Germany: June 2 1967, Shah Visit and Death of Benno Ohnesorg
The years 1967 and 1968 were exceptionally turbulent not just in Western Germany but many parts of Europe.
At June 2 1967 the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was visiting West Berlin. This was highly controversial especially in the eyes of German students since the Shah was a dictator who was torturing and executing his people. Yet the official position of the Western German government was positive towards him and large parts of the public adored him and his wife. The couple was a favorite in the tabloids back then.
At an official event in front of a Berlin city hall protests broke out at noon. Students were holding up signs and banners protesting the situation in Iran. Yet there weren't only people there who were against the Shah. A large group of people was cheering towards the Shah. Those persons weren't German citizens, they were actually Iranian secret service agents. The Shah brought them to give him support in public. The German media called them "Jubelperser", 'cheering persians'. They were holding up signs as well and were aggravated by the student protests.
The situation escalated. The Shah supporters eventually went past the police barrier and started to attack the students using makeshift clubs made out of their signs and also steel pipes. Dozens of German students got injured. The German police stood right next to this fight without starting to intervene despite pleas from the crowd. After a few minutes the police actually did start to participate yet they attacked the German students as well and beat and arrested many of them.
Those events around noon drew further attention to the visit of the Shah, especially among students. In the evening the Shah was supposed to visit opera and protests were to be expected. The situation from noon hadn't yet cooled down and while some German officials tried to resolve the tensions, others were eager to react with force to any further interruptions.
A large crowd of people gathered in front of the opera. Once again a group of "cheering persians" were positioned right next to them. They kept throwing insults at the german crowd. Simultaneously the German police was acting very aggressively. They arbitrarily snatched people from the crowd, beat them and arrested them.
Eventually the police tried to drive the people off the square. They were using force and panic broke out. People tried to flee but they were encircled from police forces who were using dogs, water cannons and tear gas.
The police was chasing down students who were running away. In one backyard three policemen in civilian clothes held onto one student called Benno Ohnesorg and kept beating him. One policeman called Karl-Heinz Kurras approached, drew his gun and shot Ohnesorg in the head from 1,5 meters away.
Multiple witnesses heard one policeman say: "Are you insane, shooting here??". Kurras responded: "it went off".
One student approached the scene, managed to get the policemen, who were still beating him, away from Ohnesorg, turned him on his back and held his bleeding head.
Kurras and other policemen probably fled the scene. Other policemen refused to call an ambulance. They forbid a doctor to give first aid to the wounded Ohnesorg. Finally an ambulance arrived yet Ohnesorg died while on transport to a hospital.
The official cause of death was "basal skull fracture". The time of death was falsified to hush up to disguise later examinations of the skull as attempts to save Ohnesorgs life. The cause of death was also being faked, it was written down as "head injury through blunt force". Kurras was allowed to visit the body, another policeman called Ohnesorg "one of the worst agitators" at the evening.
A later autopsy discovered that the piece of skull with the bullet hole had been cut out and disappeared. There were accusations that his death was supposed to be covered-up.
Ohnesorgs death agitated the German students. Related to Ohnesorgs funeral there were mass protests all over the country. Tens of thousands of people protested against police violence. The official position both of the government and the press (which in Berlin was dominated by the Springer publishing company) was that Ohnesorgs death was the fault of the students. A few hours after Ohnesorgs death the city of Berlin had already released a statement:
At June 2 1967 the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was visiting West Berlin. This was highly controversial especially in the eyes of German students since the Shah was a dictator who was torturing and executing his people. Yet the official position of the Western German government was positive towards him and large parts of the public adored him and his wife. The couple was a favorite in the tabloids back then.
At an official event in front of a Berlin city hall protests broke out at noon. Students were holding up signs and banners protesting the situation in Iran. Yet there weren't only people there who were against the Shah. A large group of people was cheering towards the Shah. Those persons weren't German citizens, they were actually Iranian secret service agents. The Shah brought them to give him support in public. The German media called them "Jubelperser", 'cheering persians'. They were holding up signs as well and were aggravated by the student protests.
The situation escalated. The Shah supporters eventually went past the police barrier and started to attack the students using makeshift clubs made out of their signs and also steel pipes. Dozens of German students got injured. The German police stood right next to this fight without starting to intervene despite pleas from the crowd. After a few minutes the police actually did start to participate yet they attacked the German students as well and beat and arrested many of them.
Those events around noon drew further attention to the visit of the Shah, especially among students. In the evening the Shah was supposed to visit opera and protests were to be expected. The situation from noon hadn't yet cooled down and while some German officials tried to resolve the tensions, others were eager to react with force to any further interruptions.
