German bank robber jailed after 20-hour court ramble cut short
A German man has been jailed for three bank robberies after prolonging his trial with a 20-hour closing statement filled with anecdotes from a career in crime, details about his fitness routine in custody and quotations from the Friedrich Schiller play The Robbers.
Michael Jauernik, 71, was sentenced on Monday to 12 and a half years in prison followed by further preventive detention for three raids between 2011 and 2019 in which he stole approximately €25,000 and critically injured one bank’s employee with a gunshot to the stomach.
The judge at Hamburg’s district court announced the verdict after taking the unusual step of curtailing the defendant’s statement, and said she regretted not having interrupted Jauernik earlier in the light of several repetitions and “excessive digressions”.
Explaining the severity of the sentence, the judge said prison was unlikely to alter Jauernik’s mindset. “We are sure that you will still think it legitimate to rob banks and threaten people in 12 years’ time,” she said.
Jauernik started robbing banks in the 1970s and returned to crime throughout his life despite serving several jail terms. In the 1980s he gained notoriety as the “Thursday robber” after holding up a string of banks shortly before closing time on Thursdays. He said in court he had recently started working as a night porter but had picked up a gun again after finding his pension payments “pitiful”.
By his own account in court, Jauernik treated prisons more as educational establishments than correctional facilities. At a prison in Karlsruhe, he said, a former member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang introduced him to the works of Brecht, Sartre and Hegel. During a later prison spell in Hamburg he made headlines by leading a protest against conditions from the roof of the building, inciting a riot involving about 250 other inmates.
Wearing a suit and dark sunglasses throughout the trial, Jauernik painted himself as a highly intelligent gentleman thief whom the police had managed to catch only by chance. “I am more intelligent and clever than any employee of the criminal police agency, that much is sure,” he claimed.
He boasted that he had kept himself fit during his pre-trial detainment with thrice-daily sit-up sessions and 5km runs. The tabloid Bild nicknamed him Richard Gier(gier is German for greed) because of his resemblance to the Hollywood actor.
Jauernik appeared to justify his raids on financial institutions by citing recent high-profile banking scandals such as the so-called “cum-ex” dividend-stripping scandal, where a group of investment bankers currently on trial in Bonn are are accused of having defrauded the German state of millions of euros. “I didn’t rob supermarkets or old women,” Jauernik said.
The judge said he had shown limited compassion for banks’ employees. “You suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder, which was on display to everyone who followed the main trial,” she said in her verdict.
A psychiatric expert witness noted that Jauernik had a tendency to talk about his crimes as if “recounting mischief from his school days”.
Jauernik is now likely to spend the rest of his life in custody.