For nearly 60 years, Germans have flocked to the family-owned Block House restaurant chain for juicy steak dinners.
On Friday, however, the billionaire Block family served up a different kind of dish: a court drama with Hollywood blockbuster potential.
Christina Block, daughter of the restaurant founder, stands accused of contracting former Israeli secret service agents to abduct two children from her estranged husband Stephan Hensel.
The couple married in 2005, had four children and separated nine years later, divorcing in 2018. Hensel moved to southern Denmark and lived there with their eldest daughter.
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Hamburg family court heard on Friday how, on New Year’s Eve 2023, black-clad, masked individuals snatched the two youngest children, then 10 and 13, while they watched fireworks in the Danish town of Gråsten.
Prosecutors say their father was knocked down and the children transferred – with their mouths taped shut, by van, to a farm in southern Germany owned by Ms Block.
The abduction was a dramatic twist in a bitter custody battle. Block claimed Hensel had, for two years, refused to allow the youngest children to return to Germany. This violated an agreement that their four children would live with her during the week and see their father every other weekend.
Hensel claims their two younger children, now aged 11 and 14, told him their mother had been violent towards them. She denies these claims and argues that he is instrumentalising their children as punishment for their failed marriage.
After the kidnapping, the two youngest children were eventually returned to their father and Block has not seen them since.
The prosecution will present documents listing 300 hours of work by the alleged ex-Israeli spies – invoicing Ms Block a reported total of €1.4 million for their services – as well as sketches of Hensel’s Danish home and cameras hidden in trees outside.
Block has plead not guilty and her defence team have presented several explanations for the kidnapping. One suggests the plan was masterminded by her deceased mother, another that it was the work of rogue security contractors anxious to tap Block’s fortune by exploiting a mother’s fears for her children’s welfare.
The defence argues that Block never paid them because their plan went terribly wrong.
“Psychologically she was totally desperate, she humiliated herself,” said Ingo Bott, Block’s lead defence lawyer, to the court on Friday.
If found guilty, Block could face a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
Block’s new partner Gerhard Delling, one of Germany’s best-known sports television presenters, stands accused of assisting the logistics of the alleged kidnap, charges he denies.
In total 140 witnesses are set to testify, including one of the alleged kidnappers and the eldest of the two abducted children.
