STASI ARCHIVE SURPRISE East German Spy Shot West Berlin Martyr (1967)
The name of Benno Ohnesorg became a rallying cry for the West German left after he was shot dead by police in 1967. Newly discovered documents indicate that the cop who shot him may have been a spy for the East German secret police.
It was one of the most important events leading up to the wave of radical left-wing violence which washed over West Germany in the 1970s. On the evening of June 2, 1967, the literature student Benno Ohnesorg took part in a demonstration at West Berlin’s opera house. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, was to attend and the gathered students wanted to call attention to his brutal regime.The protests, though, got out of hand. Pro-shah demonstrators, some of them flown in from Iran for the occasion, battled with the student protestors. West Berlin police also did their part, brutally beating back the crowd. At 8:30 p.m., a shot was fired, and a short time later the 26-year-old Ohnesorg, having been hit in the back of the head, became the left wing’s first martyr.
Now, though,