Detlev Karsten Rohwedder

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, responsible for the privatisation of state-owned property in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR),[4] in September 1990, and served until his assassination in April 1991. He had also served as CEO of steel manufacturer Hoesch AG since 1980.[5]

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
Manner of deathAssassination by gunshots
Political partySocial Democratic Party

Death

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]

Aftermath

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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