The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1

by J. Smith

  The wave of protest and violence was not long in coming, though in the end it subsided well short of the “100,000 bombings” that one group promised would avenge the events of October 18.

  In the week immediately following the deaths, West German and rightwing targets were attacked in over twenty Italian cities. Simultaneous explosions rocked the Siemens, BMW, and Opel auto buildings in Rome,5 car showrooms were firebombed in Bologna, Milan, Livorno, and Turin, and West German consulates were attacked in Genoa and Venice.6 A police officer in the northern town of Brescia lost his hand while trying to defuse a bomb, and club-wielding demonstrators sent dozens of cops to the hospital in Sicily. In Milan, city councillor Carlo Arienti, a Christian Democrat, miraculously survived being shot eight times in an action claimed by the Red Brigades to “honor our West German comrades.”1

  A telephone caller in Milan threatened, “We are also ready to ‘suicide’ the German Ambassador.”2 As a result, the FRG embassy was ringed with riot police and armored personnel carriers. Left-wing students demonstrating on the Rome University campus engaged police in a three-hour gun battle, leaving five police and three students wounded and twenty-five people in custody on charges of possessing weapons and firebombs.3 At the same time, windows were smashed on the upper class Via Veneto and molotov cocktails were thrown at cops, the protesters denouncing “German Nazis for the cold blooded murder of our comrades.”

  In Paris and Nice, molotov cocktails were thrown at German tourist buses,4 as well as at the Franco-German Bank and a car showroom.5 The offices of the progressive Libération newspaper were occupied6 in an effort to force its journalists to launch an investigation into the Stammheim deaths, as bombs went off in Toulouse, Versailles,7 and Le Havre.8

  In France, neofascists retaliated against the wave of protest by bombing the offices of the left-wing Syndicat de la Magistrature,9 leaving behind papers that simply read “Baader Murderer.”10 In a public statement, one self-styled “Anti-Terrorist Brigade” claimed to have captured and killed a member of the guerilla; as no body was ever found, this was likely bluster. Nevertheless, police used the spectre of further escalation and counter-escalation as an excuse to ban all protests outside the West German embassy in Paris.11

  Violent protests also broke out in Athens, and Greek police engaged in a firefight with reported anarchists who were driving a car full of explosives, presumably to attack a nearby factory owned by a West German corporation.12 Around the same time, three people were injured when the West German Cultural Center in Istanbul was firebombed during two days of anti-German demonstrations in Turkey.13

  In Holland, several men abducted real estate tycoon Maurits Caransa, pushing him struggling into an automobile after he left a club where he had been playing bridge. The press reported that a Germanspeaking man had called the newspaper Het Parool: “We are the Red Army Faction,” he apparently said. “We have Caransa. You will hear from us.” Another newspaper claimed to receive a call demanding that Queen Juliana abdicate and that Knut Folkerts, still awaiting extradition, be freed.14 Despite these reports, when Caransa was released three days later after haggling with his captors over a four million dollar ransom, it was revealed to have been a “normal” kidnapping unrelated to the RAF or any other guerilla group.15

  At the same time, another kidnapping, one which was not reported as being politically motivated, was in fact the work of the guerilla: in a defiant act, on November 9, the anarchist 2nd of June Movement snatched lingerie magnate Walter Palmers in Vienna, dragging him from his car as he arrived home for dinner. He was released unharmed four days later, after his son delivered a ransom of $3.1 million.16 Nobody was arrested, and the 2JM took the money and divided it three ways, giving badly needed funds to the RAF and an unspecified Palestinian group.

  As far away as Seattle, in the United States, the George Jackson Brigade bombed a Mercedes-Benz dealership in solidarity with the RAF. “We chose Mercedes-Benz as a target,” they explained, “because it is a German luxury car which is a favorite item of conspicuous consumption for ruling class bosses, and because of its association with Hans Martin Schleyer.”1

  Meanwhile, newspapers reported that they had received threats that three Lufthansa planes would be blown up on November 15, prompting massive cancellations,2 though in the end there were no attacks on the airline.

