by J. Smith
The state’s attempt to use its intelligence services to provoke a reactionary mass mobilization is not a response to the guerilla, but is rather a reaction to strategic conditions; namely, the economic and political weakness of the U.S. chain of states. They are responding to the future potential and current reality of revolutionary politics. The objective and function of psychological warfare, in the way it is being waged against every democratic initiative, is to cause splits, isolation, withdrawal and eventually extermination.
Marx said, “Revolutionary progress disrupts the course of a closed and powerful counterrevolution by producing rebels who convert the party of resistance into a truly revolutionary party.”1
The urban guerilla has shown that the only way to resist state terror is through armed proletarian politics.
The RAF Prisoners
Stammheim
September 23, 1975
The Bombing of the Cologne Train Station
On the night of November 11-12, state security agents and/or fascists again set off a bomb in a train station—first Hamburg and Nuremberg, and now Cologne.
The federal government’s Terrorism Division and the cops hoped to create a bloodbath with this pointless act of terrorism. In Bremen and Hamburg, the bombs exploded on Federal Football League game days. In Cologne, the Carnival began on November 11, certainly a night when many people would be out; it was only by chance that no one was injured. […]
The urban guerilla has often stated, and has proven through its practice since 1970, that its actions are never and have never been directed against the people. […]1
Red Army Faction
2nd of June Movement
Revolutionary Cells
November 1975
10
The Murder of Ulrike Meinhof
ON MAY 9, 1976, THE state announced that Ulrike Meinhof had committed suicide.
Government officials claimed that the guerilla leader had hanged herself following a period of extreme depression provoked by tension with her co-defendants, particularly Andreas Baader.
The prisoners’ lawyers responded to the alleged suicide almost immediately. One of her attorneys, Michael Oberwinder, challenged the claim that Meinhof had been suffering from extreme depression:
I myself talked with Frau Meinhof… last Wednesday… regarding the suits. There was not the least sign of disinterest on her part, rather we had an animated discussion in the context of which Frau Meinhof explained the group’s point of view.2
He further added:
If Federal Prosecutor Kaul, as it says here, speaks of a certain coldness between Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader, that is a monstrous claim that doesn’t correspond to reality.
Defense attorney Otto Schily further posed some interesting questions:
Why didn’t they allow a trusted doctor chosen by (Meinhof’s) sister to assist in the autopsy? Why the suspicious haste regarding the autopsy?1
Her attorney Axel Azzola dismissed the theory out of hand:
The authorities are responsible for her death. There is no such thing as suicide. There are only the pursuers and the pursued.2
The defense attorneys called for an independent investigation. As a result, on July 16, 1976, an International Investigatory Commission into the Death of Ulrike Meinhof was formed;3 its findings, delivered on December 15, 1978, revealed compelling evidence that Meinhof had been brutally raped and murdered.
In examining the autopsy report, the Commission uncovered a series of medical contradictions. A group of English doctors noted the absence of usual signs of asphyxiation, the normal cause of death in a suicide by hanging:
The report mentions neither bulging of the eyes or tongue, nor a cyanosis (bruising) of the face, habitual signs of death by asphyxiation. In spite of the fracture of the hyoid bone at the base of the tongue, there is no swelling of the neck in the area of the mark left by the “rope made from a bath towel” from which the prisoner was hanging. The negative results are irregular for a death by asphyxiation, that is the least we can say. On the other hand, they fit a death by pneumo-cartic compression very well, that is to say a death by pressure on the carotid artery, which can provoke death by a reflexive cardiac arrest.
To many supporters, this evidence seemed to indicate that Meinhof was strangled to death before being hanged.
