Hoyerswerda, Rostock – Lichtenhagen, Mölln, Solingen, Düsseldorf, Kassel, Halle, Hanau.
Wait a minute. Düsseldorf?
Let’s imagine we lived in a city where a serious right-wing extremist bomb attack was carried out on twelve people – some of them Jewish – and hardly anyone remembers it. That’s not possible. Or is it?
By Juliane Hendes.
– 18 June 2023
Juliane Hendes is an author and dramaturge and writes for theatre, film and radio plays. Born and raised in Rostock, she studied dramaturgy at the University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig and then worked as an assistant director at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. She has been a freelance author and dramaturge since 2016 and has worked at the Sophiensäle Berlin, the Nationaltheater Mannheim, the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, among others. As an author, she is associated with the independent group Pièrre.Vers. She wrote the play text for ‘Dunkeldorf’ and earlier productions by the theatre collective. In 2021 she was awarded the City of Düsseldorf Prize for the Performing Arts.
‘Dunkeldorf’ will premiere at asphalt 2023 and be shown in seven performances, with a revival at the Düsseldorf Festival in September. We would like to thank the Antiracist Education Forum for the use of its archive, from which the newspaper cuttings shown are taken.
No names, no memory.
On 27 July 2000, a bomb filled with TNT exploded at Wehrhahn S-Bahn station in Düsseldorf, injuring ten people. A woman who was five months pregnant lost her unborn child. The investigation by the local police remained inconclusive for a long time, and although the first indications of a neo-Nazi known in the neighbourhood quickly emerged and although the group of people affected – consisting of ethnic German immigrants and so-called contingent refugees – suggested a racist and anti-Semitic motive, it was not until eighteen years later that Ralf S. was brought to trial, at the end of which he was acquitted. The attacks in Hanau, Solingen and Mölln are at least partially anchored in the collective memory. The anniversaries in particular are covered extensively and nationwide. This does not apply to the Düsseldorf attack. Why not? Because nobody died? Because although there was an accused, no one was ever found guilty? Or is there another reason why the incident not only did not enter the German national memory, but did not even really enter the city’s memory?
Social echo chamber – sovereignty of interpretation.
The situation in the summer of 2000 shortly after the attack was initially confusing. The city of Düsseldorf was faced with a major challenge and the police investigations were only part of it. How does a city deal with such a violent event? A debate arose around this question. Opinions, categorisations and conflicting perspectives on such incidents always accompany the battle for the right to interpret what has happened. It is the battle over how the situation will be interpreted in the future. This is significantly influenced by local and national journalists, politicians, authorities of all kinds and social actors – each with their own agenda. Public announcements create the mood in which the investigating authorities carry out their tasks. They influence the formation of opinion in our society, which in turn can have an impact on social processes on the one hand, and on people willing to use violence in the future on the other. And they are also the echo chamber that determines what is remembered and how, and what is not.
The public always plays a part. – That’s you and me.
Let me give you an example: In the 1990s – against the backdrop of the war in Yugoslavia and the resulting immigration – democratic representatives in Germany (above all the CDU/CSU and SPD) took up right-wing narratives and fuelled sentiment against asylum seekers. ‘Just a few weeks after the pogrom in Hoyerswerda, the then CDU Secretary General Volker Rühe wrote a letter calling on all district associations to ‘make asylum policy an issue in local and city councils, district parliaments and state parliaments’. (…) This was followed by the familiar front pages of Spiegel, Bild and other newspapers with headlines such as ‘The boat is full’, ‘Onslaught of the poor’ and so on,’ writes Esther Dischereit for the Federal Agency for Civic Education. The main issue was Article 16a of the Basic Law: ‘The right to asylum has constitutional status as a fundamental right in Germany.’ The debate about the article exacerbated the mood in the country and led, among other things, to the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992, in the aftermath of which the right of asylum was tightened to such an extent that it could be understood as having been abolished to a certain extent. Whereas the perpetrators either got away with it completely unpunished or with only marginal penalties. ‘The NSU core trio and their supporters drew their self-confidence from this experience of impunity, even for the most serious crimes. And the right-wing assassins of today who were socialised in this generation – such as Frank Steffen, who attempted to send a political signal against Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker’s refugee policy by assassinating her in October 2015, or Stephan Ernst, the alleged murderer of Kassel District President Walter Lübcke – are directly linked to their experiences in the 1990s, both ideologically and in their choice of forms of action,’ Dischereit continues. The mood not only influences potential perpetrators. Mitat Özdemir, chairman of the Keupstraße interest group, reported after the NSU attack in Cologne in 2004: ‘Police officers came, accompanied by journalists, and asked about the perpetrators. When we answered: Neo-Nazis, they kept asking. And who else could it have been? At some point, we just said what they wanted to hear.’ Afterwards, some reported on it, others were asked to investigate. It’s like a perpetual motion machine: the way in which such offences are dealt with has an impact on what offences will happen in the future and how they will be dealt with in turn.
