Said Nesar Hashemi, Hamza Kenan Kurtović, Ferhat Unvar, Sedat Gürbüz, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Gökhan Gültekin, Vili Viorel Păun, Mercedes Kierpacz and Kaloyan Velkov. These are the names of the nine people who were murdered by a 43-year-old neo-Nazi on February 19, 2020 before he killed his bedridden mother and finally killed himself as a tenth sacrifice. A racially motivated killing spree of a right-wing radical individual perpetrator who put all of Germany in shock-before the Corona-Lockdowns paralyzed the world a few days later and then determined the headlines for years.
Also a cheap opportunity to quickly turn the extent of the authorities and police failure under the carpet and when it comes to clarifying how it could get as far and why was not traded faster and more targeted on the day . In any case, this thought creeps up when watching the documentary “The German people“By Marcin Wierzchowski.
The left behind
This remains consistently among the surviving members of the murdered of Hanau, with grieving parents, brothers, friends. They feel left alone in their grief and with all their questions – they were not even informed of the death of their son, says an even stunned, inconsistent father. The next morning he went to work as if nothing had happened, while the pictures from the crime scenes have long since walked through all media worldwide.
And then these victim descriptions, which were published: his dark blue, blue-eyed son was described as “oriental-Südländisch”, probably because of his indignant name. A racist murder act is followed by further racist discrimination on the part of the police, which is entrusted with the clarification of the murders. The attribution on the part of the perpetrator, who wanted to exclude his victims from what he saw as the “German people”, was adopted by the authorities, whether consciously or unconsciously.
“The German People” fills the cinema screen in a monolithic digital black weld.
A good one and a half years later, it turned out that 13 police officers who were involved as a member of a special task command were part of an even larger right -wing extremist network in the Hessian police. Neo -Nazis in the civil service hunted a mentally relatives – did some of them even intentionally try to give him an undetected escape? Again, it should not be looked so closely that the work of the Hanau police was improving at individual points, but was largely excellent, it was announced. After all, a racist attitude of police officers does not mean that they do not do their job well, according to the then Hessian Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU).
These are all things that make first and then angry. The fact that we can know them today is not necessarily due to the work of the investigating authorities, but due to the tirelessly insistent insistence of the mourners relatives to provide sufficient clarification of responsibilities and open questions. Because the initial investigations were hired without further ado, only the insistence of the bereaved on a committee of inquiry – as well as the research work of the documentary artist for Forensic Architecture – brought the full extent of the failures and failure that evening.
The fight is still not over
Director Marcin Wierzchowski dedicates her struggle, her grief and – last but not least – to her never gone anger a very monumental documentary. “The German People” is kept in a monolithic digital black weld and takes a lot of time not to press all these feelings, activism and the helpless anger into a schematic format. He also seems a lot to us: some things are redundant, sometimes you seem to fight against windmills and displacement with the relatives, and if something is supposed to change, it takes years more tireless. Incidentally, not all of which end victoriously: the monument to the victims of February 19, 2020, over whose location at the end of the film is violently disputed, will not be built at the desired location.
It should be on the central market square of Hanau, so the bereaved demanded. Right next to the monument of the most famous sons in the city, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Because the murders are also part of the heritage of the city of Hanau, whether one wanted it or not – and the murdered of February 19 are sons and daughters of Hanaus. Due to her migrant family stories, some of which were several generations, the perpetrator wanted to ponder her from what he understood as “German”. It is all the more important to not make you strangers again after her death. Your monument will not be on the Hanau marketplace, but the victims of January 19 were torn from the middle of the German society. “The German People” is a dedication on the monument of the brothers Grimm – and Said Nesar Hashemi, Hamza Kenan Kurtović, Ferhat Unvar, Sedat Gürbüz, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Gökhan Gültekin, Vili Viorel Păun, Mercedes Kierpacz and Kaloyan Velkov were part of it.
Conclusion: A massive, moving and demanding documentary, which accompanies the survivors of the murder victims of the Hanau attack on February 19, 2020 for over two hours – through grief and anger and the sometimes successful, sometimes unsuccessful struggle for education and justice. “The German people” affects and angrily.
We saw “The German People” as part of the Berlinale 2025, where it was shown as a Berlinale Special.