Germany > Topic Index > Terrorism Update > Alfred Herrhausen
Germany’s Home-Grown Terrorism
The RAF versus Deutsche Bank
Banker Alfred Herrhausen fell victim to a deadly terrorist bomb shortly after leaving his home in Bad Homburg on the 30th of November 1989. He was being chauffeured to work in his armored Mercedes, with bodyguards in both a lead vehicle and another following behind. At the time of his death Herrhausen was a key director (Vorstandssprecher, lit., “speaker of the board”) on the Deutsche Bank board. He had been with Deutsche (DOYTSCH-uh) Bank, Germany’s largest, since 1969. From 1971 on he was a member of the bank’s board of directors.
The fatal light-activated bomb had been hidden in an innocent looking school bag on a bike next to the road that the terrorists knew Herrhausen would be traveling in his three-car convoy. In the bag was a 20 kilo (44 pound) TNT bomb that was detonated when Herrhausen’s car interrupted a beam of light as it passed close to the bomb. The bomb and its triggering mechanism were quite sophisticated. The bomb targeted the most vulnerable area of Herrhausen’s car – the door where he was sitting – and required split-second timing to overcome the car’s special armor plating. The terrorists also had to account for the bodyguards’ lead vehicle, and precisely place the bomb-laden bicycle in such a manner that the blast would do the most damage when it struck the side of Herrhausen’s car.
The German terrorist group Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) later claimed responsibility for the assassination and released a bizarre anti-imperialist statement (signed “Kommando Wolfgang Beer”) blaming Deutsche Bank for just about all that the RAF felt was bad or unfair in Germany and Europe.
To memorialize the former bank chairman, the Alfred-Herrhausen-Straße is now the address of the Deutsche Bank building in Eschborn, a suburb of Frankfurt.
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Related Pages
This Site
- Money, banks and credit in Germany
- Terrorism Update - More about Germany’s brand of terrorism.
- Famous Germans, Austrians, Swiss - Includes lesser-known people
- The German Way book’s “Terrorism” chapter explores this issue in more detail. (Baader-Meinhof, RAF, Rudi Dutschke, Wolfgang Grams; rightist terror, etc.) - From Amazon.com.
The Web
- Baader-Meinhof Gang - Richard Huffmann’s site about this infamous German terrorist group and German terrorism in general offers an “extensive exploration of '70s German terrorism.”
- The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) - Official site for this 2008 German film
- Black Box BRD is a German movie about the RAF, Germany in the 1980s and Alfred Herrhausen.
- Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft der Deutschen Bank. The Alfred Herrhausen Society (in English or German).
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