Detlev Karsten Rohwedder
Rohwedder in 1990
President of the Treuhandanstalt
In office
29 August 1990  1 April 1991
Appointed byLothar de Maizière
Preceded byReiner Maria Gohlke
Succeeded byBirgit Breuel
State Secretary in the Ministry for Economics
In office
22 October 1969  16 February 1978
ChancellorWilly Brandt
Helmut Schmidt
MinisterKarl Schiller
Helmut Schmidt
Hans Friderichs
Otto Graf Lambsdorff
Preceded byKlaus von Dohnanyi
Succeeded byDieter von Würzen (1979)
Personal details
Born(1932-10-16)16 October 1932
Gotha, Free State of Thuringia, Weimar Republic
Died1 April 1991(1991-04-01) (aged 58)
Düsseldorf-Niederkassel, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Political partySocial Democratic Party

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (16 October 1932 – 1 April 1991)[1] was a German manager and politician,[2] as member of the Social Democratic Party.[3] He was named president of the Treuhandanstalt, the agency responsible for the reprivatization/privatization all state-owned property in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR),[4] in September 1990, and served until his assassination by a Far Left terrorist organization, the Red Army Faction, in April 1991. He had also served as CEO of the steel manufacturer Hoesch AG since 1980.[5]

Murder

On Monday, April 1, 1991, at 23:30, Rohwedder was shot and killed through a window on the second floor of his house in the suburb of Düsseldorf-Niederkassel (Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring 71) by the first of three rifle shots. The second shot wounded his wife Hergard; the third hit a bookcase.

The shots were fired from 63 m away from a rifle chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO. It was also the same rifle that was used during a sniper attack on the American embassy in February committed by the Red Army Faction, a West German far-left terrorist group. An inspection of the scene found three cartridge cases, a plastic chair, a towel, and a letter claiming responsibility from an RAF unit named after Ulrich Wessel, a minor RAF figure who had died in 1975. The shooter has never been identified.[6][7]

In 2001, a DNA analysis found that hair strands from the crime scene belonged to RAF member Wolfgang Grams. The Attorney General did not consider this evidence sufficient to name Grams as a suspect of the killing. Grams was killed in a shootout with police in Bad Kleinen in 1993.

On April 10, 1991, Rohwedder was honoured in Berlin with a day of mourning by German President Richard von Weizsäcker, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau, and Chairman of the Board of Treuhandanstalt Jens Odewald. The Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus, the seat of the Federal Finance Ministry, is named in his honour.

Films

In 2020, A Perfect Crime, a documentary about the Rohwedder assassination, was released by Netflix.[8]

See also

References

  1. Siemens, Ansgar (5 November 2018). "Google Translate". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  2. "SHOTS FROM THE GARDEN". looks.film. 31 December 2010. Retrieved 2019-10-30.
  3. "Google Translate". translate.google.com. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  4. Treuhandanstalt: Privatisation, Unemployment, Protests. In: Sites of Unity (Haus der Geschichte), 2022.
  5. Spiegel.de:Unzumutbarer Partner (October 4, 1982) (german)
  6. "Google Translate". translate.google.com. Retrieved 2019-04-04.
  7. Der Fall Rohwedder, archived from the original on 2021-12-21, retrieved 2019-10-30
  8. "A Perfect Crime: Netflix to examine Germany's answer to JFK assassination". TheGuardian.com. 23 September 2020.
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