Benno Ohnesorg:A death changes the Federal Republic

Benno Ohnesorg was born in Hanover on October 15, 1940. A police officer shoots the student at a demonstration in Berlin in 1967. Ohnesorg's death becomes a symbol for the increasing politicization of the student movement. Who is behind the symbol figure?

by Dirk Hempel

In the early summer of 1967, the Shah of Persia and his wife visited the Federal Republic. On June 2, there were violent protests in West Berlin against the controversial ruler, who was accused of suppressing the opposition and of torture. While the Kaiser couple is attending an opera performance with Federal President Heinrich Lübke, around 2,000 people, mainly students from Berlin's universities, are demonstrating in front of the doors. At first the atmosphere is peaceful.

Benno Ohnesorg falls victim to a brutal police operation

But then the police suddenly attacked the demonstrators with batons, drove them through the streets, used water cannons and repeatedly beat up defenseless people. When 26-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg tries to mediate in a backyard, he is first beaten up by three police officers and then shot in the back of the head at close range. He dies a little later in the hospital.

Who was Benno Ohnesorg?

Although his death led to further protests and the expansion of the student movement, little was known about Benno Ohnesorg for decades. The middle of three brothers was born on October 15, 1940 in Hanover. When he was nine years old, his mother died. Because money is tight, he leaves school after high school and does an apprenticeship as a window dresser. But Benno Ohnesorg has higher goals.

Abitur in Braunschweig

He is interested in poetry, visits painting galleries and practices artistic techniques such as linocut and drawings, actually wants to become an art teacher. That's why, after his apprenticeship, he applies to the Braunschweig College, an institution that promotes talent, in order to catch up on his Abitur. Because he is too young, he has to wait a year for approval. Meanwhile he travels a lot, earns a living from a casual job, for example working as a helper at the wine harvest in France.

Ohnesorg and Uwe Timm:writing and debating

He went to school in Braunschweig for two years, until the spring of 1963. During this time he lived in the college, a quiet loner who read Sartre and Beckett and mostly kept a little apart from the others, like the later writer Uwe Timm, a classmate Without a care, has described. The two talk about art, show each other their attempts at writing, which they discuss for a long time. Both are hungry for education and expect a different life from dealing with art and culture.

Ohnesorg's student time in Berlin

Because the Berlin Art Academy did not accept him, Ohnesorg studied German and Romance languages ​​at the Freie Universität. His career goal now:high school teacher. He often travels to the east of the divided city to see plays by Bertolt Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble. He is a member of the Protestant student community and a pacifist. He is also interested in politics, takes part in a demonstration against the controversial education policy, advocates disarmament and criticizes the injustice in "Third World" countries in talks. He tells his brother about increasing police violence in Berlin, as the journalist Uwe Soukup researched a few years ago for his book "Der 2. Juni 1967".

Six weeks before the demonstration against the Shah's visit, Benno Ohnesorg married and lived with his pregnant wife Christa in a large apartment in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. You are considering leaving Berlin and taking the exams at another university, for example in the quieter city of Göttingen.

Ohnesorg dies from a police bullet

On the evening before the opera, Benno Ohnesorg is initially not involved in the fighting with the authorities. On the contrary, he is said to have confronted bludgeoning police officers and had a moderating effect on student stone-throwers. On Krumme Strasse, he breaks up with his wife, who is fleeing the tumult, and rushes to the aid of a demonstrator who the police are pursuing in a backyard. A little later Benno Ohnsorg is dead, shot from close up and from behind by the police chief Karl-Heinz Kurras, allegedly in self-defense.

Student protests escalate after Random's death

June 2, 1967 thus marked a turning point in the history of the Federal Republic. Ohnesorg's violent death shocked, outraged and politicized the students. Almost half of the West German and West Berlin students take part in public mourning rallies for Benno Ohnesorg. In the months that followed, protests escalated everywhere. Criticism has long been directed at the encrusted structures at the universities, and the students are demanding more up-to-date study content and fairer educational opportunities. But now they are also increasingly rebelling against the political situation:the grand coalition, the lack of coming to terms with the Nazi era, the USA's Vietnam War.

Mourning service and rally in Hanover

A convoy of around 200 cars transported the coffin with Ohnesorg's body to Hanover, where the family was buried on June 9 at the Bothfeld cemetery. At the same time, thousands of people, mostly students, silently parade through the city center. In the evening they gather in the stadium sports hall. Prominent left-wing professors and student activists such as the political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas and the student leader Rudi Dutschke speak at this famous rally - a kind of founding event of the so-called politicized counter-public.

The police are covering up the crime

In the period that followed, the student protests became more radical - also because leading politicians continued to appear authoritarian, above all Berlin Mayor Heinrich Albertz (SPD), who blamed them for the death of Ohnesorg. In addition, a Berlin judge acquitted the perpetrator Kurras of the charge of negligent homicide in several trials. In the course of the proceedings, evidence had apparently been manipulated by the police, statements suppressed and, above all, facts concealed, as investigations by the federal prosecutor's office confirmed, according to a report in "Spiegel" in 2012.

The then lawyer Otto Schily, who represented Benno Ohnesorg's father as a joint plaintiff in the trial against Kurras, later spoke of "covering up" and of the fact that his belief in the rule of law was shaken. This applies to many members of the so-called 1968 generation, who are now at a critical distance from the state and its representatives.

The perpetrator was a Stasi informer

The events of June 2, 1967 have not been fully explained to this day. The perpetrator Kurras apparently shows no remorse and sticks to his self-defense claim until he dies in 2014. However, the fact that he was a member of the SED and a top agent of the Stasi, as became known five years before his death, does not lead to a reassessment of the student movement. Because an involvement of the GDR secret service cannot be proven.

Ohnesorg's death and the consequences

The death of Benno Ohnesorg becomes the catalyst for the student movement. Even if some of their demands are radical and the protests subside after a few years, they still have an impact today. The authoritarian thinking of earlier times has largely disappeared, and a more democratic and liberal climate has long since prevailed in state institutions. People's rights to freedom have been strengthened and life as a whole has become more diverse.