How do you have to feel when you see the picture of your dead friend in the newspapers and TV news every day? Headlines with full details of the horrific events springing up around every corner? Reports in which every detail is relentlessly exploited? The private loss becomes a public event?
In an NDR documentary by the filmmakers Simona Dürnberg and Kira Gantner, friends and confidants of Dominik Brunner are now expressing themselves for the first time. Brunner died on September 12, 2009, a Saturday, as a result of a fight with young people at the Solln S-Bahn station. The 50-year-old intervened on the S-Bahn when young people threatened violence against a group of high school students and pressed them for money. He alerts the police, gets out with the school group and the young people in Solln, where the situation escalates. Brunner falls to the ground, where the then 17 and 18-year-olds hit him in the head with punches and kicks. Two hours later, Dominik Brunner dies in the Großhadern Clinic.
Dieter Frey, professor of social psychology at the Ludwig Maximilian University, who researches civil courage, and Roland Autenrieth, one of the defenders of the perpetrators, have their say. Ten months later, the accused were sentenced to almost ten and seven years in prison for murder and dangerous bodily harm.
The two defendants, aged 17 and 18 at the time, were sentenced to long prison terms.
(Photo: Michael Dalder/dpa)
Brunner’s former partner Petra Pohlmeyer is still concerned today with whether it would have been different if she had been there. She was only one S-Bahn behind Brunner, both had separated after eating and shopping in the city center and wanted to meet again at his home in Solln. She doesn’t blame herself, she says, but perhaps could have rectified the situation. For the film, she returned to the place where she lost her longtime friend for the first time.
Brunner is stylized as a hero nationwide, as a shining example of courage and civil courage. There are minutes of silence nationwide, public rallies, a foundation, a Dominik Brunner house. In Poing, a junior high school is named after him, and paths and streets are dedicated to him. A whole country mourns, many honors are bestowed upon it.
Thousands take part in minutes of silence and rallies – here the ecumenical prayer for the dead at the S-Bahn station in Solln.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Public interest did not make coping easier for his friend Claus Girnghuber, it was rather a hindrance. “He was our friend who just died,” he says. Brunner also never wanted to be a hero, just had a strong sense of justice.
In the process, contradictions and doubts about the previous version suddenly emerged. According to the autopsy, none of the injuries led to Brunner’s death, but cardiac arrest. And according to a statement, Brunner got rid of his jacket and bag and was the first to strike.
The friends are annoyed by the debate about who struck first
These discussions about “first blow – not first blow” and the cause of death would have “animal annoyed and upset him,” says Charly Weinberger, another friend. Also the subject of perpetrators: He does not forgive them, but they are now completely irrelevant to him.
The film also raises questions about Brunner’s behavior and subsequent heroization. Does society need heroes and why? And how difficult it is for the defense to scratch at the base of public prejudice.
However, the documentary also conveys a close proximity to the protagonists, which involuntarily raises questions about how one deals with such a situation. That was the intention of the two filmmakers. “It was important to us to choose a topic that we can all identify with, something that everyone can experience,” says Simona Dürnberg.
There were no longer any relatives who could have asked her. The mother died shortly after Brunner’s death, the father a few years ago. Brunner had no siblings. “It was just a small nuclear family,” says Simona Dürnberg. Petra Pohlmeyer was only added at short notice, she thought about it for a long time and needed time to make her decision.
She and her colleague quickly got stuck in the case during their research. “He touched us very much and was worth telling.” A case that seemed obvious at first glance, but turned out to be much more complex in the course of the court proceedings. About a man who had the right intention, but perhaps should have approached and consulted others, and perpetrators who should never have acted in this way.
The film “Deadly Civil Courage: The Brunner Case” can be seen in the documentary series “The Scar” in the ARD/NDR media library.