The Rohwedder murder
really was the perfect crime.
The way it was executed…
And now,
thirty years later, it all remains unsolved.
One must, of course, be careful not to lapse into admiration.
This was planned with murderous and cold-blooded precision.
Some details just don't fit
the cold professionalism with which this was planned:
location, timing, escape routes.
But then the amateurism
of leaving behind casings,
leaving cigarette butts,
leaving a towel.
A hair was found on the towel, but they didn't know whose it was at the time.
From this, one might well conclude
that this was meant to be a red herring.
This may have been a very well-planned murder
with great forensic support.
As the saying goes: "After the crime, the cleaners come."
It's almost as if they brought in a ballistics expert and a coroner
to clean everything up at the crime scene.
Of course, that's how it seems if you find nothing.
Either it was a professional criminal or criminals,
or it a was broad, large-scale operation.
GERMANY
A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES
The German Reich.
No one intends to build a wall!
Unity and justice and freedom...
...insane attacks by barbaric terrorists.
Fatherland
Risen from ruins
Tear down this wall.
Our fatherland, reunited.
Flourish, German fatherland
VICTIM
Detlev Karsten Rohwedder is a man who has huge plans
as the head of the powerful and controversial Treuhand.
To get to know him better,
we've decided to play our "fill in the blank" game.
The first half of the sentence is:
Those who want to save jobs at any price are…
...more likely to destroy them than to create new ones.
In business, cruelty…
...is essential.
But it should be buffered a bit so it doesn't hurt too much.
For me, Helmut Kohl's pace towards German Unity is…
…astonishing, but correct.
OCTOBER 3, 1990
"A dream has become a reality," says the Chancellor of now all Germans.
At midnight, German Unity has become a reality.
Hundreds of thousands celebrate the reunification in Berlin.
6 MONTHS
UNTIL THE MURDER
I met Rohwedder on the eve of reunification at the Reichstag.
I talked to him about his view of the future.
He said, "It's certainly difficult,
but you know, Mr. Ludewig,
I've visited the companies, I've talked to the people there.
I'm convinced they have enough substance to make it work.
We'll get this done. Goodbye."
And then he disappeared into the crowd.
That was about an hour, half an hour before midnight, I remember it clearly.
Young athletes from both parts of the formerly divided Berlin
hoist the federal German flag in front of the Reichstag.
The bell of freedom rings in a new era of German history.
There wasn't a single mood across all of the GDR.
Some people said, "We want the reunification."
And others said, "We didn't build this country for 40 years
for it to go down the drain
and for others to take it from us."
…for the German fatherland
What alarmed me
was this great belief in Helmut Kohl,
in his promises of prosperous landscapes and unity.
I thought, "Are you crazy?
Now it's your chance to walk a different path."
Until then we had hoped to embark on a "third path"
between GDR-type socialism and West German capitalism.
But at that time, it was a country euphoric about capitalism.
Unity and justice and freedom For the German fatherland
Dear fellow citizens,
a few hour ago, a dream became reality.
After more than forty bitter years of division,
Germany, our fatherland, is reunited.
As a result of our social market economic policy,
in a few years, the former East German states of Brandenburg,
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt,
and Thuringia will become flourishing landscapes.
On October 3,
there was the big "Germany, shut up" demonstration against reunification
with 20 to 30 thousand participants.
There were a lot of West Berlin police,
who for the first time let loose in East Berlin.
Practically the worst-case scenario for me was reunification.
I liked the reforms. The fall of the Berlin Wall wasn't necessary.
But, in the end, I thought it was a good thing, too.
What really shocked me was the reunification.
Suddenly, a country was thrust upon us
that was not who we were and did not want to be.
I never wanted to be a citizen of West Germany. For the love of God!
I didn't like their society.
I still don't.
I don't like the way a lot of things were handled:
ownership, real estate,
how their laws were imposed on us,
which we didn't want.
FOR SALE
The department store is overcrowded.
Please understand that admission can only be granted in groups.
Don't push, please.
