Two fates that are intertwined: First, Rudi Arnstadt dies in the early 1960s from a bullet from a BGS officer's gun, and three and a half decades later the shooter is murdered. Why? The three-part “ARD Crime Time” with the title “Stasi Revenge or Robbery Murder – Who Shot Hans Plushke?” is looking for answers.
Rasdorf/Hünfeld – The history and events surrounding this unsolved case still raise questions today: There is Rudi Arnstadt, captain of the National People's Army, whose death in August 1962 threatens to overturn the already fragile balance between East and West. He dies on the invisible but deadly line that divides Germany into two ideological worlds.
Three-part series on the murder of Hans Pelzke in the ARD media library
When federal border guards and GDR border troops meet at the border, a firefight breaks out. Presumably in self-defense, BGS officer Hans Plushke fires a shot from the hip and hits Arnstadt. Old Stasi cadres vow retaliation.
And then there is the shooter Hans Plushke, who later worked as a taxi driver in Hünfeld and only made it public eight years after the fall of the Wall in a TV report on the Hessenschau that it was he who fired the fatal shot at Arnstadt. Months later, Plushke's life ended abruptly and brutally on a dark night in 1998. He is murdered in the same way as Rudi Arnstadt once died: a bullet hits him in the right eye. The motive is a mystery: Was the murder done out of revenge or was an attempted robbery gone wrong?
The ARD is now looking for criminal clues again. In the new “ARD Crime Time” season, the events of the night of the murder are reconstructed and analyzed by, among others, the head of the investigation at the time, a secret service expert and a former federal border guard. At Point Alpha on the former German-German border, board member and head of studies Philipp Metzler also answered questions.
TV report
The three-part “ARD Crime Time” season “Stasi Revenge or Robbery Murder – Who Shot Hans Plushke?” can be seen from Wednesday, December 18th in the ARD media library and on January 8th, 2025 at 9:45 p.m. on hr television . The author of the three episodes is Markus Cebulla and the editor is Jacqueline Paus.
The Hünfelder Land was the filming location for the short series in July. A historic BMW taxi was used to re-enact scenes from a murder case from 1998.
The television team also went into the archives for their research Fulda newspaper accompanied by editor and true crime expert Daniela Petersen. She will also have her say in the TV report. In the past, the 40-year-old has reported on the Arnstadt and Plushke cases several times.
Most recently, together with her colleague Sabrina Mehler, she devoted herself to this mystery in German-German history in the podcast “Murder on Sunday”. Both spoke to, among others, the public prosecutor Lars Streibger, who was investigating at the time, and the then federal border guard Wolfgang Christmann.
