Shootout Below the Station - Bahnhofplatz
On 19 November 1979, four members of West Germany's Red Army Faction fled a 548,000 franc bank robbery into the Shopville underpass right below this square, where a gunfight with police killed a woman of 56 and badly wounded an officer; Rolf Clemens Wagner was caught the same day and jailed for life.
Sobre este lugar
Bahnhofplatz is Zurich's grand arrival hall in the open air: the sandstone arch of the 1871 main station, Richard Kissling's 1889 monument to Alfred Escher, and the start of Bahnhofstrasse, with the Shopville shopping passage running beneath it all. On the morning of 19 November 1979 that passage became a crime scene. Four members of the Red Army Faction had just robbed a Swiss Volksbank branch on Bahnhofstrasse of 548,000 francs and escaped by bicycle toward the station. When a lone city police officer followed them underground, they opened fire among shoppers and commuters. The officer was hit three times but survived; a 56 year old woman passing through was killed in the exchange of fire, and outside a businesswoman was shot as the fugitives tried to seize her car. Rolf Clemens Wagner was arrested on Bahnhofquai the same day and sentenced to life by a Zurich jury court in 1980, while Christian Klar and two accomplices escaped to France. Today commuters stream up the escalators without a second glance, but the polished marble below once echoed with the most violent minutes in the square's history.
Datos clave
- 548000 Swiss francs — Taken from the Swiss Volksbank branch on Bahnhofstrasse at a quarter past nine on Monday, 19 November 1979.
- 56 years old — The age of the passer by who was killed in the exchange of fire in the Shopville underpass beneath this square.
- 3 bullets — The number of times the first police officer to confront the gang underground was hit; he survived and returned to duty.