On 21 December 1985 the 26-year-old Ramazan Avcı kissed his heavily-­pregnant fiancée goodbye, on his way to sell his car at a used car market and put the proceeds towards a baby bed. On the way back, he, his brother Veli and a friend were waiting for a bus at the Landwehr S-Bahn station when a group of skinheads suddenly poured out of a nearby pub and attacked them. He managed to repel their initial assault using ­pepper spray and his companions escaped into a bus. As Ramazan Avcı ran into the street, he was hit by a car and knocked to the ground. The ­skinheads then proceeded to punch and kick him, fracturing his skull, pelvis, and legs. Despite several ­emergency operations, he never woke from his coma. Ten days after his death, his son was born.

Ramazan Avcı was born in the village of Gönen in north-western Turkey on 20 December 1959, the fourth child in his family. He finished school in Isparta and trained as a car mechanic. Aged 22, he moved to Hamburg, where his brothers Hüseyin and Veli lived.

Ramazan Avcı found work at a garage on Gluckstrasse in Hamburg-Barmbek. He also took on part-time jobs, hoping to eventually make a better life for himself in Turkey. Besides his day job, he worked as a cleaner in an office building, which is where he fell in love with his co-worker Gülüstan Ayaz. The couple were eager to go back to Turkey for their wedding.

Ramazan Avcı died three days after being assaulted by skinheads. His fiancée later wrote a poem in his memory: ‘I never got to live out my youth, nor see my child. ­Ramazan Avcı, murdered by hatred.’ She named her son after his father.

In 2010 activists founded the Initiative zum Gedenken an Ramazan Avcı. Together with the Avcı family they succeeded in erecting a memorial and re-naming the forecourt of the Landwehr S-Bahn station to Ramazan-Avcı-Platz.

Gülüstan Ayaz-Avcı wrote in Die ZEIT in 2019: