A Perfect Crime (Rohwedder)

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY

APRIL 1, 1991

PRESS

April 1st was Easter Monday.

I was in the newsroom until around 10:00 p.m....

and then headed home to Dusseldorf-Unterrath.

- -That's when I noticed...

the city was full of blue light.

Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars.

I've never seen anything like it in my whole career,

never before and never since.

I followed the police cars

and they all drove to Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring.

Rich, famous people live there.

I still didn't know what had happened.

I asked a policeman,

"Can you tell me what's going on? The whole city is on lockdown."

He said, "Not just the whole city.

All freeways are closed.

We're running a dragnet."

I asked him, "What must have happened?"

He said, "The very worst kind of crime."

He said, "You must have heard of Mr. Rohwedder."

"Who's Rohwedder?"

"You don't know him?

He's the President of the Treuhand in Berlin.

He's liquidating the GDR."

My wife and I were on a skiing holiday.

We were traveling back to Dusseldorf that night.

We passed the Rohwedder house. It was all lit up.

And 20 meters in front of the house

I met a policeman and asked him just one thing,

"Is he dead?"

"Yes."

I knew what had happened. It was crystal clear.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

ZDF apologizes for interrupting this movie.

There is a sad and shocking reason for this interruption.

The head of the Treuhand Agency, Detlev Rohwedder,

was reportedly killed in his apartment in Dusseldorf

on Monday evening, at around 10:30 p.m..

GERMANY

The German Reich.

Nobody intends to build a wall!

West and East Germany - a divided nation.

Red Army Faction.

...insane attacks by barbaric terrorists.

Tear down this wall!

Our fatherland, reunited.

A PERFECT CRIME

I was skiing in Austria.

My security agents woke me up in the night and said,

"Rohwedder has been murdered."

I had only been skiing for two days.

And I'd been really looking forward to that skiing vacation.

He said, "Go photograph the top window."

I said, "But I can't see a thing."

He said, "Just turn on the flash and shoot.

You'll find out what you've photographed later on."

I was at home when the phone rang.

I knew right away why he had been attacked.

BUREAU OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION HEAD OF COUNTER-TERRORISM

- -

Our investigation units went over there,

the crime scene task force was alerted

and they started work right away, in the middle of the night.

Huge numbers of police arrived,

including the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

Strangers took command of the situation.

I was forced away.

We arrived between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.

First we went into the building to see what the situation was.

The body was still lying in the study on the first floor.

BUREAU OF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION HEAD OF COMMUNICATION

Mr. Rohwedder was across from the window,

slumped on the floor in front of the bookshelves.

-Evening, Mr. Schmok. - Hello, Mr. Voß.

Has the Ministry of the Interior in Dusseldorf

confirmed Rohwedder's murder?

Yes, it has been confirmed.

The city is in shock.

He was an extremely likeable person,

but he knew that his new role

also posed a danger to him.

We can be sure that this was a political act.

Back in the newsroom, the first thing I did

was develop the film.

I remember it so clearly.

I was shocked by what I saw.

You can see two bullets

have passed through this completely normal glass window.

One bullet struck and killed Detlev Karsten Rohwedder.

The second bullet injured his wife, who was standing behind him.

If the local police

had put sufficient protection measures in place,

there wouldn't have been normal glass in these windows,

but bulletproof glass that stopped the bullets getting through.

To this day I still don't understand

why only the ground floor of his house

had safety windows installed.

In the house where I lived,

all of the windows

and all of the doors were designed

to protect against a direct attack.

Feelings of anger and pity.

Anger and pity.

Anger because the thing you wanted to protect wasn't protected,

and pity for the people

who placed their trust in the country and the country couldn't protect

or didn't want to protect.

This is the daily news on First German Television.

Head of the Treuhand Agency, Rohwedder,

has reportedly been murdered.

The victim was a key figure in the so far futile attempt

to overhaul the economy of what was once communist East Germany.

The left-wing Red Army Faction claim they killed him,

but a German security official has said the Stasi,

the former East German secret police, may also have been involved.

The Federal Prosecutor General declined to confirm

whether the RAF really had carried out the attack.

They do not expect to find the perpetrator soon,

or perhaps ever.

Finance Minister Waigel, who supervised the Treuhand,

interrupted his Easter vacation and traveled to Bonn.

Rohwedder is, I think...

the martyr, or a martyr,

of German reunification.

And in view of that...

there was a deep sense of gratitude

towards him for his courage and willingness

to take on that hazardous role at the Treuhand.

For the good of Germany.

MARTYR

Rohwedder was the boss

of the world's biggest industrial holding company.

There were around 15,000 GDR companies in that holding company.

Dockyards, steel foundries, the textile sector, the chemical sector.

By Western standards, those companies had every problem

it was possible to have.

And each of those 15,000 companies needed major restructuring.

A huge task.

It was probably the first time that an agency, the Treuhand Agency...

TREUHAND BUSINESS LAWYER

...had to group all of the companies, restructure, liquidate and sell them.

TREUHAND AGENCY

Mrs. Breuel, your reaction to the attack...

All of the staff are very sad and feel committed now

to continuing Mr. Rohwedder's work.

That's our job, and we're dedicated to getting it done.

Awful. Terrible.

I'm lost for words.

-It's terrible. He was my boss. -I'm... sad.

Outraged, actually.

I'm wondering...

why there were no measures in place to protect him?

The day after Rohwedder's murder

I arrived at the Treuhand.

It was buzzing.

The wheels were still turning.

Investors were standing there, managers who wanted loans,

investors who wanted information about their transfer applications.

I walked around feeling totally out of place.

Uh... just think about it: you work in an organization

and then the boss is shot and killed.

What kind of sick structures cause that to happen?

A man gives up a secure position in the West

to come to the East and tackle this whole thing.

Unlike all of those smart alecks in Munich or Bonn or wherever,

sitting there safe and sound and shooting their mouths off,

uh, he came over and faced the challenge.

And that man gets shot dead. I thought it was sick.

The economy in the former GDR is on the brink of collapse.

The new states of Germany are facing an ever-growing mountain of problems.

Mr. Rohwedder, many people are wondering why you took this on?

5 WEEKS

UNTIL THE MURDER

Maybe a look at your background can help us explain it.

You were born the son of a bookseller in Gotha in 1932.

That's in Thuringia.

You're from Central Germany. Did that inform your decision?

Yes, I was always very interested

in the so-called "new" states of Germany.

I was often in the GDR during my time in Bonn.

Reunification has always meant a lot to me

and that's why, despite all the criticism,

and all of the disapproval that could be leveled at my work,

I'm proud to be able to do this job

and that allows me to see past the difficulties we're facing.

Oversized companies, self-important staff, outdated machinery,

low productivity and above all products that are difficult to sell.

The Treuhand Agency is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems.

What do you think of the agency?

-Not a lot. -Why not?

So far their restructuring has destroyed things,

not created jobs.

My wife already lost her job.