Assassination attempt by Volkhoven

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Grave of Ursula Kuhr, one of the two teachers killed, in Cologne's southern cemetery (2005)
Family grave with memorial stone for the murdered teacher Gertrud Bollenrath in the north cemetery (Cologne) (corridor 32 No. 226a + b)
Gate to the school yard

The Volkhoven assassination attempt was carried out on the morning of June 11, 1964 at a primary school in the Volkhoven district of Cologne . The 42-year-old Walter Seifert, who took early retirement, fatally injured eight children and two teachers with a self-made flamethrower and a lance. In addition, 20 children and two teachers suffered severe burns . The killer then committed suicide by ingesting the pesticide E605 suicide .

crime scene

The primary school building

The Catholic elementary school in Cologne-Volkhoven was located at Volkhovener Weg 209–211, in the center of a village-like suburb of Cologne. The school grounds were separated from the street by a wall about 1.50 meters high, in which there was a two-wing iron gate and a single-wing entrance gate. On the left of the schoolyard, immediately next to the entrance gate, was an old, brick-built school building. On the right side of the school yard, about 20 meters from the wall, was a single-storey wooden barrack with four classrooms. Opposite her, in the far left corner of the schoolyard, was another wooden barrack with two classrooms. The school grounds and the buildings were freely accessible at the time of the crime, as the lock on the entrance gate was defective and schools were not secured against unauthorized entry during class time. At the time of the crime, there were eight teachers and around 380 children in the school.

Course of action

The chronological sequence of the individual acts in the school was reproduced differently by the victims and other witnesses shortly after the crime. The following description corresponds to the description of the then head of the Cologne criminal police , Karl Kiehne , which he submitted in 1965 to the criminological journal Archiv für Kriminologie . Kiehne himself was there less than an hour after the attack.

On the morning of June 11, 1964, Walter Seifert, dressed in blue work suit, went on a bicycle from his not far away apartment on Volkhovener Weg 154 to a barn across from the school property. He was carrying a flamethrower packed in a sack , which he had built himself from a converted plant sprayer. In addition, he had a self-made lance about 1.50 meters long, a striking tool made of an iron part with attached steel cable and handle, a wooden wedge and storm matches . He deposited the bike, his jacket and the empty sack in the barn, where they were found after the fact.

The small gate to the right of the building was the entrance to the school grounds

Seifert entered the school grounds around 9:10 am, shortly before the “big break”. He carried his flamethrower on his back and in his hands the lance, the striking tool and the wooden wedge. He blocked the entrance gate behind him with the wooden wedge and approached a teacher, 67-year-old Anna Langohr, who was teaching gymnastics to a third or fourth class of girls at the far end of the schoolyard. When the perpetrator approached, the teacher stood protectively in front of the children. From about six meters away, Seifert directed a beam of flame at the teacher, whose clothes caught fire and who then curled up in a bush.

Seifert then turned right to one of the two classrooms closest to the street and directed the flames into the room through an open window. The jet of flames reached the far wall and set fire to the clothes of numerous children, many of whom came into contact with the flames a second time on the run to the door. In this room a fire broke out on the roof that was later extinguished by the fire brigade. A boy was able to leave the classroom through a window, but tripped and fell to the floor. Seifert set the boy on fire and turned to the second classroom . There he broke a window with the sling and in turn added several pupils and the 24-year-old teacher Wiltrud Sch. Burn injuries too. The flame went out because the flamethrower's tank was empty. Seifert took E 605 , threw the opened tube and the now useless flamethrower on the ground in the middle of the school yard and went on to the common entrance of the third and fourth classrooms of the barrack.

Another teacher, Gertrud Bollenrath, had just left the barracks at this point and was injured in front of the door by a stab with a lance in the stomach. Then the perpetrator ran to a pavilion with two classrooms in the far left corner of the school grounds. The two teachers who taught there had already become aware of the crime and tried to block the door to the building by holding the door handle. Seifert was still able to open the door, whereby the teacher Ursula Kuhr rushed into the school yard and was injured by two lance stabs in the thigh. She was able to get up briefly, but was stabbed in the back by Seifert.