Politically motivated offences. – It’s all about attention.
Terrorist attacks – regardless of which ‘side’ commits them – become major media events. The interest is huge, it must and should be reported quickly and for the representatives of all political orientations it is all about placing their own opinion in the public eye in a profitable way. It’s like a battle in which various forces are trying to gain sovereignty of opinion. Politically motivated offences from the right and left are often played off against each other. However, a distinction must be made in the logic of the attacks. The radical left commits attacks ‘against people who they assume are particularly hated representatives of the ruling regime. (…) The motives of the terrorist right are quite different. The experience of the last thirty years shows that right-wing extremist bomb terror is used in an untargeted manner and is intended to hit random victims. The attacks are intended to prove the powerlessness of the state, to increase the call for strong men who, in contrast to the democratic institutions, are capable of protecting citizens. (…) Targeted terror against prominent representatives of the opposing regime or untargeted terror with the intention of spreading fear and terror throughout the country? It should not be difficult to answer this question in the Düsseldorf attack,’ wrote Christian Semler in the taz newspaper on 29 July 2000 – two days after the attack in Düsseldorf. The so-called horseshoe theory has traditionally played an important role for security authorities. However, it is controversial among scientists and the public. The statistics of the Federal Criminal Police Office from May 2023 show the following: 23,493 politically motivated right-wing offences were committed last year, 6,976 left-wing offences. However, while alleged left-wing radicals such as Lina E. recently targeted known right-wing extremists and criminals, giving the impression that the rule of law would probably rightly crack down on these crimes with particular severity – especially with the accusation of founding a criminal organisation – the attack in Düsseldorf, just like that in Hanau or Halle, was directed against a specific victim group that occupies a vulnerable position as a minority in society and is to be dehumanised in right-wing devaluation ideologies. Other investigative mechanisms seem to apply to these offences.
Individual perpetrators are not alone.
When investigations lead to the conclusion that it was a right-wing extremist attack, the term ‘lone perpetrator’ is often used. ‘In these cases, the term ‘lone perpetrator’ merely stands for the specific planning of the offence. It does not negate the fact that the perpetrators‘ fixation on violence and ideology has causes, that their actions can be the result of communication and interaction with like-minded people and that the actors feel motivated in the face of increasing xenophobia in society and the associated discourse,’ writes Florian Hartleb, a political scientist from Passau specialising in populism, right-wing extremism and left-wing extremism. ‘Nevertheless, most right-wing extremists come from a social environment characterised by extremism. They are part of right-wing comradeships, hooligan milieus, right-wing parties or the Reichsbürger movement,’ adds the Federal Agency for Civic Education. There is no talk of a criminal organisation being formed around these perpetrators. Düsseldorf’s very active right-wing scene hardly played a role in the public perception in the 2000s. This was despite the fact that there were various incidents in the run-up to the attack.
The Kemna concentration camp memorial in Wuppertal was attacked on 9 July 2000, on 14 June 2000 the neo-Nazi Michael Berger shot three police officers in Dortmund and two weeks before the attack, seven so-called skins from the ‘Reichswehr’ band threw a Greek and an Afghan onto railway tracks. Despite this, the scene was talked down and its actions trivialised. A year after the attack, ‘investigators speculated that the Russian mafia could be behind it. This was ‘a theory that cannot simply be dismissed out of hand’, said Johannes Mocken (chief public prosecutor in 2000; author’s note) in July 2001. The mafia theory was also ‘emotionally close to the heart’ of then Lord Mayor Joachim Erwin (CDU),’ wrote Pascal Becker in the taz newspaper in 2017. Until 2011, many assumed that politically right-wing motivated attacks had to be accompanied by a letter of confession. Since this was missing, it could not be such a crime. Only the unmasking of the National Socialist Underground clearly showed that it was possible to commit the most serious political offences undetected for more than a decade, even without a letter of confession.
Limited field of vision.
