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Since June, the State Security Senate of the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main has been trying to solve the murder of Walter Lübcke. In addition to the alleged main culprit Stephan Ernst, Markus H. is also charged with allegedly being the intellectual arsonist. He is said to have agitated and instigated Ernst, until he went to the Lübcke family terrace at Wolfhagen-Istha in Hesse on the night of June 2, 2019 and shot the Kassel district president from a close range.
Markus H. is silent. He did not say anything about the allegations in the preliminary investigation and does not say anything in court either. Presumably in the hope that the evidence is not enough to convict him of complicity in the murder of the CDU politician.
His chances get worse that day: his ex-girlfriend Lisa-Marie D. is invited as a witness, the two have a four-year-old daughter together. During her interrogation by the police, D. made a drawing of her ex-partner, which should have supported and complemented the assessment of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
The 31-year-old does not initially lose a glance to the left towards her ex-boyfriend. Markus H. looks amused when he sees the woman, with whom he has had a custody battle for years, limping in the hallway due to a knee injury with a crutch.
Markus H. is a “right wing extremist and citizen of the Reich”
He and Lisa-Marie D. met in 2014 on an Internet platform, they became a couple in the spring of 2015 and had a two-year long distance relationship: Markus H. stayed at his apartment in Kassel, Lisa-Marie D in hers in Diemelsee, a municipality in northern Hesse. After the birth of their son, the two of them moved, apparently, with astonishing speed. Markus H. seems to have struggled with the role of the father. The couple separated in July 2017. When H. obtained his workbench and welding equipment from D’s apartment, he is said to have brought a friend with him: Stephan Ernst.
Lisa-Marie D. is a trained gardener and landscaper who worked at a security company, was allowed to carry a gun, and is currently looking for work. She has tattooed the back of her hands and, when asked by the court, said she had many other tattoos. Reason: “Dogs, dogs, dogs.” And then there is the writing “My loyalty is honor,” an oath, she says, that only applies to her dogs.
Attorney General Dieter Killmer reminds you of the tattooed Viking ship and a forbidden rune related to National Socialism. D. avoids a compromise with the scene on the right. He only admits that he is politically “fundamentally correct” today. However, he rejects violence. Later that day it turns out that he used to wear a swastika on his leg, which is now “heavily tattooed.”
The political attitude seems to have been only a subliminal basis of his relationship with H. Rather, D. impressed that H. – “a right-wing extremist and citizen of the Reich” – was “the sole determinant of his life.” “He never wanted to swim with the crowd. That appealed to me, I was more of a crowd.”
Markus H. called himself “Stadtreiniger” on the Internet
It was only a matter of time before he realized that this one-stop shop was becoming his association’s biggest problem. He describes H. as a “very quiet loner” with “psychopathic urges” and a pronounced contempt for women; like a narcissist who manipulates those around him. As an example, she describes: “He throws the word ‘asylum seekers’ into the room, thus starting a debate, remains smiling and watches.”
Markus H. was also on the Internet under the pseudonym “Stadtreiniger”. He chose the name symbolically, says D. He wanted to clean the city and the country of “foreign infiltration.” At home I slept on the sofa because otherwise there was no space; he had bought poisonous frogs, poisonous snakes, and cobras under false names, some of which died within days.
D. initially accepted his affinity for guns and even liked him himself. He came to shooting sports through H. and recalls joint shooting exercises at the shooting range of the “Schützenclub 1952 Sandershausen eV” and at the “Germania Cassel” (SSG) sports shooting club in Grebenstein. There he met Stephan Ernst, whom he found sympathetic.
Guns had the highest priority in H’s life, says D. His motto was: “We Germans have to arm ourselves: in America everyone has the right to own a gun. Germans are prevented from defending ourselves.” H. was convinced that “Germans would be exchanged for asylum seekers”. He spoke of “Umvolkung”. It is said that he manufactured the ammunition with which H. was fired using a loading press to reload cartridges.
“Live your life how you want”
According to his ex-girlfriend, H. not only handled weapons, but also experimented with explosives. He is said to have ordered the necessary chemicals on his behalf on the internet, manufactured New Year’s Eve pebbles and triggered test explosions. H. once announced to him that, in the event of a serious illness, he would fiddle with an explosive belt and “take as many knacks as possible to his death.” “Only then did I do something right once in my life,” H. said. “Does Kanaken represent what?” Asks Chief Justice Thomas Sagebiel. “For foreigners.”
There was always “this aversion” that H. felt towards foreigners and Jews, says D. His girlfriends should only be European, he explained. In a dispute, he alleged that Stephan Ernst had once advised him to seek out a “Russian-German” like Ernst. “At least she is quiet and loyal”, and as a man you can “continue living your life however you want.”
“Great friends” were the two, D. had testified during a police questioning. They assume, if Ernst had planned the attack on Walter Lübcke, that H. was in the plan. The woman puts this in perspective in court: “The two were honest with each other, they harmonized.” Especially with regard to asylum policy in Germany. You don’t want to be able to judge which of the two was more dominant.
The night of October 14, 2015 plays an important role in the murder of Walter Lübcke. Lisa-Marie D. recalls: At the time, Markus H. attended a meeting with Stephan Ernst at the community center in Lohfelden near Kassel. There, Walter Lübcke spoke about the initial reception facility for refugees in an empty hardware store and drew the ire of some listeners. Especially that of the two defendants.
Ernst is “completely insane”
Markus H. was “out of his mind,” says D. He showed him the video he shot at the event and said he wanted to make the extract with Lübcke’s quote “absolutely public”. “They were both almost impossible to hold,” recalls D. Ernst, “completely screwed up,” H. told him.
Judge Lars Rhode upholds D. what she told the police: H. said at the time that Walter Lübcke had to be “hanged.” “Yes, it is true,” says D. in court. It is likely that the Federal Prosecutor’s Office interprets this statement as a clear will to use violence on the part of the accused. Also, an image file that was saved on his computer: Shows the Chancellor as a target from a distance of 25 meters. In his confession, Ernst stated how H. had once taken that target with him to target practice and announced that he would also create one in the likeness of Walter Lübcke.
After the citizens’ meeting in Lohfelden, they “incited” each other, says D. on the day of the negotiations. She was also upset and hasty with Lübcke’s words.
Judge Christoph Koller talks to you about the custody dispute with Markus H. It could be that D. deliberately wanted to put her ex-boyfriend in a bad position to get sole custody. The witness reacts calmly. Long before the “disaster with Dr. Lübcke”, she hit the emergency brakes and sought a level of nurturing with H. However, her hatred for her outweighs her interest in her daughter. Koller wants to know why this is so. “I am as bad a woman for her as her mother.”
