In 1981, the Berlin Wall still symbolically separated East and West Germany, as the country had been divided since the end of World War II.
In March of that year, in the city of Lubeck in what was then West Germany, a 30-year-old mother walked into a courtroom with a Beretta and fired seven shots into the back of Klaus Grabowski as he stood trial for the rape and murder of her 7-year-old daughter, Anna.
The vigilante murder shocked the world, creating a media frenzy and eliciting outpourings of sympathy and support for the bereaved mother, Marianne Bachmeier.
At the same time, details of Bachmeier’s own history led to salacious tabloid accounts and, eventually, to documentary and “based on a true story” films adapting her story.
Even today, a viral video purporting to depict Marianne Bachmeier slaying her daughter’s killer makes the rounds on the internet.
So, what really happened… and what became of Marianne Bachmeier?
Who is Marianne Bachmeier?
Born and raised in Lower Saxony in what was then West Germany, Marianne Bachmeier came from a troubled home. Her father was a previous member of the Waffen-SS who lived in what one German newspaper called an “alcoholic haze.”
When she was young, her parents divorced and her new stepfather was someone Bachmeier described as “dictatorial.”
By 16, she was out on her own and already pregnant with her first child, which she gave up for adoption. At 18, she had her second child, again put up for adoption. Marianne Bachmeier had not had an easy life by the time she became pregnant with her third child.
When Anna, Marianne Bachmeier’s third child, was born in November of 1972, Bachmeier’s life had achieved at least some small measure of stability, but she was still a young, single mother at the age of 22, living what many would later character as a “bohemian” lifestyle.
Bachmeier worked at a pub and, since she didn’t have child care, she brought Anna along, the child often sleeping behind the bar.
The Sad Death of Anna Bachmeier
What Anna’s early life was like has been distorted by various fictions inspired by the life story of Anna and her mother.
Two German films were released in 1984, just a few short years after Marianne Bachmeier pulled the trigger, and both depicted what could have been exaggerated versions of Marianne and Anna’s life together.
Here’s what we know. Anna was seven years old in 1980, when she decided to skip school after having an argument with her mother. She went to a neighbor’s house—one that she had visited before, to play with his kittens.
That house was the home of Klaus Grabowski.
Grabowski was a convicted sexual offender who had voluntarily undergone chemical castration in 1976 after he was convicted of sexually assaulting young girls—by some accounts, including his own daughter.
However, he subsequently underwent hormone treatment in an alleged attempt to reverse the castration. When Anna arrived at his home, he held her captive for several hours, sexually assaulting her before finally strangling her to death.
He then packed her small body into a box and left it near the canal.
Anna and Marianne Bachmeier's gravestone
Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsMarianne Bachmeier Courtroom Shooting
During his trial, Klaus Grabowski allegedly claimed that 7-year-old Anna had seduced him and that he had only killed her after she tried to extort money from him in order to stay silent about the assault.
His defense attorney argued that hormonal imbalances due to his hormone treatments had made him violent.
On March 6, 1981, during the third day of Grabowski’s trial, Marianne Bachmeier walked into the courtroom.
According to an eyewitness account, translated from German, she “pulled out a pistol and emptied the entire magazine. Then she came back out of the courtroom, threw the pistol on the floor, and allowed herself to be immediately led away.”
Of the seven shots she fired, six of them fatally hit Grabowski in the back. “I wanted to kill him,” Bachmeier later told a judge.
According to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, “Marianne Bachmeier struck a chord of open and repressed feelings of hatred and fear in the general consciousness and collective unconscious.”
What Happened to Marianne Bachmeier?
On March 2, 1983, Marianne Bachmeier was convicted of manslaughter and illegal possession of a firearm. Though she was initially faced with a harsher charge, the court decided that “she acted spontaneously under exceptional circumstances.”
She was sentenced to 6 years in prison but released after serving only 3. After her release, she left Germany and lived abroad until 1996.
At the age of 46, Marianne Bachmeier passed away—cause of death: pancreatic cancer. She was buried in Lubeck, Germany, next to her daughter, Anna.
Public support for Bachmeier’s actions was initially very high. Supporters gathered outside the courtroom, chanting, “Marianne, we understand you!”
Bachmeier was said to have received as many as 15,000 letters while in jail. She sold the rights to her story to the German magazine Stern for roughly 100,000 Deutsche Marks, which she used to help cover her legal costs.
However, the details of her life that came out somewhat eroded popular support for her position, as “the public’s ideal image of the vengeful mother did not long withstand the relentlessly curious gaze of the media,” which seemingly revealed a woman who “did not conform to bourgeois norms of law and order […] raising her child between her own pub and an alternative lifestyle in the countryside, and seemingly unconcerned with marriage certificates and parental supervision.”
Marie Colbin in "No Time for Tears: The Bachmeier Case"
Photo Credit: Hark BohmIs the Marianne Bachmeier Video Real?
In recent years, a viral video has begun making the rounds on social media. In it, a woman in a long coat walks into a courtroom, draws a pistol, and impassively empties it in the direction of the camera.
The video is usually shared with Marianne Bachmeier’s story attached to it, claiming (or at least implying) that it is actual footage of Bachmeier’s act of vigilante justice.
But is the Marianne Bachmeier video real?
Yes and no. The footage really is connected to the case, but it isn’t of Marianne Bachmeier. Within just a few years of her arrest, there were two German films released based on her story.
Anna’s Mother was one and No Time for Tears was the other, both released in 1984. These aren’t the only films to have been inspired by her story, either.
There are several Marianne Bachmeier documentaries available, including a German film detailing the last years of her life. She also published an autobiography in 1994.
Instead of showing Marianne Bachmeier’s actual killing of Klaus Grabowski, the viral video is a scene from the movie No Time for Tears, with German actress Marie Colbin playing the role of Marianne Bachmeier, for which she won the German Film Award for Best Actress.
