Detlev Karsten Rohwedder

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (16 October 1932 – 1 April 1991)^[1] was a German manager and politician,^[2] as member of the Social Democratic Party.^[3] He was named president of the Treuhandanstalt, the agency responsible for the reprivatization/privatization of all state-owned property in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR),^[4] in September 1990, and served until his assassination by a Far Left terrorist organization, the Red Army Faction, in April 1991. He had also been CEO of the steel manufacturer Hoesch AG since 1980.^[5]

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder
Rohwedder in 1990
President of the Treuhandanstalt
In office 29 August 1990 – 1 April 1991
Appointed by	Lothar de Maizière
Preceded by	Reiner Maria Gohlke
Succeeded by	Birgit Breuel
State Secretary in the Ministry for Economics
In office 22 October 1969 – 16 February 1978
Chancellor	Willy Brandt Helmut Schmidt
Minister	Karl Schiller Helmut Schmidt Hans Friderichs Otto Graf Lambsdorff
Preceded by	Klaus von Dohnanyi
Succeeded by	Dieter von Würzen (1979)
Personal details
Born	(1932-10-16)16 October 1932 Gotha, Free State of Thuringia, Weimar Republic
Died	1 April 1991(1991-04-01) (aged 58) Düsseldorf-Niederkassel, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Political party	Social Democratic Party

Death

On Monday, 1 April 1991, at 23:30, Rohwedder was shot and killed through a window on the second floor of his house in the suburb of Düsseldorf-Niederkassel (Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring 71) by the first of three rifle shots. The second shot wounded his wife Hergard; the third hit a bookcase.

The shots were fired from 63 m (207 ft) away from a rifle chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO. It was the same rifle that was used during a sniper attack on the American embassy in February committed by the Red Army Faction (RAF), a West German far-left terrorist group. An inspection of the scene found three cartridge cases, a plastic chair, a towel, and a letter claiming responsibility from an RAF unit named after Ulrich Wessel, a minor RAF figure who had died in 1975. The shooter has never been identified.^[6][7]

In 2001, a DNA analysis found that hair strands from the crime scene belonged to RAF member Wolfgang Grams. The Attorney General did not consider this evidence sufficient to name Grams as a suspect in the killing. Grams was killed in a shootout with police in Bad Kleinen in 1993.

On April 10, 1991, Rohwedder was honoured in Berlin with a day of mourning by German President Richard von Weizsäcker, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau, and Chairman of the Board of Treuhandanstalt Jens Odewald. The Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus, the seat of the Federal Finance Ministry, is named in his honour.

Films

In 2020, A Perfect Crime, a documentary about the Rohwedder assassination, was released by Netflix.^[8]

See also

• Birgit Breuel