Enlarge image
Defendant Lina E. (September 2021): She has been in custody for almost two years
Photo: JENS SCHLUETER / AFP
The judge's question about the RAF comes quite casually.
It's about a novel that was found at Lina E.'s.
»In his early childhood a garden« is the title.
"Did the book impress you?" the judge asked in a tone that sounded as if he wanted to chat with the accused about the work of the author Christoph Hein.
Lina E. laughs.
She sees through his attempt.
The novel is based on the case of RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams, who shot himself during a police operation at Bad Kleinen station.
In his story, the author addresses doubts about the suicide.
The presiding judge of the State Protection Senate at the Dresden Higher Regional Court, Hans Schlueter-Staats, does not utter the word »RAF«.
He only asks if "the book" impressed her.
Lina E. first answers with a smile.
"We read that in school," she says.
Today she can no longer say what effect the book had on her at the time.
“I don't remember that anymore.” Then she laughs – and the judge's attempt to talk to a suspected left-wing extremist about the RAF failed.
She is said to have been in command of at least two attacks
For more than a year, Lina E. has had to answer in court together with three co-defendants.
The 27-year-old is accused of forming a left-wing extremist criminal organization that allegedly carried out six attacks on alleged and actual neo-Nazis between October 2018 and February 2020 and injured 13 people, some seriously.
Lina E. is said to have been in command of at least two attacks and also to have been involved in the selection and spying on the victims.
She remained silent in the high-security hall of the Dresden Higher Regional Court for 71 days.
On the 72nd day of the trial, her voice can now be heard for the first time.
Lina E. talks about her life for almost an hour on Thursday.
She does not speak about the charges.
Defense attorneys usually read out ready-made statements on behalf of their clients.
But Lina E. speaks for herself. It's not easy for her, she says.
"It's a big thing for me." But her nervousness is barely noticeable.
In a calm, firm voice, she outlines her childhood and youth in Kassel: Her mother is a social worker, her father is a senior teacher at a vocational school.
The parents separated when their daughter was in elementary school.
In 2013, Lina E. graduated from high school.
After that she worked in a hotel in Tenerife and traveled through Southeast Asia for five months.
In 2014 she moved to Leipzig and began studying educational sciences in Halle an der Saale.
In 2018 she did her bachelor's degree and since then she has been allowed to call herself a state-recognized social worker.
In 2019 she started her master's degree.
Her studies have been suspended since she was arrested almost two years ago.
She realized early on that working with children and young people suits her, she says.
While still at school, she worked as an intern with mentally and physically handicapped children.
During her studies she looked after young people in a residential group, later children who had experienced abuse and neglect.
Her fiancé has gone into hiding
The longer Lina E. talks, the harder it is to imagine that this young woman with a balaclava over her head is said to have been part of a brutal raid.
She politely answered the court's questions.
The federal prosecutor, however, refused to answer.
And she doesn't want to talk about her relationship with Johann G. either.
The authorities regard her fiancé as a left-wing extremist.
In June 2020 he went into hiding.
Lina E. prefers to talk about her work as a teacher.
She reports on a young person she looked after: The girl lived in a group home and one day injured herself with broken glass.
The young woman stood in front of her, bleeding, with a shard in her mouth.
According to Lina E., she managed to stop the girl from swallowing the shard.
Lina E. says that it was then that she realized that she could really help children and young people.
She calls it a "key moment."
She does not speak of any other kind of »key moments«.
Lina E. was 16 years old when the »National Socialist Underground (NSU)« exposed itself in November 2011 and the world found out that neo-Nazis had been roaming Germany for years, murdering and laying bombs.
In April 2006, the right-wing terrorists also killed in Kassel, Lina E's hometown. Halit Yozgat was shot dead in an Internet café.
An employee of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was at the scene at the time of the crime, but he claims he did not notice the murder.
Did the NSU complex radicalize Lina E.?
By dealing with the subject, has she come to the conclusion that she cannot rely on the state in the fight against right-wing extremism and that she has to fight neo-Nazis herself with brute force?
Her bachelor thesis deals with the NSU
The presiding judge keeps trying to engage the accused in a conversation about political issues.
He tries it through her bachelor thesis, which she wrote in 2018.
The title is: »On dealing with neo-Nazism in youth work – the NSU in the Winzerla youth club«.
The NSU terrorists Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt met in the youth club in Jena-Winzerla.
Mundlos and Böhnhardt openly presented themselves there as neo-Nazis.
The youth workers let her, it was part of the concept of their so-called accepting youth work.
In her work, Lina E. criticizes that the right-wing scene was able to appropriate the youth club and use it for their political goals.
The radical nature of the young people was played down by the social workers or not recognized at all.
In court, she remains more abstract.
“Every red line was crossed in Winzerla,” is all she says.
The judge asks how she came up with the subject.
The accused answers him as a teacher, not as a left-wing extremist.
Lina E. says that during her studies she dealt with the concept of accepting youth work.
And when she "privately" read the book "Heimatschutz" by Stefan Aust and Dirk Laabs about the origins of the NSU, she found out about the youth club in Winzerla.
She wanted to understand what went wrong in the educational work with neo-Nazis, "in order to draw conclusions for future work".
The judge does not ask what conclusions she drew.
On September 20, 2018, Lina E. submitted her bachelor thesis.
According to the indictment, twelve days later she and others brutally attacked the former NPD city councilor Enrico B. in front of his house in Leipzig.
The neo-Nazi suffered facial injuries and a fractured kneecap.