Furthermore, the autopsy results suggested to the Commission that Meinhof had been raped before she was murdered:
The two autopsy reports mention a marked edema in the external genital area and swelling of the two calves. The two reports mention an abrasion covered with clotted blood on the left buttock. The Janssen report also mentions an ecchymosis on the right hip. The chemical analysis for sperm had, according to the official statement, a positive result, in spite of the absence of spermatozoa.4
A letter from Dr. Klaus Jarosch, a professor at the University of Linz, to defense attorney Michael Oberwinder, dated August 17, 1976, concurred with the opinion of the English doctors: “It certainly does not appear to be a typical death by asphyxiation due to hanging….”5
There were several problems with the claim that Meinhof had used her prison towel to fashion a rope for hanging herself. Both the report of West German neuropsychiatrist Hans-Joachim Meyer6 and that of the Stuttgart-based Technical Institute of Criminology7 noted discrepancies in the width and length of the towel-rope found in Meinhof’s cell, and the other towels in Stammheim. Furthermore, the TIC noted that neither Meinhof’s scissors nor the table knife in her cell had any traces of fiber on them, raising the question of how the towel would have been cut.8 Finally, RAF prisoner Ingrid Schubert declared that the prisoners had carried out a series of tests with their own prison issue towels, and that neither new nor old towels had managed to bear a weight of more than fifty kilos without tearing out of the window grating.1
There were also significant contradictions regarding a chair allegedly used in the hanging. The report of the legal doctor and that of the criminal police claimed that the chair placed on top of a mattress was supporting Meinhof’s left leg. The chair is not mentioned in the report of Schreitmüller, a prison functionary, who explicitly stated, “I did not see a chair.” When questioned by Croissant, he even went so far as to state that the report of a chair, published in Spiegel, was false. Prison doctor Henck stated in his report, “The feet were 20 cm from the floor.” Police reports mentioned neither the chair nor the mattress. The prisoners, in their statement, noted that a chair on such an unstable base would surely have tipped as a result of reflex motions, and that such reflex motions would have caused severe bruising of the legs.2
Important objects were missing in the inventory of her cell taken following her death. A blanket she always used, on which Andreas Baader’s name was sewn, had gone missing, and was never found. Similarly, Meinhof was found dead wearing black pants and a grey shirt, whereas that day she had been wearing blue jeans and a red shirt. The Commission posed the question as to why a woman intent on committing suicide would change before doing so, and noted that investigators never made any effort to examine the clothing she had been wearing earlier that day.3
On the evening of her death, the duty guard removed the light bulbs from Meinhof’s cell, as was standard procedure. However, the May 10 inventory turned up a light bulb in Meinhof’s desk lamp. A test for fingerprints produced some partial prints, insufficient for positive identification, but in no way matching those of Ulrike Meinhof. The Commission further noted that the result of these fingerprint tests was only sent to the investigators after the investigation had been closed.4
The way in which the autopsy was conducted also raised serious concerns. Neither the prisoners nor their lawyers were permitted to see the body before the autopsy. Professor Rauschke, the specialist in legal medicine appointed by the state to conduct the autopsy, failed to carry out skin tests that could have established whether or not Meinhof was dead prior to being hanged.1 Rauschke had also performed the autopsy on Siegfried Hausner, and som
e supporters and members of the guerilla would point to this as further evidence of a cover-up, given the theory some held at that time that Hausner’s autopsy had been used to camouflage the fact that he had been beaten to death by the Swedish police.2
Ulrike’s Brain
A gruesome postscript to Ulrike Meinhof’s death and the subsequent cover up surfaced decades later.
In 2002, it came to light that the BAW had arranged for Meinhof’s brain to be surreptitiously removed during her autopsy and delivered to the neurologist Jürgen Peiffer at Tübingen University. The state was still curious as to whether “left-wing terrorism” might in fact be the result of some kind of neurological disorder. Peiffer was happy to oblige, and after carrying out his tests claimed that Meinhof did indeed suffer from brain damage, which “undoubtedly gives cause to raise questions in court about how responsible she was for her action.”1
Following this, Meinhof’s brain was stored away in a cardboard box where it remained untouched for twenty years, until 1997 when it was transferred to the Psychiatric Clinic in Magdeburg. There, Dr. Bernhard Bogerts, a psychiatrist, studied it for five years, coming to a similarly totalitarian conclusion, namely that “The slide into terror can be explained by the brain illness.”2
At the demand of her daughters, Meinhof’s brain was interred at her burial place on December 22, 2002.
