The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (12 page)

A banner at the funeral of Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe: “Against Deaths in Prison! Against Skyjackings! Peace to the Hovels, War to the Palaces!”

_____________

1
. Joyce Marie Mushaben,
From Post-War to Post-Wall Generations: Changing Attitudes toward the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic of Germany
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 176-177.

2
. According to most accounts, this murder constituted the defining moment in the birth of the 1960s generation's revolt in West Germany. An unexpected and almost unthinkable twist to this story came to light in 2009, when journalists uncovered proof that police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras, who had killed Ohnesorg, was at the time an informant for the
Stasi,
and a secret member of the East German Socialist Unity Party.

3
. Irmgard Möller, interviewed by Dagmar Brunow and Luka Skywalker, “Zur Mythenbildung nicht geeignet,”
Testcard
, May 12, 2003.

4
. The persistence of so many Nazis in power also played a part in this process, as RAF prisoner Lutz Taufer would later explain, “In the context of Auschwitz and Vietnam, it was politically and morally justifiable to join with these forces in an uprising, taking up arms even in the center. The fuzzy relationship that the politicians, finance, the justice system, and the military had to the fascist past, as well as their clear position in favor of the genocide in Vietnam, made it an open question whether or not fascism could creep back in Germany. In this sense, armed struggle in the Federal Republic was a form of belated resistance.” (Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Knut Folkerts, Lutz Taufer, Thomas Ebermann, Rosita Timm, and Hermann L. Gremliza, “Sie wollen uns auslöschen,”
konkret
June 1992).

5
. Mushaben, 167. As RAF member Rolf Clemens Wagner would later put it, “Throughout the world, the critique of the Vietnam War was also a critique of the capitalist system.” (Helmut Pohl and Rolf Clemens Wagner, interviewed by
junge Welt,
“Wir wollten den revolutionären Prozeß weitertreiben,”
junge Welt,
October 17, 2007. This interview has been translated and is available at
http://www.germanguerilla.com/red-army-faction/documents/07_10.html
.)

6
. Knut Folkerts, interviewed by Wolf-Dieter Vogel, “Im Politik-Fetisch wird sich nichts Emanzipatives bewegen lassen,”
Jungle World,
October 1997.

7
. RAF, “The Black September Action in Munich: Regarding the Strategy for Anti-Imperialist Struggle,” in André Moncourt and J. Smith,
The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Vol. I: Projectiles for the People
(Oakland: PM Press, 2009), 222-223.

8
. As a consequence of creative page design, while this text was initially titled “The Urban Guerilla and Class Struggle,” it became more commonly known as “Serve the People,” although this had in fact been intended as the original document's subtitle.

9
. All three of these texts are available in English in our first volume, and also on the German Guerilla website,
www.germanguerilla.com
.

10
. Christian Klar, interviewed by Günter Gaus, “Günter Gaus im Gespräch mit Christian Klar,”
Angehörigen Info,
February 15, 2002.

11
. So called because of the ubiquitous “k” (for “communist”) in their names, the K-Groups were those Marxist-Leninist parties and pre-party formations that emerged from the decline of the APO.

12
. Helmut Pohl and Rolf Clemens Wagner, interviewed by
junge Welt.

13
. RAF, “The Urban Guerilla Concept,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 97.

14
. Allensbach Opinion Poll, published in
Spiegel,
July 26, 1971.

15
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 163-169.

16
. Ibid., 170-172.

17
. The formulation used in Germany is to put the city name first, and then the name of the prison, usually the name of the neighborhood in which the prison is located. So Cologne-Ossendorf refers to the prison in the Ossendorf neighborhood of Cologne.

18
. Friends of Astrid Proll,
Astrid Proll: The Case Against Her Extradition
(London: 1978), 8.

19
. Stefan Aust,
The Baader-Meinhof Group: The Inside Story of a Phenomenon,
translated by Anthea Bell (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1987), 246.

20
. As Rolf Clemens Wagner would later recall, “My experience is—and I've heard the same thing from other prisoners—that one feels the best during hunger strikes. Not physically, but because one is active and struggling in unity with others.” (Helmut Pohl and Rolf Clemens Wagner, interviewed by
junge Welt).
Or as Karl-Heinz Dellwo once put it, “With our hunger strikes we have transcended a torturous reality and reconstituted ourselves as subjects.”

21
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 253-254.

22
. United Press International, “Gunmen Kill German judge,”
Hagerstown Morning Herald,
November 11, 1974.

23
. RAF, “Letter from the RAF to the RAF Prisoners,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 338.

24
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 332-335.

25
. The periodization of the RAF into “generations” was at the time resisted by the guerilla and its supporters. In Christian Klar's words, “The ‘generations,' that was never our understanding. That's based on the needs of the people pursuing us, who after 1972 or 1977 had to explain why, after we were ‘smashed,' it nonetheless continued. One must instead work through the actual stages and the changes in the political situation.” (Christian Klar, interviewed by
Süddeutsche Zeitung,
“Die RAF gehört in eine ganz bestimmte Zeit…”
Angehörigen Info
194, May 16, 1997). See also Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 336.

26
. Ibid., 181.

