The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1
Page 81
1 Ibid.; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Zweihundert Studenten der Freien Universität im Hungerstriek Demonstrationen und Krawalle in Berlin,” November 13, 1974.
2 Salvator Scalzo, Steffi de Jong, and Joost van den Akker, Terror, Myth and Victims: The Historical Interpretation of the Brigate Rosse and the Rote Armee Fraktion, October 26, 2007, 18.
3 Jürgen Busch, “Viele Gruppen—viele führende Leute” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 14, 1974. One can see from this declaration how it was assumed by not only journalists, but also by the revolutionary left, that the RAF had been finished off by the arrests in 72. Even those “in the know” were unclear about the relationship between the 2nd of June Movement and the RAF itself.
4 Ibid.
5 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Todesfälle eingeplant?” November 14, 1974.
6 Busch, “Die letzte Waffe des Anarchisten.”
7 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Beshuldigungen nach dem Tod von Holger Meins.”
8 Associated Press, “Bonn fears more violence,” Syracuse Post-Standard, November 12, 1974.
1 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Maihofer: ‘Brutale Strategie’ der Baader-Meinhof-Bande,” November 14, 1974.
2 European Stars and Stripes, “German terrorist is hospitalized,” November 14, 1974.
3 Associated Press, “West German police round up anarchist groups,” Greeley Tribune, November 27, 1974.
4 Cobler, 141.
5 Associated Press, “West German police round up anarchist groups.”
6 The frustrating fact of the matter is that no two sources seem to agree on either the exact number of arrests, the nature of all the charges, or the numbers actually prosecuted.
7 In a cabinet shuffle after Helmut Schmidt replaced Willy Brandt as Chancellor earlier that year, Werner Maihofer replaced Hans-Dietrich Genscher as Minister of the Interior. (Genscher became Minister of Foreign Affairs.)
8 “Meinhof,” European Stars and Stripes, November 30, 1974.
9 Klaus Croissant, “Le procès de Stuttgart,” in Croissant, 16-17.
10 Cobler, 206.
1 The Committees themselves disbanded over the next year and a half.
1 A term for the police, whose uniforms were green.
2 Greens being police, whites are presumably psychiatrists.
3 Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Happiness) was a Nazi organization within the Arbeitsfront (Work Front), the Nazi “company” union. Kraft durch Freude organized vacations and leisure activities for the working class.
4 The period during which the RAF was on its first hunger strike—what follows is a list of solidarity actions about which the editors of this volume sadly have no further details.
5 North German Radio, a chain of radio stations serving north-western Germany and headquartered in Hamburg.
6 PEN is an international organization promoting literacy and defending literary works from censorship. It’s president between 1971 and 1974 was Heinrich Böll.
1 Ludwig Martin, Attorney General from April 7, 1963, until April 30, 1974.
2 This is a quote of Bertolt Brecht, the communist playright.
1 The Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft, the FRG’s science funding agency, began supporting experiments in sensory deprivation in federal institutions in 1967.
1 Red Rock.
1 German police wear green uniforms.
1 A reference to Mao.
1 §231a and §231b had just become law, part of the Lex Baader-Meinhof, allowing for trials to continue in the absence of the defendants. See page 345.
1 In the original, this list appeared in one long paragraph; we have reformatted it for greater readability.
2 Roughly $60 million at the time.
3 Diether Posser was the SPD Minister of Justice in of North Rhine Westphalia at the time.
1 Christian von Ditfurth, historian and journalist.
2 Karl Carstens, a former Nazi who was at this time the Leader of the Opposition for CDU in parliament.
1 The Third International was a worldwide organization of communist parties under the leadership of the U.S.S.R.
1 Lin Biao was a close associate of Mao, and second in command during the Cultural Revolution.
1 This refers to the “Guillaume affair.” Günter Guillaume was an East German spy who worked as SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt’s personal assistant. He was uncovered in late 1973 and arrested on April 24, 1974. The crisis forced Willy Brandt to step down, making room for the more bluntly right-wing and pro-American Helmut Schmidt to take over the party and the chancellorship. Guillaume was released to the GDR in 1981.