In 2002, it was also revealed that Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin—who had all been similarly “suicided” in Stammheim—had all had their brains removed prior to burial in 1977, without their relatives’ knowledge or consent.
The whereabouts of their brains remains unknown today.3
There were also problems regarding the inspection of the cell. Klaus Croissant, Meinhof’s sister Inge Wienke Zitzlaff, and her step-daughter Anja Röhl were all denied the right to attend the inventory, while attorney Michael Oberwinder was only permitted to stay in the hallway outside of the cell as the Criminal Police searched it for five hours.3 Two days after her death, the entire cell, including the window grating, was painted. This is not standard procedure. It was not until after this that lawyers and relatives were permitted inside the cell.4
Given the mass of evidence, the Commission concluded:
The totality of the medical and legal contradictions, facts, and evidence that we have uncovered and proven, rule out the possibility of suicide as the cause of Meinhof’s death.5
At a conference in May 1975, Dr. Hans Josef Horchem, at the time head of the Verfassungsschutz, had underscored Meinhof’s importance in the eyes of the state. “Through the lack of new ideologues of Ulrike Meinhof’s quality,” the head of the political police had mused, “the continuation of the phenomenon of terror could be curtailed.”6
Noting this, the Commission concluded:
It is not impossible that Ulrike Meinhof’s death was part of a secret service strategy to combat the RAF. In which case, her “suicide” would have been meant to show everyone how her politics and those of the RAF had failed, and how, by her “suicide,” she herself had recognized this failure.7
The Commission further noted that the murder of Ulrike Meinhof would be far from inconsistent with past treatment of RAF prisoners. Andreas Baader, Ronald Augustin, and Ali Jansen had been deprived of water for extensive periods during hunger strikes.8 They also noted that Holger Meins, Katharina Hammerschmidt, and Siegfried Hausner had all died as a result of medical mistreatment.9
The timing of Meinhof’s death was also taken by some as evidence of a counterinsurgency operation. On May 4, the prisoners had filed demands for the production of evidence. The demands were aimed at unmasking specific political and union figures, and, in particular, at revealing that both the current SPD Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, and his predecessor, Willy Brandt, had ties to the CIA.
According to the Commission, “It is clear that the confrontation would have reached its climax at this point in the trial.”10
These demands, as it turns out, were based on Meinhof’s work. Documents pertinent to this subject, as well as those pertinent to other work she was doing, documents that she always kept with her, were never seen again after her death.
As far as the Commission was concerned, the question was not whether Meinhof’s strategy might have damaged well-known politicians. Rather, the Commissioners noted that Meinhof’s plan risked dealing a serious blow to the Attorney General’s use of the Stammheim trial to depoliticize the defendants and the actions for which they were being held accountable.
The prisoners would subsequently insist that even the concept of institutional murder regarding Meinhof’s death was not precise enough. Rather, it was the execution of a revolutionary in the context of a military conflict.1 As Meinhof herself had said in court the day before she was found dead, “It is, of course, a police tactic in counterinsurgency conflicts, in guerilla warfare, to take out the leaders.”2
Meinhof’s sister, Inge Wienke Zitzlaff, similarly rejected the state’s version of events. “My sister once told me very clearly she never would commit suicide,” she remembered. “She said if it ever were reported that she killed herself then I would know she had been murdered.”3
Not only members of the RAF support scene, but also many in the undogmatic left and the K-groups, agreed that Meinhof’s death must have been a case of murder.
