An investigation into two contrary, but equally radical lives, both of which ended through violence: Alfred Herrhausen, chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank, died in 1989 in a bomb attack presumably planned and executed by the RAF. Four years later, the suspected RAF terrorist Wolfgang Grams was to be arrested at Bad Kleinen station, but died in a hail of bullets. The circumstances surrounding his death were never fully revealed.

On 30 November 1989, Alfred Herrhausen, chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank, was killed in a terrorist attack ascribed to the RAF (Red Army Fraction). Four years later, Wolfgang Grams, a suspected member of the RAF, is killed in a gun battle with the police at Bad Kleinen station. BLACK BOX BRD attempts to pick up the evidence - but not forensically - and relates the two dead men's biographies by way of example.

This film is also about the history of two hostile camps in a polarized society. Alfred Herrhausen was born in 1930 and attended an elite Nazi school before setting out on a fairytale career in the country of the economic miracle. In the 1980s he took over the top position at the Deutsche Bank and become one of the most powerful men in the country. A statement by the former Chancellor Helmut Kohl shows just how well his reliable banker friend was able to link politics and business. Herrhausen played a decisive role in the merger between Daimler-Benz and MBB and thus also came into contact with the German defence industry. The often highly disputed banker showed that he could also be highly unorthodox when he pleaded for a reduction of the Third World debts upon returning from a trip to Mexico. These ideas proved just as unacceptable as his proposals for far-reaching reform within the Deutsche Bank.

Wolfgang Grams was born in 1953 and, like many of his generation, had rebelled against his parental home and the state system. He first met the militant left in Wiesbaden and went underground in 1984. The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) assigned him to the command level in the RAF and considered him to be partly responsible for the attacks on managers and senior civil servants. It is still not perfectly clear just how he died on 27 June 1993. Doubts have repeatedly been voiced over the official explanation that he committed suicide. Death was caused by a "point-blank" shot in the back of the head.

Andres Veiel has succeeded in intertwining the two life stories and the statements by relatives and numerous other, directly or indirectly involved people without at the same time implying any kind of "causal interrelationship". The question whether and if so, then to what extent, Wolfgang Grams was responsible for Herrhausen's murder remains completely open. The decisive context lies in the history of the Federal Republic in which the two dead men had irreconcilably confronted one another in the 1980s as prominent representatives of diametrically opposed ideologies. Their war was an ideological war from which weapons could not be banished.

The film's ambivalent title must also be understood as a platform and concept. "The term Black Box has several meanings for me. There is literally the black box which blocks out all light and therefore cannot cast any light on events. Take Wolfgang Grams for instance: what really happened in Bad Kleinen? How did he die? Who knows, maybe a member of the GSG-9 special task force will one day confess on his death bed. However, Black Box is also a kind of black projection box, a box into which we can project everything that we know and believe. Alfred Herrhausen's death could become clearer, for instance, if we assume that the RAF had been infiltrated by secret service agents. After all, there have been theories that the Stasi (State Security of the GDR) or CIA were involved. My film merely offers possibilities and the projection area in this box is big enough for a whole variety of ideas. And then there is the Black Box on board every plane that records what happened during a catastrophe. That Black Box has still not been found. But the entanglement of contemporaries and survivors are still there, as are the wounds which have been ripped open by the losses." (Andres Veiel)

The statements by a whole series of people make the thoroughly contrary personalities of Grams and Herrhausen more plausible, but they do not overcome the irritation felt over the radical way of thinking and also way of life that were so characteristic of the two men. "This film is about the people Grams and Herrhausen, a kind of counter-concept to the black-and-white ideas of the rebellions in the 1970s. Why did the one man go underground as late as 1984? Who was killed by the RAF at that time? For many viewers, the film's greatest provocation probably lies in the common features uncovered by Veiel - the parallels between the calculating manager and the unscrupulous murderer or, to put it from the other side, between the ice-cold representative of big money and the rebel killed by the state." (Martina Knoben, epd Film)

Veiel's film research which always vacillates between near and far without seeking to establish a distance does not smooth any contradictions, nor does it presume to give answers. Nor does the film ever need them in view of the multitude of statements - simply collecting them must have required immense persuasion. BLACK BOX BRD is packed with information, not only in the verbal statements by Herrhausen's widow or Grams' parents. Viewers should also pay attention to the settings: the Grams' family home, Herrhausen's house, the idyllic garden houses to which the formerly militant left-wingers have retired and of course to Frankfurt, the German money metropolis, a city with more high-rise buildings than anywhere else in Germany. The panorama view obtained as the helicopter with camera approaches the banking district known as "Mainhattan" invariably provokes a number of associations - from Fredersen's tower in METROPOLIS to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Hans Günther Pflaum

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

2000/2001

Production Year

2001

color

color + b/w

Aspect Ratio

1:1,66

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Documentary

Genre

Biography / Portrait

Topic

Violence, Capitalism, Socialism / Communism, Extremism / Terrorism

Available Media

DCP, DVD

Original Version

German (de)

DCP

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian (ru)

DVD

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian (ru)