Beate Zschäpe - the foreign daughter

Annerose Zschäpe has not seen her daughter for years. Only in the courtroom did she sit opposite her for a few minutes.

Two cups on her shelf remind Annerose Zschäpe to her daughter. On one cup is the name "Beate", on the other a photo of Uwe Mundlos is printed. They are everything that Beate Zschäpe has left her since her "disappearance". So the mother calls the submergence of her daughter on January 26, 1998.

Since then, she had no contact with her, it has Annerose Zschäpe told the investigators, after Beate Zschäpe had surrendered on 8 November 2011. For 14 years she did not know where her daughter was.

At the time, she sent word of the officers to the alleged terrorist that her family was there for her, mother and grandmother. And today she proves it. When presiding judge Manfred Götzl asks her in the NSU trial if she wants to make a statement, the petite 61-year-old says: "No." She invokes her right to refuse to testify as a mother. The use of their statement at the Federal Criminal Police Office in November 2011 contradicts them. So she does not burden her daughter, even accidentally.

This Wednesday, mother and daughter sit in the courtroom for a brief moment. Beate Zschäpe stares down, trying to avoid eye contact. After a few minutes Annerose Zschäpe leaves the Munich Higher Regional Court, where her daughter since May 6, the process is made.

The relationship between Annerose and Beate Zschäpe is considered "difficult". Long before Beate Zschäpe's "disappearance" she was probably shattered. The daughter grew up with her grandparents, the mother was a single parent and worked as an engineer. Beate Zschäpe was raised without a father, the organic producer had not recognized the paternity and is also not recorded in the birth certificate. "Beate Apel, female sex Born at 6:38 pm on 6 January 1975", parents: Annerose Apel, is in the document of the registry office Jena.

Annerose Zschäpe met him during her studies in Bucharest, became pregnant and left without the Romanian back to Jena. She soon married her childhood friend and his name was later recorded in the birth certificate. The marriage did not last. The mother married a second time in 1978, but this marriage was divorced after a good year. From the second stepfather Beate Zschäpe remained the last name.

In the interrogation of 2011, which the court is now no longer allowed to use, Annerose Zschäpe described her daughter as a "lovely, nice girl". As one who gladly gave pleasure to others. "She was always popular, had a lot of girlfriends in school, and they always liked to come to us."

"If she was convinced of something, then she represented this thing consistently."

With the turn of the family finally collapsed, Annerose Zschäpe lost her job as an engineer and fell into lethargy, did not even care about unemployment benefits. Mother and daughter lost their apartment. Beate Zschäpe has never forgiven her for that. As a fighter, Annerose Zschäpe described her daughter in the interrogation: "She was self-confident at school, I would not say that she was easily influenced, but if she was convinced of something, then she also represented this matter consistently In the fourth grade, Beate started fencing and was really good at it. " When her fencing group was dissolved, she did not want to go to any other. "She vehemently refused, did not go fencing anymore, she was not jumping."

The right-wing attitude was a shock

With the same stubbornness, Beate Zschäpe later turned against her new friend. They alienated themselves. At some point, they hardly shared more than the new two-room apartment in Jena-Winzerla. And so the mother was shocked when in 1996, the police searched the apartment.

Since she first became aware that her daughter "has taken this political direction seriously, moving in the neo-Nazi scene," Annerose Zschäpe told the investigators 2011. They, the "politically tend in the left direction", could not bypass. But it was already too late, she had not come to her.

Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt even noticed her at the time, she said in her interrogation. "They barely drank alcohol, made sure their shoes were always clean." That was in the report. Until Annerose Zschäpe handwritten the word "shoes" and replaced it with "combat boots".

An insurmountable distance

It is not known where Annerose Zschäpe suspected her daughter Beate in the underground years. She had agreed with the mother of Uwe Mundlos, they wanted to inform each other as soon as they heard something from their children.But only ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Böhnhardt, the mother of Uwe Böhnhardt, had contact with the three.

Her daughter has met her only in custody, she has visited Beate Zschäpe three times. And today in the process for a moment.

The fact that Annerose Zschäpe refused to testify today is not surprising. Interview requests she had always friendly but definitely rejected. When journalists lurked in Jena, she replied, "Only lies are written."

It seems that they have now completely withdrawn into the ten-story prefabricated building in yellow-blue-pink pastel colors in the north of Jena, where the two cups are. She lives there with her mother, who is 80 years old and has heart disease. She was the one Beate Zschäpe wanted to visit again on her escape. Not the mother. On a train ticket Zschäpe had written down the telephone number: "Granny 822XXX".

German court rules foreign reporters must attend NSU trial (May 2024).