Fritz von Weizsäcker: Assassination out of nothing

The next day the shock is felt everywhere. The horror of a terrible crime, an attack that came from nowhere. Fritz von Weizsäcker, renowned chief physician at the Berlin Schlosspark Clinic, son of the former Federal President, is dead. Stabbed by an apparently mentally ill offender, who was a blank slate for the investigating authorities so far.

"It is a terrible blow to the Weizsäcker family," says government spokesman Steffen Seibert on behalf of the Chancellor. The President condoled. FDP leader Christian Lindner tweeted that the deceased had been "a passionate doctor and a fine person". "Once again, you ask yourself in which world we live." In the clinic lie sympathy lists.

Offenders from Andernach

Fritz von Weizsäcker has paid with his life for the fact that more than 600 kilometers from Berlin, a man has evidently increased into a morbid delusion. In the Rhineland-Palatinate Andernach planned the 57-year-old Gregor S. according to their own information for some time the bloodbath.

It is Tuesday evening at seven o'clock, when the plans become tragically serious.

Fritz von Weizsäcker lectures at the clinic near the Charlottenburg Palace on the topic "fatty liver - (K) a cause for concern". About 20 people have gathered in a meeting room of the Department of Psychiatry. Weizsäcker is almost at the end of his lecture, when Gregor S. dissolves from the crowd of listeners and goes to the podium.

The man stabs his victim purposefully in the neck. And he attacks a police officer who has privately listened to the lecture and now comes to the rescue. Then several listeners can overwhelm the zeal. Weizsäcker dies at the scene, the policeman comes to the hospital seriously injured.

In the evening investigators interrogate the man from Rhineland-Palatinate. Gregor S., reported later a police spokeswoman to the SPIEGEL, acts receptive and makes no confused impression. But what he tells, it seems sick.

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He had deliberately killed the doctor to take revenge on the Weizsäcker family. Actually, he wanted to meet Fritz's father: Richard von Weizsäcker, Federal President from 1984 to 1994, Managing Director of the chemical company Boehringer Ingelheim in the sixties. Richard von Weizsäcker, however, has been dead for almost five years. Therefore, he says, he chose his son.

Richard von Weizsäcker was responsible for the fact that Boehringer had supplied toxins with which the US had tortured people in the Vietnam War. It is specifically about precursors of the defoliant agent "Agent Orange". Richard von Weizsäcker had told the SPIEGEL in 1991 that he had learned "with great consternation" only years after leaving "Agent Orange".

"Delusional General Dislike"

The details of the statement of S. wanted a spokesman for the Berlin prosecutor neither confirm nor deny. The agency said that the motive was in a "probably delusional general dislike of the accused" against the family.

S. had, so at least he told the police, the lecture date found on the Internet. It was not until Tuesday that he boarded the train to Berlin. Still in Rhineland-Palatinate he bought the later Tatmesser.

On Wednesday, investigators had Gregor S. examined by a doctor. Based on the result, one starts from an "acute mental illness" of the offender. Investigators therefore requested that he be sent to the psychiatric ward for murder and attempted murder. Unlike healthy offenders, no arrest warrant will be requested.

Connection to the Vietnamese people?

According to the "Bild" newspaper, Gregor S. worked as a storeman at a major mail order company. Accordingly, S. should have traveled regularly to Thailand. He also has a connection to the Vietnamese people.

The public sympathy for the case is also great because the Weizsäckers are among the best-known German families. According to her biographer Hans-Joachim Noack in the face of the SPIEGEL, they have become "the avant-garde in the field of spirit and power since the fifties".

The deceased was "open-minded and cheerful", "bound by earthly things". The physician had been a "fervent supporter" of artificial intelligence. "He appeared to me as one of the most modern in this extended family."

Fritz von Weizsäcker leaves behind a wife and three children.