Black Box BRD

Then there was that thud. Like an explosion.

I called the car phone.

All I heard was:

“The number you have dialled is not available.”

That scared me even more. I knew the car-phone.

Either it was engaged or it rang.

I got into the car straight away.

I drove the same way ... I drove after him.

There they were. The bodyguards

from the car behind his.

One called out: Here comes Mrs. Herrhausen!

Both of them took hold of me. I just wanted to go to the car.

I wanted to see it!

“I want to see it!”

I asked: ls he dead?

Neither of them replied.

I said: Let me go over there. I’ve seen more in life than you have.

They didn’t let me.

They didn’t let me through.

BLACK BOX GERMANY

These were probably his last steps.

He came round the corner as I did.

He was attacked from all sides.

He fell off the platform backwards, banged his head ...

and was lying down there.

Two police officers chased him ...

leapt down here on the rails.

One of them knelt on his stomach, the other was beside him.

They pulled their guns.

When Alfred Herrhausen talked about whom he might compare us with

he didn’t mention Dresdner Bank or so.

He talked about those he saw as part of the international scene.

The peer group, the larger context, people around the world.

Aiming high was typical of him.

Saying, if we can get rid of so much dead weight

why not take a European perspective

or even a global one?

If I am to do that ...

then we’ve some catching up to do.

He became very enthusiastic.

We can do it, too. We have what it takes! We have it in us.

We shouldn’t set our limits in terms of geography or a legal system.

We can do more than that! We’re up to it intellectually ...

emotionally and on all fronts.

Good news for young ambitious people

who want to belong.

He didn’t want chitchat. Not at meetings either.

Chairman, Board of Directors, Deutsche Bank

He wanted to attain objectives. But there was another side to that.

Everyone who had anything to do with him

felt he didn’t have time for them. He wasn’t attentive enough ...

showed little human warmth.

He ticked things off mechanically. Always racing the clock.

It had to be fast. When he had questions he really probed deep.

He always put on the pressure,

hurrying, so as not to be hurried.

It was very competitive. Many people didn’t understand that.

The Deutsche Bank was doing well. We did the phenomenal Flick deal.

We had good operating results. So why was he so frenetic?

If Herrhausen had been advised

Board Spokesman

which would have been difficult

as spokesman of the Deutsche Bank ...

or not to speak so precisely on certain issues ...

or to be less compromising in his wording ...

Alfred Herrhausen would not have taken that advice.

It wouldn’t have suited him at all.

It would have distorted his character, his personality.

He wouldn’t have been true to himself.

He wouldn’t have been so successful. And that’s what mattered to him.

His primary school teacher saw

Gram’s father he was very musical and said

I can just picture him as

a choirmaster or a conductor.

He started violin lessons.

Mother They told him he had perfect pitch.

Around the age of 16 ...

he stopped playing. He said: No, I’m not continuing.

He always had original ideas and acted on them.

Friend

Sometimes he ran up against limits.

Sometimes his parents boxed his ears.

In our presence, too.

Later on he was more reserved ...

when asked about it.

He just vanished.

He disappeared.

We imagined he’d found some garden shed or other to crash in.

It was never for long: maybe a day. He’d go and his mother would panic.

In our family of four, everyone had their place.

Wolfgang opposite me, Rainer opposite you.

Sometimes we got into arguments, especially father and son.

But ...

people like us were happy.

We come from the East.

We were refugees

and not so well off. We were glad my husband worked ...

so we could afford a few things.

It got better little by little. We thought we were doing all right.

He didn’t want to end up like his father.

Always getting up at the same time

doing the same thing, day in, day out. He didn’t want that.

No way.

Wolfgang, ‘Gaks’, was really interested in theatre.

He was an extra in the Wiesbaden Theatre. I was, too.

Friend

He had a flair for acting.

Maybe he’d have been better off at drama school.

When we were together we had our own premiere parties.

We didn’t want anything to do with those snooty people in dinner jackets.

We used to go to the spa park, to these highbrow places,

roll a joint and get high.

The police came. Always friendly. They never found anything.

We’d usually finished it before they turned up.

That’s where we always met.

But even then, I noticed Wolfgang was headed somewhere else.

He was headed somewhere else.

Wiesbaden is an American army base.

Friend

Erbenheim is the biggest air base outside the USA.

In a way, the Vietnam War was right on our doorstep.

I didn’t have to go far from my parent’s flat

to see the planes taking off from Wiesbaden Erbenheim.

At first he just didn’t know. He had all sorts of ideas

but nothing was clear. He wanted to maybe become a forester.

Maybe a minister.

I said: if neither works out ... You learned a bit of music ...

so join the army, the military band.

Try to find your place there. Something with music.

They had big arguments,

...shouted at each other.

Sometimes he just left.

He realised they would never agree.

Wolfgang said right from the start: Carrying a gun

is not for me.

He became a conscientious objector.

It suited him to take care of helpless people.

Even on their deathbed.

Preparing the corpses and carrying away the coffin.

Of course we talked about the war.

Wolfgang wanted to know: What did I do when I was a soldier?

I applied to join the Waffen-SS. As a volunteer. Simple as that.

It was something special.

Today l’d say,

it was like an inner compulsion.

Not that I’m trying to make excuses. An inner compulsion.

We all felt it. Everyone we knew.

I volunteered to go to war

to serve the state. As any normal boy

in the Hitler Youth would have done.

Dear classmates! After 55 years

we meet here again,

where we went to school together for two and a half years.

On behalf of all those who have died,

whom we cannot greet today,

I mention Alfred Herrhausen

who, sadly, was killed

in a devious, mean attack.

I was very proud to have been

in the same class as him.

If he could be with us today

we would reminisce about old times.

Just as I hope we will do today.

I remember him as squad leader. We all had a lot of respect for him.

He was full of energy, even then.

A good mate, always friendly. But he could also be very energetic.

If we didn’t want to do what he, as squad leader, wanted

he knew how to get his own way.

Feldafing was an elite school. The Reich School of the NSDAP.

It was a National Socialist school but instruction there was excellent.

Father always told us, to succeed in life

Herrhausen’s sister

you must work more than the masses, at least an hour more. He was right.

One hour’s not enough of course. But that’s what he told us to do.

Always try to do a bit more and be a bit better than the others,

than the crowd, the masses.

That proved to be right.

He got to know my sister in law when he was a student.

She came from an upper class family.

Got whatever she wanted. She was driven to university

by a chauffeur. That sure helped my brother, who was still very young,

to make up his mind... to marry her.

Herrhausen’s first wife

He went straight to VEW.

His father-in-law was the director. He progressed very quickly.

My father didn’t like that.

He didn’t approve. Understandably, as he always said:

I don’t want my son to succeed as someone’s protégé.

He should succeed on his own. But it soon became clear.

He wasn’t promoted because of favouritism.

Lots of things bothered him here. He said: There’s so much poverty

here in Germany.

We should do something about it.

Not just ...

go along with consumerism.

He didn’t want all that.

I was almost ashamed to see my son

at the Red Cross,

buying clothes by the kilo.

I couldn’t believe it.