See how orderly the people up front are standing in line.
Did things change for you?
Yes, the future has become more uncertain.
At work.
Everything happened too fast.
I don't really know what you want to hear.
You know exactly the problems we are facing here, don't you?
Can I ask what has changed for you?
The Treuhand continues to destroy the companies,
people are unemployed.
Everything is sold off, and we're supposed to rejoice? Really?
Don't forget...
the reports said the GDR would be bankrupt by 1991 at the latest.
There was no market for the GDR's automobile production anymore.
For the huge ships built in Stralsund and elsewhere,
there was no longer a market.
There was no point in continuing a business
if it couldn't sell its products.
There had to be a market,
like we had in the West.
This contrast between East and West…
You could really sense it when the politicians from Bonn visited.
It was like a visit from the Starship Enterprise.
It was like a strange force arriving.
You could tell they were uncomfortable.
They didn't know…
It's like they got a rash when they came to East Germany.
The peaceful atmosphere
in the West, in the ministry,
the flowing fountains, the polished floors, the silence…
That was another country, a different planetary system.
In the morning, when you arrived at the Berlin Treuhand office
workers were already waiting with rods to bang on your car.
And we stand here in front of this building.
FIGHT WITH US
People seem to think we are this dark, gloomy, powerful castle
here at the Berlin Alexanderplatz.
And I'm very sorry about this. It's a big misunderstanding.
I have to work ridiculously hard. It's a dog's life, really.
I get to the office in the morning when it's still dark out.
I leave at night when it's dark again,
go back to my hotel, do some more work,
catch the last minutes of TV and then go to bed.
5 WEEKS
UNTIL THE MURDER
But Mr. Rohwedder, most observers didn't expect things to be so dramatic.
Unemployment is skyrocketing:
700,000 civil service jobs,
400,000 in agriculture,
550,000 in the metal and electrics industries.
I could go on.
If there is no improvement on the horizon soon,
aren't you afraid there might be another revolution in the former East Germany?
Well, first of all, this is just the beginning of the tunnel.
Now we must drive down this tunnel a ways
without getting scared, and then the light will appear.
I was worried about the increasing pressure,
but not about his composure.
It was good, and he was very tough.
He could take a hit, and he could hit back.
Politicians could hide perfectly behind the Treuhand.
And, of course, he was an ideal scapegoat.
At the time, the papers, the TV coverage,
everyone was on a rampage.
MOUNTING PRESSURE AGAINST THE TREUHAND
The public pressure, including the media, was enormous.
HARSH CRITICISTM OF THE TREUHAND
SPIRAL INTO BANKRUPTCY
The mood was combative.
There had to be consequences eventually.
Where is your personal pain threshold? At what point would you say,
"I will no longer play a part in this?"
I'm completely irresponsive to pain.
I'm confronted with many incredible,
unreasonable demands to a degree that none of you could tolerate.
Actually, you could say everything here is unreasonable.
Everything is disorganized and…
dangerous and dramatic.
Right before Christmas 1990, Rohwedder came to me
at the Ministry of Finance.
He told me he wanted to quit.
I begged him to stay.
Helmut Kohl begged him to stay, too,
and he told him, "We need you."
I tried…
to convince him to stay.
I still think of our talk back then.
It's a vivid memory.
I told Rohwedder's children,
"Had I not entreatied your father to stay,
he might still be alive today."
I have to live with this thought, but…
it was still the right thing to do
to ask him, the best man for this job, to continue
in the interest of the great cause, for Germany.
I guess all I can say is,
it's crucial to let people know
that the phase we're going through now…
-Mr. Rohwedder. -will come to an end.
If we have 40% or even 50% unemployment, Mr. Rohwedder...
We've never had such numbers in Germany,
not even during the Great Depression or right before Hitler seized power.
I worry
that the pressure on you and the Treuhand will grow intense.
6 DAYS
UNTIL THE MURDER
The traditional Monday protests
have again begun to dominate the political landscape in East Germany.
