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  1968 Revisited: The Truth about the Gunshot that Changed Germany

1968 Revisited The Truth about the Gunshot that Changed Germany

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 4: 'No Regrets'

Although the "assassination" of Ohnesorg and the Kurras trial contributed to the radicalization of some members of the left to the point of violence, the attempted assassination of student leader Rudi Dutschke, the Vietnam War, the emergency laws and other events only reinforced the conviction that they were living in an unjust world and a semi-fascist West Germany.

The members of the 1968 protest movement saw themselves as the enforcers of the world's conscience, and as partisans of a new world order held together by peace, love and equality.

They lived in an ideal world and with the conviction that they were entitled to reinvent sex, education, housing, music and democracy. There was only one power that could prevent them from bringing their human experiment to a happy conclusion: capital.

In other words, a revolt, an uprising against the conditions they despised, was inevitable. Nevertheless, some elements of the protest movement would have been different if it had emerged that Kurras was a communist during the investigations at the time. The case against the shooter would probably have proceeded in a different direction, because the fellow police officers who protected him with their silence would have testified against him instead. He would have been convicted, and his conviction would have muted the anger of demonstrators. For many students in high schools and universities, the Kurras trial and acquittal was just one more reason to characterize the West German government as fascist. A different verdict would have changed their view of the government.

Some members of the German left would hardly have turned to East Germany and its West German Party, the German Communist Party (DKP).

But the Springer press would also have been unable to apply its simple but effective formula equating a protester with a communist and, therefore, a henchman of the East German government. The press could hardly have exploited the news that a communist had shot a liberal.

For Kurras, the deadly shot on the street Krumme Strasse spelled the end of his lucrative relationship with the Stasi. Although it remained in contact with its agent, it clearly did so merely in an effort to control the damage. "Destroy material immediately. Discontinue work for the time being," East Berlin radioed to Kurras on June 8. "Resume contact following conclusion of the investigations. We consider incident as highly regrettable accident." Kurras replied: "Understood in part. Everything destroyed. Meet at Trude. Now on 15th. Need money for attorney."

The file also contains an empty envelope, which contained a radio message sent on June 17. Kurras had radioed about 1,000 characters, an unusually long message, but the text was removed.

According to the file, it was not until nine years later, on March 24, 1976, that Kurras met with the Stasi in East Berlin again. Werner Eiserbeck, his supervising officer of many years, noted: "Kurras behaved as if the last meeting had happened only a few days ago." The Ohnesorg killer, since demoted to a motor vehicle tracing unit, wanted to know whether he could resume working for the Stasi. He told Eiserbeck that his career path was "no longer impaired by the incident," that he had since been promoted and expected to be appointed senior inspector soon. According to the Stasi officer's report, Kurras felt "blameless and had no regrets." He said that his life had been "threatened by radicals attacking him with knives." At the end of the meeting, Kurras said that since the Ohnesorg shooting, he had "lost old sponsors, but gained new ones." The man had become a liability for the Stasi, and his file was closed.

The party that Kurras had once worshipped so ardently also distanced itself from the hard-working informer. After the first trial against Kurras, the SED newspaper Neues Deutschland expressed outrage over the gunman who had served his party with sword and shield for years. "The Murderer Grins with Satisfaction," the paper wrote in November 1967 headline, noting that his acquittal was "one of the most egregious political justice scandals since the expansion of West Berlin into a front city of the Cold War." Neues Deutschland also had harsh words for Kurras's second acquittal in December 1970. The verdict, the paper wrote, shone "a telling light on the entire anti-democratic policy" of the West Berlin Senate.

After his suspension ended, Kurras never truly regained his footing with the police. He was transferred from Department I, the police intelligence unit, to the "normal" criminal investigation department. As the then Berlin Police Chief Klaus Hübner recalls, "an internal position" had to be found for him at the time.

The former police chief paints a picture of a "traumatized man." According to Hübner, Kurras was an "overwhelmed police officer" who "got the jitters" at a decisive moment, which explains why he shot Ohnesorg. After that, says Hübner, Kurras was "hardly capable of being reintegrated." His coworkers at the new unit, the manhunt database, "kept their distance from him, and Kurras kept his distance from them."

There was talk of alcohol problems. In the summer of 1971, Kurras was picked up on a park bench, drunk, carrying a knife and his service weapon in his briefcase. He was no longer authorized to carry the weapon. He was suspended a second time and eventually reinstated a second time.

Kurras hardly ever appears in public anymore, except on the anniversary of Benno Ohnesorg's death. In May 1977, a photojournalist with the German magazine Stern tracked down Kurras in Spandau. When the journalist reached for his camera, a scuffle ensued and Kurras shouted: "You were allowed to photograph me in the past. Thank God those days are gone."

Kurras somehow managed to drag himself along in the police department. When he retired in 1987, at the rank of a senior inspector, everyone with the Berlin police "was pleased to see him go" says former Police Chief Hübner.

Regret remains alien to Kurras's nature today. In December 2007, when a reporter asked him about his momentous act, he shouted: "A mistake? I should have stalled until the sparks flew, not just once, but five or six times. Anyone who attacks me is destroyed. End of story."

When a reporter with Tagesspiegel visited him recently at his apartment, he found an old man with thinning hair. "That must be Ströbele's doing," he said, when asked about the revelations over his Stasi file. He also said that he shot Benno Ohnesorg "for fun."

DIRK KURBJUWEIT, SVEN RÖBEL, MICHAEL SONTHEIMER, PETER WENSIERSKI

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.