Escape and arrest of the perpetrator

Seifert now ran to the back of the school yard, climbed over a fence and fled with a lance in hand across an open field to a nearby railway embankment. He was followed by 20 to 30 people. The first radio patrol arrived at the scene at 9:38 a.m., at which time the fire brigade was already busy extinguishing the burning barracks. From the crowd in front of the school, the officers received information on Seifert's escape route and were able to find him after a brief persecution. He had gone to the embankment and kept his pursuers at a distance of about 15 meters with his lance. The two officers from the radio patrol left their vehicle and tried to cut off the perpetrator's escape route. While trying to get closer, Seifert attacked them with a lance; Seifert was injured in the thigh by a targeted pistol shot by an officer. He was admitted to the "Lindenburg" university clinic in Cologne .

Victim

Memorial plaque on the former school building

Fatalities

The 24-year-old teacher Ursula Kuhr died at the scene of the crime within a few minutes, her 61-year-old colleague Gertrud Bollenrath at 1.30 p.m. in the Heilig Geist Hospital. Both died from severe stab wounds. 28 children and two teachers were injured, some seriously, by burns. Eight of these children died during the following three weeks: Dorothea Binner on June 15, Klara Kröger and Stephan Lischka on June 18, Renate Fühlen and Rosel Röhrig on June 19, Ruth Hoffmann (10) and Karin Reinhold (11) on June 20 June and Ingeborg Hahn on June 30th.

Injured

Some of the survivors were in mortal danger for weeks and had to endure numerous operations. The injuries sustained and the painful treatments affected their lives and that of their families, often for years and decades.

Rescue operation

While the assassin was still on the school premises, students and teachers, including Gertrud Bollenrath, who later succumbed to her injuries, began to extinguish the children's clothing that had caught fire. When Seifert was already on the run, passing employees of the municipal garbage disposal succeeded in breaking open the locked gate and extinguishing other children with blankets and clothing. They stopped passing vehicles that were transporting injured children to the closest Heilig-Geist-Hospital in the Longerich district before the first rescue workers arrived . Even before the police arrived, the fire brigade in Cologne , the Maltese emergency service and the German armed forces - a medical unit was stationed in what is now the Liège barracks in Cologne-Longerich - arrived at the scene. With their vehicles, the remaining injured were taken to the Heilig-Geist-Hospital, the children's hospital in Amsterdamer Strasse in Riehl , which was opened less than two years before the crime , the Vinzenz-Hospital in Nippes , all only a few kilometers away from the crime scene, and to Cologne Brought to university hospital.

Medical supplies

Some of the children rescued were so disfigured by the burn injuries that their identification in the hospitals was difficult. For months, the clinicians worked together with the specialists called in to ensure the survival of the victims, who had burned up to 90 percent of the body surface. Medical equipment required for the treatment of skin burns was specially procured. The night after the attack, residues of the flammable liquid were analyzed at the Cologne Institute for Forensic Medicine in order to obtain important information for the treatment of the injured. This was also done in the concern that the liquid might have contained an acid additive.

A month after the crime, ten children were still in mortal danger, only one had been discharged from the hospital. In August all the children were out of danger, but 19 of them and the teacher Anna Langohr were still in the hospital and could not expect their discharge for a few months. A year after the attack, a 13-year-old girl was still in the hospital, and everyone else needed further medical treatment.

