{"generated":"2026-10-21T11:20:11.527Z","canonical":"Every record points at the human page on this site, and that page is the canonical copy. The derived files here are served with `X-Robots-Tag: noindex`: fetch them freely, but the article page is the one that belongs in an index or a citation.","article":{"url":"https://writesidesofhistory.com/herrhausen-and-rohwedder-two-raf-killings-the-archives-cannot-close/","markdown_url":"https://writesidesofhistory.com/agents/articles/herrhausen-and-rohwedder-two-raf-killings-the-archives-cannot-close.md","json_url":"https://writesidesofhistory.com/agents/articles/herrhausen-and-rohwedder-two-raf-killings-the-archives-cannot-close.json","slug":"herrhausen-and-rohwedder-two-raf-killings-the-archives-cannot-close","title":"Herrhausen and Rohwedder: Two RAF Killings the Archives Cannot Close","description":"In 1989 and 1991 the killings of Alfred Herrhausen and Detlev Karsten Rohwedder shook a reunifying Germany.","era":"modern","topics":["cold-war"],"published":"2026-10-21","words":1493,"image":{"url":"https://writesidesofhistory.com/images/generated/herrhausen-and-rohwedder-two-raf-killings-the-archives-cannot-close.webp","alt":"Bad Homburg — Two RAF Killings the Archives Cannot Close"},"sources":[{"id":"bpb-herrhausen","type":"institutional","author":"Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung","title":"Vor 30 Jahren: Ermordung von Alfred Herrhausen","publisher":"bpb.de, Hintergrund aktuell, article 196955","year":2019},{"id":"bpb-namen-der-toten","type":"scholarly","author":"Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung","title":"Die Namen der Toten","publisher":"bpb.de, dossier Die Geschichte der RAF, article 49319","year":2007},{"id":"bundestag-drucksache-13-754","type":"institutional","author":"Deutscher Bundestag","title":"Drucksache 13/754","publisher":"Deutscher Bundestag","year":1995},{"id":"stuttgarter-zeitung-rohwedder","type":"reference","author":null,"title":"Der Mord am Treuhand-Chef: Die ungelösten Rätsel um Rohwedders Tod","publisher":"Stuttgarter Zeitung","year":2020}],"licence":"Quote freely, with attribution to Writesides of History and a link to the article url. The articles are written and published by Writesides of History, which is both author and publisher.","cite_as":"https://writesidesofhistory.com/herrhausen-and-rohwedder-two-raf-killings-the-archives-cannot-close/","questions":[{"question":"Who killed Alfred Herrhausen?","answer":"The attack was claimed in the name of the Rote Armee Fraktion, and the attribution to the group is the accepted reading. Nobody has been convicted of the killing, and the federal agency for civic education describes the case as never fully cleared up."},{"question":"Was Detlev Karsten Rohwedder killed by the RAF?","answer":"Officially and in the view of most experts he was killed by members of the group's third generation, and a claim in its name was sent to the press. No verdict has confirmed it, and alternative theories, including one about the East German secret police, have circulated without ever being proved."},{"question":"Did the 2001 announcement solve the Rohwedder case?","answer":"No. The federal prosecutor said a hair trace could be assigned to a RAF member who had died, but did not call the person a suspect, and no trial could follow. A trace at a scene shows presence, not who fired."},{"question":"Why does this article not name suspects?","answer":"Several people have been linked in public to these attacks without ever being convicted. Naming them would present accusation as proof, so this article names the victims and their functions and leaves the unresolved question open."}],"markdown":"**Two men were killed in the space of sixteen months, one the head of the largest bank in West Germany, the other the president of the agency selling off East Germany's state-owned economy. The Rote Armee Fraktion claimed both killings. Neither has ever been solved in court, and the honest state of the record is that the authorship of the group is the accepted reading, not a proven one.**\n\n## Two victims, one transition\n\nIn 1989 and 1991 Germany was changing faster than its institutions could describe. The Wall had fallen on 9 November 1989, as told in [the fall of the Berlin Wall](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-end-of-an-era-and-the-dawn-of-german-unity/), and both of the men killed in the following sixteen months stood at the points where West German money met the East.\n\nAlfred Herrhausen was the spokesman of the board of Deutsche Bank. Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was the president of the Treuhandanstalt, the trust agency charged with privatising the state enterprises of the former GDR. Their killings were not obscure crimes. They were the most prominent attacks of the group's last decade, which our article on [the third generation](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-third-generation-twenty-years-of-attacks-and-almost-no-convictions/) places in the wider pattern of attacks with almost no convictions.\n\nThis piece does one thing only: it sets out what the record establishes, what it does not, and why the two cases remain open in the archives.\n\n## Chronology\n\n| Date | Event |\n|---|---|\n| 30 November 1989 | Alfred Herrhausen is killed by a roadside bomb in Bad Homburg |\n| 5 December 1989 | A longer claim reaches news agencies, five days after the attack |\n| 1 April 1991 | Detlev Karsten Rohwedder is shot dead through a window of his house in Düsseldorf |\n| 2 April 1991 | A claim in the name of the RAF is sent to the Associated Press office in Düsseldorf |\n| January 1992 | A witness presented as a breakthrough in the Herrhausen case later withdraws his statements |\n| 2001 | The federal prosecutor announces that a trace in the Rohwedder case can be assigned to a RAF member who is dead |\n| 1998 | The RAF declares itself dissolved |\n\n## Bad Homburg, 30 November 1989\n\nOn the morning of 30 November 1989 Herrhausen's armoured car was travelling through Bad Homburg when a bomb went off at the roadside. According to the federal agency for civic education, a charge of about seven kilograms had been fixed to the luggage rack of a bicycle and was set off by a light barrier as the car passed. Herrhausen was killed; his driver was injured.\n\nInvestigators found at the scene a sheet of paper bearing the emblem of the Rote Armee Fraktion and the words \"Kommando Wolfgang Beer\". Wolfgang Beer was a RAF member who had died in a car accident in 1980, so the name is a tribute, not a signature. Five days later a longer letter claimed the attack. In [the Kommando statement](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-kommando-statement-how-the-raf-wrote-its-own-record/) we explain why such documents are evidence of the group's self-presentation, and why they are not evidence of who physically did the deed.