Policemen celebrate reunion after 21 years
A few gray hairs and wrinkles have been added here and there. The policeman mustache have meanwhile also parted ways. Many of them are already retired. Exactly 21 years after their six-month assignment at the world exhibition in Hanover, 15 officials from all over Germany have now met again in the state capital. “We were a group of 30 officials from almost all federal states who were assigned to the crime and investigation service at Expo 2000,” says the now 80-year-old Peter Tillner from Wolfenbüttel.
The officers had a lot to tell each other – especially bizarre anecdotes: Daily police escorts for high-ranking state guests, fights at Expo parties, lively drug trafficking and attempted fraud with false admission tickets were just some of the focus of the unit’s work.
“I investigated three stolen giant lobsters in the Africa pavilion,” reports 68-year-old Roland Kettner from Mannheim. The animals had disappeared from an aquarium under still unexplained circumstances and never reappeared.
“Friendships have developed”
5,000 police officers from all over Germany were on duty as reinforcement in Hanover 21 years ago – around 300 of them in three departments on the Expo site. “But our unit meets once a year for an alumni meeting – always in a different federal state,” says Frank Rahl from North Rhine-Westphalia. After all, all officers in their group were accommodated in numerous apartments specially rented by the police for the month-long deployment and also spent free time together after work. “Friendships developed,” says Rahl.
“Everyone had applied in writing for the work at a distance,” says 78-year-old Wilfried Molde. The Hanoverian and former head of the trade fair guards at CeBIT and the industrial fair, he had also selected the police officers for the expo unit based on their skills and specialist areas. According to Molde, around 15 of them are now part of the hard core at the alumni meetings. “Many now bring their spouses with them, too,” he says. Last year, the reunion in Hanover – exactly 20 years after the joint effort – was canceled due to the corona pandemic. That has now been made up for.
Eviction because of an abandoned suitcase
The 61-year-old chief detective Bernhard Reiners from Meppen remembers spectacular scenes: Right at the beginning of the expo, the stairs at the end of the exponale had to be cleared because of an abandoned suitcase. While waiting for the special command to check the suitcase, he was amazed at a painter who had given important instructions in the security zone. “The man turned out to be a high-ranking police officer from Hanover, who had renovated on the day off and then had to get to the Expo site at lightning speed,” says Reiners.
The officials also remembered a number of schoolchildren who died with drug trafficking. The small dealers mostly came with school classes to visit the Expo. “Two officers were solely responsible for the narcotics trade,” Rahl reports.
The missions due to brawls at Expo parties were less time-consuming. “It was mostly in a Latin American bar, in an Irish pub and, above all, at the Expo Oktoberfest,” says Reinhold Beste from the Sauerland. What made the operations manageable: “The event always ended at midnight.”
Meeting with former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
Overall, however, the workload for the police unit only increased in the course of the fair with the introduction of the cheaper evening ticket for 10 Deutsche Mark and increasing visitor numbers, reports Rahl. For the police officers, meeting the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was less work than private pleasure: “Halfway through the time he celebrated a mountain festival with us police officers in a barracks and drank beer,” says Rahl.
By Ingo Rodriguez