  The flames of protest spread quickly, but by the end of the year, the violence had clearly been contained. The strongest reaction had been from the Italian left, where a tradition of militancy and a keen awareness of the realities of postfascist state repression provided the basis for the fierce fightback, giving rise to 147 documented anti-German attacks between October 18 and December 31 of 1977.3 The massive offensive by the revolutionary movement in Italy, including militant strikes and numerous armed actions, certainly contributed to the impressive show of solidarity.

  In the Federal Republic itself, courthouses were bombed in Hannover,4 Zweibrucken,5 and Hamburg,6 but these were isolated acts. This meek reaction, especially when compared to what was happening in other countries, was a measure of the extent to which the visible might of the state and vicious anticommunist hysteria had put the left on the defensive. Rage had been muted by despair, as many people now felt that the level of conflict had exceeded their capacities. They recoiled in shock as the country seemed to be transforming itself into a police state.

  The cream of the West German establishment gathered at Schleyer’s state funeral on October 24, surrounded by 750 police, with snipers in place on the surrounding rooftops.

  In this paramilitary setting, President Walter Scheel declared:

  The fight against terrorism is the fight of civilization against a barbarism trying to destroy all order… They are the enemies of every civilization… The nations of the earth are beginning to realize this. They realize with horror that not this or that order is being attacked, but all order.

  Specifically referring to anyone who dared protest following the Stammheim deaths, he remarked that, “They too share the guilt.”7

  It should be noted that while this lynch mob atmosphere met with broad support from the West German public, for many—including people who had no truck with revolutionary politics—things seemed to be going too far. The new “muscular” social democracy seemed to find appropriate expression on the cover of Stern magazine around this time, where Chancellor Schmidt posed wearing the uniform of the BGS. This government reaction to the events of 1977 demonstrated the degree to which the SPD could act as repressively as the CDU, and has been identified as the starting point of yet another split between the party’s leadership and its more left-wing members, a development that accelerated over the next few years, giving rise to the Green Party.8

  Police set up special phone numbers in eighteen cities where one could hear taped recordings of the RAF members’ voices; in Bonn, the line was so jammed with calls that a second number had to be set up. Over 100,000 police were mobilized, and alleged terrorist hideouts were raided. In West Berlin, thirty-eight apartments, bookstores, and printing shops were searched and forty people taken into custody, prompting a protest outside of police headquarters, which was met by cops swinging rubber truncheons.9 Info-BUG and its printers Firma Agit-Druck were amongst those targeted, and the radical newspaper found itself banned.

  At the same time, in France, attorney Klaus Croissant was being publicly referred to as “a central figure in international terrorism.” The lawyer was supported by philosophers Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre,1 as well a number of professional associations, including the Syndicat de la Magistrature, the Confédération Syndicale des Avocats, the Jeunes Avocats, the Mouvement d’action judicaire, and the Association Francaise des Juristes Democrates.2 There was also a Committee for the Immediate Liberation of Klaus Croissant, which made its point by mailing one thousand crescent-shaped pastries to government officials, each one accompanied by a note which read, “If a croissant can circulate freely in the marketplace, why not a lawyer?�
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  Croissant’s persecution by an authoritarian state across the Rhine brought back memories that added weight to the entire affair. As one defense lawyer put it:

  When I see this hunted lawyer on the one side, and on the other Prosecutor Shuller, a former stormtrooper and member of the old National Socialist party, I know where I stand.4

  But to no avail: on November 2, extradition hearings began in Paris, and two weeks later, the court ruled that Croissant could be handed over to the Germans. By November 19, he was sitting in a cell in Stammheim.5

  The RAF was on the defensive, and initial reports indicated that members had fled the country. Reportedly, one million handbills and posters went out across Europe and as far away as Japan,6 identifying the suspects as Susanne Albrecht, Rolf Heissler, Christian Klar, Friederike Krabbe, Silke Maier-Witt, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Adelheid Schulz, Angelika Speitel, Sigrid Sternebeck, Willi-Peter Stoll, Christof Wackernagel, Rolf Clemens Wagner, Elisabeth von Dyck, Juliane Plambeck, Inge Viett, and Jörg Lang. The equivalent of $19,200 was offered for information leading to the arrest of each of these suspects, for a total of over $300,000. (Plambeck and Viett were not actually members of the RAF, but of the 2nd of June Movement, the bulk of whose members would dissolve their organization and join the RAF in 1980.)

