Captain Rainer Misar has just brought the Lufthansa machine "Münster" on its way from Frankfurt to Cologne / Bonn at cruising altitude, as someone rips open the door to the cockpit. A black-clad, 31-year-old man with long, dark blond hair with a plastic bag in one hand and a pistol at the copilot with the other.
"Good morning," says the man, "do what I ask, nothing will happen!" The pilot should fly as planned to Cologne / Bonn. He will cooperate, assures Captain Misar. Secretly, he sparks the signal hijacked , kidnaps how the "star" will later reconstruct.
The emergency call from the "Münster" with 120 passengers and eight crew members strikes meets a nervous Federal Republic, shaken by the years of the RAF terror and the "German Autumn". Two years earlier, Palestinian terrorist terrorists had captured the Lufthansa plane "Landshut" to free RAF prisoners. Minister of State Hans-Jürgen Wischnewksi led the negotiations at that time, the GSG 9 stormed the plane in Mogadishu and was able to free all hostages.
photo gallery
13 pictures
Raphael Keppel: The strangest hijacking of German historyChancellor Helmut Schmidt immediately alerted "Ben Wisch" and the special unit. So begins this Wednesday, September 12, 1979 at 10:10 clock the strangest hijacking in German history - and a probably unique political career.
The Air Pirate is anything but a ferocious terrorist. Rather a nerd and misguided world improver. His gun is made of plastic, in the bag he wears a 93-page manifesto entitled "Abduction to Humanity". His name: Raphael Keppel.
Ballermann from Bakelite
Keppel was born in 1948 and grew up as the third of nine children in a village near Cloppenburg. His mother often beat him and his siblings "not by hand, but with a wooden spoon and a hand brush," he writes later in his manifesto.
After sixth grade, he leaves school and works in the mining industry. Then he learns electric welder and soon earns so well that he can save money for a small home. He gets married, his wife Brigitte gets two sons.
In his spare time he plays football at the TSG Cloppenburg and reads: the psychotherapist Josef Rattner, the philosopher Arno Plack, the sociologist Georg Simmel, novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and football books. Neighbors report that he cares lovingly for the children.
But Keppel is constantly dissatisfied and nervous. "He has personally affected the injustices of this earth," says a friend later the "star". Voluntarily, he goes into psychological treatment, the doctors do not detect any diseases and certify him "high intelligence". He is unable or unwilling to work as an electric welder.
Keppel sells the house with 50,000 marks profit and moves into a three-room apartment in Rothenburg in Hessian on the Fulda, hometown of his wife. There he writes manuscripts on his typewriter with titles such as "Elvira - Psychoanalysis of a Failed" or "Memories of a Hope" and sends them to publishers who, however, are not interested.
In the late summer of 1979 Keppel decides to make his thoughts accessible to a wider audience. As an air pirate. He bought for 10.75 Mark a plastic pistol, a real-looking dummy of bakelite, and a plane ticket (107 marks). He sends his wife nine red roses and a letter in which he explains himself. He renames the manuscript "Memories of Hope" to "Abduction to Humanity".
Farewell with a handshake
On the morning of September 12, Keppel easily passes the security gate at Frankfurt Airport. "I have to break," he says shortly after the start and rushes forward to the on-board toilet. There he digs the pistol out of the bag and storms the cockpit at 10.10 clock.
The captain is supposed to fly to Cologne / Bonn - that's the goal anyway. Immediately Keppel let him pass his demands: The Chancellor and television crews of ARD and ZDF should come to the airport. Instead of Helmut Schmidt, the clever crisis negotiator Wischnewski returns from the tower after landing, and Keppel is satisfied with that.
The kidnapper hands the pilot his manuscript and orders him to read pages 83-87. There, among other things, the maternity protection should be extended, conscription abolished and the subject "environmental protection" introduced. The catalog ends with: "All I want is a humane world in which and for which it is worth living." The radio broadcasts the manifesto, Keppel leaves the 120 passengers free, but not yet the crew.
