Kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer

{{Short description|Kidnapping and murder by Red Army Faction (RAF) in 1977}}

{{Infobox civilian attack

| title = Kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer

| partof = German Autumn

| image =

| image_size =

| alt =

| caption = Hanns Martin Schleyer kidnapped by RAF

| location = Cologne, West Germany (kidnapping)
France (murder)

| target =

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| date = {{start date|1977|09|05|df=y}}–
{{end date|1977|10|18|df=y}}

| time =

| timezone =

| type = Kidnapping, murder

| fatalities = 5

| injuries =

| victim = Hanns Martin Schleyer

| perpetrators= Red Army Faction (RAF)

| susperps =

| weapons =

| numparts =

| dfens =

| motive =

}}

File:Schleyer gedenkstelle.jpg]]

The kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer was one of the left-wing terrorist attacks called German Autumn in 1977.

German industrial leader and former Nazi SS officer Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped on 5 September 1977, by the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as Baader-Meinhof Gang, in Cologne, West Germany. It was intended to force the West German government to release Andreas Baader and three other RAF members being held at the Stammheim Prison near the city of Stuttgart. Later, Lufthansa Flight 181 was kidnapped and abducted to Somalia to support the terrorist demands. West German GSG9 forces liberated the hostages on 18 October 1977, this made the news on radio, after which three RAF leaders died in prison. Hanns Martin Schleyer was killed after being a hostage for 43 days.{{Cite book |last=Katz |first=Samuel M |title=Raging Within : Ideological Terrorism |publisher=Lerner Publications |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8225-4032-8 |location=Minneapolis |pages=14 |language=English}}

Events

=Kidnapping=

Schleyer's abduction was planned by Siegfried Haag, but he was arrested in 1976, so his replacement, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, carried out the abduction.{{cn|date=May 2020}}

On 5 September 1977, an RAF "commando unit" attacked the chauffeured car carrying former Nazi SS officer Schleyer, then president of the German employers' association, in Cologne, just after the car had turned right from Friedrich-Schmidt-Strasse into Vincenz-Statz-Strasse. His driver, Heinz Marcisz, 41, was forced to brake when a baby carriage suddenly appeared in the street in front of them. The police escort vehicle behind them was unable to stop in time, and crashed into Schleyer's car.{{cite web|last=Aust|first=Stefan|url=https://thelul.org/library/stefan-aust-the-baader-meinhof-complex|title=The Baader-Meinhof Complex|work=The Library of Unconventional Lives|year=1985|access-date=1 June 2025}}

Peter-Jürgen Boock and Sieglinde Hofmann had pushed the carriage on the street to appear as if they were friends meeting with a baby. After the car crash, about six masked RAF members jumped out of a yellow Mercedes parked next to the carriage and sprayed machine gun bullets into the two vehicles. The gunfire killed Marcisz and a police officer, Roland Pieler, 20, who was seated in the backseat of Marcisz's car.{{cite magazine|title=Ambush in a 'Civil War'|url=https://time.com/vault/issue/1977-09-19/page/63/|work=Time|volume=110|issue=12|date=19 September 1977|pages=[https://time.com/vault/issue/1977-09-19/page/63/ 37]-[https://time.com/vault/issue/1977-09-19/page/64/ 38]|access-date=1 June 2025}}{{rp|37}} The driver of the police escort vehicle, Reinhold Brändle, 41 and a third police officer, Helmut Ulmer, 24, who was in the second vehicle were also killed.{{Cite book |last=Clutterbuck |first=Richard L |title=Terrorism, Drugs & Crime in Europe After 1992 |publisher=Routledge |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-415-61620-1 |location=London |pages=48, 49 |language=English}} The hail of bullets riddled over twenty bullet wounds into the bodies of Brändle and Pieler. Schleyer was then pulled out of the car and forced into the RAF assailants' own getaway van.

=Imprisonment and killing=

Schleyer was hidden in a highrise in Erftstadt (Liblar) near Cologne. The police came very close to finding him, but due to lack of internal communication could not rescue him.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021|reason=Where does this information come from?}} Several local police officers were convinced that Schleyer was held in the aforementioned highrise close to the autobahn.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021|reason=Where does this information come from?}} One investigator had rung the doorbell of the apartment in question, but nobody had conveyed this information to the crisis center of the federal police.{{cite news |author1=Büchel, Helmar |author2=Aust, Stefan |title=Dann gibt es Tote [Then there are dead] |url=http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-52985281.html|publisher=Der Spiegel |date=2007-09-17|language=de}}

The RAF demanded that the government release imprisoned members of their group.{{cite book |last1=Siemens |first1=Anne |title=Für die RAF war er das System, für mich der Vater |date=2007 |publisher=Piper Verlag GmbH |location=München |isbn=978-3-492-05024-1 |page=36 |edition=2nd |language=German}}{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}} The government refused to give into RAF's demands or negotiate aside from strategical negotiations, hoping that the police would manage to free Schleyer in the meantime.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021|reason=Where does this information come from?}} The RAF sent the government a picture of Schleyer alive, in captivity, on 8 October 1977.{{cite news |date=2008-03-25 |title=Obituaries in the news: Waltrude Schleyer |publisher=Denver Post |agency=Associated Press |url=http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_8697241 |accessdate=2008-04-05}} {{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}

On 13 October, the passenger-plane "Landshut" was kidnapped in order to support the demands to release imprisoned members of the RAF.

After 43 days, the government had not given in to the demands of the kidnappers. {{Citation needed|date=October 2021|reason=Where does this information come from?}} Hours after the German counterterrorism unit GSG 9 ended the Palestinian hijack of Lufthansa Flight 181,{{Relevance inline|clause|date=October 2021|talk="were found dead in their prison cells."?|reason=Is this just co-incidence or has it any relevance to the kidnapping or prisoner deaths?}} the imprisoned RAF members Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in their prison cells.{{Explain|date=October 2021|reason=What who or what killed the prisoners? Were they murdered in revenge for the hijacking?}}{{Synthesis inline|date=October 2021}}

After Schleyer's kidnappers received the news of the death of their imprisoned comrades, Schleyer was taken from Brussels, Belgium on 18 October 1977, and shot dead en route to Mulhouse, France, where his body was left in the trunk of a green Audi 100 on the rue Charles Péguy.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021|reason=Where does this information come from?}}

=Investigation=

On 9 September 2007, former RAF member Peter-Jürgen Boock mentioned that the RAF members Rolf Heissler and Stefan Wisniewski were responsible for Schleyer's death.{{Cite web |url=http://www.worldwidelexicon.org/translation/1790.html |title=WorldwideLexicon.Marx: Ex-Terrorist Reveals Names Of The Schleyer Murderers |access-date=2015-01-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120211074651/http://www.worldwidelexicon.org/translation/1790.html |archive-date=2012-02-11 |url-status=dead }}

Schleyer's widow, Waltrude Schleyer, campaigned against clemency for his kidnappers and other members of the RAF. She died on 21 March 2008, in Stuttgart.{{cite news |date=2008-03-26 |title=Obituaries in the news: Waltrude Schleyer |publisher=International Herald Tribune |agency=Associated Press |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/26/america/Deaths.php |accessdate=2008-04-05}}