On August 16, 1988, the Gladbeck hostage drama began with a bank robbery. It ended in disaster – for the police and the media. starReporter Jürgen Petschull reported on the crime at the time, which is still causing debate decades later.
Gladbeck in the Recklinghausen district, mid-August 1988: Two armed men break into a Deutsche Bank branch. What is planned as a bank robbery ends in days of public kidnapping across the country and in other European countries. In the end there are three dead: the two hostages Silke Bischoff and Emanuele de Giorgi are shot dead, the police officer Ingo Hagen dies in a traffic accident on the sidelines of the operation. Dhe crime turns into a disaster for the police and the media, with repercussions to this day.
In 1988, stern also reported extensively on the hostage drama in Gladbeck in numerous articles, first in issue 35 of August 25 under the title “And everyone was watching…” by reporter Jürgen Petschull.
To mark the 35th anniversary of the crime, we republish the document, uncommented and unchanged, using the 1988 spelling.