Dieter Today
The Person Behind the Records
Dieter Riechmann has been incarcerated since late 1987. Court records document proceedings, motions, and decisions — but reveal little about the person whose life has unfolded behind prison walls for decades.
In personal messages, Riechmann writes about his present-day routine, his work with books, his curiosity about science and new developments, memories of an earlier life filled with travel, and his thoughts about what a life in freedom might still look like.
The following glimpses are based on Riechmann’s own account in personal messages from 2025 and 2026.
Time in Prison
Nearly Four Decades Behind Walls
When Dieter Riechmann sent Christmas greetings at the end of 2025, he mentioned almost in passing that it was his 39th Christmas in prison. A few months later, he wrote that he could hardly believe he had now been incarcerated for nearly four decades.
Statements like these make tangible a span of time that appears in court records mainly as a sequence of dates. Since his incarceration in the late 1980s, society, technology, and forms of communication have changed fundamentally. Riechmann says he nevertheless tries to follow developments outside prison — through books, news, media, and now podcasts as well.
In his messages, this long period does not appear as an abstract number but through small reference points: recurring holidays, work in the library, books he has read, and efforts to keep up with changes outside the institution. This page does not offer an independent assessment of his personal situation. It records how Riechmann himself describes his daily life and the length of his incarceration in the messages he authorized for use.
Since 2018
Working Among Thousands of Books
Dieter Riechmann says he has worked in the prison library since 2018. At the end of 2025, he described a collection of about 5,000 books, along with magazines and daily newspapers.
His work involves more than checking out books. In a September 2026 message, he describes advising other prisoners on what to read, repairing damaged books, maintaining the catalog, and removing little-used material from the shelves to make room for other titles.
The work appears to mean more to him than simply having a job to do. In an earlier message, he called it a “nice job” and wrote that he enjoyed the work.
His descriptions emphasize the practical work involved in maintaining the collection: keeping it organized, making books usable, and helping readers find what they are looking for. Like every personal message, this passage reflects his own perspective on daily life in the library.
“A nice job — I like it.”
Daily Life in Prison
A Typical Weekday
Riechmann described what his daily routine looked like in a personal message dated January 5, 2026. The times are his own snapshot and may change because of institutional scheduling.
Wake-up
Breakfast
Library
Lunch
Library
Dinner
Reading and Chess
According to his January 2026 description, opportunities for outdoor recreation were primarily available on weekends. Times and routines within the institution can change.
Quiet Rather Than Television
Outside of work, Riechmann also describes his daily life as relatively quiet. He says television plays little role for him. After the library, he usually withdraws, reads, or plays a game of chess on his tablet.
He says he reads legal materials particularly often because he wants to keep up with new decisions and developments in the law. Chess is not an entirely new interest: records concerning his earlier life also indicate that the game has long been among his interests.
Reading and Knowledge
Books as a Window on the World
Riechmann says books have been part of his life since his youth. He describes discovering distant countries, people, and other ways of life through books in the 1950s, long before he began traveling himself.
“My books spread the world out before me, and in my mind I traveled everywhere.”
Today, he says, he reads mostly scientific literature and nonfiction, and only occasionally a novel. The books he has mentioned most recently range from physics and cosmology to biology and future studies.
His personal reading list includes, among others, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, David Deutsch, and Ray Kurzweil. He also mentions works on biology and other scientific subjects.
Knowledge Beyond the Walls
Curious About a World That Keeps Changing
His interests are not limited to books from past decades. Riechmann says he also tries to keep up with current social and technological developments.
In April 2026, for example, he wrote about the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Through media and podcasts, he said, he could at least follow the discussion as an observer. He summed up his attitude in one concise word: “knowledge-hungry.”
“I’m hungry for knowledge.”
The remark fits his current reading: physics, cosmology, the natural sciences, and questions about how technology and society continue to develop are among the subjects that occupy him.
Life Before Prison
Before the World Became Small
Long before his range of movement was defined by a prison, travel played a major role in Riechmann’s life.
By his own account, he worked approximately from 1961 to 1966 as a steward on merchant ships. That took him to numerous port cities in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He recalls, among other places, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cape Town, Dakar, Alexandria, Beirut, Rotterdam, and Stockholm.
Together with later private travel, he estimates that he visited around 40 countries over the course of his life. That figure is his own estimate.
He had also known the United States from a very different perspective before the later criminal case. In 1986, he recalls traveling through the country twice with his partner at the time, for about two months on each trip.
He says they essentially planned only their flights and rental cars and otherwise often drove along highways and back roads without a fixed destination. If they liked a place, they stayed for a few days. In his recollections, he mentions Las Vegas, Memphis, the Grand Canyon, and Key West, among other places. Looking back, he describes himself at that time as an enthusiastic traveler in the United States.
Thoughts About the Future
What Might a Life in Freedom Look Like?
After nearly four decades in prison, imagining life outside necessarily comes with many open questions for Riechmann.
In a May 2026 message, he described a quiet Sunday without work, when he tried to imagine what such a life might look like.
He thought about Hamburg, whether he might want to have a dog again, and whether Germany, after so much time, would still be the place to which he wanted to return — or whether he might live somewhere else.
He himself adds an important qualification: these are not concrete plans. He does not know what will happen. They are thoughts, possibilities, and “dreams” about a possible future.
One of his more concrete ideas, fittingly, concerns books again. In September 2026, Riechmann wrote that he looked forward to one day being able to read literature that is not available to him today. Jokingly, he called a fully loaded Kindle his possible “new friend.”
The personal information on this page comes primarily from Dieter Riechmann’s messages from 2025 and 2026. It reflects his own account of his daily life, memories, and interests. Riechmann expressly authorized the use of his messages for this page.
For this English version, direct quotations have been translated from German. In the German source text, spelling and punctuation were lightly normalized solely for readability; the substance of the statements was not changed.