  One name that did not immediately appear on the wanted posters was that of Peter-Jürgen Boock, the husband of RAF prisoner Waltraud Boock, and yet it was later revealed that this man had in fact been central to the events of 77.

  Boock had wanted to join the RAF ever since he was a teenaged runaway, one of the kids Baader and Ensslin had worked with in Frankfurt back in 1970. They had rejected him as a member at the time, not least because of his drug habit, a curse which only worsened as the years went on. Nevertheless, by the mid-seventies, with the original leadership largely removed from the field, Boock became a trusted recruit and was sent to South Yemen for training in 1975.7

  In the wake of 77, Boock and other RAF fugitives had found shelter in Baghdad, but he remained plagued by his addiction, and when he began going through withdrawal, some of his comrades became desperate. At this point, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, the senior guerilla in the field, made the incredible decision to ask RAF members and supporters still in Europe to buy or steal drugs, which would then presumably be smuggled into the Middle East.8

  The first RAF members arrested after the Stammheim deaths were on one such mission. Christof Wackernagel and Gerd Schneider were in Amsterdam looking to score for Boock, but unknown to the two men, their safehouse had been identified during the Caransa investigation, and the police had it under constant observation. On November 11, the two men were followed as they left the apartment; when they realized that police were surrounding them, they drew their weapons and began to fire, even throwing a hand grenade. Sharpshooters took them out: one guerilla was hit in the chest and stomach, the other received a bullet in the head.1

  Schneider was being sought in connection with the Schleyer kidnapping, Wackernagel in connection with the recent Zweibrucken courthouse bombing. Both men were extradited to the Federal Republic.

  On January 21, 1978, Christine Kuby was arrested following a shootout with police in a Hamburg drugstore; she had been attempting to use a forged prescription to buy narcotics for Boock.2

  Shortly afterwards, the Verfassungsschutz tried to carry out an ambitious false flag action, meant to entrap the guerillas. Dynamite was set off in the wall of Celle prison with the goal of allowing Sigurd Debus to escape. Debus, while not a member, was a political prisoner who had participated in hunger strikes with the RAF: the hope was that he would unwittingly lead the Verfassungsschutz to the underground guerillas. (As it turned out, Debus did not escape. When the details of this operation came to light in the mid-eighties it caused some consternation.)3

  In March, the prisoners went on an unsuccessful and uneventful sixth collective hunger strike, demanding association, an international inquiry into the Stammheim deaths and that of Ingrid Schubert, and a return of all documents that had been seized from the dead prisoners’ cells. This time, Klaus Croissant was not able to organize support on the outside: his trial on charges of supporting a terrorist organization had just begun on March 9.4 Refusing to distance himself from his former clients, he now joined them in their hunger strike.

  As progressive journalist Oliver Tolmein wrote years later, “Klaus Croissant was a lawyer who had a political understanding of justice and, as a result, never drew a firm line between defending his clients and political engagement.”5 As a result of such commitment, on February 16, 1979, the tireless advocate was found guilty of supporting a terrorist organization and sentenced to two and a half years in prison, plus four years of Berufsverbot.6

  On May 11, 1978, Stefan Wisniewski was apprehended at the Paris airport as he disembarked off a flight from Yugoslavia. Not only was Wisniewski carrying drugs, police also found a letter from Karl-Heinz Dellwo that had been smuggled out of prison, in which the RAF prisoner strongly criticized the hijacking that ended in the Mogadishu debacle.7

  On June 30, four RAF members—Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Sieglinde Hofmann, Peter-Jürgen Boock, and Rolf Clemens Wagner—were arrested in Zagreb. The Yugoslav government entered into negotiations with the FRG, hoping to exchange the RAF combatants for eight members of the Croatian far right being held by West Germany. When this crass attempt at a trade broke down, the RAF prisoners were ferreted out of Yugoslavia to an undisclosed third country.

