , October 28, 1997, p. 6.
2. ↑ "Asmet S., a tall, slender man with a bushy mustache, served up confused stories: He told of telepathy, of electricity and that Katrin Reemtsma is 'still alive'." In: Bollwahn: Der tragische Tod. TAZ , October 28, 1997.
3. ↑ Jens Rübsam: One judgment, many question marks: Berlin district court sentenced Katrin Reemtsma's partner to 12 years imprisonment for manslaughter. The motive for the crime remains unclear. In: TAZ , November 1, 1997, p. 6.
4. ↑ On the death of Katrin Reemtsma: The tragedy: A personal obituary by Rajko Djuric. In: TAZ , June 16, 1997, p. 5.
5. ↑ Volker Müller: : Deadly multicultural dream: Richard Wagner's political and sociological Romanpamphlet against the do-gooders. ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Berliner Zeitung , December 27, 2007 
6. ^ Page of the IMDB about the film by Ulrike Rode