Face Down

On 27 December 1973 the nightmare began: late that night German businessman Thomas Niedermayer was kidnapped from his home in Belfast. Never seen alive again by his friends or family, he became one of the 'disappeared' and it seemed that no one knew what had happened to him.

His wife, Ingeborg, and his daughters, Renate and Gabriele, spent the next seven years not knowing if Thomas were alive or dead. In 1980, an IRA informant led police to recover his body. But the trauma for Thomas's family was far from over: there were further devastating consequences for all of them.

Five decades on, FACE DOWN sets out to discover what really happened in Belfast all those years ago.

Now in its second, updated edition and the subject of a feature-length documentary, this astonishing story of one family's generational trauma undermines any attempt to glamorise or minimise the effects of political violence.



DAVID BLAKE KNOX was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge University in England. He has worked as a TV Producer for RTÉ in Dublin, the BBC in London and HBO in New York. While in RTÉ, he devised and produced the innovative Nighthawks TV series, and was Director of TV Production. He established Blueprint Pictures, an independent TV and Film production company, in 2002. Blueprint specializes in Arts and Entertainment programming.



'We both cried throughout. She lives four minutes from where Thomas Niedermayer was buried ... but she had never heard of the case. She can’t get it out of her head now [and] we left the cinema stunned.' (For the documentary.)



Review for The Killing of Thomas Niedermayer (2019)

‘David Blake Knox’s non-fiction work is a lie detector for the post-Troubles era ... Niedermayer becomes, in Blake Knox’s clear yet deceptively subtle argument, a perfect test case.’



Review for The Killing of Thomas Niedermayer (2019)

‘A rigorous and compelling historical study.’



Review for The Killing of Thomas Niedermayer (2019)

‘A consistently thought-provoking read... impressively researched and morally clear-sighted.’



Review for The Killing of Thomas Niedermayer (2019)

‘This is no refresher course in Irish history. Blake Knox has the ability to write this non-fiction book like a novel.’



Review for Face Down (documentary film)

'Gripping, chilling, properly enraging...The film digs up some still-startling horrors, but it also restores fleshed-out humanity to a decent man.' ****



Review for Face Down (documentary film, 2023)

'David Blake Knox and Gerry Gregg’s fine documentary explores one of the Troubles’ most shameful episodes.' ****



Review for Face Down (documentary film, 2023)

'Searingly powerful'



'The kidnapping and killing of Thomas Niedermayer by the Provisional IRA is given a family context and gripping historical background… the dignity of Niedermayer’s granddaughters, their resilience and compassion, are deeply moving; the film skilfully shows how brutal acts rarely happen in a vacuum, but reverberate for many years' ***



'A shocker…really worth people being reminded (of the Niedermayer story)… a documentary that lives up to it’s one and half hours.' 4.5*



'Tells the shocking story of the IRA kidnapping and killing in 1973 of Thomas Niedermayer, the German boss of the Belfast Grundig factory, where Catholics and Protestants worked together productively, and how this led remorselessly to four family suicides. I cannot praise it enough. We have an unembroidered, heartrending story showing the ghastly reality of terrorism, and the torment victims go through … The contributions from commentators [are] superb.' (For the documentary.)



'An overpowering experience. Many reports and documentaries and TV dramas and movies have been produced about the Troubles, so I hesitate to say it is the best – but it is certainly up among them.' (For the documentary.)