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The Bundestag Budget Committee provided 15 million euros for a museum in Friedrichshafen around October 1977, which was hijacked and released from the GSG-9. But Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters rejects this location as "bizarre". Now nine of the hostages, seven passengers, the co-pilot Jürgen Vietor and the flight attendant Gabriele von Lutzau, are finally calling for a viable decision.
Why do we need a Museum of the German Autumn?
The "Landshut", a Boeing 737 of Deutsche Lufthansa with the registration D-ABCE, landed - the penultimate act of the hijacking in autumn 1977 - in South Yemen's capital Aden next to the runway on sand and rubble.
The military there had blocked the regular runway with tanks to prevent a landing.
But without fuel and with a gun on their necks, the pilots landed in the sand next to the runway.
The fire extinguishers in the engines were triggered to keep them from catching fire.
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After that, nothing would have worked in normal flight operations.
But after the leader of the Palestinian terrorists murdered the "Landshut" captain Jürgen Schumann and the regime in Aden refused to grant the kidnappers asylum, the plane had to take off again.
Co-driver Jürgen Vietor was now alone at the wheel.
Sand and stones had been sucked into the engines upon landing.
If even a stone had injured a fuel pipe during the forced take-off and the following flight: The “Landshut” would have come to an end with all of its passengers as a fireball in the sky over Africa.
The engines got very hot during the flight to Mogadishu.
Almost too hot, but the machine held out.
So this 737 saved the lives of the people on board.
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The GSG-9 freed the hostages on October 18, 1977. A few bullets pierced the hull of the "Landshut" - but even that took it: the holes were patched and soon it resumed normal Lufthansa service.
Jürgen Vietor completed his first business flight after the kidnapping in the cockpit of the "Landshut".
"The Baader Meinhof Complex"
The history and actions of the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction (RAF) are the subject of the feature film “The Baader Meinhof Complex” by Uli Edel from 2008. Producer Bernd Eichinger wrote the script for the lavish production.
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Source: Constantin Film
After it was retired from Lufthansa, the 737 flew on for decades.
First passengers and finally freight, in Africa, then in South America.
An engine failure and a financially weak airline brought the flying end.
An aircraft graveyard on the edge of the Brazilian jungle became their stand.
With a little research on the Internet, you could actually always know how things were going with the "Landshut".
Martin Rupps, author and journalist, campaigned to bring them to Germany.
He won over the then Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel for the project.
For 20,000 euros, the "Landshut" belonged to the Federal Republic.
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Disassembled, it landed on board two Antonows at Friedrichshafen Airport in 2017;
three years later, the machine with wings, engines and even the armchairs is still dismantled in the Dornier hangar.
"We have no words"
Monika Grütters is against Friedrichshafen and has even brought a "decentralized exhibition" of parts into play.
That's really bizarre: The door through which the GSG-9 entered, maybe in Berlin, the tail plant maybe in Bonn, the cockpit at Lufthansa in Frankfurt?
Words fail us when faced with such a crazy idea.
Our aim is to finally give the "Landshut" as a whole its appropriate location.
The Bundestag only provided the money for a museum in Friedrichshafen.
Friedrichshafen would be a possibility, but because politicians are massively opposed to this, we would like to come back to another suggestion: Since the House of the History of the Federal Republic in Bonn, not far from Helmut Schmidt's Chancellery, is unable to exhibit a Boeing 737, it offers to Berlin - the federal capital.
The kidnapping of the "Landshut" is of course part of the history of the old Federal Republic, but since we know today that the secret services of the Soviet Union and the GDR were also indirectly involved, it was an all-German event.
Tegel Airport has recently been out of service, but is already planned for future uses.
In the old Tempelhof Airport, however, seven huge hangars are empty.
So far, there are only concrete usage plans for three of them - the Allied Museum is to move there.
A branch of the technology museum is also being considered.
The federal government is against a Tempelhof location for the "Landshut";
she argues that the necessary renovation would be very expensive.
But that is not convincing, because Tempelhof is a listed building - and that means that preservation must be guaranteed anyway;
a luxury renovation, however, is unnecessary.
"A walkable piece of contemporary history"
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We former hostages demand: First set up the "Landshut" in one of the hangars, then we'll see.
In Tempelhof the “Landshut” would be a walk-in piece of contemporary history.
The 15 million euros made available can still be used, because we should think ahead: 43 years have passed since the kidnapping of the “Landshut”.
As the climax of the “German Autumn” and the RAF terror, these dramatic days are still in the memory of those who are at least 50 years old today as a decisive experience.
But a historical museum is always aimed at younger people.
This time has to be made comprehensible to you, who did not experience the horror of the attacks, of the armed conflict from the middle of society.
As a warning - and as recognition of where violence can lead.
Why was the RAF formed?
What contacts did she have with other terrorist groups and with secret services?
How did the state act?
How did the end of the terror and the dissolution of the RAF come about?
And of course: what lessons can we draw from this?
It's about coming to terms with what has long been the proverbial “leaden time”.
There are concepts, there is excellent art on the subject of the RAF and terror.
Changing exhibitions would be feasible.
For the operation of the museum, a foundation and a support association would certainly come into being.
It is compulsory for German students to travel to Berlin once during their school days.
A visit to a "Tempelhof Museum Line" would be a highlight.
You could sit in the original “Landshut” and watch Heinrich Breloer's film “Death Game”.
Audio files could also be compiled.
One would hear perpetrators, such as Andreas Baader, reading crude theories with his fistulous voice, and reports of hostages.
Quite a few have been interviewed, but many have already died.
Your voices remain.
Last but not least, there is the desperate farewell from Gaby Dillmann from the cockpit of the "Landshut".
She tried to get the government in Bonn to act.
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Our situation on the afternoon of October 17, 1977 was hopeless.
None of us knew that the GSG-9 existed.
Their men forcibly freed us, but without a single loss from the hostages;
three of the four kidnappers were killed.
That too deserves to be recognized: What a unique achievement!
One must also give the nameless victims a face and remember them.
The celebrities have their lobby - and rightly so, of course.
Victims like Alfred Herrhausen, Hanns Martin Schleyer or Siegfried Buback.
But where is the memory of the "collateral damage"?
To drivers, bodyguards, police officers?
People who happened to pass by?
They too need a place of remembrance.
Giving victims a face is obviously a huge problem in Germany.
But only those who work through history can learn from it.
Only those who present the past in such a way that they grasp the youth will find interest.
History to touch, to walk through, to experience, to hear, to see - this is a modern, at the same time largely digitally convertible exhibition concept.
A museum of the German autumn with the “Landshut” as its centerpiece would be a symbol of the victory of the state, of society over terror.
This seems more important than ever to us today.
Hartwig Faby
Beate Keller
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Jutta Knauf
Anita Lange
Gabriele von Lutzau
Diana garbage
Birgit Röhl
Dorothee Selter
Jürgen Vietor
"The Lawyers" - The importance of the defense lawyers for the RAF terror
After decades, the interview film “The Lawyers” brings together three lawyers who were largely politically united in the early 1970s.
But Otto Schily became Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans-Christian Ströbele the upper left of the Greens - and Horst Mahler a neo-Nazi.
Source: RealFiction