\n\nThe technique is the reason the case is hard. A remotely triggered charge leaves no gunman, no face and no witness at the moment of the act. It also required careful preparation: someone had to choose the spot, learn the route and place the device without being noticed.\n\n## Düsseldorf, 1 April 1991\n\nRohwedder was killed on the night of 1 April 1991, shot through a window of his house in Düsseldorf. He had run the Treuhand since the previous year, in the months when closing, selling or rescuing thousands of East German firms made it the most hated institution in the East. A letter signed in the name of the RAF was found near the place from which the shots were fired and a claim reached the press the next day.\n\nThe attribution to the RAF's third generation is the official one and the majority view among experts, according to press retrospectives, but it was never confirmed by a verdict. Other theories have circulated for decades, among them that the East German secret police had a hand, and commentators still disagree. We state it as an open question because the evidence that would close it does not exist in public.\n\n## What the investigations produced\n\nFor Herrhausen, the record is a sequence of leads that did not hold. A former informant of the Hessian domestic intelligence service confessed in 1991 and later retracted. In January 1992 the authorities presented a witness as a key figure, and he too withdrew his statements; a 1995 parliamentary document returns to the episode. The federal agency for civic education says the case could not be completely cleared up, and notes the speculation about the East German service and about the Hessian authorities. Speculation of this kind is not a finding. No court has convicted anyone of the killing.\n\nFor Rohwedder, the federal prosecutor announced in 2001 that a hair trace on a towel found in the bushes near the shooting position could be assigned, with modern methods, to a RAF member who had died in 1993. The prosecutors described it as a decisive new impulse, but they did not call that person a suspect or an accomplice, and because the person was dead no trial could follow. A trace placed at a scene is evidence of presence at some moment, and it does not say who fired.\n\nThe result is the same in both cases: a claim in the group's name, a scene with physical evidence, and no judgment.\n\n## Why unsolved is a finding\n\nIt is tempting to resolve the two cases by choosing a reading. We do not, and the group's own history is the reason. The RAF issued statements to take credit for its attacks and also to shape how they were read, as the [German Autumn of 1977](https://writesidesofhistory.com/the-german-autumn-of-1977-day-by-day/) showed in its own way. A document found at a scene tells us what the group wished to say. It does not identify the hands.\n\nThe same discipline applies to the people named in public speculation. Our [record of these operations](https://writesidesofhistory.com/datasets/red-army-faction-attacks/) lists the victims, the functions and the outcome, and it leaves out the names of anyone who was never convicted. The victims are named because their identity is the identity of the event. Suspects who were never tried are not, because an accusation without a verdict is not a fact.\n\nThe shape of the failure also connects to the state's earlier response: the vast data-matching drive described in [Rasterfahndung](https://writesidesofhistory.com/rasterfahndung-how-terrorism-shaped-german-privacy-law/) was built for the first generation, and the courtroom of [Stammheim](https://writesidesofhistory.com/stammheim-as-a-building-a-courtroom-built-for-a-trial/) for the first trials. The third generation produced neither a trial of that kind nor a record that could support one.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nThe killings of Herrhausen and Rohwedder were the two best-known acts of the RAF's last phase, and they remain the least resolved. What can be said is limited but firm: both were claimed in the group's name; both attacks were carefully prepared; and in neither case has a court established who carried it out. A history that fills that gap with a name or a theory it cannot support does less than one that says plainly where the evidence stops.\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n**Who killed Alfred Herrhausen?** The attack was claimed in the name of the Rote Armee Fraktion, and the attribution to the group is the accepted reading. Nobody has been convicted of the killing, and the federal agency for civic education describes the case as never fully cleared up.\n\n**Was Detlev Karsten Rohwedder killed by the RAF?** Officially and in the view of most experts he was killed by members of the group's third generation, and a claim in its name was sent to the press. No verdict has confirmed it, and alternative theories, including one about the East German secret police, have circulated without ever being proved.\n\n**Did the 2001 announcement solve the Rohwedder case?** No. The federal prosecutor said a hair trace could be assigned to a RAF member who had died, but did not call the person a suspect, and no trial could follow. A trace at a scene shows presence, not who fired.\n\n**Why does this article not name suspects?** Several people have been linked in public to these attacks without ever being convicted. Naming them would present accusation as proof, so this article names the victims and their functions and leaves the unresolved question open.\n\n## Recommended reading\n\n- Jeremy Varon, *Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence* (2004) - the comparative history of revolutionary violence in West Germany and the United States, and the standard English account of the earlier generations. [View on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0520241193)\n- Karrin Hanshew, *Terror and Democracy in West Germany* (2012) - the political history of the state's response, and of the argument about what a democracy may do to defend itself. [View on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1107017378)\n- Sarah Colvin, *Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence, and Identity* (2009) - on the group's language and self-understanding, which is most of what survives of a generation that was never identified. [View on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1571134158)"}}