Beate Zschäpe was part of the so called “national socialist underground” (NSU), a German rightwing terroristic group (Röpke & Speit, 2011). The core of the NSU which had managed to live underground undiscovered for 13 years consisted of three people: Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt (Röpke & Speit, 2011). The NSU is very likely responsible for the murder of 10 people (9 of them with migrant background), 14 bank robberies and several bombings, which took place in Germany between 2000 and 2007 (Dauber, 2014).
Finally, Zschäpe surrendered to the police in 2011; the reason for her action was the death of the two other NSU members Mundlos and Böhnhardt, who had committed suicide after a bank robbery (Röpke & Speit, 2011). Before her surrender, Zschäpe distributed a video in which the NSU claimed responsibility of the 10 murders and several other crimes (Röpke & Speit, 2011).
Beate Zschäpe is now accused of arson, first degree murder and being a member of a terrorist organization; the trail started in 2013 and still continues (Dauber, 2014). In December 2015, Zschäpe claimed …show more content…
People can learn certain behaviors (including aggressive behaviors) by watching other people, a learning process called modeling (Bartol & Bartol, 2012). Beate was part of a right-wing-peer group during her adolescence (Heerdegen, 2015), an environment in which aggressive behavior was most likely present and reinforced. Therefore, it is likely that she learned to be aggressive because of aggressive models and reinforcement for aggressive acts. Moreover, people learn cognitive scripts when they observe significant others or make significant experiences and follow these scripts in other situations (Bartol & Bartol, 2012). It is possible, that Beate learned aggressive scripts in her peer group or through personal experiences and followed these scripts in different