To this day, the authorities and institutions seem to repeatedly make misjudgements when it comes to racially motivated offences. ‘The debate surrounding Tobias R., the Hanau attacker, also showed the difficulty of clear categorisation. Based on initial assessments, the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch, initially spoke of an obvious ‘severe psychotic illness’ – according to initial media reports, the BKA was unable to recognise a right-wing extremist motive. The clarification followed later: ‘The BKA assesses the offence as clearly right-wing extremist’, Münch announced,’ writes Andreas Speit for the Federal Agency for Civic Education. The term ‘lone perpetrator’ and the insinuation of mental illness individualise violent acts and ignore the social dimension. In the case of the Wehrhahn attack, initial investigations revealed evidence pointing to the right-wing scene, more specifically to Ralf S., but the police were unable to find sufficient proof of his perpetration. Of course, the principle of ‘doubt in favour of the accused’ applies. And if there is no evidence, it is logical that Ralf S. was not prosecuted further in 2000. But questions still arise: Was it really not possible to track down a perpetrator? Were mistakes made? Did the police really do everything in their power? In any case, the summary sounds like this: Eighteen years after the crime, Ralf S. was charged, but acquitted of all charges after thirty-four days of trial. He was entitled to compensation payments from the court for the circumstances that had arisen, but the victims have not received any compensation payments even after twenty-three years. Even if things were legally correct, this status quo cannot fulfil the need for justice.
Uprising of the decent and the silence of a city.
After another attack in Düsseldorf in October 2000, this time on the synagogue in Zietenstraße, civil society reacted massively. Paul Spiegel, then President of the Central Council of Jews, Gerhard Schröder and a broad alliance in the city’s society mobilised people to take to the streets together and set an example against the right. The so-called ‘uprising of the decent’ was intended to make it clear where the city stood. And where the country stands. Schröder said it was ‘not a local event, it concerns the federal government because it concerns Germany’. So the authorities may have failed, but the city and its people actually did everything right? After all the decent people had got up, they went back to their everyday lives. In the year after the crime, the city did not remain silent. But the more time passed, the more silent it became. Until the attack no longer played a role in the city’s history.
#Saytheirnames – Why is it so quiet?
The city’s forgetting is one side. The silence of those affected is the other. An empirical study by the Social Science Research Centre Berlin shows ‘that those affected and victims of attacks hardly have a say in the public debate. This pattern was evident after both Islamist attacks and right-wing extremist attacks: In both cases, less than five per cent of statements came from victims or those affected.’ The #saytheirnames initiative criticises this fact. The hashtag was established in Germany primarily by the survivors of the Hanau attack in order to focus on the victims’ perspective – albeit only one year after the attack. It is also thanks to them that not only is the 2020 attack still very much present, but that the names of the victims have also entered the collective memory. So does remembrance and attention only work if those affected and their relatives are committed to it in the face of continuous confrontation with their suffering and the resulting re-traumatisation and do not let up in admonishing, remembering and demanding? And in cases where they are not prepared to do this service to our society, will the memory be lost? Our society has no self-triggering mechanism for such cases. If those affected do not remember, they are not remembered. In our research for ‘Dunkeldorf’, we – director Christof Seeger-Zurmühlen and author Juliane Hendes – tried with all sensitivity for the circumstances to enter into dialogue with those affected by the Wehrhahn attack in order to take their wishes and concerns into account, to place their perspective at the centre and to make our unreserved solidarity clear. Our attempts to contact them were rejected on the grounds that the victims – after all these years – are no longer interested in being constantly confronted with their fate. We respect this wish, because it is not the job of those affected to publicise their suffering in order to remind our society of the values we once agreed on. They should not have to remind us that it is important to condemn right-wing tendencies as soon as they emerge, not to give an inch of space to full-blown right-wing ideology and that it is necessary to show unconditional solidarity. They should not tell us that each individual must do their bit. We should all do that. Always.
We are the city.
In order to stimulate appropriate public remembrance, acts such as these must be dealt with in full. But it is not enough to simply investigate the causes in the immediate surroundings of the offence; we should also not ignore the lasting impact of the violence and the ensuing debates on our society’s self-image. And what contribution civil society can and must make. It is important for civil society – just like public institutions and authorities – to monitor developments in our democracy and to influence the overall situation through public statements and civil society engagement. The involvement of civil society is the basic prerequisite for a functioning democracy. The people on the ground play a decisive role in shaping coexistence in this country. We are the city.
