Two men with prior criminal records – Hans-Jürgen Rösner and Dieter Degowski – robbed a branch of the Deutsche Bank in Gladbeck, North Rhine-Westphalia, taking two employees as hostages.

[4][5] In the aftermath of the hostage crisis, journalists were criticised for conducting interviews with the hostage-takers, asking them to pose for photographs, and aiding them by giving them, among other things, coffee and road directions.

[6][7] The police, having been tipped by Rösner's ex-wife Ursula regarding his whereabouts, planned to arrest him on 16 August 1988 – the day of the bank robbery and hostage-taking.

[11] Shortly before the bank robbery in August 1988, Degowski agreed to be Rösner's accomplice on the premise that they would use the money to establish their own car recycling business near Münster.

[13] The couple worked as taxi drivers for some time, but unsatisfied with her marriage, Löblich eventually left her husband to start a relationship with Hans-Jürgen Rösner.

The men were hooded and armed with a M1911 and a Smith & Wesson Model 27 respectively, also carrying a backup Luger pistol and 350 rounds of assorted .357, 9 mm and .45 ACP type ammunition in a plastic bag.

They went back into the bank and took two clerks hostage, demanding a car and ransom money, firing their guns into the air several times.

[14] Negotiations were held over the next hours through Gladbeck branch bank director Wolfgang H. Schöning, the abductors were given 300,000 DM and a white Audi 100 as a getaway car by an unarmed police officer in his underwear.

Dieter Höhbusch, the officer in charger during the initial bank robbery stand-off, later recalled that he was convinced that the hostage crisis would be resolved "by the time I woke up the next morning", as they thought Rösner would be easily found in a statewide manhunt due to his numerous tattoos and "unimaginative mindset".

[15][16][17] The robbers remained in town for several more hours, driving around aimlessly and stocking up on food and alcohol at local restaurants, paying while brandishing their guns.

Via the A1 and A30 highways, they first drove north through Münster to Osnabrück, where they turned back south at Bad Oeyenhausen, passing through Bielefeld and Dortmund over A2 before ending up in Hagen.

[18][19] In the early hours of 17 August, after driving back north on the autobahn from Hagen to Bremen, the abductors arrived in the district of Vegesack.

As the trio believed that police had lost their trail, they were no longer vigilant and at one point, Degowski left the occupied car unattended for several minutes to urinate.

During the day, knowledge about the Gladbeck robbers' presence in Bremen spread to the public, with camera crews managing to track down the movement of the kidnappers, capturing footage of them at various stops as they discussed their next steps.

Bus driver Wolfgang Schweickart tried to drive off upon seeing the armed men approach, but he instinctively braked upon seeing the red light ahead.

[21][22] There were too few officers without adequate equipment to properly cordon off the scene so the media were able to get close and even into the bus interior with the permission of the abductors.

Marksmen were placed in neighboring buildings while plainclothed MEK was allowed on the bus without the abductors' knowledge, but police specifically ordered that no action was to be undertaken, claiming that the department lacked the training and resources to handle the situation.

Rösner felt comfortable enough around the press to sometimes leave the bus with Degowski and Löblich, who had armed herself with the leftover Luger, to be interviewed outside by journalists.

De Giorgi had been travelling on the bus with his parents, guest workers from Surbo, Apulia, and was said to be protecting his sister, who Degowski was about to grab in place of him.

Paramedics from Rotenburg arrived only 20 minutes later when patrons of the adjacent convenience store called emergency services, as police had neglected to have an ambulance on site.

As officers and civilian bystanders dragged De Giorgi indoors to provide first aid, reporters photographed the bleeding boy.

[15][27] Police did not monitor the car and instead placed officers in two hospitals in Gronau near the highway, falsely assuming Rösner would want to have Löblich's gunshot wound treated immediately.

At 10:30 am, the car was surrounded by media and shoppers in a pedestrian area in Breite Straße, directly in front of the WDR Arkaden, the Cologne headquarters of Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

Against the orders of Cologne Police, a troop of plainclothed SEK officers were among the crowd planning to rescue the hostages, with team leader Rainer Kesting briefly engaging Rösner in conversation.

At this point, Kölner Express reporter Udo Röbel [de], who had interviewed Rösner a few minutes earlier after giving him coffee, shouted for people to step away from the car and make way for the group to drive off.

At this point, police officers in pursuit received orders to "act" i.e. arrest the perpetrators, with the lives of the hostages being "a risk to accept".

This was not a view expressed in the official report into the incident by a parliamentary enquiry in the state of the North Rhine Westphalia, which commented negatively on the journalists' ethics.

[2] In August 2018 it was announced by the regional court in Arnsberg that Dieter Degowski was to be released on conditional parole after serving 30 years in prison.

[4][30] The head of Germany's largest journalists' union (DJV), Michael Konken, has referred to the incident as "the darkest hour of German journalism since the end of WWII".

[32] A documentary titled Gladbeck: The Hostage Crisis was released in 2022 on Netflix, documenting the events throughout the entire 54 hours using raw footage, without commentary.