„You were saying that your sister’s husband was not of pure German blood?“ (Olaf Klemke, Defence Attorney of Ralf Wohlleben)

All parties had been intently awaiting the questioning of accused Carsten Schultze, this time by the defence of accused Ralf Wohlleben, which took up most of this trial day. Schultze had originally refused to answer questions of the Wohlleben defence, finding it unfair that he had “made himself nude” by testifying in detail while Wohlleben did not testify at all. In the meantime, Schultze has realized that it would be good for the credibility of his statement, and would likely lead to a less lengthy sentence for himself, if he also answers these questions.

Schultze has massively incriminated Wohlleben, stating that it was Wohlleben who had upheld the contact to the three undercover Nazis, that it was Wohlleben who had told him to buy the Ceska pistol and give it to “the Three”. Schultze’s testimony is particularly credible given that it has already led to the uncovering of an additional NSU bombing attack.

Accordingly, parties were expecting a particularly intensive questioning. But the Wohlleben defence did not live up to the situation: hours upon hours of questions which tested Schultze’s memory, but never left him hard-pressed to answer. However, Wohlleben’s defence attorney Klemke showed his true colors by asking Schultze “„You were saying that your sister’s husband was not of pure German blood?“, showing his own closeness to his client’s ideology.

The questioning of Schultze took about five hours. The end of the trial day was marked by a motion from victim’s counsel Stolle from Berlin. Stolle moved that a “birthday newspaper” which had been found in the apartment of André Kapke, also suspected of NSU involvement, be admitted into evidence. This paper had been prepared by Ralf Wohlleben and a mutual friend on the occasion of André Kapke’s birthday on 24 August 1998, following the style of the “Bild-Zeitung”, Germany’s (in-)famous yellow press newspaper. It contains “funny” articles such about the Buchenwald death camp being “converted into a ‘gas station’” and the like, but above all a number of homages to Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe who had gone undercover shortly before.

Wohlleben’s self-descriptions in that paper show him as someone who had been deeply racist even as a small child and who was willing to kill in furtherance of his hatred against anyone not fitting into his extreme right-wing world view.

Wohlleben knew what he was writing about. Mundlos, Zschäpe, Böhnhardt, Gerlach and Kapke were his closest confidants, with whom he shared both a friendship lasting years and a common political organization. Wohlleben knew that in laying down his racist murder fantasies, he was not only describing himself, but also speaking on behalf of the entire “Kameradschaft Jena”. It is apparent that he hit the nail on the head – after all Kapke had held on to the paper for many years.