Hanns-Martin Schleyer (May 1, 1915 – October 18, 1977) was an SS officer, a German business executive and employer and industry representative, serving as President of the two influential organizations Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and Federation of German Industries (BDI). While serving in both functions, he was kidnapped on September 5, 1977 by far left militant organisation Red Army Faction (RAF) and murdered one and a half months later after the German government did not give in to RAF's demands. The abduction and murder are commonly seen as the climax of the RAF campaign in 1977 (German Autumn).
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Born in Offenburg, Baden, Schleyer came from a national-conservative family. His father was a judge and his great-great uncle was Johann Martin Schleyer, a renowned Catholic priest who invented the Volapük language. Hanns-Martin Schleyer started studying law at the University of Heidelberg in 1933, where he joined the Corps Suevia, a student fraternity. In 1939 he obtained a doctorate at the University of Innsbruck.
Very early in his life he became a follower of National Socialism. After a stint in the Hitler Youth, the youth organization of the National Socialist Party, he joined the SS in 1933 and was an Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant). During his studies, he was engaged in the Nazi student movement. An early, important mentor of this time was the student leader Gustav Adolf Scheel. In the summer of 1935, Schleyer accused his fraternity of lacking "national socialist spirit". He left the fraternity when the Kösener SC, an umbrella organization, refused to exclude Jewish members. Schleyer started a career as a leader in the national socialist student movement and, in 1937, he joined the Nazi party. At first he was the president of the student body of the University of Heidelberg. Later, Reichsstudentenführer Scheel sent him to post-Anschluss Austria, where he occupied the same position at the University of Innsbruck. In 1939 Schleyer married Waltrude Ketterer (1916–2008), daughter of the physician, city councillor of Munich and SA-Obergruppenführer Emil Ketterer. They had four sons.
During World War II, Schleyer was drafted and spent time on the Western Front. After an accident, he was discharged and appointed president of the student body in Prague. In this position he met Bernhard Adolf, one of the German economic leaders in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, who brought Schleyer to the industrial association of Bohemia and Moravia in 1943. Schleyer became an important deputy and adviser to Bernhard Adolf. On May 5, 1945, Schleyer escaped from the city shortly after the start of the Prague uprising.
After World War II, Schleyer was a prisoner of war for three years, because he had held the rank of an officer (Untersturmführer) in the SS. In 1948 he was repatriated.
In 1949 he became secretary of the chamber of commerce of Baden-Baden. In 1951, Schleyer joined Daimler-Benz, where he climbed the ladder, with the help of his mentor Fritz Könecke, to be a member of the board of directors. At the end of the 1960s, he was almost appointed chairman of the board, but lost the position to Joachim Zahn. Successively, Schleyer got more involved in employers' associations, and was a leader in employer and industry associations. He was simultaneously president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI).
His uncompromising acts during industrial protests in the 1960s such as lockouts, his history with the Nazi party, and his aggressive appearance, especially on TV (the New York Times described him as a "caricature of an ugly capitalist"), made Schleyer the ideal enemy for the 1968 student movement.[1] A pocket book novel by Bernt Engelmann, "Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz" from 1974, also created a public image of Schleyer being the key figure of a conservative network with the aim of bringing Helmut Kohl and Kurt Biedenkopf to power in the West German federal government in Bonn.
Schleyer was kidnapped on September 5, 1977 by the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as Baader-Meinhof Gang, in Cologne. His abduction was planned by Siegfried Haag but he was arrested in 1976, so his replacement, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, carried out the abduction. It has been said often that Schleyer's convoy was stopped by one of the group (Sieglinde Hofmann) pushing a pram into the road where it was to pass by. However, as evident by photographs of the ambush site, Schleyer's car was in fact stopped by the kidnappers reversing a car into the path of Schleyer's vehicle, causing the Mercedes he was being driven in to crash. Once the convoy was stopped, Hofmann and others who leapt out of parked cars nearby (Peter-Jurgen Boock, Stefan Wisniewski and Willi-Peter Stoll) all started firing semi-automatic weapons at Schleyer's convoy. Two police officers and Schleyer's driver Heinz Marcisz as well as his bodyguard were killed. Schleyer survived the ambush and was subsequently kidnapped. The RAF then tried to persuade the German government to release imprisoned members of their group.
Schleyer was hidden in a highrise in Erftstadt (Liblar) near Cologne. Later, he was taken across the border into the Netherlands, and subsequently moved to Brussels, where he spent the majority of his time in captivity. The German police came very close to finding Schleyer, but due to lack of internal communication could not rescue him. Several local police officers were convinced that Schleyer was held in the aforementioned highrise close to the Autobahn. One investigator had even rung the doorbell of the apartment in question, but nobody had conveyed this information to the crisis center of the federal police.
After 43 days, the German government had not given in to the demands of the kidnappers. Hours after the German counterterrorism unit GSG 9 ended the Palestinian hijack of Lufthansa Flight 181, the imprisoned RAF members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in their prison cells having killed themselves. Irmgard Möller was found seriously injured.
After Schleyer's kidnappers received the news of the deaths of their imprisoned comrades, Schleyer was taken from Brussels on October 18, 1977, and shot dead en route to Mulhouse, France, where his body was left in the trunk of a green Audi 100 on the rue Charles Péguy. After the kidnappers phoned the location of the Audi to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur office in Stuttgart, Schleyer's body was recovered on October 19.
On September 9, 2007 former RAF member Peter-Jürgen Boock mentioned that the RAF members Rolf Heissler and Stefan Wisniewski were responsible for Schleyer's death.[2]
Schleyer's widow, Waltrude Schleyer, actively campaigned against clemency for his kidnappers and other members of the RAF.[3] She died on March 21, 2008, in Stuttgart.[3]
