Was the SPD vice president of the Bundestag poisoned?

Source: Thomas Oysmüller, TKP.at, 20 Aug 2024

The death of lockdown critic Thomas Oppermann is now almost forgotten. It will soon be four years since the sudden death, and Wolfgang Wodarg has now spoken about the explosive background.

There are new highly explosive clues surrounding the death of former Bundestag Vice-President Thomas Oppermann (SPD) in October 2020. Wolfgang Wodarg suspects that poisoning could be behind it. The public prosecutor’s office is not investigating.

This was triggered by a recent interview with Wodarg in the magazine Multipolar. Editor-in-chief Paul Schreyer, one of Germany’s most important investigative journalists, speaks of “very explosive” new developments. The public still has no real clarity about the cause of death.

Multipolar reports on Tuesday:

In an interview with Multipolar on Monday (19 August), long-time SPD politician Wolfgang Wodarg gave previously unknown details about the death of then Bundestag Vice President Thomas Oppermann on 25 October 2020. Wodarg had “been told the situation” in such a way that Oppermann “was in make-up a few minutes before a live appearance on ZDF, i.e. was made up for the appearance”, that he “was then offered a coffee, drank a coffee and that he then collapsed dead.” No police came afterwards and there was also “no particularly thorough investigation into the cause of death”, according to the former parliamentary group colleague. His conclusion: “It looks to me as if he was poisoned before the performance.” The public prosecutor’s office should have taken action, but “it didn’t”, emphasised Wodarg. Multipolar was able to confirm this information through a conversation with the person to whom the eyewitness had confided.

In the days before his death, Oppermann had vehemently opposed a further lockdown, which was then declared on 2 November. He told SPIEGEL in October that he expected “further court rulings that would lift the coronavirus measures.” The “actionism of the state governments” is producing “poorly thought-out individual measures” that “violate the principle of proportionality or the principle of equal treatment”. He criticised discussions “behind closed doors in the Chancellery” and called for “an open general debate in the Bundestag” just a few days before his death. There is “no majority in favour of an unspecific accommodation ban”, said the politician, who was also chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag until 2017. Only the Bundestag could “ensure the necessary acceptance of the necessary measures through an open debate and careful consideration.” In another interview, Oppermann repeated: “We need a debate on the exact legal authorisation of the executive”. This is “a question of the rule of law”.

His death occurred a few minutes before he was able to explain his thoughts and demands to an audience of millions as an interview guest on the ZDF programme “Berlin direkt”. Oppermann was to be broadcast live from the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen. The head of the ZDF capital city studio, Theo Koll, recalled that “in the preliminary discussion for the planned programme, we experienced the always professional and relaxed politician Thomas Oppermann.” The journalist Hans-Jörg Vehlewald, who said he had known him for over 20 years, emphasised that no one in Oppermann’s circle had been aware of a previous illness.

Wodarg, who made the details of the death public to Multipolar for the first time, admitted that he was “very shocked” at the time. He “did believe that there were people who were very afraid” that politicians like Oppermann would “disrupt the planned actions”. There was a wave of legal action against the second lockdown in autumn 2020. The head of the German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Mario Ohoven, also warned the German government in October 2020 that the planned new lockdown would be a “death blow for the economy” should the federal government bring public life to a standstill again, he reserved the right to take legal action. He “does not believe that a new lockdown would stand up before the Federal Constitutional Court”, Ohoven said at the time. It was therefore “not only legitimate, but downright necessary to ask whether the measures are also proportionate in the legal sense and therefore in line with our constitution.”

Two days after this statement, on 31 October 2020, Ohoven also died. He crashed his car into a motorway bridge. According to media reports, he had been “driving his Bentley in the left-hand lane of the A44 motorway when he lost control of the vehicle for an as yet unexplained reason”. The public prosecutor’s office did not investigate this case either.