Gerold Braunmühl

Gerold Braunmühl (b. 15. September 1935 in Wroclaw; d. 10. October 1986 in Bonn) was a senior German diplomat who was killed in 1986 by the Red Army Faction (RAF).

Life and work

Gerold Braunmühl came from a noble family of Swabian origin. He grew up in Mainz and attended the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium. After graduation he studied law. He graduated from the First and Second State and earned a doctorate in 1963. In 1964 he married Hilda, the daughter of a professor of medicine of the Alice Hospital. Subsequently, he studied International Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Bologna (1964-1965) as well as in Washington, DC (1965-1966) and graduated with a Masters Degree.

Activity in the Foreign Office

Since 1966 Braunmühl belonged to the Foreign Service and worked as Attaché of the German Embassy in Washington in 1967 and in 1971 he was in the Unit for Germany and Berlin in the Bonn headquarters, where he eventually became Secretary to the closest advisors of Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher climb. In 1985 he was the Head of Political Division II in charge of European Political Cooperation, the WEU and NATO, as well as for relations with the Soviet bloc, so that he was in the Foreign Office of the most influential officials. Braunmühl was instrumental in improving relations with the Soviet Union and Poland, which had cooled since the ban of the Polish trade union movement. He was considered a likely candidate for the post of Secretary of State in the Foreign Office.

Murder

Gerold Braunmühl was on the evening of 10 October 1986 shot by two people in his residence in Bonn. He came home from work at 9 PM. As he got out and paid the driver, a masked person came up to him and shot him twice in the upper body. As Braunmühl tried to escape behind a parked car, there appeared a second masked person who shot him at close range in the head, and disappeared together with the first person. The perpetrators fled to Bonn Endenich, where four days later their getaway car was found. Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who had recently been released from the hospital, wrote in his memoirs that he had been called by Mrs. Hilde Braunmühl, who said to him: "My husband has been shot." Then Genscher went to Ippendorf to the house of his former office manager. Genscher: "The image of Gerold Braunmühl lying dead on the road in front of me I will never forget."

Tomb of Gerold Braunmühl in Poppelsdorf Cemetery

The main suspects in his murder are RAF members Barbara and Horst Ludwig Meyer but there is no evidence. In the forensic examination of the projectiles a revolver of the Smith & Wesson type was identified, most likely the same type of gun with which Hanns Martin Schleyer had been killed. Braunmühl was married and had three children. His funeral took place in the Bonn Beethoven Hall. Gerold Braunmühl was buried in Bonn in Poppelsdorf Cemetery. At the scene of the Buchholzstraße 39 a commemorative plate was mounted in 1987 with the following text: "Here died on 10.10.1986 Dr. Gerold Braunmühl, Political Director of the Foreign Office. He was murdered by terrorists." In the (now defunct) training and education center of the Foreign Ministry (diplomatic academy) in Bonn, Gudenauer way 134, Gerold Braunmühl Auditorium was dedicated. The Federal Foreign Office commemorates him through a memorial wall in the old building of the construction on the Werder market in Berlin for those members who were killed in the line of duty.

Open letter by the Braunmühl brothers to the RAF

In November 1986, the five brothers of Gerold Braunmühls wrote an open letter to the RAF, on the one hand to get an answer to the meaning and motives for his murder, and on the other hand to enter into a kind of "dialogue", to prevent further such acts.