Assassination of Alfred Herrhausen
“Revolutionary processes are the experiences which, out of the agony between life and death, will lead to a determined struggle for life.”
On November 11, 1989 the Commando Wolfgang Beer executed the Chief executive of the Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen: we blew up his armoured Mercedes with a hollow charged mine of our own making.
The blood of two world wars and unspeakable exploitation run through the history of the Deutsche Bank and throughout this Herrhausen sat at the top of this pillar of the German economy; he was the most powerful economic leader in Europe.
Throughout Western Europe and in most parts of the world, the Deutsche Bank has become a symbol for the power and domination that is colliding head on with people’s most basic need for dignity and self-determination. Under Herrhausen’s management, the Deutsche Bank has worked its way up to being the largest bank in Europe, where it dominates economic and political development. It has cast its net over all of West Europe and stands at the head of the fascistic capitalist structure, against which everyone has to assert themselves. The bank has been preparing for years; now it stands ready to again subjugate the people to the dictates and logic of capitalist exploitation.
Herrhausen’s plans against the countries of the Three Continents, which are praised even in “left-wing intellectual” groups as being progressive, are simply meant to guarantee that the present relationship of domination and plunder continues into the foreseeable future. These plans extend and increase the suffering of the populations there even more.
Around the world, imperialism produces a single form of destructive development to secure its profits and power: genocide, starvation, humiliation, poverty and widespread destruction create a fundamentally similar situation everywhere – a situation which has taken on an existential dimension. Nowhere are the people able to really live according to their own ideas and values.
But the protagonists of this system must know that their crimes have created bitter enemies, that there will be no place in the world where they can be safe from the attacks of revolutionary guerrilla units.
All of us, the entire revolutionary movement in West Europe, are standing at the brink of a new cycle.
The completely changed international situation and the totality of the new development here require that the entire revolutionary process be assessed anew and be developed on a fresh basis.
We are working on that and we want to discuss it with everyone who wants to stop imperialist destruction and who is struggling for another world – one that is possible because so many people want it and have already started working towards making it real.
We conceive of this as a process of joint discussion and practice in which the various experiences, ideas and critiques are openly discussed in order for everyone to be able to understand what is happening and come to common political goals, developing practical ideas for bringing about radical change.
The prisoners must be a part of this discussion. Because of this, and because the annihilation project against them must be stopped once and for all, they must be granted association right now and we must struggle for their eventual freedom.
In this new stage, we have to link the various revolutionary practices against the system. The revolutionary process needs new, dynamic and productive relationships; only together can the struggles develop the strength needed to stop and reverse the process of imperialist destruction – only together, united in a front against imperialism, will we here in West Europe, together with the liberation struggles worldwide, be able to carry through a unified, international and protracted process of radical change.
Struggle together!