Autumn 1992-1999: Atta Attends University in Hamburg, Germany

Dittmar Machule, a professor who worked with Mohamed Atta at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. [Source: Corbis/Antoine Serra]Mohamed Atta enrolls in the planning program of the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, where he studies for a master’s degree. Luckily for Atta, the department’s chairman, Dittmar Machule, is a specialist on the Middle East. Machule feels that Atta shares his passion and says that Atta is “tender, sensitive…he had deep, dark eyes. His eyes would speak. You could see the intelligence, the knowledge, the alertness.” Those who know him at the university will say that he sits and listens, without making hasty comments, that he is careful about what he says, and that he is very respectful of well-prepared teachers. Fellow student Martin Ebert will say, “I don’t think it was possible to have a fight with him.” Another fellow student, Harmut Kaiser, will say that it is hard to draw Atta into political discussions in class, even if politics is relevant to the topic under discussion: “He wasn’t a guy who acted like he wanted to change the world—unlike a lot of other students in the group.” [McDermott, 2005, pp. 24-25]