Was the fatal knife attack against Fritz von Weizsäcker the act of a madman? The violent death of a son of the former Federal President caused horror. Now a 57-year-old is sitting on the dock. The process started differently than expected.
Berlin (dpa) - Hardly started, already over. The process of the deadly knife attack against Fritz von Weizsäcker, youngest son of the former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, starts in Berlin in seven minutes.
Exactly six months earlier, a 57-year-old is said to have stabbed the chief doctor out of hate and seriously injured a police officer who intervened.
The accused wants to comment on the allegations. But that's not possible on Tuesday because the psychiatric expert is prevented. The process is also about the guiltiness of the man from Andernach in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Murder of the doctor and attempted murder of the police officer have been charged. The attacker had insidiously and for low motives killed the doctor, the indictment says. So far, the public prosecutor's office has assumed that the man was mentally ill during the crimes; she believes that unmarried Germans are less guilty.
The former packer in a logistics center has his picture taken before the start, doesn't cover his face, he obviously wants to be recognized. In his box made of bulletproof glass in the Berlin district court, he looks gray and lean. Opposite him, Beatrice von Weizsäcker - the dead doctor's sister - and the injured policeman took a seat. You are two of the four co-plaintiffs.
Attorney Roland Weber represents two teenage children. Weber says that they are badly hit. "You lost your father from one second to the next."
Fritz von Weizsäcker, chief physician for internal medicine at the Schlossparkpark Clinic in Berlin-Charlottenburg, was killed during a lecture in the clinic on November 19, 2019. The attacker went out of the rows of listeners to the podium and surprisingly stuck a folding knife in the professor's throat. The doctor died at the scene.
The death of the 59-year-old had caused a nationwide shock. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) spoke of an "appalling blow to the family".
Long-term hatred of the Weizsäcker family was the motive, according to prosecutor Silke van Sweringen. This related to the fact that Richard von Weizsäcker (1920-2015) was supposedly responsible for the production of "Agent Orange" through his previous work for the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The defoliants killed many people in the Vietnam War. The accused wanted to avenge these deaths on the son as "collective guilt". Lawyer Weber later said that the accused's allegations were "pulled by the hair".
The 33-year-old policeman, who attended the lecture privately and was able to overwhelm the attacker, suffered stab wounds to the neck, upper body and hands, severing tendons. The police union said he was still struggling with the aftermath. The policeman left the court without a word.
According to earlier information from the public prosecutor, the alleged murderer is said to have planned the crime for a long time and to have traveled there. In the investigation he is said to have confessed to the deeds.
According to a report by the "Tagesspiegel", the accused does not consider himself insane, that he does not want to go to a psychiatric facility, but to a real prison.
Lawyer Weber says in passing: "After studying the files, we assume that the accused is a seriously ill man who committed these acts in a delusion."
At a moving funeral service for Fritz von Weizsäcker on December 2, a man was remembered who liked chess and primes, loved his large family, played the piano and turned to his patients. We were talking about a humanist with constant commitment, prudence and kindness.
Fritz von Weizsäcker's last resting place is in the forest cemetery in the Dahlem district next to his father, who died at the age of 94. The process will continue on May 26th.
