Could the murder of the Kassel district president Walter Lübcke (CDU) have been prevented if the Hessian protection of the constitution had not lost sight of the right-wing extremist perpetrator Stephan Ernst beforehand?

The question has overshadowed the work of the corresponding committee of inquiry in the state parliament since it was constituted in July 2020.

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

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"None of us will be able to answer that conclusively," said Günter Rudolph, SPD parliamentary group leader, at the 37th meeting on Friday.

In doing so, he not only described the limits of possible knowledge for the first time.

He also indicated that the opposition's criticism of the security authorities will ultimately be contained.

This is striking because the social democrat recently expressed the view in an interview with the FAZ that "Ernst could have been stopped if one had looked properly".

Rudolph's moderate statement on Friday also stands out clearly from the tweet on social media in which the SPD faction in mid-January pilloried four Union politicians in connection with the murder of Lübcke.

Ernst fell out of sight of the authorities

One of them, the Hessian Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU), was interviewed by the committee of inquiry on Friday.

As a former Minister of the Interior, he also bears political responsibility for the structural deficiencies in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Rudolph explained.

However, Rhein only spent a relatively short period in the ministry.

He was Secretary of State for a year and a half before heading the House from August 2010 to January 2014.

Lübcke's murder occurred in June 2019. In 2015, Ernst's personnel file was blocked for official use.

This put the later murderer out of sight of the authorities.

During Rhein's tenure, however, another event took place.

In 2011, Ernst took part in a summer solstice celebration in Thuringia.

That was an indication that he was still in the right-wing scene.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution had a photo of him, but he was not recognized.

When asked about this, Rhein said: "I can't rate that."

The deputies also asked him about the extinguishing moratorium imposed during his term of office.

His department head issued it in 2012 because the Bundestag committee to investigate the NSU murders asked for it, Rhein explained.

This is the reason why Ernst's personal file was still available after Lübcke's murder and could have been made available to the Federal Public Prosecutor.

As a result of the deletion moratorium, however, the personnel files in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution piled up in such a way that they were later blocked for official use in rows without examining the individual case.

Ernst's file also disappeared from the officers' field of vision.

This "accelerated procedure" was applied from December 2014.

At that time he was no longer in office, noted Rhein.

It is undisputed that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution acted in this way without the knowledge of the ministry.

The head of government said the names of Stephan Ernst and his comrade Marcus Hartmann, who has since been acquitted of complicity, have only been known to him since the murder.

Deficits in the work of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution

MP Torsten Felstehausen (left) spoke to him about the so-called NSU files, which had recently been published in "ZDF-Magazin Royale".

They document deficits in the work of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which had been determined by the agency itself.

Rhein commissioned the audit after the NSU was exposed, but was no longer in office when the agency completed the investigation.

Another assignment from the former Minister of the Interior led to the establishment of a project group to develop a concept for the realignment of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The final report with the suggestions for optimization was presented in 2013, the year of the state elections.

A little later, Rhein left office.

On Friday, the opposition had to concentrate on the accusation that Rhein had done too little to end the lack of staff in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The complaints filed against the committee of inquiry by former Presidents Roland Desch and Alexander Eisvogel were cited for this.

When the Union and the FDP replaced the red-green government in 1999, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was “devastated” with just 182 employees.

Today 380 people work there.