Magdalena Kopp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magdalena Cäcilia Kopp (born April 2, 1948 in Neu-Ulm ; † June 15, 2015 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a terrorist in the Revolutionary Cells and the wife of the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez known as "Carlos" .

Life

Magdalena Kopp grew up in the Bavarian-Swabian town of Neu-Ulm as the daughter of a postal worker and a waitress . As a secondary school student, she met Michel Leiner (1942–2014), who studied at the Ulm School of Design , was active as an SDS member in the left student movement and became her partner. After graduating from school, she began an apprenticeship as a photographer, which she initially broke off and completed from 1967 to 1969 at the Lette School in Berlin . In 1969 she moved to Leiner in Frankfurt am Main, where daughter Anna was born and Leiner became production manager and art director at the Roter Stern publishing house, which was founded in 1970 and for which Kopp subsequently also worked.

In 1972 she fell in love with Johannes Weinrich , an employee of the publishing house , for whom she left her husband. She first moved to Bochum with Weinrich before she went to Gaiganz near Erlangen with her daughter, where she worked as a repro photographer. Her employer was the "Politladen Buchhandlung und Verlags GmbH" run by Gerd-Hinrich Schnepel , which was closely linked to the left-wing radical Frankfurt scene. Kopp was one of the founders of the Frankfurt " Revolutionary Cells " (RZ). Members of this group, which in addition to Weinrich and Schnepel also included Hans-Joachim Klein , Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann , were involved in the attack on the OPEC conference in 1975 and in the hijacking of an Air France plane from Athens to Entebbe in 1976 .

She went into hiding abroad in 1978 with Weinrich, who was involved in a failed attack on an Israeli plane at Paris airport in 1975. She left her daughter with her father. Weinrich was friends with the internationally wanted terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez , known as Carlos. At the end of 1978 Kopp traveled via Prague to Baghdad, where Carlos lived under the protection of the Iraqi secret service.

From 1979 Kopp was in a relationship with Carlos and worked in the closest leadership of his organization of internationalist revolutionaries . On February 16, 1982, she was arrested in Paris on the Champs-Elysées with the accomplice Bruno Bréguet when she tried to carry out an explosive attack on the Kuwait embassy , with which protection money was to be extorted.

During her imprisonment, Carlos carried out several attacks in retaliation on Arab and French facilities, resulting in numerous deaths.

Soon after her release from prison in 1985, she returned to Carlos and lived with him and their daughter, who was born in 1986, in the Syrian capital Damascus . In 1991, Carlos officially registered his marriage to Magdalena Kopp in Lebanon under Islamic law . Kopp was not present at the official act.

In May 1991 the Illustrierte Stern reported in a detailed article entitled “The Godfather of Terror” that Kopp was living with her daughter at Carlos's side in Damascus. In view of the information that had become public, the Syrian secret service then recommended that Kopp should leave the country. In 1992, Kopp and her daughter came to Carlos 'home in Venezuela , where they lived for the next three years under the care of Carlos' wealthy and influential family. In June 1995, the German news magazine Focus reported on Kopp's exposure in the Venezuelan city of Valencia by its own reporters. Carlos was arrested in Sudan in 1994 and extradited to France. At the end of 1995 Magdalena Kopp returned to Neu-Ulm with her daughter, where she has lived since then. She broke up with Carlos and made herself available to the investigative authorities as a witness.

Kopp was the first journalist to confide her experiences and insights to Oliver Schröm , who classified them as the most important source for his book Im Schatten des Schakal: Carlos and the pioneers of international terrorism , published in 2002 . In the following years, she processed her memories of the 13 years with Carlos in an autobiographical book entitled The Terror Years: My Life by the Side of Carlos, which was published in 2007. In the biography Carlos - The Jackal by director Olivier Assayas (2010), Nora von Waldstätten played the role of Magdalena Kopp. The documentary In The Darkroom (2013) by Nadav Schirman illuminates the relationship with Carlos and her way alongside the top terrorist with interviews with those involved from the data center, Magdalena Kopp and their daughter Rosa.

Magdalena Kopp died on June 15, 2015 in Frankfurt.

publication

documentary

  • Nadav Schirman: The Jackal's wife (English original title: In the Darkroom ), Germany / Israel / Finland / Romania / Italy 2012, 90 minutes

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Die Welt : The Terrorist's Wife
  2. ↑ The Years of Terror p. 39 f
  3. ↑ Schröm: In the shadow of the jackal p. 36
  4. ↑ The Years of Terror p. 7
  5. ↑ Ursula Wenzel: Obituary Michel Leiner. In: Shape of March 2014 called on June 19, 2015.
  6. ↑ Schröm: In the shadow of the jackal p. 37
  7. ↑ Michael Sontheimer: The jackal's mistress. In: Der Spiegel of August 27, 2007, accessed on June 19, 2015.
  8. ↑ a b Assassinations: Lilly's Generalbeichte, in: Focus from November 11, 1996, accessed on July 16, 2014
  9. ^ Wilhelm Dietl : Der Pate des Terrors In: Stern from May 8, 1991, pp. 20 ff
  10. ^ Wilhelm Dietl: "Lilly" in a golden cage. In: Focus from June 26, 1995, accessed June 18, 2015.
  11. ↑ Schröm: In the shadow of the jackal. P. 9.
  12. ↑ FOCUS from May 20, 2010: Nora von Waldstätten must dream with the film character
  13. ↑ Magdalena Kopp was more than just the terrorist bride. In: Augsburger Allgemeine. September 25, 2015, accessed September 25, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Kopp, Magdalena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kopp, Magdalena Cäcilia (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German wife of the terrorist "Carlos"
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH New Ulm
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 2015
Place of death Frankfurt am Main