Mölln assassination attempt

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The Mölln assassination attempt was an arson attack on the night of November 23, 1992 on two houses inhabited by Turkish families in the small town of Mölln in Schleswig-Holstein . The right-wing extremist crime attracted nationwide attention.

The crime

The attacks were carried out by neo-Nazis Michael Peters and Lars Christiansen using Molotov cocktails . In the house that was first attacked, there were no fatalities, but nine were injured, some seriously. In the second house, the two girls Yeliz Arslan and Ayşe Yılmaz and their grandmother Bahide Arslan perished in the flames. Even during the extinguishing work there were calls to confess to the police, which ended with " Heil Hitler ". The emergency interception circuit did not lead to the callers. The two men known as neo-Nazis quickly came under suspicion; especially the testimony of a 9-year-old girl led to her. Both confessed to police interrogation, but later revoked their confessions during the trial.

Victim

As a young woman, 51-year-old Bahide Arslan lived as a farmer in Çarşamba on the Black Sea with her husband eight years older than her . In 1967 she followed a recruitment in Germany on her own until she had earned enough money that her husband and sons could follow. In 1967, according to other sources not until 1970, her husband and three sons also came to Germany, the family moved into an apartment on Möllner See . Bahide's husband worked as a factory worker in the Möllner textile works. After their first German apartment in a " guest workers' home " burned down, the family moved in 1974, according to other sources in 1976, to the white-plastered half-timbered house from the 19th century in Möllner Mühlenstrasse. In Germany the family also had a daughter. It was unusual for the patriarchal structures of Turkish society that Bahide Arslan is described as the head of the family. Bahide Arslan worked in restaurants and as a harvest helper on strawberry fields, at times she worked as a small business owner z. B. with a vegetable stand , a kebab snack and a restaurant. The emergency call reached the operations center at 1:11 a.m., and the victims were all surprised by the fire in their sleep. Bahide Arslan was burned alive, and her charred body was found in the hallway after the extinguishing work.

Yeliz Arslan was a ten-year-old granddaughter of Bahide Arslan and attended the second grade in a Möllner elementary school. She was found alive, but died minutes later of smoke inhalation and burns . Yeliz's seven-year-old brother survived in the kitchen wrapped in a wet sheets by his grandmother; her mother contracted a double pelvic fracture while jumping with the eight-month-old second brother from the second floor of the burning house . Her father was visiting his brother in Hamburg and therefore not in the house that night.

Ayşe Yılmaz was a fourteen-year-old cousin of Yeliz. She lived in Epçeli near Çarşamba and was visiting Mölln. According to eyewitnesses, it should have slipped out of the hands of the firefighters during the rescue with a ladder, but this was denied by the fire brigade. The autopsy report also found the most severe burn injuries and smoke inhalation as the cause of death.

The dead were buried in Çarşamba. In addition to the three dead, the attack resulted in nine seriously injured people.

Condemnation

The Schleswig-Holstein Higher Regional Court sentenced the perpetrator on 8 December 1993 for triple murder in coincidence with attempted murder of seven people in the case of 19-year-old main perpetrator Lars Christiansen to ten years in prison after the juvenile justice system . In the case of the 25-year-old accomplice Michael Peters, a life sentence was imposed. The arsonists are now both at large. Lars Christiansen was released after seven and a half years, Michael Peters was released in November 2007 - almost 15 years to the day after the Mölln arson attacks. Lars Christiansen denies his involvement in the act.

Public reactions

Demonstrations, fairy lights

In the days and weeks after the attack, spontaneous large-scale demonstrations against racism and xenophobia took place all over Germany , often in the form of chains of lights .

Helmut Kohl, Dieter Vogel and the "condolences tourism"

At the memorial service for the Mölln victims in Hamburg, the Federal Government was represented by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel and Labor Minister Norbert Blüm . At that time, Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl took part in the state party conference of the Berlin CDU . When the Federal Press Conference on November 27, 1992 asked why the Federal Chancellor was not present at the funeral service, Kohl's spokesman Dieter Vogel stated, among other things, that the Federal Government did not want to go into “condolences”. This widely criticized statement gave rise to a small request from the PDS / Left List group in the Bundestag to the Federal Government; the term “condolence tourism” was a candidate for the 1992 bad word of the Society for German Language (GfdS) and was shortlisted.

Commemoration

In the Bickendorf district of Cologne , Wahmstrasse near the Westfriedhof was renamed Bahide-Arslan-Strasse. Bahide-Arslan-Platz has existed in the Gaarden-Ost district of Kiel since 1997 . And in 2014 a narrow corridor in Mölln, which leads past Bahide Arslan's former home to the spa park, was renamed Bahide-Arslan-Gang.

In 1993, the singer Wolfgang Petry , along with other artists (including Wencke Myhre , Karel Gott , Bernhard Brink and Kristina Bach ), based on the example of Band Aid , took the title Who closes his eyes (will never see the truth ) under the name Mut zur Menschlichkeit ) , which is directed against xenophobia and racism . The proceeds from the sale of the phonograms went entirely to victims of right-wing extremist violence .

In the song Das Bit Totschlag (1994), the band Die Goldenen Zitronen processes the right-wing extremist riots of 1992/93 and shows how the German population and government reacted to it.

A commemorative event organized by the city takes place in Mölln every year on the anniversary of the attack. However, criticism is also expressed about this form of commemoration. Ibrahim Arslan, who survived the attack as a seven-year-old because his grandmother Bahide Arslan wrapped him in damp cloths in the burning house, criticizes that he and his family are only guests at this commemoration and, as those directly affected, are not at the center. He felt like an extra at these events. For self-determined remembrance, he and the Freundeskreis initiated the “ Möllner Speech in Exilein commemoration of the racist arson attacks in Mölln in 1992 under the motto reclaim and remember . This is not part of the official commemorations and has been taking place in various cities since 2013 around the anniversary of the attack. The aim is to address current racism and neo-Nazism. “Remembrance cannot be shaped by the interests of the survivors. We are the main witnesses of what happened. Even 21 years after the racist arson attack in Mölln, the following applies: Fighting back the memory. Reclaim and remember. Especially now, ” said Ibrahim Arslan at the first Möllner speech in exile.

documentary

Malou Berlin's documentary After the Fire from 2012 deals with the later fate of the Arslan family.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Axel Kinzinger: The skinheads from next door . In: Focus . No. 20 (1993), May 17, 1993.
  2. Deadly fire in Mölln: How a girl cleared up a right-wing terrorist attack. In: Focus Online . October 17, 2016. Retrieved September 9, 2017 .
  3. Kertin Kampen: “My life is over too” . In: taz . June 24, 1993, p. 6.
  4. a b c d Bascha Mika : "Without Bahide, the Arslans are lost" . In: taz . November 26, 1992, p. 5.
  5. ^ A b c d Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff , Kuno Kruse and Ulrich Stock: Mölln, Germany . In: The time . No. 51/1992, December 11, 1992.
  6. a b Cordt Schnibben : “This is how the world must end” . In: Der Spiegel . 49/1992, November 30, 1992.
  7. a b c d Bruno Schrep : "We are so completely different" . In: Der Spiegel . 9/1993, March 1, 1993.
  8. ^ Olaf Sundermeyer : Right terror in Germany: A history of violence . CHBeck, 2012 ISBN 978-3-40663845-9 , p. 33 ( limited preview in Google book search)
  9. ^ Günter Kahl : A sick person as an enemy of the state? . In: shz.de . Schleswig-Holstein newspaper publisher. November 23, 2007. Archived from the original on November 23, 2012. Retrieved on November 23, 2012.
  10. Ulla Jelpke : The spokesman for the federal government and the "condolence tourism" . Small question in the Bundestag . Printed matter 12/3926, December 1, 1992.
  11. ^ Federal government : The spokesman for the federal government and the "condolence tourism" . Answer to the small question from Ulla Jelpke in the Bundestag . Printed matter 12/4045, December 28, 1992.
  12. ^ Unwords from 1991-1999. Archived from the original on March 25, 2016 ; accessed on January 15, 2014 .
  13. ^ Bahide Arslan Square . In: Kiel . Retrieved November 24, 2019.
  14. mst: City council says yes to the Bahide Arslan gang . In: Lübecker Nachrichten . April 16, 2014.
  15. Commemoration on November 23, 2019 for the 27th anniversary of the Mölln arson attacks | Mölln - The Eulenspiegel town. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  16. ^ Johannes Kulms: 25 years after the arson attack in Mölln - commemoration with tension. In: Deutschlandfunk . November 22, 2017. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  17. October 2013. Retrieved on November 20, 2019 (German).
  18. Gedenken Mölln 1992. Retrieved on November 20, 2019 (German).
  19. October 2013. Retrieved on November 20, 2019 (German).
  20. ^ After the fire at Filmfest Hamburg.de