Perpetrator

Example

Willi Walter Seifert (born June 19, 1921 in Cologne-Bickendorf; † June 11, 1964 in Cologne-Lindenthal) contracted tuberculosis as a prisoner of war as a Wehrmacht soldier . After the end of the war, Seifert spent a year in the police force, but was dismissed as incapacitated because of his lung disease. In 1953, an expert from the Tuberculosis Welfare Office of the City of Cologne found a 30 percent reduction in earning capacity and ruled out a causal connection with Seifert's captivity as a prisoner of war. Seifert then began a long-term dispute with medical officers and pension offices, during which he repeatedly wrote extensive petitions. His work Social Policy - Social Doctors - Social Murder , in which he sharply attacked several doctors, was the occasion for an examination of Seifert by a specialist in neurology and psychiatry , who certified that he had a " schizophrenic defect or paranoid development ". Since Seifert had shown no signs of behavior that was dangerous to the public during the examination, the doctor saw no reason to be placed in a psychiatric clinic .

At the beginning of the 1950s Seifert got into an argument with his younger brother. Seifert had described the plan to him to build an underground cellar under the cellar of the parents' house. His plan was to kidnap minors on dirt roads, keep them prisoner in the cellar and abuse them "if necessary". Seifert expressed these fantasies before his marriage; in this context he obtained technical literature on earthworks.

Seifert married on October 7, 1955. Three years before the rampage, on February 11, 1961, his wife died of an embolism after a premature birth , and the child did not survive either. He then wrote a 120-page document entitled Matricide - Individual Fate and Analysis of a System , of which he sent several copies to authorities and doctors. In the text it becomes clear that Seifert must have dealt intensively with medical literature, which he now cited in order to underpin his blame. He attacked his wife's doctors, who he accused of having treated the embolism incorrectly, and called her "murderers". Society is a "criminal system", the principles of which are also valid for doctors. He closes with the words: "Whoever denies me the protection of the law, forces the club into my hand".

His social environment judged him differently, some neighbors avoided him as “crazy” and “eccentric” after the death of his wife, others appreciated his helpfulness and love for children. The day before the attack, there was an argument with construction workers who had to lay pipes in front of Seifert's house and the neighboring house. Seifert complained that the earthworks were not carried out according to regulations. There was no further evidence of the impending act.

Preparation of the attack

Seifert did not commit the act spontaneously, but planned and prepared in detail over a long period of time. This results from the nature of the means of crime , exclusively self-made weapons and aids, in the manufacture of which he proceeded carefully and used the skills he had acquired in professional life as a metal cutter and as a weapons sergeant. He built the flamethrower from a container his parents used for spraying fruit trees. He bought a hose and a closure and converted it himself for assembly. The flammable liquid was a mixture of different substances, including used motor oil, paint thinner, and toluene . To build the lance he used a sharpened triangular scraper, which he mounted on a rod. The hammering tool for smashing the window consisted of an iron pump bracket to which he attached a steel cable and a handle. After all, the wedge he used to block the gate consisted of several pieces of wood fitted together with a steel band attached to the top. There were iron nails on the underside, which should anchor themselves in the ground and make it difficult to loosen the wooden wedge from the outside.

Confession and death

At the place of his arrest , while waiting for the ambulance and in the hospital after the first treatment, Seifert made the head of the Cologne homicide squad, Dr. Manfred Gundlach, fragmentary information on the course of events and his motives . When asked about the reason for his act, he stated that they wanted to kill him. As in some of his earlier letters, he accused several doctors by name. He said he didn't know any of the children or the teachers or the school or had "trouble" with them. About his deed he only said: “It's a bad thing”, it was “maybe a bad idea”, and when asked why he attacked the children: “It's too lengthy”. He had planned the deed for a long time, he wanted the lance made eight weeks earlier and the flamethrower a little earlier. Walter Seifert died at about 8:35 p.m. from being poisoned by the pesticides that were still in use on the school premises. During the autopsy it was found that Seifert neither suffered from active tuberculosis nor had a recent episode of the disease. At first it was said among the population that his ashes had been scattered anonymously. According to the head of the criminal investigation department in 1965, the urn was buried outside the city. A few years later, however, he stated that the ashes were initially buried in the grave of Seifert's mother near his victims. After protests by the relatives of the victims, Seifert's urn was reburied in another, secret location.