1 The Bremen bombing and other false flag attacks are discussed in Section 9. Shadow Boxing: Countering Psychological Warfare. The RAF’s statement on this attack in particular can be found on page 371.
1 This is a rough quote from “The Class Struggles in France,” a series of articles which Marx wrote in 1850 about the 1848-1849 revolution and counter-revolution in France. These articles can be read online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/index.htm.
1 This introductory paragraph comes from the book Karlek med forhinder (“Love with Impediments”) published in Sweden in 1978 by independent publisher Bo Cavefors. The intent was to smuggle the RAF writings in a book with a phony cover into West Germany where publication and distribution of RAF material was illegal.
2 This legislation, part of the Lex Baader-Meinhof, was passed in December 1974. For more on this see page 345.
1 The Grundrisse by Karl Marx was a book of notes for future work on economics that was cut short by the author’s death. This passage comes from Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Random House, 1973), 83-84, available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm.
1 Associated Press, “New Terror Ring Smashed By Raids in German Cities,” European Stars and Stripes, February 5, 1974.
1 Jacobson, “Show Trial,” 17.
2 Letter from the RAF to the RAF prisoners, reprinted on page 338.
1 At the time, a little more than $8,000.
2 Ralf Reinders and Ronald Fritzch, Die Bewegung 2. Juni, (Berlin, Amsetrdam: ID-Archiv, 1995), 86.
3 The FRG approached Libya, Syria, and Ethiopia; all refused to take the prisoners.
4 Joe Stork, “Socialist Revolution in Arabia: A Report from the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen,” MERIP Reports 15 (March, 1973): 1-25. See also Maxine Molyneux, Aida Yafai, Aisha Mohsen, and Noor Ba’abad, “Women and Revolution in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen,” Feminist Review 1 (1979): 4-20.
5 Stork, 23.
6 Associated Press, “Kidnaped Berlin Political Figure is Released Unhurt,” Wisconsin State Journal, March 5, 1975.
1 Fred Halliday, Revolution and Foreign Policy: The Case of South Yemen 1967-1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 76-77. The aid had in fact been promised in 1967, but had been frozen when the Marxist-Leninist National Liberation Front had out-maneuvered the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (favoured by the imperialist countries) for power, and, in line with the Soviet position, refused to recognize West Berlin as part of the FRG
2 Time Magazine [online], “The Lorenz Kidnaping: A Rehearsal?” March 17, 1975.
3 Quoted in Richard Clutterbuck, “Terrorism and Urban Violence,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 34, no. 4, The Communications Revolution in Politics (1982): 173.
4 Cobler, 193.
5 Ibid.
6 European Stars and Stripes, “Hunt for anarchists stepped up,” March 7, 1975.
7 Melvin J. Lasky, “Ulrike Meinhof & the Baader-Meinhof Gang,” Encounter 44 no. 6 (June, 1975): 23.
1 Halliday, 77. Roughly $3 million DM were eventually released as “emergency food aid” and pumps for Aden’s water supply.
2 Dellwo, 93.
3 Ibid., 10.
4 The MEK, or Mobile
s Einsatz Kommando—similar to an American SWAT team.
5 Karrin Hanshew, “Militant Democracy, Civil Disobedience, and Terror: Political Violence and the West German Left during the ‘German Autumn,’ 1977” in War and Terror in Contemporary Historical Perspective, Harry and Helen Gray Humanities and Program Series 14, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies Humanities Volume 14, Johns Hopkins University 2003: 28.
6 Aust, 291.
7 The state and media claimed that the explosives went off due to some error on the part of the commando; the guerilla suggested that the MEK intentionally triggered the explosion.
1 Associated Press, “4 get life for attack at embassy,” European Stars and Stripes, July 21, 1977.
2 Thaddeus Kopinski, “From barroom brawls to bombings,” Post Herald and Register, April 27, 1975.
3 Cobler, 168.
4 Ibid.
5 Dellwo, 124.
1 Ibid. In terms of how the prisoners themselves felt about this action on their behalf, Dellwo recounts that during his first visit from Klaus Croissant, the lawyer passed on a thankful greeting from Meinhof: “Stockholm is the Diên Biên Phu of social democracy.”
