Soldier murder in Lebach

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The murders of four soldiers at the Bundeswehr base in Lebach in 1969 went down in German history as the soldier murder of Lebach . Who were murdered Corporal Dieter Horn and Ewald Marx, Corporal Arno Bales and Sergeant Erwin Poh.

Act and motive

Against 02:50 on the night of January 20th, 1969 broke two armed men in the store ammunition defeat  461/1 Landsweiler in Lebach , which by soldiers of the Paratrooper Battalion 261 was guarded. There they killed three of the five guards on duty in their sleep and seriously injured two. One of the surviving seriously injured soldiers, Ewald Marx, died from his gunshot wounds in February 1969.

As it turned out later, the two perpetrators had opened four of the twelve ammunition bunkers by force, took 1,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, 50 rounds of pistol ammunition, two Walther P1 pistols and three automatic fire rifles of the type HK G3 .

Investigations

The deficit in the security of military installations, which became apparent through the act, hit those responsible in the Bundeswehr, the German parliament and the public hard. Conservative circles around the CDU MP Werner Marx from Kaiserslautern suspected an attack from the ranks of the extra-parliamentary opposition , without being able to present any evidence. The reason for this was, among other things, a leaflet which is said to have been distributed at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken .

The investigation, led by Chief Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback , combined with one of the largest manhunters in post-war German history, brought a different story to light: three homosexual young men from Landau in the Palatinate wanted to raise money through armed extortion so that they could go abroad. There they wanted to lead a life together. The men, who called themselves “Organization for economic cooperation and development of the Mafia” in ransom letters, were called on April 25, 1969 after an unresolved search call was broadcasted by the fortune teller Madame Buchela on April 25, 1969 in the context of the ZDF program Aktenzeichen XY ... Landau arrested in the Palatinate.

The perpetrators had introduced themselves to the fortune teller with a false name, which they also used in another context and which had been mentioned in the television program. They had planned to kidnap Madame Buchela and force her to reveal intimate details from the private lives of their customers; The perpetrators then wanted to use this knowledge as a basis for further extortion. According to other sources, she was suspected of having large amounts of cash and gold, because as a " gypsy " she would not entrust her money to any bank.

Trial and Judgment

On June 29, 1970 the trial began before the Saarbrücken Regional Court in the Saarbrücken Congress Hall used for this criminal case . The trial was met with great interest from the population - people in the upper echelons smoked and food they had brought with them was consumed - and was sometimes referred to as a show trial . In the public perception, the homosexual relationships between the perpetrators also played a role. In the public arena, the case raised calls for the death penalty .

The judgment of August 7, 1970 read: life imprisonment for the two main defendants, six years imprisonment for the third party for aiding and abetting murder.

consequences

The criminal case was given subsequent legal significance because a two-part documentary game on the subject produced by ZDF in 1972 was banned from broadcasting by the Federal Constitutional Court in the so-called Lebach judgment at the request of the perpetrators . a. to enable rehabilitation. The production has not been broadcast publicly to this day. Since this landmark ruling, the names and faces of prisoners have been anonymized in the German media.

The Bundeswehr reacted and improved the security precautions of the properties, especially those of the guard houses.

A documentary produced by Sat.1 in 1996 was broadcast for the first time on January 13, 2005 after a lengthy legal tug of war.

In the documentary Soldiers Murder - Die Schüsse von Lebach by Inge Plettenberg , which ARD first broadcast in 2001 as part of the series The Great Criminal Cases and in which contemporary witnesses from the perpetrators' environment also have their say, the story is mainly from the perspective of the time involved criminologists and trial reporters told. The convicts themselves did not want to talk about their crime. One of the perpetrators is still in custody in 2019, although he has had the right to a detention test since the mid-1990s . However, the now over 75-year-old never applied because he felt unjustly condemned.

literature

  • Jürgen Neven-DuMont, Karl Schütz, Rainer Söhnlein: Small town murderers. Lane 1081. Background to the Lebach case. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1971, ISBN 3-455-05610-5 .
  • Kerstin Rech: Spectacular criminal cases in Saarland. Geistkirch Verlag, Saarbrücken 2015, ISBN 3-946-03643-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Ihl: Lebacher Soldiers Murder is celebrating its 40th anniversary today ( Memento from July 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , January 19, 2009.
  2. ↑ The trio . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1970, pp. 62-67 ( online ).
  3. ^ Eduard Zimmermann : The invisible network. Munich 1969, pp. 227-234.
  4. ↑ Crime No. 28
  5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKTID0LzJOw&pbjreload=10 The big criminal cases S02 E05 The murder of soldiers The shots in Lebach from 32:30 to 32:45
  6. ↑ See the process reporting: Gerhard Mauz: An outbreak from the “European order” . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1970, pp. 69-70 ( online ). Gerhard Mauz: "Why this way and later different ...?" In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1970, pp. 74-75 ( online ). Hans-Joachim Noack: Not apo and not mafia: the Lebach trial began like a detective novel . In: Die Zeit , No. 27/1970. Hans-Joachim Noack: Giggles in the hall: Ditz and Wenzel take refuge in silence . In: Die Zeit , No. 28/1970. Hans-Joachim Noack: The incomprehensible remained without explanation: Judgments in the Lebach trial: The court found only general places . In: Die Zeit , No. 33/1970.
  7. ↑ Christian Bommarius: The Untold Stories: Sat.1 shows the "Lebach case" after nine years. It's a well-done crime thriller - nothing more . In: Berliner Zeitung , January 13, 2005 (background information on the case and the delay in the transmission of the Sat1 documentary)
  8. ↑ The Soldier Murder - The Lebach Shots . Press release on the ARD broadcast, June 7, 2001.
  9. ↑ Udo Lorenz: 50 years after the soldier murder: The unforgettable bloody deed of Lebach . In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , January 18, 2019.
  10. ↑ Antonia Kleikamp: Death came at three in the morning . In: Die Welt , January 20, 2019.