RAF thriller "The assassination attempt" on ZDF: explosives, rifles, legends

This article appeared in its original version as early as September, when the "assassination attempt" was first shown to journalists.

The history of the Red Army Faction (RAF) has always been an inspiration. From 1972 to 1993, the left-wing terrorist group committed serious attacks in Germany. And even today, 20 years after the dissolution of the self, many acts are riddles, legends proliferate, former leaders are silent.

A starting point that inspires filmmakers - and regularly leads to controversy when fiction and facts change. Last year, a "Tatort" episode of Dominik Graf triggered a debate. It was about the death night of Stammheim. In 1977, several RAF prisoners of the first hour died in the prison - Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe. The episode features one of several death night versions of a state killer squad that kills terrorists.

"RAF propaganda," scolded Stefan Aust, chronicler for decades. Just the murder version spread the remaining terrorists back then, in order to ostracize the state and to promote new supporters. It was known that it was suicide. The "crime scene," AUSGE gen keen ARD, was "dangerous nonsense."

With explosives, Panzerfaust and MG

This autumn, ZDF is trying on a new mix of facts and fiction. The big two-parter "The Murder Attack" is based on the novel "The Last Terrorist" by André Georgi, a renowned mystery scriptwriter. Its story takes place shortly after the change, in a time when the RAF in the third generation fights the state - with explosives, bazooka and submachine gun. Since the mid-eighties, a series of murderous assassinations shook the country, it always meets alleged carriers of the system.

The names of the eleven casualties are barely present today. Most prominent are probably Alfred Herrhausen (1989), chief of Deutsche Bank, and Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (1991), chief of the Treuhandanstalt.

In the "assassination attempt" Georgi condenses the case of Rohwedder into a plot of robber pistols. It is about the RAF, the Stasi and machinations of Western entrepreneurs who want to do unfair business in the ex-GDR. On the sidelines, Georgi kills the Herrhausen murder fictional and the deadly shots of Bad Kleinen, where in 1993 the RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams died.

In the film, Sandra Wellmann (Petra Schmidt-Schaller), mother and RAF sympathizer, hires as assistant to the Berlin trust boss Hans-Georg Dahlmann (Ulrich Tukur). At the behest of the terrorists, they should explore when the hated capitalist is best killed.

ZDF / Gordon Muehle

Ulrich Tukur as trustee boss Hans-Georg Dahlmann

Doubting assistant

But the longer the assistant accompanies her boss, the more she has doubts about the purpose of her job. Dahlmann is to transfer the state-owned enterprises in the east to the new economy. Rehabilitate, close, sell, these are often the options that he and his people examine.

Wellmann experiences a supervisor who fights fraud and works for workers who fear for their jobs - that goes against the classic leftist enemy image.

The boss of Treuhand invites his assistant one day to Bad Godesberg, she should get to know his family. The terrorists decide to kill him on this occasion - a long-range shot from a colony of canards, which is located opposite the mansion of the manager.

But RAF sniper Klaus Gelfert (Christoph Bach) has to disappear at short notice - the police are looking for him because of the deadly explosive attack on the head of the Vereinsbank. The terrorist Bettina Pohlheim (Jenny Schily), who wants to pull Wellmann for some time in the illegality presses her Elevin a pistol in the hand. The assistant is to shoot her boss in the house.

Then Dahlmann is surprisingly murdered by a sniper when he goes to the phone on the first floor of his villa. Was that the RAF? The viewer is allowed to puzzle over almost the entire second part - there is no clear answer. Even a former Stasi officer and business opponents are considered backers. The RAF option remains the least likely.

Anyone who follows the film with his finger in specialist literature, for example in the standard work "Deadly Error" by Butz Peters, will discover many quotes from reality. The deadly shot hits Dahlmann 63 meters away, so it was with Rohwedder.

Mystery mystery

"Who is the RAF today?" Someday asks a consternated Minister of the Interior. "We do not know," says a BKA man. Historians still lack the overview of who belonged to the third generation. Only a few names are known. And the RAF Stasi liaison, which sounds in the film, has a true core: In the eighties, the intelligence agents from the East trained the terrorists from the West.

The longer the film lasts - in total there are 180 exciting minutes - the more the story moves in the realm of fantasy. Although it is still unclear who shot Rohwedder. There is no serious doubt about the perpetrators of the RAF. The terrorists left a typical letter of confession, evidence of a forgery does not exist. Thanks to new methods of analysis, BKA experts were able to allocate a hair from the crime scene to RAF man Wolfgang Grams in 2001 - by which time, however, he had already been dead for eight years.

photo gallery

5 pictures

To portray the historical case of Rohwedder, the ZDF produces a documentary, which is to run in November directly after the end of the film. There it will go to the findings of the criminalists. In 2007, ex-terrorist Eva Haule emphasized in a letter to the editor that she wanted to "make things clear again": "The RAF was responsible for the actions against Alfred Herrhausen, Gerold von Braunmühl and Detlev Rohwedder, among others."

The occasion was the then recurring thesis that Western intelligence had murdered Herrhausen. This plot has long been filmed - in the award-winning political thriller "The Phantom" from the year 2000. Based on the non-fiction book held by the author Gerhard Wisnewski.

The man has since made a name for himself as a conspiracy theorist.

"The assassination attempt", Monday, 5.11. and Wednesday 7.11., 20.15 clock, ZDF