For hours, Keppel and Wischnewski discuss by radio about his catalog of demands and questions of justice, about nuclear energy, youth unemployment and piecework, about prisons, pensions and compulsory military service. "When it comes to a whole series of questions, I do not see any differences at all, so that you think about how to operate them with more and more intensity," says the Minister of State. Five days later, SPIEGEL publishes a report of the talks.
"Ben Wisch" softly chatters the pirates - around 10 pm, after almost twelve hours, Keppel gives up. "I figured out from the start that it would give me a few years in prison," he says. And: "By the way, it's a toy gun, I would never hurt anyone." As he lets the eight crew members go, he shakes the hand of pilot Misar and apologizes for the inconvenience. For the pre-trial detention, he has packed four packs of Camel cigarettes and a toothbrush.
"He is not crazy"
At a press conference that same night, a journalist describes Keppel as a "madman," but Wischnewski interrupts him: "We do not want to talk about a madman here, he's not crazy." The tabloids, meanwhile, have already passed their verdict. "A madman in black kidnaps Lufthansa jet," headlines a newspaper. Richter categorizes Keppel as guilty in 1980 and sentenced him to three and a half years in prison, with two of them in prison. The publisher Droemer and Knaur wants to print his manifesto, but decides against it. It is finally published by Volksverlag aus Linden.
Shortly after the hijacking of the aircraft, Hesse founded the national association of a party that resembles Keppel in many respects. Its members are committed to the environment, reject authorities and resort to radical means such as protest camps in the forest against the construction of the runway west at Frankfurt Airport: the Greens.
"Keppel showed up at a meeting, presented his case and received a lot of applause," remembers Jan Kuhnert, at that time one of the central figures in the national association. "In his manifesto were many useful things - only the instrument was a bit wrong."
The Greens nominate Keppel as a state parliamentary candidate, also as a protest against his conviction. "Coming to jail for a water pistol is a totally inappropriate proportion," says Kuhnert. However, the Hessian Land Returning Officer deletes Keppel from the list because he lost his passive right to vote for five years.
After the election in 1982, the Green Keppel take on their parliamentary group. It consists of the nine MPs, nine followers and him. All together decide on equal terms how the faction behaves. One of the deputies splashed a US General with self-tapped blood a little later.
Keppel is now touring the Hessian prisons as an expert in prison and meets the English rock singer Geraldine Blecker, caught by police with cocaine. The two record a record titled "Helmut" and "Oh Cherie", which flops, however. That, says Keppel, is just the beginning. Some Greens scoff at him.
The kidnapper is kidnapped - supposedly
With a "Manifesto of Fundamentalists" write Keppel and Kuhnert 1985 against a coalition with the Hesse-SPD, the green realpolitiker to Joschka Fischer at that time aspire. But they are in power struggle: Keppel resigns from the state group, the party in the state government under Holger Börner. The SPD prime minister had said in 1982 about militant runway protesters: "I regret that my high state office prohibits me from hitting the guys on their own." Previously at the construction, they did such things with the batten. "
In early 1986 Keppel threatens to publish explosive information about the Realos. The SPIEGEL sees the papers and comes across only a small check: how individual politicians argue about expense allowances and want to come on television.
Shortly afterwards, Keppel disappears. From Paraguay, he writes a letter to Kuhnert, right-wing intelligence officials have kidnapped him. His companion initially alleviates the suspicion, but the alleged evidence collapses. After this action the contact between them was broken off, says Kuhnert.
After that, the tracks gradually disappear. In 1989, Keppel emigrated with his two sons to the South Pacific island state of Fiji and is temporarily imprisoned nine years later because he has concealed his criminal record from Germany. He writes books on the first years of the football league or the careers of world champions from 1954, 1974, 1990. As the website of the German sports club for football statistics and the "Fiji Times" announce, the former air pirate and Green Party politician Raphael Keppel dies in November 2010 in the Fijian city of Nasouri.