After the fact

public perception

The act attracted considerable attention. Newspapers and television stations not only reported immediately after the crime, but closely followed the fate of the victims for months. Even decades later, the attack and the fate of the injured were the subject of coverage in the local media. The Parisian tabloid Le Parisien claimed that the assassin shouted "I am Hitler the second" when entering the schoolyard. In fact, it was found that two days before the attack, another Volkhovener had disrupted traffic in downtown Cologne and described himself as the “successor of the Führer”.

A wave of helpfulness began for the victims. Donors from all over the world raised 350,000 DM for the victims and their relatives within three weeks, a total of 1.4 million DM were donated. The funds were intended for the long-term support and advancement of the victims and were administered by a support association, the Kuratorium for the disaster-damaged children of Volkhoven eV .

In addition to sympathy with the fate of the victims, there was a discussion of whether the act could have been avoided if the authorities had intervened in good time. A few weeks after the act, the Vice President of the German Child Protection Association raised serious allegations against the medical profession. With reference to the attack in Volkhoven and to three other children who have since been killed by the mentally ill in Berlin and Ludwigshafen, he explained that the doctors were apparently unable to “recognize the dangers of the mentally ill”. As a result of the public dispute, the responsible Rhineland Regional Association announced that the legal situation had not made it possible for the perpetrator to be forcibly placed in a psychiatric clinic.

Forty years after the attack, Barbara Peter, 8 years old at the time of the attack, who herself was one of the seriously injured and spent three and a half months in hospital, published the title The heart of the city stood still. The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven is a collection of memories from survivors, relatives, deployed firefighters and police officers, teachers, pastors and medical supervisors of the victims. In connection with this book, she also provided an explanation for the multitude of different descriptions of the attack, contradicting each other in detail, as they emerged immediately after the crime: “There is no absolute truth about what happened then. Everyone had their own version, and only the sum of the memories completes a picture that possibly comes close to the truth ”.

Remember the victims

Weiler cemetery: gravesite of slain children (2014)

The eight deceased children were given a joint resting place and memorial in the old cemetery in Weiler. On June 20, 1964, before the burial of the first four deceased children, more than 2,000 people took part in a requiem held by the Archbishop of Cologne, Josef Cardinal Frings, in the small church of St. Cosmas and Damian . The number of mourners exceeded the capacity of the church, so that many people had to watch the mass in the rain, which was broadcast outside via loudspeakers. On June 20, 1969, a monument by the Cologne sculptor Elmar Hillebrand was erected at the graves , a column on which leaves entwined in flames are depicted.

Two schools in the Cologne district of Chorweiler were named after the killed teachers Ursula Kuhr and Gertrud Bollenrath . The Volkhovener Weg Catholic elementary school in Cologne-Heimersdorf, which was planned to replace the Catholic elementary school in Volkhoven before the attack, was opened in April 1965 and was named Ursula-Kuhr-Schule, which it still bears today. In the course of a school reform, the elementary school became a community secondary school . The Ursula-Kuhr-Weg in Volkhoven also commemorates Ursula Kuhr. The Gertrud-Bollenrath-Schule was a special needs school for people with learning disabilities in Volkhoven / Weiler, which got its name in 1986, it was demolished in 2016 as part of a new school building. On November 15, 2018, the Committee for Schools and Further Education unanimously decided that the special needs school Soldiner Str. 68, 50767 Cologne should be given the proper name "Gertrud-Bollenrath-Schule".

Honoring the surviving teachers

The seriously injured teacher Anna Langohr was in mortal danger for a week and was only able to leave the hospital after four months. In appreciation of her commitment to her threatened students, she was welcomed by Pope Paul VI. Awarded the Cross of Honor Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice (Latin “For Church and Pope”). The Lord Mayor of Cologne, John van Nes Ziegler, presented her with the Medal of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia honored her with the Rescue Medal of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia . She never returned to school, but for many years she headed an old people's group in Volkhoven. Anna Langohr died on January 27, 1990 at the age of 93. In the neighboring district of Heimersdorf , a community elementary school with an open all-day school was called Anna-Langohr-Schule after her death .

