Beate Zschäpe

Beate Zschäpe (German: [beˈʔaːtə ˈtʃɛːpə]; née Apel; born 2 January 1975) is a German far-right extremist and a member of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terrorist organization. In July 2018, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for numerous crimes committed in connection with the NSU, including murder and arson.

Early life and education

Beate Zschäpe's mother, Annerose Apel, was a citizen of East Germany who studied dentistry at UMF Bucharest. Zschäpe's father was a Romanian fellow dentistry student, Valer Boankic. Zschäpe never met him, and both denied being related until Boankic's death in 2000. Her mother had been unaware of her pregnancy until shortly before the birth and returned to Bucharest to continue her education, leaving Zschäpe to be taken care of by her grandmother, which became a recurring arrangement throughout her childhood. For the first five years of Zschäpe's life, she was largely raised by her grandparents and two stepfathers. After Zschäpe's mother returned to Germany, she worked in accounts at Zeiss.

Growing up in the austere Lobeda neighborhood of Jena, Zschäpe's relationship with her mother was at best uneasy. Her mother was first married to an on-off boyfriend, from whom she was separated during her relationship with Zschäpe's biological father, but the couple divorced after three years in 1978. The same year, Zschäpe's mother remarried, moved to Camburg and again divorced by 1979, keeping her second husband's surname for her daughter. During the first 15 years of her life, she moved six times within Jena and its surroundings.