27
. Helmar Büchel and Ulrike Demmer, “Krieg der Lügen,”
Spiegel,
April 11, 2009. Such psychological warfare techniques were by no means unique to West Germany—rather they had become a standard fare in countries around the world by this time. This has been perhaps best documented in the United States, where in 1971 activists broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, and made off with files detailing the FBI's COINTELPRO program. Of course, when confronted with evidence of such activities, the state's preferred tactic is to dissimulate and downplay. As such, in 2009, when Herold was contacted by
Spiegel
about the BKA's dirty tricks he merely admitted it was possible he had written such a document, but claimed not to recall any actual cases where its suggestions were implemented. Former Baden-Württemberg LKA president Kuno Bux, who had met with the police and
Verfassungsschutz
to discuss the paper in 1975, would insist that “we dropped the disinformation concept, because it was neither legally nor politically viable.”

28
. Ibid.

29
. It should be noted that even as they condemned this as a transparent move to bar them from proceedings, the prisoners insisted that they were unfit to stand trial because of the isolation conditions, not the hunger strikes themselves.

30
. Sebastien Cobler,
Law, Order and Politics in West Germany
(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1978), 207.

31
. Gerard Braunthal,
Political Service and Public Loyalty in West Germany: The 1972 Decree Against Radicals and Its Consequences
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 160-161.

32
. Philip Jacobson, “Show Trial,”
Sunday Times Magazine,
February 23, 1975, 21.

33
. Deutsche Welle [online], “Journalists Unearth Rare Terrorism Trial Tapes from 1970s,” July 31, 2007.

34
. United Press International, “Urban Guerilla Leader Hangs Herself in Cell,”
The Hayward Daily Review,
May 10, 1976.

35
.
Winnipeg Free Press,
“Uneven Contest,” May 19, 1976.

36
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 441-443.

37
. Ibid., 381-388.

38
. Throughout this book we will refer to “RAF prisoners” to indicate prisoners who had previously been active in the RAF. It should be kept in mind that the prisoners (as well as the RAF) were always clear that once captured, a guerilla was no longer a member of the RAF. As Irmgard Möller explained, “When you are arrested and are no longer armed, and you're as aboveground as you can get, you can no longer struggle as a RAF member, given that you have been captured. You're still a part of it all, though no longer part of the organization.” (“NDR/Arbeiterkampf Interview mit Christine Kuby, Irmgard Möller, Hanna Krabbe und Gabriele Rollnik, May 16, 1992,” in ID-Archiv im Internationalen Institut für Sozialgeschichte/Amsterdam,
wir haben mehr fragen als antworten
:
RAF diskussionen 1992-1994
[Berlin-Amsterdam: Edition ID Archiv, 1995], 33-46.)

39
. RAF, “The Assassination of Attorney General Siegfried Buback,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 490.

40
. Jürgen Dahlkamp, Carsten Holm, Sven Röbel, Michael Sontheimer, and Holger Stark, “Operation Zauber,”
Spiegel
, July 9, 2009; Michael Sontheimer, “Logik des Krieges,”
Spiegel,
May 14, 2007.

41
. Pohl and Beer had been captured along with Ilse Stachowiak, Margrit Schiller, Eberhard Becker, Christa Eckes, and Kay-Werner Allnach, on February 4, 1974. Hoppe had been captured three years earlier following a firefight with police.

42
.
Spiegel,
“Sicher gestört,” February 27, 1978.

43
. Holger Meins, “Holger Meins' Report on Force-Feeding,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 293.

44
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 259.

45
.
Frankfurter Rundschau,
August 15, 1977, quoted in “The Stammheim Deaths,”
Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review,
no. 4.

46
. RAF, “The Attack on the BAW,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 496-497.

47
. Jan-Carl Raspe, “Statement Breaking Off the Fifth Hunger Strike,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 495.

48
. See the RAF's explanation to this effect on
pages 246–247.

49
. RAF, “The Schleyer Communiqués,” in Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 498.

50
. On the PFLP (EO), see the sidebar on
page 23
, and also Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 559-561.

51
. Schumann had been caught sending out coded messages about the situation on board, and when the guerillas allowed him to leave the plane to quickly check the aircraft was not damaged after the rough landing in South Yemen, he refused to come back for over an hour, during which time he communicated with the security forces about the situation. Schumann was posthumously awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit, and a Lufthansa pilot school in Bremen was named in his honor, as was a street in the Bavarian city of Landshut. (The hijacked airliner was called the
Landshut.)

52
. Karl-Heinz Weidenhammer,
Mord oder Selbstmord? Das Todesermittlungsverfahren: Baader, Ensslin, Raspe,
(Kiel: Malik Verlag, 1994).

53
. For a detailed discussion of the inconsistencies and irregularities in the state's version of events, see Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 511-520.

54
. Although subjected to the Contact Ban, Möller had been moved to one of the few cells where the connection to the prison radio had not been disconnected. In a book-length interview with former
taz
journalist Oliver Tolmein, she has explained that she had a pair of earphones with which she could connect to the prison radio and sometimes hear the news. (Oliver Tolmein,
RAF—Das war für uns Befreiung: Ein Gespräch mit Irmgard Möller über Bewaffneten: Kampf, Knast und die Linke
[Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1997], 100.)

55
. Irmgard Möller, interviewed by Manfred Ertel and Bruno Schrep, “Irmgard Möller: Ich will nicht anders leben,”
Spiegel,
May 5, 1992.

56
. Monika Berberich, interviewed by
Initial,
“Interview zur Geschichte der RAF,”
Initial,
October 6, 2002.

57
. Associated Press, “German Leftists, Police Battle after Paper Raided,”
Waterloo Courier,
October 24, 1977.

58
. United Press International, “Crusade Against Terrorism Urged,”
Newport Daily News,
October 25, 1977.

59
. Margit Mayer, “The German October of 1977,”
New German Critique
13 (Winter 1978): 155.

60
. Braunthal, 162.

T
HE GUERILLA FLED
.