Where historiography is silent, there is room for the imagination of writers. In his novel "The Last Terrorist" André Georgi has taken on a topic that is almost forgotten today: the last attacks of the so-called third generation of the RAF.

He goes from the assassination of the head of the German bank Alfred Herrhausen to the access at Bad Kleinen station, where the terrorist Wolfgang Grams was killed. The focus, however, is the planning and execution of the attack on the Treuhand boss Detlev Rohwedder, who was shot in April 1991 in his Dusseldorf villa by a sniper.

Georgi works mainly as a screenwriter, writes "crime scenes" and other TV crime thrillers. "The Last Terrorist" is his second novel, and like his predecessor "Tribunal" he is based on a script of his own. The film is titled "The Assassination" in November as a two-parter on ZDF, high-profile cast with Ulrich Tukur and Petra Schmidt-Schaller.

Jörg Dieckmann

Author of the book André Georgi

Already during the preparation of the film aroused much attention, which meant some restrictions for Georgi - so he could use for legal reasons, neither in the script nor in the novel Klarnamen. The Treuhand boss, for example, is now called Hans-Georg Dahlmann. However, these requirements also brought with them certain freedoms: Georgi allows himself to condense time, to change facts and to add figures.

Like Sandra Wellmann, a childhood friend of Dahlmann's daughter, who - now radicalized - can be hired as an assistant to the Treuhand boss. A familiar as a door opener for terrorists, historical model was here Susanne Albrecht, 1977, the assassination of the bank manager Jürgen Ponto enabled.

Wellmann is at the center of the multi-perspective novel - Georgi tells in constant change from the point of view of RAF terrorists, BKA agents and politicians. And he stays very close to his characters, does not sway to the judge, but leaves the verdict to his readers.

Instead of Gauloises without filter Lord Extra

The result is a very dense and multi-layered, feverishly and rapidly told portrait of the time shortly after the fall of the Wall, when the GDR cake was distributed and above all the cream pieces Bitterfeld and Leuna made many western entrepreneurs appetite. Rohwedder - and this is a bitter irony of history - was indeed a hated symbol for the fiduciary and thus the clearance of the GDR, but actually he was the one who had resisted dismemberment and treachery.

Who had a real interest in murdering Rohwedder / Dahlmann? The RAF, hoping that the hatred of the trust would bring them new supporters? The Stasi, what was actually speculated about at that time? West German entrepreneurs that Rohwedder was in the way? The murder was never finally solved; even if the RAF had known this, many open questions remain today. A strength of Georgi's novel is that he does not get bogged down in conspiracy theories, but points to disagreements that sets one or the other question marks, where previously a point claimed conclusion.

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André Georgi:
The last terrorist

Suhrkamp, ​​361 pages, 14.95 euros

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The third generation of the RAF is the one least known about which Georgi is also interested in this void. It was never clarified how big the hard core was and how extensive the circle of supporters, also about the command structure and above all the whereabouts of the terrorists, there is no final clarity.

Georgi's novel offers no new facts here, but provides a coherent portrait of the terrorists as driven, caught in an ideology that they no longer believe in. Rebels for no reason, highly trained professional killers with no real vision, sad decals of misunderstood idols sitting in the stolen car and dreaming about how Baader and Ensslin rush into the adventure land with the Porsche: "Instead of Gauloises without a filter, they smoke Lord Extra, nicotine-reduced, Not the taste of adventure and freedom, but the taste of Bietigheim-Bissingen at the moment shortly after the cabbage rolls are cooked and just before the children are home. "

Rainer Werner Fassbinder has previously painted a similarly dreary, albeit shriller, picture of terror, almost four decades ago. In his visionary, but almost forgotten film "The Third Generation" - shot in 1979, and thus years before the talk was of the third generation of the RAF - he shows a terrorist group of broken citizens' children. In their blind activism they do not even realize that they are controlled by intelligence services and capital. André Georgi, he revealed in the conversation, has never seen Fassbinder's film, but his evil punchline should like him.