In the night from December 10 to 11, 1990, Klaus-Dieter Reichert died at the age of 24 in Berlin-Lichtenberg. In the apartment of acquaintances, he is threatened and brutally beaten up by several right-wing skinheads. In panic, he let himself fall from a window on the tenth floor of a high-rise building. After the fall, the perpetrators left the seriously injured Reichert lying in front of the building. He dies there shortly afterwards. The death of Klaus-Dieter Reichert poses many mysteries. Despite everything, it is clear to us that he is a victim of extreme right-wing violence. We want to remember his fate, even though he has not yet appeared in any official victim statistics. Neo-Nazi violence has many faces. We must not forget its victims!
The fate of Klaus-Dieter Reichert
Little is known about Klaus-Dieter Reichert. He was born in 1966 in a small town in Mecklenburg. At the time of his death, he lived with changing acquaintances in Berlin-Lichtenberg. According to court documents and testimonies, he regularly frequented the train station scene at S Lichtenberg. There he also had contact with neo-Nazis. Reichert used to consider himself a skinhead and had corresponding tattoos on his body. Nothing is known about his political orientation at the time of the crime.
However, Klaus-Dieter Reichert was probably marginally involved in gang-related check card fraud. This may have been a consequence of his precarious living situation and difficult financial circumstances. He is said to have owed DM 8,000 to other participants. In order to collect the money, other gang members were set on him. On December 9, they made a first attempt to get the money. But Reichert was able to shake off the bill collectors. However, they met in the evening of the same day in an apartment known as a meeting place for right-wing skinheads. In Reichert’s presence, bill collectors promised DM 1,000 to those who would bring them the DM 8,000. A day later, on December 10, Reichert happened to meet three right-wing skinheads at the Lichtenberg train station. They had heard about the bounty, harassed and beat him. Reichert then agreed to hand over the money to them at the apartment of an acquaintance in Lichtenberg. Together with another perpetrator, the five of them drove to the apartment. Once there, however, Reichert stated that he had stored the money in another place. Thereupon, the three right-wing skinheads brutally beat him up with wooden slats and baseball bats. Shortly after midnight, Klaus-Dieter Reichert must have felt so cornered in this situation that he threw himself out of an open window. When the perpetrators then hastily left the house, they found him lying on the sidewalk, still seriously injured. But they did not call for help. The police, who were notified by the owner of the apartment, were unable to help Klaus-Dieter Reichert. He died in the night of December 11, 1990.
Unclear assessments of the case
Three of the four perpetrators (aged 19, 22 and 27) were caught by the police in the following six months. One remains unknown to this day. The Berlin Regional Court later sentenced two of them to four years each, and the third to three years in prison. According to the indictment, all three known perpetrators moved in right-wing skinhead circles. One of them had also already been convicted of neo-Nazi propaganda offenses. Although the political backgrounds were known, they played no role in the conviction and the official evaluation of the crime. The prosecution and the court assumed solely material motives on the part of the perpetrators, who wanted to receive the bounty.
Nevertheless, Klaus-Dieter Reichert was included in many unofficial statistics on victims of right-wing violence in the Federal Republic in the following years. In 2014, his case was one of twelve homicides for which the Berlin State Criminal Police Office commissioned a reassessment of the political background. In its study published in 2017, the commissioned “Center for Research on Anti-Semitism” at the Technical University of Berlin came to the conclusion that the death of Klaus-Dieter Reichert would not be classified as a political homicide. However, this assessment is only made with reservations due to the poor state of the sources. For example, important documents from the trial are missing for a comprehensive scientific evaluation. Thus, the evaluation of the researchers is not an objective scientific judgment, but an ultimately subjective interpretation of the available sources. The sources suggest that the perpetrators acted primarily from material motives. Political interpretations cannot be derived with certainty from them, but they cannot be ruled out either.
Many open questions
However, a newspaper article refers to the reasons for the verdict. There it is stated that the crime was promoted by the “brutalization of the defendants” in a “milieu characterized by alcohol abuse and aimless gambling”. It remains unclear, however, to what extent extreme right-wing thinking is also to be understood as an aspect of this brutalization. According to previous findings, all perpetrators were in extreme right-wing circles in Lichtenberg. Inhuman devaluation and violence against individuals and groups were part of everyday life there. Constant residence in such an environment inevitably leads to habituation to the idea of violent acts and acts of violence. It can be assumed that without such a lowered inhibition threshold, the crime would not have been possible. Because the known perpetrators accepted violence as a legitimate means of conflict resolution due to their political attitude, they were also prepared to use it against Klaus-Dieter Reichert. The TU Berlin study also addresses this assessment. It states there:
“A brutalization of the perpetrators due to their affiliation with the right-wing extremist violent scene seems plausible, but can only be proven to some extent due to the insufficient sources. The perpetrators
The perpetrators know each other only superficially and do not represent a solid group. The extended criteria for a politically right-wing homicide therefore do not seem to be fulfilled.” (page 54)
Nevertheless, this assessment leaves questions unanswered. Why did the bill collectors of the check-card gang, about whose political background nothing is known, explicitly place the bounty in an apartment that was considered a meeting place of right-wing skinheads? The neo-Nazis’ propensity for violence may have played a decisive role here. Moreover, the supposed purely material motivation of the perpetrators cannot explain why they used such excessive violence against Reichert after he was unable to pay. The violent degradation of the opponent seems to be more important to them than the bounty or the frustration over its loss. The perpetrators’ perception of Reichert probably also plays a role. Witnesses at the trial testified that he regularly frequented the homeless scene at the train station and consumed alcohol there. The escalation of violence can thus also be a consequence of the social-chauvinistic devaluation of the victim. Such an interpretation of Klaus-Dieter Reichert’s fate has not been pursued anywhere so far.
A commemoration is needed! – Our demands
In the end, it will not be possible to clarify these questions. Even the scientific report did not bring the hoped-for certainty about possible political backgrounds. The authorities of Berlin and the Federal Republic are using this residual uncertainty to deny Klaus-Dieter Reichert an official status as a victim of right-wing violence. His fate is an example of the state’s unworthy attempts to keep official statistics of victims of right-wing homicides as low as possible. Instead, the burden of proof is reversed. People who want to stand up for the victims have to provide the final proof of the political background of the crime. For the state, guesses are enough to remain inactive and overlook a right-wing murder. But equally good assumptions about a political background of the act are just not enough to get an official recognition. But for us this is no reason to ignore or forget the case of Klaus-Dieter Reichert. Instead, we will work all the harder for a remembrance.
Therefore we demand:
1) The Center for Research on Anti-Semitism or the Berlin security authorities must disclose the exact place of Klaus-Dieter Reichert’s death. Only in this way can a dignified commemoration be held and a discussion about permanent commemoration possibilities be initiated.
2) In order to find a dignified political way of dealing with unclear cases in the future, the classification of victims of right-wing violence in Berlin and nationwide must be changed. Here, a shift in the burden of proof is needed. For example, perpetrators whose extreme right-wing background is known must always be assumed to have a political motive due to their habit of violence and their generally misanthropic ways of thinking, as long as the opposite is not proven. Instead of proving that extreme right-wingers acted ideologically motivated, it must be shown that they did not. Only in this way can some justice be done to their victims.
No forgiving, no forgetting – remembering means fighting!