Tens of thousands gathered again today
to call attention to the poor economic situation in East Germany.
Apparently 100,000 people joined.
A large police presence from Bavaria and Hesse
has blocked access to government buildings.
From March 1991, I joined regularly.
I took the evenings off and joined the Monday protests, and…
there was a lot of anger.
There was a lot of anger from people who were, so to speak,
the first to be thrown out onto the street.
We say no to the Treuhand policy
which makes a mockery of the "trust" in its name.
We say no to a policy
that sells off companies without caring about the people.
Something was growing.
In March, 1991, a new civil movement,
maybe even a workers' movement, was growing in the streets.
Shouts from Leipzig could be heard loud and clear again today.
Many banners demanded the resignation of Chancellor Kohl
and called for re-elections.
We are the people,
and we demand re-elections!
The Monday protests are coming back to life.
Dangerous social dynamite has accumulated, that is obvious.
Many former GDR citizens are losing their jobs and their hope.
Re-elections!
Chancellor Kohl called re-election rumors absurd.
Tonight, they flocked to the streets again despite the freezing cold.
They want to continue, every Monday,
until their demands are met.
Things continued to escalate, and it frightened certain people.
I think it made the leaders
and the Kohl government extremely nervous.
Of course the Treuhand was also a lightning rod.
If all that anger had exploded in Bonn, I'm not sure Bonn would still exist today.
We have no experience with reuniting Germany.
I hope that never again will a German government
have to prove experience in this field.
Naturally, we must constantly make decisions.
And we make mistakes, myself included.
Every day, tens of thousands of unemployed protesters
flood the streets of the former GDR, and it's still growing.
Are we not approaching an even more difficult situation?
NIGHT OF THE MURDER
Whoever the killers were,
I think there could be a larger connection.
As a politically-minded criminal investigator, I always ask myself:
Who benefited or benefits from this?
Several scenarios are plausible,
including ones of a political nature.
For example, this hypothesis of a third RAF generation
never really convinced me.
I mean, it might be true, but not necessarily.
Other perpetrators could have done it,
but I would probably rule out the RAF.
I never doubted it was the RAF.
It was clear to me
that they had the political motive and that they committed this murder.
I never had any doubt.
Nothing has changed in my assessment or my impression of the attack.
I'm convinced it was done by former Stasi members
and that this was a revenge killing.
It could well have been connected with the Stasi,
to provoke the East German working class to rise up against the West.
Finally, a third scenario I have considered would be
that the West orchestrated the murder by hiring contract killers.
I mean, files don't disappear repeatedly without a reason.
State interests, secrecy, protection of informants
are reasons often used as excuses
in order to obstruct the public's ability to investigate.
Of course, this makes you suspicious,
this fact alone.
I assert
the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Prosecutor General
are much closer...
to solving the Rohwedder crime than we have all been led to believe.
I myself made several inquiries.
I got the most diaphanous excuses. "We're considering all possibilities."
When someone talks like that, they're hiding something.
They have a solution but don't want to disclose it,
because the solution might reveal something
that would shake this republic to its very core.
Now there's a lead.
At the time, investigators found hair at the crime scene.
Using new technology, they have now found
that one hair belongs to alleged terrorist Wolfgang Grams.
Back when the Rohwedder murder occurred,
we couldn't use hair that was shed.
Back then, DNA analysis could only be done on hair
that had been pulled out with the roots and cell material attached.
Running tests on "telogen hair," shed hair without roots,
became possible much later.
We then used this
and were able to confirm that it was Grams's hair.
It could be Grams's real hair.
But was it shed there naturally
or did it get there some other way?
These questions have never been answered.
If we accept that Grams's DNA
was found at the crime scene,
then it's clear Grams was involved in the Rohwedder murder.
However, how exactly and at what time did he leave his DNA behind
remains unanswered so far.
But he was a leading figure back then.
From 1990 until 1992, I was Head of the State Security Unit,
responsible for the former GDR territory.
In spring 1991,
I could have arrested Grams and his associate.
