German Official Slain; Oversaw Sales in East

BONN —  The head of Germany’s most controversial agency was shot to death and his wife wounded late Monday in their Rhine River home, police said. Left-wing terrorists reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, the 58-year-old chairman of the government trust overseeing the post-Communist economic restructuring of eastern Germany, was killed just four days after an east Berlin branch of his trust was firebombed. No one was injured in the arson attack.

Government spokesman Dieter Vogel described the slaying of Rohwedder as “shocking and incomprehensible.”

“It robs Germany of a man who, out of patriotic conviction, worked harder than perhaps anyone else to lay the foundation for the economic reconstruction of former East Germany,” he said.

Vogel said Chancellor Helmut Kohl, vacationing in Austria, had been informed of the murder.

Police immediately blockaded bridges over the Rhine after the 11:30 p.m. shooting in Rohwedder’s Duesseldorf house. No arrests were made, and no weapon was found.

Rohwedder’s wife, Hergard, was reported in satisfactory condition. The couple was in the study when the shots were fired, authorities said.

“The shots came from outside. We have no further information at this point,” said police spokesman Friedhelm Werner.

Werner confirmed reports that the French news agency Agence France-Presse had received a call in its Paris bureau from someone claiming responsibility for the assassination on behalf of the terrorist Red Army Faction.

The leftist guerrillas have been linked to several deadly bombings and attacks against West German industrialists, politicians and other prominent figures.

The government trust headed by Rohwedder, known as the Treuhand, is charged with the formidable task of privatizing some 8,000 former East German firms over the next several years.

The agency has come under bitter criticism in eastern Germany for its policies and has been blamed by some for escalating unemployment and bankruptcies there.

The discontent has triggered public protest, including mass demonstrations and warning strikes. A poll published Monday by the mass-circulation daily Bild reported that 84% of 803 eastern Germans surveyed felt that the Bonn government had not kept promises made last fall when East and West Germany merged.

Investment in the crippled eastern states has been relatively slow, and the Treuhand already has shut down more than 300 companies it deemed beyond repair. Another 1,000 have been privatized.

But critics have accused the Treuhand of moving too slowly in seeking investors for the former state-run companies.

Rohwedder, a member of the opposition Social Democrats, was credited with turning around the Dortmund steel concern Hoesch before giving up that chairmanship.