Cornelia "Conny" Wessmann was a 24-year-old student who died on 17 November 1989, during a

police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest a ...

raid in

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

Events

On that day,

neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy (often white supremacy), attack r ...

s rioted in the city centre of Göttingen. At that time, it was often the case that neo-Nazis attacked

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in so ...

institutions or refugee centres. Antifa groups and other people tried to stop the attacks of the Nazis by mobilizing people with

telephone chain A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...

s. As Wessmann was part of such a group. When her group arrived at the scene, the neo-Nazis were already stopped by the police and brought out of town. The police then followed her group which planned to dissolve near the

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

campus. Close to the busy ''Weender Landstrasse'', the group was attacked by police forces. Trying to escape over the street, Wessmann collided with a car and died.

Aftermath

Left-wing groups then blamed the police because of the sudden attack at this dangerous location. The incident got some attention in the media and the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundati ...

put forward an inquiry in the

Parliament of Lower Saxony The Lower Saxon Landtag () or the Parliament of Lower Saxony is the state diet of the German state of Lower Saxony. It convenes in Hanover and currently consists of 146 members, consisting of four parties. Since 2022 the majority is a coalition o ...

. To the criticism of the police contributed the fact that the police discussed over radio before the raid whether they "flatten them" (German: ''plattmachen''). The meaning of this term was debated in the period immediately after the death and into the investigation. The official investigation concluded that neither the police nor the car driver could be held responsible for what happened that day.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wessmann 1965 births 1989 deaths Autonomism People from Göttingen Road incident deaths in Germany Murdered anarchists German anarchists