An open letter signed by various intellectuals—including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir—compared it to the worst crimes of the Nazi era.4 Left-wing poet—and former anti-Nazi resistance fighter—Erich Fried described the fallen guerilla as “the most important woman in German politics since Rosa Luxemburg.”5
There was a wave of low-level attacks against German targets across Europe. In Paris, the offices of two West German steel companies were bombed, as was the German Cultural Center in Toulouse6 and Daimler-Benz in Nimes. In Italy, the German Academy and the West German Travel Bureau in Rome were firebombed;7 in Milan, targets associated with Bosch and Volkswagen were attacked. The West German consulate in Venice was similarly firebombed. On May 11, the West German consulate in Copenhagen was firebombed.
Meanwhile, back in the FRG, bombs went off in Munich outside the U.S. Armed Forces radio station and in a shopping center in the middle of the night,8 and a molotov cocktail was thrown at the Land Courthouse in Wuppertal.
Thousands reacted with sorrow and rage, demonstrations took place across the country, and both social and political prisoners in Berlin-Tegel Prison held a three-day hunger strike, as did thirty-six captives at the Hessen Women’s Prison.
Fighting was particularly fierce in Frankfurt; according to one police spokesperson, it was “the most brutal in the postwar history of the city.”9 Following a rally organized by the sponti left,10 with the watchword that “Ulrike Meinhof is Dead—Let’s Rescue the Living,” hundreds of people rampaged through the downtown area, breaking the windows at American Express and the America House cultural center, setting up barricades and defending them against police water cannons with molotov cocktails. Twelve people were arrested and seven cops were injured, one of them seriously when his car was set ablaze as he sat in it.11
As we shall see in Section 11, this demonstration and the reaction to it constituted a turning point for the sponti scene.
On May 15, some 7,000 people, many with their faces blackened and heads covered to avoid identification by the police, attended Meinhof’s funeral in West Berlin.12 Wienke Zitzlaff requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the prisoners’ support campaign.1 When they left the cemetery, mourners joined with demonstrations in downtown West Berlin and at the Moabit courthouse where Meinhof had been sentenced two years earlier in her trial with Horst Mahler and Hans-Jürgen Bäcker.2
Meinhof, described as “the most important woman in German politics since Rosa Luxemburg,” would not be forgotten by future generations.
left: “Ulrike Meinhof, murdered 9.5.1976 in Stammheim prison—Protest is when I say I don’t like this and that. Resistance is
when I see to it that things that I don’t like no longer occur.”
right: “Because freedom is only possible in the struggle for liberation; Lesbian demostration at Ulrike’s grave on October 7, 1995; Internationalist Feminists will celebrate Ulrike Meinhof’s 61st birthday; Build a Revolutionary Women’s Movement”
That same day, there were bomb attacks in Hamm in North Rhine-Westphalia, and also in Rome, Seville, and Zurich.
Three days later, there was another demonstration of 8,000 people in West Berlin, during which several police officers were injured. Bombs continued to go off in France, and cars with German license plates and the offices of a right-wing newspaper were targeted.3 On June 2, the Revolutionary Cells bombed the U.S. Army Headquarters and U.S. Officers’ Club in Frankfurt, carrying out the attack under the banner of the “Ulrike Meinhof Commando.”4 That same day, just outside the city, two fully loaded military trucks at a U.S. airbase were blown up.
Claims that Meinhof had committed suicide were interpreted by the RAF as part of the state’s psychological warfare campaign, a horrible escalation intended to discredit the guerilla in general and Meinhof’s participation in particular.
In an attempt to refute claims that there had been a falling out between Meinhof and the others, or that she was weakening in her resolve, the prisoners opted to release several documents she had written just before her death.
These documents were accompanied by the following stipulation by Jan-Carl Raspe:
This is a fragment about the structure of the group, which Ulrike insisted on presenting in Stammheim, in order to destroy the leadership theory around which the BAW wanted to build this trial. Andreas was opposed, and we all wanted to write it differently.