# Bad Reichenhall shooting

On 1 November 1999, a mass shooting took place in Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria, Germany. 16-year-old Martin Peyerl killed four people and wounded seven others before committing suicide. It is considered the first modern mass shooting in post-reunification Germany.

## Shooting

On 1 November 1999, Peyerl's parents left the house to visit the grave of one of Peyerl's grandparents in Piding, something they typically did on All Saints' Day. Martin did not go with them. Instead, in their absence, he broke into his father's gun cabinet – which contained more than ten firearms – where he stole a Ruger Mini-14. His 18-year-old sister Daniela, a caregiver at the hospital across the street, came home at around noon. According to police, a struggle of some kind occurred between the two, ending when Martin shot his sister five times and killed her.
Positioning himself in his bedroom window, Peyerl then shot at nearby people with the rifle and a revolver. Neighbors 59-year-old Ruth Zillenbiller and 60-year-old Horst Zillenbiller were killed with ten gunshots, and 54-year-old Karl-Heinz Lietz, a patient at the hospital across the street who had stepped outside to smoke, was mortally wounded by a single rifle shot. Seven others were ultimately wounded, among them actor Günter Lamprecht, his partner Claudia Amm [de] and their chauffeur, who were around the hospital entrance. He then fatally shot the family cat, sat down in a bathtub, and committed suicide with a single blast from a shotgun. A total of 50 gunshots were fired.
Police cordoned off the area and did not attempt to go near the house from which the shots were fired. It was initially thought that the gunman was Peyerl's father before the latter showed up outiside police barriers. With the arrival of a SEK team, police stormed the house at 18:00, finding the bodies of Daniela and Martin Peyerl along with the cat. An enormous swastika was painted above Peyerl's bed; in his room were a number of additional painted swastikas and other Nazi symbols. A number of videos and CDs with violent content were also discovered. A portrait of Adolf Hitler hung above the bed of Peyerl's sister.

## Perpetrator

Martin Peyerl was born to Rudolf and Theresa Peyerl on 11 August 1983, as the younger of two children. He lived with parents on Riedelstraße 12 in Bad Reichenhall.
No clear motive has been presented for Peyerl's actions. Peyerl was an outsider at school and had an alcoholic father at home who was frequently unemployed. He was an avid gun enthusiast and frequently purchased gun magazines. He told classmates that he sometimes went to the forest looking for birds "to shoot" and sometimes practiced shooting with his father in the garage. His father Rudolf Peyerl, a twelve-year veteran of the German Army, was himself enthusiastic about firearms, owning as many as nineteen. A few months prior to the shooting, Peyerl was temporarily expelled from school because of Nazi photographs pasted in his notebook. He was attending apprenticeship as a locksmith.
Neighbors said that Peyerl was a normal albeit introverted boy, but a psychiatrist who was involved in this case spoke of a "loser type". He is said to have been a shy loner who preferred playing video games over talking to people. One classmate said "Martin was always nice", but that he was largely ignored and rarely had anything to say. Another said Peyerl was "a bit of a right-winger".
Media argued that Peyerl was possibly influenced by the American mass murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold due to the similarities to the Columbine High School massacre that occurred in the same year. Descriptions by Peyerl's classmates drew comparisons to those given of Harris and Klebold. Peyerl commented one day leading up to 1 November 1999, that it was "completely crazy what these guys have done" and that he believed Harris' and Klebold's actions to be "something we should do".

## Aftermath

Numerous politicians, including Minister of the Interior Otto Schily, called for changes in German firearm legislation following Peyerl's indiscriminate shooting on 1 November 1999. Schools implemented crisis plans in the event of an active shooter scenario and a closer monitoring of students with suspected depression or suicidal ideation. State police agencies changed their response strategy, favouring a direct approach and elimination of an immediate threat, rather than the previous method of evacuation and waiting for trained SEK forces. Rudolf and Theresa Peyerl were interviewed as witnesses by police shortly after, and the German Kriminalpolizei started an investigation. Wolfgang Giese, head of the investigation, denied the possibility that drugs, alcohol, or extreme right-wing ideology were behind Peyerl's actions, saying those things played "no role". Instead, Giese asserted, the problem was "in the personality of the offender". Criminologist Rudolf Egg [de] posited that Peyerl's interest in neo-Nazi subculture was less political in nature and more related to his own insecurities, speculating that he may have felt "empowered" and "superior" by associating himself with a larger movement.
Investigators concluded that Martin Peyerl, like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, did not commit murder-suicide as a spontaneous act, but likely planned his actions well in advance. Peyerl left behind no journal or videos as the Columbine killers did, however, leaving his actions for the most part a mystery. Despite this, investigators remained certain that Peyerl's own death was as much a part of whatever plan he devised as the indiscriminate shooting of others. A written request filed by The Greens to the Bavarian Landtag in January 2012 listed the Bad Reichenhall shooting as one of several murder cases to be reinvestigated for a potential right-wing motive.
Günter Lamprecht, through his lawyer Rolf Bossi, filed a lawsuit for pain and suffering against Peyerl's parents, but the case was ultimately not brought to court.