In addition to Anna Langohr, four other teachers were awarded the rescue medal of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in December 1965, "because they tried, at the risk of their lives, to avert an impending danger from the children entrusted to them." A sixth teacher was honored for identifying the disfigured children in the hospitals with a colleague after the attack.

Public commemorative events were also held in Cologne on the 45th anniversary of the crime. To mark the 50th anniversary, the city hosted a commemoration in the Heinrich Mann Gymnasium. There was also an exhibition by the Volkhoven-Weiler Citizens' Association.

Rehabilitation and aftercare costs

Six weeks after the attack, the City Council of Cologne decided unanimously to assume all costs of treating the injured, including cosmetic operations , psychotherapeutic treatments and recreational stays, to pay the victims an appropriate training allowance and, in the event of disability due to the injuries suffered, from the age of 16. Year of age to pay a lifelong pension. Three months after the crime, the costs incurred by the public sector up to then amounted to six million DM, mainly costs for medical treatment of the injured, but also support payments and expenses for recreational stays for the children.

School grounds

Today's development of the school grounds, rear part, with the simultaneous hall

Within a few weeks of the attack, the school committee of the City of Cologne recommended building a new building to replace the school. The existing school was closed and the buildings, with the exception of the old stone schoolhouse, were demolished just a few days after the crime. The old school building was added to Cologne's list of architectural monuments on July 1, 1980 with monument number 517 . This decision was not related to the attack.

In 1979 , the Cologne-based architecture firm Busmann + Haberer erected a provisional segment of the planned new building for the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum / Museum Ludwig in Cologne (today Museum Ludwig ) on the rear part of the property . The effect of the incidence of light on the museum's pictures, wall coverings and floor coverings were tested here. After the end of these attempts, the hall was supposed to be demolished, but since 1983 it has been used by local artists as a studio and exhibition hall. The hall has not been allowed to enter since January 2018 because it is considered to be in danger of collapsing.

Movies

  • The Volkhoven rampage. A film by Lothar Schröder from the ARD series: Protocol of a catastrophe . A production by beta bande on behalf of the WDR. Documentary, Germany 2014.

literature

  • Anja Bach: The attack in Cologne-Volkhoven . In: History workshop of the Citizens Center Chorweiler eV (Ed.): Heimersdorf - From the courtyard to the Cologne district , self-published, Cologne 1997 (see web links).
  • Barbara Peter: The heart of the city stood still. The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven . SH-Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89498-144-X (with statements from those affected and contemporary witnesses).
  • Mark Benecke: Murder Methods. New spectacular criminal cases - told by the world's most famous criminal biologist . Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2002, ISBN 978-3-404-60545-3 , pp. 288-302.