2 Aust, 149.
3 Rote Armee Fraktion, 197.
4 Defense Attorney Siegfried Haag Goes Underground, see page 341.
5 Varon, 231, 268.
1 Speech to the Bundestag, June 7, 1972, quoted in Texte des prisonniers de la “fraction armée rouge” et dernières lettres d’Ulrike Meinhof, Draft version, A3.
2 Television interview, April 25, 1975, quoted in Ibid., A6.
3 Croissant, “Le procès de Stuttgart,” 17.
4 Bakker Schut, Stammheim, 157.
5 Ibid., 158.
6 Jacobs, “Civil Rights and Women’s Rights,” 168.
7 It should be noted that even as they condemned this as a transparent move to bar them from proceedings, the prisoners also insisted that they were unfit to stand trial because of the isolation conditions, not the hunger strikes themselves.
1 Cobler, 207.
2 “Wir waren in den Durststreik treten,” Spiegel 4/1975: 52-57. Cf 300-318.
3 Croissant, “Le procès de Stuttgart,” 18.
4 Brigitte Mohnhaupt’s Testimony at the Stammheim Trial, July 22, 1976.
5 In 1987, RAF lawyer Pieter Bakker Schut published the entire Info collection in a book entitled Das Info: brief von gefangen aus der RAF aus der discussion 1973 - 1977. It is available online at the site maintained by his former client, ex-RAF prisoner Ronald Augustin, at http://labourhistory.net/raf/search.php?search=das+in fo+bakker+schut&field=0&word=0&btn=Search#
1 Bakker Schut, Stammheim, 519.
2 Ibid., 630.
3 Ibid., 419.
4 Varon, 256.
5 Cobler, 117-118.
6 Braunthal, 160-161.
7 Ibid., 161.
8 Associated Press, “Terrorist Bomb Racks Train Station,” Modesto Bee, September 14, 1975.
9 Reinders was a 2nd of June Movement member arrested in September 1975, in connection with the Lorenz kidnapping. The 2JM also disclaimed responsibility for this attack.
10 The Bombing of the Hamburg Train Station, cf 378-79.
11 Most notoriously in Italy. As an example, see: Stuart Christie, Stefano Della Chaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist, (Black Papers, No 1) (London: Anarchy Magazine/Refract, 1984).
1 Associated Press, “W. Germans fear possible gas attack by terrorists,” Reno Evening Gazette, May 16, 1975.
2 Cobler, 46.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 47.
5 Jacobson, 21.
6 Ibid.
1 Aust, 164.
2 Ibid., 360.
3 Christiane Ensslin and Klaus Jünschke, “Stimmen aus Stammheim: Isolationshaft ist kein Mythos,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung [online], August 8, 2007.
4 Becker, 273.
5 Aust, 362-363.
6 Associated Press, “Baader-Meinhof Armourer Testifies,” European Stars and Stripes, January 28, 1976; “Handelsgeschäfte mit der ‘Wahrheit’ Kronzeugen als Sonder- Beweismittel der Anklage,” http://www.freilassung.de/div/texte/kronzeuge/goe1.htm.
7 Aust, 384-386.
1 The preceding points appeared in the German as one long paragraph; they have been reformatted here for added readability.
1 Klaus Croissant indicated that Meinhof misspoke, intending to refer to the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a guerilla group active in the California between 1973 and 1975.
1 With minor omissions, this is a quote from Lenin’s Imperialism and the Split in Socialism written in October, 1916 and available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm.
2 Le Duan became the first Secretary of the Communist Party in North Vietnam in 1960. After the death of party founder and leader Ho Chi Minh in 1969, Le took over the leadership of the government. He remained General Secretary of the CP and head of the government until his death in 1986 at the age of seventy-nine.
3 This quote is from Le Duan’s Principles and Methods of Revolutionary Action, written on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the establishment of the Indochinese Communist Party (1970). A slightly different translation appears in This Nation and Socialism Are One: Selected Writings of Le Duan First Secretary, Central Committee Vietnam Workers Party available at http://leninist.biz/en/1976/NSO261/05-Principles.and.Methods.of.Revolutionary.Action#forw1page17.
