He was seen as the RAF fighter, began early on the Computer: In his time as the BKA chief Horst Herold had to fight with massive resistance – and suffered a bitter defeat.
His greatest performance could not prevent his darkest hour: Horst Herold was one of the first criminologists the Chance, with data processing and systematic approach to criminals to come to the track. He gathered information, hypotheses about the behaviour of Perpetrators, and then sought after the intersection.
In the wedding of the RAF investigation in the 1970s was this approach great opportunities. Herold knew a lot about the way of life of the terrorists. They paid the rent in cash, preferred tracks anonymous residential blocks in the urban areas, in the vicinity of the car. In an intersection you had to look.
As in the autumn of 1977, the employer President Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped, saw Herold the hiding place right before your eyes. You had to find it. In fact, a strip gave police a clue as to the possible hiding place – and all of the Herald-criteria fit.
Horst Herold, the former Minister of the interior Genscher on the occasion of his entering the Service as a BKA-chief on December 31. August 1977
competence tussle with the police of the Laender
However, the note remained within the police left on the table. Also, because the Federal criminal police office at the time had relatively few powers in the war on terror, and there was a Back-and-Forth with the country’s police forces. The result is known: Schleyer was murdered, the perpetrator years later in focus.
This photo of Hanns Martin Schleyer, published in the RAF.
Herold had the theory right but in practice it had failed. Until, in his last years of life he has grieved it deeply. From today’s perspective, Herold recognized the many opportunities and problems “of” Federal criminal police office much earlier than the Minister of the interior, which were for him and his successors in charge. Especially “Kommissar Computer” is associated in authority with him, or the “dragnet” and a “total monitoring”, as he was called by his critics.
Herold polarized. Photos from that time show him as often as he was presented with the Pride state of the art Computer politicians, the devices were as rare insects. Today, these pictures seem like peculiar to the time, at the time, many critics referred to the surveillance state. “Who knows what he’s doing”, was, in part, to the Public, the allegation that was made to the well-known police officers in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
distance, and the envious – in the policy
What did Herold at that time, is today a recognized Standard. At the time, however, the Public and many politicians Herald ideas saw quite critical. And in politics, there was distance and envious. At the end of the 1970s, the FDP Minister of the interior Gerhard Baum, there are significant differences with the Herald, and a head of Department in the Federal Ministry of the interior, the later BKA chief Heinrich Boge, had had interest in Herald’s Job.
Herold came under pressure and had to recognize the beginning of the 1980s, the then attorney General Kurt Rebmann, and some of the Constitution protectors in the search for RAF terrorists worked even aimed at him.
“the Last prisoner of the RAF”
Herold went embittered in the temporary peace and quiet and retreated into his house. This house he had to build at their own expense on the site of a Federal police barracks in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. Because Herold was, until the end of the 1980s, as the extremely compromised and his home country of Bavaria, refused to provide a downtown location for his safety. “People say the house is my family home and I was the last prisoner of the RAF”, scoffed the Herald. And took note of how little you thanked him for his efforts.
Who attended him in this “family home”, also experienced in recent years continue to be interested criminologists and polite host.
Horst Herold served butter pretzels, cake and matching drinks, mused about new criminalistic methods, and saw with satisfaction how “to be” BKA has been in over the years to become what he had always wanted: A powerful authority to fight terrorism.
Former BKA head Herold Atlas |Germany |Berlin
correspondent
died