music

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven. In: Archiv für Kriminologie , Volume 136, 1965, pp. 61–75, here p. 61.
  2. ^ Anja Bach: The assassination attempt of Cologne-Volkhoven . In: Geschichtswerkstatt des Bürgerzentrums Chorweiler eV (Ed.): Heimersdorf - Vom Hof ​​zum Kölner Bezirk , Eigenverlag, Cologne 1997, pp. 45–50, here p. 45 Online ( Memento from September 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on 2nd January 2014.
  3. ↑ a b c d Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Archivalie LAV NRW R civil status register, registry office Cologne-Lindenthal, deaths, 1964, vol. 03, no. 1364 (death certificate Willi Walter Seifert, issued on June 16, 1964) Online JPG 355 kB, accessed on January 1, 2014.
  4. ^ A b c d e Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 69.
  5. ^ Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack from Volkhoven In: Karl Kiehne: Not only roses from the Klingelpütz. A police chief reports from his life , Schneekluth Verlag, Munich 1972, pp. 172–194, here p. 178.
  6. ↑ a b without author: 19 flamethrower victims still in the hospital. In: Passauer Neue Presse , August 19, 1964 Online , accessed on January 3, 2014.
  7. ^ A b c Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 67.
  8. ^ Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 65.
  9. ^ Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 68.
  10. ↑ a b c Anja Bach: The attack from Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 49.
  11. ^ Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Archivalie LAV NRW R civil status register, registry office Köln-Nippes, Sterbefälle, 1964, vol. 02, no. 753 (death certificate Ursula Margret Kuhr, issued on June 15, 1964) Online JPG 360 kB, accessed on 1. January 2014.
  12. ↑ Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Archivalie LAV NRW R Personenstandsregister, Standesamt Köln-Nippes, Sterbefälle, 1964, Vol. 02, No. 754 (death certificate Gertrud Bollenrath, issued on June 15, 1964) Online JPG 360 kB, accessed on January 1 2014.
  13. ↑ a b without author: Doctors are still fighting for the lives of eleven school children. In: Passauer Neue Presse , June 22, 1964 Online , accessed on January 3, 2014.
  14. ↑ a b c d e Anja Bach: The attack from Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 48.
  15. ↑ Miriam Hollstein: The man who survived the first school rampage. In: Die Welt , March 9, 2012 Online , accessed January 2, 2014.
  16. ↑ a b without author: Six Volkhoven teachers were honored. In: Passauer Neue Presse , December 10, 1965 Online , accessed on January 3, 2014.
  17. ^ A b c Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 70.
  18. ↑ a b c without author: 350,000 DM for victims of the flamethrower attack. In: Passauer Neue Presse , July 4 and 5, 1964 Online , accessed on January 2, 2014.
  19. ↑ a b without author: The wounds in Volkhoven have not yet healed. In: Passauer Neue Presse , June 9, 1965 Online , accessed on January 2, 2014.
  20. ^ A b c Karl Kiehne: Not just roses from the Klingelpütz. A police chief reports from his life , p. 193.
  21. ^ A b Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 71.
  22. ^ A b c Karl Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 72.
  23. ↑ a b Charles Kiehne: The flamethrower attack in Cologne Volkhoven , pp 73-74.
  24. ↑ a b Thomas van Zütphen: "An evil thing". In: Focus Magazin , 2004, No. 22, pp. 44–45 Online , accessed on January 2, 2014.
  25. ^ Anja Bach: The assassination of Cologne-Volkhoven , p. 50.
  26. ↑ without author: Kinderschutzbund raises allegations. In: Passauer Neue Presse , July 20, 1964 Online , accessed on January 2, 2014.
  27. ↑ Karl Kiehne: Not just roses from the Klingelpütz. A police chief reports from his life , pp. 191–192.
  28. ↑ a b without author: three victims of the flamethrower attack released. In: Passauer Neue Presse , September 28, 1964 Online , accessed on January 3, 2014.
  29. ↑ Petra Wischgoll: New School: Special school will be demolished. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , August 12, 2013, accessed on December 28, 2016 .
  30. ^ Without author: City of Cologne helps Volkhoven people. In: Passauer Neue Presse , July 25 and 26, 1964 Online , accessed on January 2, 2014.
  31. ↑ Kay von Keitz: Simultanhalle. The dummy is alive. In: StadtRevue Köln Magazin , 2003, No. 4 Online PDF ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2014 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. 160 kB, accessed on January 3, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.simultanhalle.de
  32. ^ The rampage of Volkhoven - protocol of a disaster. In: Programm.ARD.de. June 6, 2014, accessed June 3, 2018 .
  33. ↑ Reinhard Lüke: WDR documentary: rampage at a German school. In: NOZ.de. June 5, 2014, accessed June 3, 2018 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 0.1 ″  N , 6 ° 53 ′ 25.6 ″  E