History of Europe

July 1978:Celler Loch shakes Lower Saxony

by Michael LangeThe hole in the prison wall - for a long time it was unclear who blasted it into the wall.

A loud bang. A fireball lights up the night when, on July 25, 1978, at 2:54 a.m., a bomb detonates at Celle Prison. The officers in the watchtower sound the alarm and use searchlights to illuminate the six meter high outer wall. There is a hole about 40 centimeters in diameter. Much later it became known that it was a fictitious attack with the knowledge of the CDU state government at the time. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution had the hole blown up in the prison wall. Informants were to be smuggled into the hard core of the RAF. It was not until 1986 that the background was uncovered - by a journalist from the "Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung" (HAZ).

It should look like a rescue action

After the Celle criminal police and the horrified prison warden Paul Kühling arrived in the early morning of July 25, 1978, officers in civilian clothes stormed Sigurd Debus' cell and searched it at around 4 a.m. Kühling arranges single yard walk. The then 35-year-old suspected terrorist is serving a 12-year prison sentence for politically motivated bank robberies and the preparation of two bomb attacks. However, there is no evidence of direct involvement in the attacks.

The terrorist is still in bed

That night everything looks as if sympathizers from the left-wing extremist milieu wanted to free Debus. CID officials in Salzgitter secured a suspicious vehicle in February, in which they found ammunition and a forged ID card with a photo of Sigurd Debus. Searching the cell in Debus' absence, officers allegedly discovered breakout tools. However, Debus was in bed at the time of the detonation and seemed unprepared for his rescue.

The RAF is suspected

The headlines the next morning unanimously report a terrorist attack on the prison. The suspicion is obvious:two months earlier, an armed liberation operation from Moabit prison had succeeded in Berlin. However, the State Criminal Police Office in Hanover presents the so-called Dellwo paper as decisive evidence of a terrorist background to the act. The author of the strategy paper is said to be RAF member Karl-Heinz Dellwo, who was involved in the 1975 attack on the German embassy in Stockholm. The "strategy of insecurity" outlined in it reads like the script for the Celle attack:Bloodless "attacks on the outer area of ​​the prisons" are to be carried out in order to force "a merger of incarcerated terrorists into interaction groups".

Three days later, the first mug shot of suspect Klaus-Dieter Loudil was published. Sigurd Debus's fellow prisoner had not returned from his prison leave. But the search is unsuccessful.

The bomb explodes for the second time

On April 25, 1986 - three weeks before the state elections in Lower Saxony - the "Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung" opened with an unbelievably sounding story:The attack on the Celle prison was completely staged. But what journalist Ulrich Neufert uncovers in his later award-winning article is true. Officials planted the bomb, ministers were their clients, the protection of the constitution seconded. The highest levels of government, from the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony Ernst Albrecht to the Federal Minister of the Interior at the time, Werner Maihofer, were in the know, as was prison director Paul Kühling.

The "Fire Magic Action" was intended to provide informants with a piece of biography to enable them to enter the left-wing extremist scene. In addition to Klaus-Dieter Loudil, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution recruited Manfred Berger, who was also convicted of serious crimes, for this job. Even before the attack, both tried to recruit accomplices for the planned "liberation action" as snitches.

Albrecht government celebrates "terror theater" as a success

Prime Minister Ernst Albrecht defended the action and rated it a success.

First statements are not long in coming. While Gerhard Schröder, the SPD's top candidate at the time, attacked Albrecht for "ordering the use of terrorist means to fight terrorism," the prime minister said confidently:"I'm sure that's exactly what our people are asking of me." The action's record of success allegedly includes the prevented murder of a Celle prison officer by Debus and the discovery of a conspiratorial apartment in Hamburg in which a five-kilo bomb was found and which was intended as a "people's prison". In addition, the informants had found out important information about the Basque terrorist organization ETA.

Committee of Inquiry provides insight

The parliamentary investigative committee set up at the end of 1986 cannot confirm Albrecht's self-praise of having prevented "bad crimes". In fact, the informants acted as rather questionable provocateurs. Green MP Georg Fruck suspects that they helped to solve crimes "that they themselves orchestrated and then sold as a success".

Explosive attack as "intelligence tool"

Confidence in politics and the security authorities was shaken much more than the Celle prison wall. The stoking of fear of terrorism and the targeted disinformation of the population meant that in the future it would no longer be known "which attacks were made by terrorists and which the state was responsible for," judged Jürgen Trittin, a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament at the time. The constitutional protection officer Peter Frisch had emphasized that a bomb attack could also be an "intelligence service tool".

A questionable precedent

The investigative proceedings against those involved in the blasting, initiated on May 7, 1986, were discontinued the following day because, in the eyes of the Lüneburg public prosecutors, there were no indications of criminal offenses and the statute of limitations for prosecution had already expired for various allegations. It remains unclear at first whether such a state demolition operation, including comprehensive disinformation, is fundamentally legal or not. However, the abrupt drop in the proceedings suggests that such action is not against the law. This gives the Celler Loch the status of a questionable precedent.

Not for the museum

The piece of wall known as the "Celler Loch" is kept in the prison.

When the old outer wall of the Celle prison gave way to a new one in 1998, the prison's own team of bricklayers milled out the Celle hole in one block and reconstructed it. Since then, the memorial has reminded visitors, employees and residents of the scandal so that, according to Paul Kühling's successor Rüdiger Wohlgemuth, "this state nonsense will not be forgotten." But not only remains a monument from the Celler Loch, but also the recurring debate about the use of decoys.