Beate Zschäpe

Beate Zschäpe (2 January 1975) is a German right-wing extremist and an alleged member of the Neo-Nazi terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU).

Beate Zschäpe's mother was a citizen of the GDR, who studied dentistry in Bucharest. According to her mother, Zschäpe's father was a Romanian fellow dentistry student. Zschäpe never met him and he denied being her father until his death in 2000. Her mother was unable to practise dentistry because of an allergy and worked in accounts at Zeiss until 1991 when she became (but did not register as) unemployed. Living in an austere neighbourhood of Jena, Zschäpe's relationship with her mother was at best uneasy and she spent a lot of time in the care of her grandmother. Her mother got divorced twice and each time Zschäpe took on the surname of her mother's new partner. During the first fifteen years of her life she moved six times within Jena and its surroundings.

A school report for her second school year (1982/1983) says, "Beate strives to achieve good learning results, but often lacks the necessary concentration and order, so she does not reach her full capability ... she is actively and joyfully involved in Pioneer Life." In 1991, after she finished tenth grade (age 15-16), she left her mainstream school, the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe School, in the district of Jena and began work under a job creation program as a painter’s assistant. She then went on to do an apprenticeship as a gardener, from 1992 until 1996, specializing in vegetable growing.

In the time around the reunification of Germany in 1989, the politics around Zschäpe were in turmoil and, in contrast to official GDR propaganda, racism was already widespread.

Aged 14, she joined a youth gang which called itself "Die Zecken" ("The Ticks") whose members included punks with nose rings and hair dyed bright red. Although the group considered itself politically leftist, there were also completely non-politically oriented members. When "Die Zecken" planned to attack a meeting of young right-extremists and beat a few of them up, she tagged along. Otherwise she is described at the time as just wanting to enjoy life, only seldom expressing herself politically, and as having a liking for the magazine Bravo (illegal in the GDR).

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