A large crowd of people gathered in front of the opera. Once again a group of "cheering persians" were positioned right next to them. They kept throwing insults at the german crowd. Simultaneously the German police was acting very aggressively. They arbitrarily snatched people from the crowd, beat them and arrested them.
Eventually the police tried to drive the people off the square. They were using force and panic broke out. People tried to flee but they were encircled from police forces who were using dogs, water cannons and tear gas.
The police was chasing down students who were running away. In one backyard three policemen in civilian clothes held onto one student called Benno Ohnesorg and kept beating him. One policeman called Karl-Heinz Kurras approached, drew his gun and shot Ohnesorg in the head from 1,5 meters away.
Multiple witnesses heard one policeman say: "Are you insane, shooting here??". Kurras responded: "it went off".
One student approached the scene, managed to get the policemen, who were still beating him, away from Ohnesorg, turned him on his back and held his bleeding head.
Kurras and other policemen probably fled the scene. Other policemen refused to call an ambulance. They forbid a doctor to give first aid to the wounded Ohnesorg. Finally an ambulance arrived yet Ohnesorg died while on transport to a hospital.
The official cause of death was "basal skull fracture". The time of death was falsified to hush up to disguise later examinations of the skull as attempts to save Ohnesorgs life. The cause of death was also being faked, it was written down as "head injury through blunt force". Kurras was allowed to visit the body, another policeman called Ohnesorg "one of the worst agitators" at the evening.
A later autopsy discovered that the piece of skull with the bullet hole had been cut out and disappeared. There were accusations that his death was supposed to be covered-up.
Ohnesorgs death agitated the German students. Related to Ohnesorgs funeral there were mass protests all over the country. Tens of thousands of people protested against police violence. The official position both of the government and the press (which in Berlin was dominated by the Springer publishing company) was that Ohnesorgs death was the fault of the students. A few hours after Ohnesorgs death the city of Berlin had already released a statement:
"The patience of the city is at an end. A few dozen demonstrators, including students, have earned the sad credit of having not only insulted a guest of the Federal Republic of Germany in the German capital, but are also responsible for one dead and numerous injured - police officers and demonstrators. The police, provoked by hooligans, were forced to go ahead and use their batons. I say explicitly and emphatically that I approve of the behavior of the police and that I have personally convinced myself that the police have held back to the limits of reasonableness. "
The attempts to blame the students kept on for a few weeks but eventually a number of high officials had to resign.
Police forces tried to cover up what happened at the time of Ohnesorgs death. Evidence disappeared. Policemen remained silent about what they saw. Kurras claimed he was defending himself in self-defence which was untrue according to multiple witnesses around the scene. Kurras was on trial for his act but he was acquitted.
The protests of June 2 1967 and the death of Ohnesorg strengthened and radicalized the Western German student protest movement. In their eyes the state was ultimately showing his true face. Behind the democratic appearance there'd violence and oppression. Government and police were still stuck in antidemocratic and authoritarian way of thinking and they were willing to use forces and to cover it up afterwards. Western German journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who later would become a member of the leftist terrorist group RAF, wrote at this time:
"The protests against a police chief of state unmasked our own state as a police state. Police and press terror peaked in Berlin on June 2. At this point we understood that freedom in this state is freedom for the police baton and press freedom [existed] in the shadow of the Springer corporation freedom to justify the baton."
The police of West Berlin actually was still being influenced by the Nazi past. Many of their members had been serving as policemen or soldiers under the Nazi reign. Their way to resolve conflicts wasn't peacefully but by force. An escalation of a situation and the use of violence was accepted or used on purpose. Only in the years and decades to come the police was slowly starting to change and to follow a strategy of de-escalation.
The death of Benno Ohnesorg influenced a large number of people in a different and personal way. Many become more critical towards the state and protests started to grow. Others started to see this event as evidence that the current Western German state was a "lost cause" and that there was no way to peacefully change the current conditions anymore. The date June 2 1967 became extremely important in the history of the terrorist group RAF; without the death of Ohnesorg the group never might have existed in that way at all.
Parts of the press, the "Springer" press in particular, had been blaming the students for the violence at June 2 and the death of Ohnesorg. The Springer press became an enemy of the student movement. In the years after 1967 there were about to be protests and violent acts against Springer buildings.
Many years later in 2009 historians discovered that the shooter Karl-Heinz Kurras was actually a secret agent of the Eastern German intelligence agency Stasi. If this would have become public in 1967 events might have occured way differently. His work for the Stasi probably didn't influence him killing Ohnesorg. The Stasi was astonished by his act, mistrusted him and stopped working with Kurras.
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