1 Amir Parviz Puyan was a prominent member of the Organization of the People’s Fedayeen Guerillas, a Marxist-Leninist guerilla group established in 1971. By the time of the 1979 revolution, the OPFG was the most significant guerilla group operating in Iran.
2 Probably quoted from memory, this is a mangled paraphrasing of an argument from Marx’s “The Class Struggles in France.” The full passage as it appears in Marx and Engels, Selected Works II, ed. V. Adoretsky (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1942), 192: “revolutionary advance made headway not by its immediate tragi-comic achievements, but on the contrary by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an opponent, by fighting which the party of revolt first ripened into a real revolutionary party.”
1 This signaled the third of the RAF prisoners’ hunger strikes; see page 253.
2 These are actions the police and media claimed the RAF was planning.
1 §231a and §231b allowed for trials to continue in the absence of a defendant, if the reason for this absence was found to be of the defendant’s own doing—a stipulation directly aimed at the prisoners’ effective use of hunger strikes.
2 Following the 1848 working class uprising in Germany in which prominent communists including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels played an important role, a series of trials in Cologne was used in a partially successful attempt to destroy the Communist League, also known as the First International.
1 On November 21, 1974, bombs in two pubs in Birmingham, England claimed twenty-one lives. These bombings were denounced by the left as a counterinsurgency action meant to discredit the Irish nationalist movement, but the IRA acknowledged its responsibility some years later.
2 On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in a public square in Milan killing a large number of people. Initially blamed on anarchists, the action was subsequently proven to be the work of fascists supported by the Italian security services and NATO.
3 Many of the actions listed here were carried out by the Revolutionary Cells. For more on this guerilla organization, see pages 436-41.
4 This was the most complete version of this document available to us.
1 Probably quoted from memory, this is a very mangled version of a phrase from Marx’s “Class Struggles in France.” See page 367, fn 2.
1 This was the most complete version of this document available to us.
2 Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 9.
1 Ibid., 10.
2 United Press International, “German rebel hangs herself,” Pharos Tribune, May 10, 1976.
&nb
sp; 3 The commissioners were: Michelle Beauvillard (a lawyer from Paris), Claude Bourdet (a journalist from Paris), Georges Casalis (a theologian from Paris), Robert Davezies (a journalist from Paris), Joachim Israel (a sociology professor from Copenhagen), Panayotis Kanelakis (a lawyer from Athens), Henrik Kaufholz (a journalist from Denmark), John McGuffin (a writer from Belfast), Hans-Joachim Meyer (a neuropsychiatrist from the FRG), and Jean-Pierre Vigier (a doctor from Paris).
4 Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 25. It should be noted that Stefan Aust, the most intelligent defender of the state’s version of events, objects that “the ‘sperm test’ was a phosphatase test customarily carried out to establish the presence of certain yeasts. There are many of these, found not only in sperm but in all proteins, also occurring as a result of bacterial contamination. Thus, such a test will be positive in the majority of cases. Only if it gives a negative result are further specialized tests unnecessary. In Ulrike Meinhof’s case, further microchemical and microscopic tests were carried out, and clearly showed that the protein traces were not spermatic filaments.” (Aust, 346-7) The editors of this volume are highly skeptical of the state’s story, and yet feel readers are best situated to make up their own minds on the matter.
5 Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 28.
6 Ibid., 32-34.
7 Ibid., 45-46.
8 Ibid., 46.
1 Ibid., 42-43.
2 Ibid., 46.
3 Ibid., 47-49.
4 Ibid., 47-48.
1 Roger Boyles, “Daughter Defies State Over Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain,” The Times [online], November 9, 2002.
2 BBC News [online], “Meinhof Brain Study Yields Clues,” November 12, 2002.
3 Spiegel [online], “Gehirne der toten RAF-Terroristen verschwunden,” November 16, 2002.
1 Ibid., 62-64.
2 This theory regarding Hausner’s death disappeared from RAF statements before the end of the decade. For a synopsis, see sidebar, page 334.