Timeline Detlev Karsten Rohwedder

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder 14

• 1953 Rohwedder leaves school in Meldorf Then law and economics at Hamburg and Mainz Born in Thuringia, raised in the west - the biography that later made him plausible in both Germanys.
• 1960 Rohwedder marries Hergard Toussaint They met as students. She became a judge in Düsseldorf She was in the room when he was shot, and was wounded by the second bullet.
• 1969 – 1978 State secretary in the economics ministry Under Brandt and then Schmidt, for eight years A Social Democrat who spent his career moving between government and industry.
• 1980 Rohwedder takes over Hoesch AG The Dortmund steelmaker, then close to collapse He cut the workforce hard and saved the company, which made his reputation as a turnaround man.
• 1990 The Treuhandanstalt is created Still by the East German government, before reunification It inherited 8,500 companies employing four million people - the largest holding company in the world.
• 1990 Rohwedder is appointed president of the Treuhand Chosen to privatise an entire national economy He took the job at a symbolic salary and said privatisation was the fastest form of restructuring.
• 1991 – 1994 Two and a half million jobs disappear The Treuhand sells, restructures or closes the East German economy He became the most hated man in the east, and told colleagues he understood why.
• 1991 Detlev Karsten Rohwedder is assassinated Shot through his study window at 23:30 on Easter Monday Three shots from 63 metres with a Belgian G1 rifle. The first killed him, the second wounded his wife.
• 1991 The RAF claims responsibility A letter signed Kommando Ulrich Wessel left at the scene Cartridge cases, binoculars, a plastic chair and three cigarette butts were all the police recovered.
• 1991 Birgit Breuel succeeds him The Treuhand carries on without pause Its work continued for another three and a half years under tighter security.
• 1992 The Treuhand headquarters is renamed Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus, on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin Goering built it as the Air Ministry. It is now the German finance ministry, and keeps his name.
• 1995 The Treuhand is dissolved Four years after his death, its work declared finished The argument over whether it saved the East German economy or destroyed it has never stopped.
• 2001 A hair from the scene is matched to Wolfgang Grams DNA technology that did not exist in 1991 Grams, an RAF member, had died in a shootout with police at Bad Kleinen in 1993.
• 2020 A Perfect Crime A four-part Netflix series on the unsolved killing It set out the rival theories - the RAF, the Stasi, or something else - and settled none of them.