A hostage crisis which gripped the German nation 30 years ago is being recounted in a TV thriller, sparking debate about the roles the police, media and a voyeuristic public had to play in the disastrous outcome of the event.

The Gladbeck hostage situation unfolded over 54 hours in the summer of 1988, after Dieter Degowski and Hans-Jürgen Rösner, both already convicts and armed, robbed a branch of Deutsche Bank in the Ruhr valley town and took hostages away in cars and a hijacked bus. Three people, including two teenage hostages, and a policeman whose vehicle crashed, were killed.

The gangsters’ odyssey, from 16 to 18 August 1988, involved a road chase from the Ruhr, northwards to Bremen, and into the Netherlands before they were intercepted by special forces on a motorway near Bonn.

The makers of the two-part dramatisation, called Gladbeck, broadcast this week by ARD, said the film was an attempt to dissect the dramatic events which continued to traumatise those involved.

The apparently coincidental timing of the broadcast with the release of the ringleader, Degowski, has prompted an angry response from hostage survivors as well as the relatives of those who died.

Condensing the calamitous events into just three hours the TV thriller captures the chaotic state of the police operation, which was hampered by indecision, faulty radio equipment and a string of mishaps, including the breaking of a key in the handcuffs of a female accomplice, Degowski’s girlfriend, Marion Löblich.

The thriller depicts the media, on the gangsters’ tail from the start, as being in closer pursuit of the criminals than the police, but also portrays their incessant hunt for the best pictures and soundbites. The general public is never far behind, glued to their TV screens and radios as they follow the unfolding events, caught between feelings of fascination and horror.

Clip from the TV drama Gladbeck. Photograph: ARD/Degeto/Ziegler Film/Martin V

One of the most shocking scenes in the film recreates an interview Degowski gave in the back of a car during which he answers questions into the journalists’ microphones while holding his pistol to the throat of the 18-year-old hostage Silke Bischoff. Bischoff was asked in the interview: “What’s it like to have a gun held to your neck?” Bischoff was later killed by Rösner.

The TV drama has prompted an avalanche of chat shows, magazine features and documentaries, in which former police officers, journalists (some of whom forged careers on the back of Gladbeck), survivors and the bereaved, have recalled and analysed the events of 88 and told how it affected their lives.

Johnny Bastiampillai, now a doctor, was six and had just emigrated with his family from Sri Lanka when he was taken hostage on the bus. He said he had never got over the shock. “I believe that the police had a great deal of responsibility for allowing it to escalate,” he told the late-night chat show host, Sandra Maischberger, following the broadcast of the drama’s first episode on Wednesday evening. “I will not be watching the film, because it’s like a homage to Degowski who has now been freed.”

He said he was also shocked to have found out that the accomplice Rösner was due to be released, pending good behaviour, next year.

Emanuele De Giorgi, the 15-year-old son of Italian immigrant parents, was shot in the head in revenge for the arrest of Degowski’s girlfriend. His family said they had never recovered from his murder, and were appalled to hear of the perpetrator’s release. “He is free, while we’ll suffer for a lifetime,” said Fabio, 40, Emanuele’s brother. “I often dream of him. He’s sitting in the bus and then the shot comes, and I wake up.”

Actors Alexander Scheer, left (playing Degowski), and Sascha Alexander Geršak (Rösner) in the dramatisation. Photograph: ARD/Degeto/Ziegler Film/Martin V

His sister, Tatiana, who was nine at the time and sat on her brother’s lap in the bus, said she had never stopped hearing his words in her head as he whispered to her: “Don’t be scared, I’ll protect you.”

Udo Röbel, a journalist with the Cologne newspaper Express, who went on to edit the tabloid Bild, was both praised and reprimanded at the time for climbing into the car holding the hostages and helping direct the criminals out of the city, sitting next to Bischoff while Degowski held the gun to her. Röbel has since admitted his mistakes, saying: “Journalistically we totally messed up.”

The hostage takers themselves consumed the media coverage on the car radio and newspapers, which they stopped off to buy at motorway service stations, and appeared to be buoyed by the attention.

Frank Plasberg, a young broadcast journalist at the time, recalled jumping on his Vespa with his recording device and hurrying to the scene of the hostage crisis in Cologne, as Degowski and Rösner held a pseudo press conference in a pedestrian zone and journalists bought the hostage takers cups of coffee, as the police looked on.

In one of the more memorable scenes for those who watched in 1988, Rösner was captured on live television putting his pistol in his mouth and saying: “To be dead is better than to be without money.”

Plasberg, now 60 and one of German television’s most prominent celebrity anchors, did an interview with Rösner. It was never aired. He told Bild: “Rösner sat in the driver seat, his windscreen down, and gave interview after interview, like it was a journalistic drive-in … we were all in some way culpable.”





