Uwe Mundlos

Uwe Mundlos (11 August 1973 – 4 November 2011) was a German neo-Nazi, right-wing terrorist and serial killer. Together with Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe, he formed the nucleus of the terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU), which was responsible for 10 murders, 43 attempted murders, 3 explosive attacks, and 15 bank robberies in Germany between 1998 and 2011. He died, presumably by suicide, after a bank robbery led to his discovery by police.

Early life and education Mundlos was born and grew up in the East-German city of Jena. His brother was disabled. His mother was a saleswoman. His father, Siegfried Mundlos, was a mathematician at the University of Jena. Beginning in the early 1990s, he served as a Professor of Computer Science at the Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena.

The Mundlos family home was a plattenbau on Max-Steenbeck Street in the Winzerla area of Jena. As a youth, Mundlos was a member of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation and the Free German Youth. Until the summer of 1989 he attended the Magnus Poser Polytechnic School.

After Mundlos left school after tenth grade, he did a data-processing apprenticeship at Carl Zeiss AG. He later tried to do his "Abitur" exams at Illmenau College.

On 29 June 1995, the Amtsgericht Chemnitz sentenced Mundlos to 20 days in prison and a fine of 30 DM for "producing and keeping symbols of unconstitutional organisations". On 1 November 1996, Mundlos was banned from the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial because he had entered the grounds together with Uwe Böhnhardt wearing Sturmabteilung (SA) uniforms.

It is alleged that Mundlos had a network of nation-wide contacts with neo-Nazi groups as early as the mid-1990s.

Military service Between 5 April 1994 and 31 March 1995, Uwe Mundlos was a conscript in the German Bundeswehr. However, in the opinion of the Truppendienstgerichts Süd in Kassel, this did not constitute "either a criminal offence or the elements of a service offence." Mundlos was subsequently released.

At the same time, the Military Counterintelligence Service listed Mundlos as a suspect. In March 1995 he was interrogated by the MCS and asked "whether he could imagine reporting dates for attacks on asylum seekers' homes of which he had become aware of to the police or the constitutional protection authorities". Mundlos answered in the negative. The MCS kept a file on Mundlos' contacts which was destroyed 15 years after the end of his military service.The matter came to light in September 2012 when MP Hans-Christian Ströbele asked the Bundestag's NSU investigation committee about it. It caused a scandal because the German Ministry of Defence had known about the existence of the documents for some time.

Mundlos was eventually promoted to the rank of Private, and to Private First Class in the reserves upon his retirement. He was trained with assault rifles, machine guns and the Walther P1.

On 26 January 1998 Thuringian authorities searched Mundlos's, Böhnhardt's and Zschäpe's apartments and their shared garage. In the garage the police found four live pipe bombs, 14 kg of TNT and Nazi propaganda. The plasticine found in the garage was identical to the plasticine used in the Theater Square bomb. On 28 January, an arrest warrant for Mundlos was issued. In 2003, the public prosecutor's office closed the investigation against Mundlos, citing the statute of limitations, although this had not yet been reached. The Jena District Court had ordered a search in 2000, which interrupted and restarted the statute of limitations.

The National Socialist Underground

Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe had gone underground on 26 January 1998, two days before the arrest warrant was issued. Until 2011, they relied on a network of old acquaintances from the neo-Nazi scene who supported them with flats, money, weapons and official documents. For example, Mundlos, nicknamed "Max", used the identity card of Max-Florian B in order to apply for a fraudulent passport. Despite an extensive manhunt by Thuringia police and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the trio evaded capture.

Between 9 September 2000 and 6 April 2006, Mundlos and Böhnhardt murdered eight small-business owners of Turkish or Greek origin. The January 2001 explosive attack on a supermarket was also attributed to the pair. On 9 June 2004, they detonated a nail bomb in Keupstraße, Cologne, which injured 22 people. In April 2007, they shot and killed policewoman Michèle Kiesewetter in Heilbronn, as well as seriously injuring her colleague. Between 6 October 1999 and 4 November 2011, they committed 15 bank robberies around Germany.

In their crimes the pair used mountain bikes and rented campervans.

Suicide in Eisenach On 4 November 2011, Böhnhardt and Mundlos robbed a bank in the town of Eisenach, stealing over 70,000 euros. During their escape, they were spotted by the police. Police discovered a suspicious motorhome in which the bank robbers were hiding. After firing a shot at the police, the pair reportedly committed suicide. Mundlos supposedly killed Böhnhardt using a pump action shotgun with a close-range shot to the head. He is said to have set fire to their vehicle before fatally shooting himself in the mouth. The circumstances of Mundlos and Böhnhardt's deaths remained controversial for a long time.