Back then, our office,
the Counter-Terrorism Unit,
had received intel from Thuringia
that these two individuals were hiding there.
I sent one of my officers to Thuringia to investigate,
and, depending on the circumstances, to arrest them.
He was sent away under some pretext.
I then made a call to the Federal Criminal Police Office,
at which point they told me they'd deal with this matter alone.
We were not to intervene.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
In a shooting involving two high-ranking RAF members
this afternoon in the town of Bad Kleinen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
the alleged terrorist Wolfgang Grams was shot.
We had intelligence
from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution Rhineland-Palatinate,
indicating they had succeeded
in infiltrating the command of the RAF.
I immediately set up a special task force
and instructed our operation team
to close off the area around the Bad Kleinen train station.
Bad Kleinen was a glorious moment
for the intelligence services.
For the first time in 20 years,
they had succeeded in placing a human source
into a terrorist organization.
We were on the phone in my office in the Federal Criminal Police Office,
together with my deputy
and the Federal Prosecutor General.
Everyone could hear it over the speaker phone.
I get the message "Mission completed.
We have injured persons.
The target…
The target opened fire."
A member of the special Border Protection Unit 9
also suffered fatal injuries.
Then we learned one of our men had died
and that Grams was being removed.
He had died, too.
So, at approximately 8:00 p.m. that night, it was clear to me
that the mission had failed.
The circumstances of the death of the alleged RAF terrorist Grams
on Sunday remain unclear.
After the events in Bad Kleinen, I had this feeling...
the entire affair seemed strange to me.
I thought they knew the location of Grams and his associates,
but were willing to accept
one or two people dying that day.
The circumstances of the operation at Bad Kleinen station
are even more confused today.
At the site of the operation, not all the evidence has been secured.
It's still unclear how many shots were fired.
We had a scandal on our hands.
The next Sunday, Der Spiegel published a story about "the fatal shot."
I knew it had turned into a public relations disaster.
They were out for blood.
That Sunday, I visited the Minister of the Interior,
and he resigned.
Then I started to have doubts myself about what had happened that day.
I doubted it myself.
Mr. Seiters took responsibility for the mistakes
and surprisingly resigned from office.
Federal Prosecutor General von Stahl will be dismissed.
After the series of mishaps in the Grams case…
I cannot recall any other case
that caused eight or ten politicians and high-level officials
to be forced into retirement
as a direct result of a police operation.
This was an admission of complete failure by the entire security establishment.
Ten days after the Bad Kleinen operation,
it remains unclear who used which weapon
to shoot alleged RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams.
After the autopsy of alleged RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams
Der Spiegel reports that several missteps have hindered attempts
to clarify the circumstances of the death.
Grams' body was allegedly thoroughly washed,
which removed blood residue.
The investigators in Schwerin are still missing important evidence
needed to determine the cause of death.
The entire investigation was an instance of Murphy's Law.
Just one example...
Some of the evidence was sent to the Zurich police in Switzerland
to show that we wanted an objective investigation.
We let the Swiss analyze Grams's jacket for gunshot residue.
The result was that Grams's jacket disappeared from the Zurich institute,
never to be found again.
Thus, for some people
who are skeptical towards the police and the judiciary,
it must have seemed like something was being covered up,
something just wasn't right.
This mental programming, to commit suicide in a hopeless situation,
was widespread among political figures.
Why couldn't he have killed himself
by using the weapon?
This could well have been a cover-up.
Because, to this day, the security authorities have been unable
to answer any of the open questions
or solve any of the unsolved murders,
and also don't appear to be overly interested in solving them anymore.
So when I look at the Rohwedder case, I'm not too far
from calling the Grams murder
a cover-up.
The scary thing about this situation
is that a lack of transparent or accurate information
created the impression
among the public
that there is a conspiracy in the state.
I'm almost certain the Office for the Protection of the Constitution
withheld information from us.
I'm worried
that the security institutions
have developed a life of their own,
which could become a danger to our democracy,
ladies and gentlemen.