  On September 6, RAF member Willi-Peter Stoll was shot dead by police in a Chinese restaurant in Düsseldorf. A few days later, the cops located his apartment, where they found a coded diary, an arsenal of weapons (including a homemade “Stalin Organ” capable of firing primitive missiles), and fingerprints of six other suspected RAF members.8

  Later that month, police surprised three people engaged in target practice in the woods outside of Dortmund. Michael Knoll and Angelika Speitel were both shot, police officer Hans-Wilhelm Hansen was killed while another RAF member managed to escape with his submachine gun. Knoll, who was said to have assisted the RAF by traveling back and forth to Italy as a courier,9 died of his wounds on November 25.

  Also in September, a figure from the earliest days of the guerilla once again made the headlines: Astrid Proll, who had fled from a medical clinic in 1974, was identified and arrested in England. Proll had not been involved in armed struggle since her escape, but had rather found a place for herself in the feminist and squatting communities in London, where the former getaway car driver worked as a mechanic and ran an auto maintenance class for women. It would later be said that Gruppe 47 poet Erich Fried had been one of those who secretly helped her get by while she was in hiding.1

  right: Demonstration organized by the Friends of Astrid Proll campaign in London, England.

  Astrid Proll

  A campaign took shape, largely at the initiative of radical feminists, to support Proll and attempt—unsuccessfully—to fight against her extradition, for in the fugitive’s own words, “I do not expect to survive if I am returned to Germany.”2 Nevertheless, once she was returned, the state quickly agreed to drop the most serious charges: the main evidence against her was that of the discredited Karl-Heinz Ruhland, and the memo from state security that proved her innocence had come to light.

  Meanwhile, on November 1, 1978, Rolf Heissler and Adelheid Schulz were identified as they were attempting to cross into Holland. A firefight ensued and border guards Dionysius de Jong and Johannes Goemans were both shot dead.

  The guerilla was still regrouping, and yet there would be more casualties before it was operational again.

  In the midst of the prisoners’ seventh hunger strike, Elisabeth von Dyck was identified by police while entering a suspected RAF safehouse in Nuremberg on May 4, 1979. She was shot in the back, and died on the spot.3

  A month later, Rolf Heissler was captured after he miraculously survived being shot in the head as he entered a Frankfurt apartment.4 Heissler’s ca
pture would actually go down in history as one of the first public successes of computer data mining in defense of the state. As an engineering magazine explains:

  Much was already known about the terrorists. “The police knew that they rented apartments to conduct their crimes,” recalls Hansjürgen Garstka, the State of Berlin’s commissioner for data protection and freedom of information. “But they used them only a couple days before the event. Also, the police knew these people paid their electricity and rent only in cash.” The terrorists preferred high-rise apartments with underground garages and direct access to the highway, and they were primarily young and German.

  Profile in hand, the police contacted electricity companies, to find out which apartments used no or little electricity, and apartment complexes, to find out which people paid in cash; they also combed through household registrations (German citizens are required to register with the state). “The results were all merged, and in the end, they found one flat which fit absolutely absolutely this profile,” Garstka says. Police put the apartment under surveillance and soon nabbed RAF member Rolf Heißler.5

  While such law enforcement techniques might not raise an eyebrow today, it must be remembered how advanced—as if from science fiction—such levels of surveillance seemed to most people just a generation ago. There was a public outcry when it was learned how the bust had been carried out, and that Horst Herold’s BKA, with its massive computers, was behind it. (Learning a lesson from this, legislation was passed in the mid-eighties allowing such data mining in the FRG.)6

  While the guerilla were the only ones actually being gunned down, 1977 and the years that followed challenged an entire society, as the state unleashed a wave of repression, and anyone to the left of Helmut Schmidt felt they might be a potential target: