Norbert Kröcher

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Norbert Erich Kröcher , nickname Knofo , (* July 14, 1950 in Berlin ; † September 16, 2016 there ) was a German member of the terrorist organization Movement June 2nd .

Life

At the beginning of 1972, Norbert Kröcher and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann , with whom he had been married since October 1971, were one of the twelve founders of the left-wing extremist terrorist organization Movement June 2nd . Shortly afterwards, the couple was wanted by an arrest warrant for a bank robbery. Kröcher then left Germany and settled in Stockholm in 1972, where he found an active left-wing radical scene. Kröcher and his wife separated, she went into hiding in Germany and was later arrested in Bochum in July 1973.

Kidnapping plan "Operation Leo" 1977

In April 1975, Kröcher followed through the media in Sweden the hostage-taking of Stockholm by the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the German embassy and the subsequent extradition of the survivors to the Federal Republic of Germany. In response, Kröcher planned to free these and other terrorists imprisoned in Germany. For this, Anna-Greta Leijon , the former labor minister in the social democratic cabinet of the Swedish head of government Olof Palme, was supposed to be kidnapped . As a member of the government responsible for foreigner affairs in the spring of 1975, Kröcher and his accomplices held her responsible for the controversial extradition to the Federal Republic of Germany of Siegfried Hausner , who was seriously injured after his involvement in the embassy attack and who died a few days later in custody. Leijon's abduction was postponed several times by the perpetrators, including because of her interim pregnancy. The crime was ultimately thwarted when Kröcher was arrested on March 31, 1977 in Stockholm by a task force of the Swedish security police, which had been observing him for around a year. In several cities, two dozen suspected terrorists of various origins were arrested at the same time, as their ringleader, according to investigators, was Kröcher. The kidnapping of the politician planned by this "Kröcher group", for which far advanced preparatory measures could later be proven, became internationally known as "Operation Leo".

A few days later he and Manfred Adomeit were extradited to the Federal Republic of Germany. He was accused of forming a criminal and later a terrorist organization, aggravated robbery and gang theft, and committing crimes: coercion of a constitutional body, kidnapping and hostage-taking, murder and bomb attacks. He was later convicted as a terrorist and was released in 1985.

Grave of Norbert Kröcher

In 2016, he learned that he was suffering from cancer with no prospect of a cure. In September of the same year he shot himself. He is buried in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder communities in Berlin-Mitte.

Publications

  • "... why me the left" - knee shots or: criticism as a weapon. Verlag Edition AV, Lich / Hessen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86841-080-8
  • Two hundred grams of state , shock edition (4), EdK / Distillery, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-941330-33-7
  • K. and traffic: memories of eventful times. First part 1950-1989. BasisDruck, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86163-158-3

literature

  • Dan Hansén & Jens Nordqvist: Command Holger Meins: dramat på västtyska ambassaden och Operation Leo . Ordfront, Stockholm 2005, ISBN 91-7037-092-3 .

Movie

  • Operation Leo (1981), Swedish feature film - 1 hr. 31 min, director: Hans Hederberg

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dominique Grisard: Gendering Terror: A gender history of left-wing terrorism in Switzerland. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2011, p. 139.
  2. ↑ a b Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann: Explanation sample from law enforcement authorities. In: Klaus Weinhauer, Jörg Requate, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (Hg): Terrorism in the Federal Republic: Media, State and Subcultures in the 1970s. Campus, Frankfurt / New York, 2006, p. 227
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of October 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Hannes Gamillscheg: A Lifelong Struggle to Get Rid of the Stamp "Terrorist", in: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 14, 1997, p. 2
  5. ↑ Listeners in the pub. In: Der Spiegel from April 11, 1977, accessed on September 20, 2016
  6. ^ Jacob Sundberg: Operation Leo: Description and analysis of a European terrorist operation. In: Terrorism Vol. 5, Heft 3, 1981, pp. 197-232 (English, abstract online ).
  7. ↑ TERRORISM: Primer against Zombies . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1979 ( online - Aug. 6, 1979 ).
  8. ↑ ¡Anarquía sí! Knofo is dead. In: Junge Welt , September 20, 2016, online
personal data
SURNAME Kröcher, Norbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kröcher, Knofo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist, co-founder of the June 2nd movement
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 16th September 2016
Place of death Berlin