AMBULANCE
When Rohwedder was shot, I really struggled with myself.
I thought…
"Jump on any plane, just leave Germany, because there is going to be a civil war.
They'll start fighting and shoot each other's leaders."
It wasn't clear, if this was just the beginning.
No one knew what might happen next.
7 DAYS
AFTER THE MURDER
"Dear friends,
there have been contradictory statements in the media
regarding our protest today.
In fact, we did deliberate
whether to hold this Monday protest."
The politicians exerted severe pressure against this protest.
LEIPZIG OPERA
Someone officially declared, perhaps the Interior Minister or Chancellor Kohl
"It's indecent to continue your protests."
WHY DO YOU USE THE POISON OF ENVY TO DEEPEN THE DIVISION OF GERMANY?
END THIS CYNICAL GAME WITH THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
Then they had a minute of silence.
"We sympathize with the family of the victim
and remember Detlev Karsten Rohwedder in silence."
A minute of silence!
The emerging workers' civil movement
simply collapsed.
I believe that was our last protest.
It is quite conceivable
that there exist certain powerful forces within Germany,
a kind of deep state.
Of course, this isn't done by the state officially,
but by certain people from within, who have the ability to orchestrate events.
So it could have been plotted by the West
to kill the head of the Treuhand
in order to prove the point that the Treuhand is correct
and, in turn, undermine the devotees of the East,
those who were anti-Treuhand.
To tell them, "See? Your concept for society leads to death."
Already, Rohwedder's successor as the head of the Treuhand
will be announced next week,
Minister of Finance Theo Waigel told the press today.
The CDU politician Birgit Breuel is the new Head of the Treuhand.
Then Mrs. Breuel came in
and shifted the focus extremely towards a market economy solution.
Prior to that, we hadn't privatized much.
Because we had focused on restructuring, not selling companies,
with Rohwedder leading this cause.
And then came Breuel with her clear focus
on private ownership, privatization.
Then the Treuhand gathered pace.
Mr. Rohwedder was an entrepreneur who committed himself wholeheartedly.
We will continue our work in his spirit.
We are determined.
This means privatize quickly.
Then Mrs. Breuel gave a press conference.
Incidentally, Waigel was there that day, but only by chance.
As acting minister, he only visited the Treuhand once.
That says a lot.
Once.
And at the time he seemed a like a real cold,
fucked up West German politician.
As if he thought, "Thank God, they shot my subordinate, not me."
Something like that.
That's how he seemed to a young person working there.
And then Mrs. Breuel?
Business as usual.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
With an official ceremony, the German public today
bid farewell to the assassinated Treuhand President, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder.
The memorial service at the Berlin concert hall
was attended by 1,300 leading representatives of business,
culture, politics, and the church.
His wife remains hospitalized recovering from gunshot wounds.
Germany's President praised Rohwedder as a pioneer of German unity.
He came from both East and West.
He did not believe there are essential differences
between East and West Germans,
yet he understood the incredible material and human burden
that has been imposed on our compatriots in the former GDR.
Detlev Rohwedder truly served our people.
Yes, very moving.
Politics has the ability to honor people, as they have done here,
in a very good, grand gesture.
But politics in its daily business is quite different,
and when someone has to go
or has to be replaced,
politics doesn't really care.
He gave his entire reputation, his entire self.
But he also knew the ins and outs of politics.
And politics loves hunting people.
He paid for this with his life.
He had been so proud that he was asked to help.
This country, so brutally divided,
all those human relationships…
And to make this into one Germany again
was a matter very close to his heart.
THE MURDER OF DETLEV KARSTEN ROHWEDDER REMAINS UNSOLVED.
THE TREUHAND PRIVATIZED ALL OF THE GDR'S ASSETS.
94% OF COMPANIES WERE TAKEN OVER BY WEST GERMAN OR INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS.
I don't know anything about its details and history, of course, but…
I'm pretty sure we could turn this into something nice.
6% REMAIN WITH THE PEOPLE OF EAST GERMANY.