Hergard Rohwedder Wiki, Age, Husband, Family, Biography & More

Hergard Rohwedder was a trained lawyer and a judge in the asylum chamber of the administrative court in Düsseldorf, Germany. She was married to Detlev Rohwedder, a German manager, politician, and the chairman of Treuhand, who was assassinated at his home on 1 April 1991.

Wiki/Biography

Hergard Rohwedder was born as Hergard Toussaint on Sunday, 11 June 1933 (age 85 years; at the time of death) in Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) and hails from Bonn, Germany. She pursued a degree in law from The University of Chicago Law School, United States of America ^[1]Handelsblatt. In 1980, she moved to Düsseldorf after her marriage.

Address

Hergard Rohwedder resided in 72 Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring, Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia.

Family

Relationships, Wife/Husband & Children

In 1960, Hergard Rohwedder got married to Detlev Rohwedder, a German manager, politician, and the chairman of Treuhand. ‘Treuhand,’ an agency established by the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to secure, reorganize, and privatize the assets of the GDR’s state-owned enterprises, post the fall of ‘The Berlin Wall.’ The couple had two children, Philipp Rohwedder and Cäcilie Rohwedder. Philipp Rohwedder was the former Warner Bros. CEO for German-speaking countries, and Cäcilie Rohwedder was a reporter for an American business newspaper.

Career

Hergard Rohwedder served as a judge in the asylum chamber of the administrative court in Düsseldorf. In 1999, Hergard Rohwedder founded the ‘Liberal Network Foundation,’ a cross-party, nationwide association of independent, critical citizens who work to strengthen liberal positions in politics and society.

Death

Hergard Rohwedder died on Wednesday, 1 May 2019 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Reportedly, it was a natural death. ^[2]Handelsblatt

Controversies

• On 1 April 1991, Hergard Rohwedder’s husband, Detlev Rohwedder was assassinated in his office at 11.30 p.m, on the first floor of his villa in Düsseldorf-Niederkassel, by a sniper. Three shots were fired, using a Belgian G 1 rifle from a distance of 63 meters, from diagonally opposite allotment garden. The first shot killed Detlev Rohwedder as he stood up from his desk. The second shot hit, Hergard in the arm, and the third one hit a bookshelf.
  

  The bullet shots on the window of Hergard Rohwedder’s House.

  A letter of confession signed by the Red Army Fraction (RAF) Commando, Ulrich Wessel, was recovered from the crime scene. RAF was an extremist terrorist organization in the Federal Republic of Germany

• Just three minutes after the shooting, the Düsseldorf police set off a large manhunt, but the attacker escaped undetected, leaving no trace of the murder weapon. In an interview, Hergard Rohwedder accused ‘Stasi,’ the secret police of GDR (German Democratic Republic) of the assassination of her husband, Detlev Rohwedder, who was allegedly about to find the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) party assets that had disappeared, having a worth of 800 million Deutschmarks. This supports the theory that the Stasi assassinated Rohwedder, and blamed the RAF for the murder. The suspicion rose in Hergard’s mind as in the previous assassinations by RAF, they never shot the family of the victim. In an interview, she said,
  

  RAF, has on previous assassinations, never shot at the victim’s family, never! And with us they shot several times; my husband fell over immediately and I walked into the room seconds later and they fired a well-aimed killing shot at me….It was so perfectly planned – the right second of the day when he got up from his desk to go to bed. It was the case that people who have experience in security policy are convinced that it cannot have been the RAF alone. ^[3]Handelsblatt

Facts/Trivia

• Three-to-four days prior to her husband’s murder, some suspicious activities like late-night calls, and doorbells that rung in the middle of the night gave Hergard Rohwedder a hint that something was brewing. In an interview, she said,
  

  They called at night, at two or three o’clock…..It was nobody’s turn. Just silence. Then again the doorbell rang at night -I didn’t open the door. But I looked down. Nothing, nobody to see.’

• During the interview, she also revealed that a large car was parked on the adjoining lot, with a couple sitting in it, on the previous day of the murder. She said,
  

  We spent Sunday in Essen and distributed large bouquets of flowers to everyone….When we got home, I made a mistake that I still regret today. There was a large car on the adjoining lot with a young couple sitting in it. It was Sunday afternoon. There was a law office in the house, there was no reason to be there on Sundays. I wanted to go, but my husband said: “Come on, leave it, what the heck, we’re going in!” It must have been the assassins! At least I could have written down the car number. I really blame myself for that.