by J. Smith
September 13, 1981
A demonstration against Alexander Haig in West Berlin escalates to serious rioting.
September 15, 1981
The RAF’s Gudrun Ensslin Commando attacks the car carrying the head of the U.S. Army in Europe, General Frederick Kroesen, with a bazooka. The armor-plated vehicle survives the attack. Kroesen and his wife suffer permanent damage to their hearing.
September 21, 1981
The trial of RAF member Sieglinde Hofmann, charged in connection with the assassination of Jürgen Ponto, begins.
September 22, 1981
During an action to clear squatted houses in West Berlin, police chase protesters into the street, where one squatter, Klaus-Jürgen Rattay, is hit by a municipal bus and killed.
Sixteen houses are occupied on Kiefernstraße in Düsseldorf. These will become a major hub of activity for anti-imps in the years to come. Also around this time, the Hafenstraße squats are established in Hamburg; these will in time become an important Autonomen stronghold.
October 16, 1981
Alleged RAF supporter Helga Roos is arrested in connection with the attack on Kroesen.
November 2, 1981
The occupation at the planned site of the Startbahn West expansion is violently cleared by police.
December 4, 1981
The Düsseldorf OLG sentences RAF member Stefan Wisniewski to life in prison for his role in the Schleyer kidnapping, among other things.
1982
Inge Viett leaves the RAF and is provided with a new identity and sanctuary in East Germany.
Verena Becker gets word to the other prisoners from the RAF that she had given information to the Verfassungsschutz, and offers to kill herself. The others take their distance from her, but discourage her from doing herself any harm.
May 1982
The RAF releases a major theoretical text reevaluating their practice and opening a new phase in their relationship with the aboveground movement. This paper, Guerilla, Widerstand und antiimperialistische Front (The Guerilla, the Resistance, and the Anti-Imperialist Front), calls for a front involving the guerilla and the aboveground anti-imperialist movement. This document becomes known as the May Paper.
June 1, 1982
In a coordinated offensive against NATO-related institutions, RZ cells bomb the U.S. Army Headquarters in Frankfurt, AFN in West Berlin, ITT in Hannover, IBM and Control Data in Düsseldorf, and the U.S. Army Officers Clubs in Hanau and Gelnhausen.
June 4, 1982
The RZ firebombs the arms company Bourns Ketronic Flug Technik in Hamburg.
June 5, 1982
The RZ bombs the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institute in Tübingen.
June 6, 1982
Israel invades Lebanon in order to attack the Palestine Liberation Organization.
June 10, 1982
In Bonn, 500,000 people demonstrate peacefully against the NATO Summit and President Reagan’s visit to West Berlin. In the lead up to the protest, a split developed around strategy and tactics, between the mainstream left, which favored a peaceful protest, and the anti-imperialists and Autonomen, who favored a more confrontational approach. On the same day 100,000 demonstrate peacefully in West Berlin.
June 11, 1982
Thousands riot in West Berlin against Ronald Reagan’s visit. Numerous houses are raided and ransacked by police on the same day. Two hundred and seventy one people are arrested.
June 16, 1982
The Frankfurt OLG sentences RAF member Sieglinde Hofmann to fifteen years in prison for her role in planning the attempted kidnapping that led to the Ponto assassination. The women arrested with her are sentenced to five to six years in prison.
July 16, 1982
George Shultz replaces Alexander Haig as U.S. secretary of state.
September 16–18, 1982
Supported by Israel, members of the Lebanese Phalange enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and carry out a massacre. Some estimates put the number of victims at well over 3,000. It is believed that former 2JM guerilla Ina Siepmann died fighting as part of a Palestinian women’s brigade resisting this slaughter.
October 26, 1982
People taking a walk in the woods outside of Heusenstamm stumble upon a RAF supply depot. Shortly thereafter another depot is discovered outside of Anmühle.
November 10, 1982
The Düsseldorf OLG sentences RAF member Rolf Heißler to two life terms plus fifteen years for the murder of a police officer and membership in a terrorist organization.
November 11, 1982
RAF members Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Adelheid Schulz are arrested at the RAF’s Heusenstamm arms depot.
November 16, 1982
RAF member Christian Klar is arrested at the RAF’s Anmühle arms depot.
1983
March 1, 1983
RAF member Gisela Dutzi is arrested in Darmstadt.
March 6, 1983
In federal elections, the SPD manage to form a minority government in coalition with the FDP. The Green Party enters the Bundestag for the first time.
March 13, 1983
The Dusseldorf OLG sentences Adelheid Schulz and Rolf Clemens Wagner to life in prison.
March 23, 1983
Reagan proposes the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which would use ground- and space-based missiles to try and neutralize a nuclear attack. This is widely viewed as a move that would facilitate a U.S. first strike against the Soviet Union.
April 10, 1983
Alleged RAF supporter Inge Krobs is arrested in Frankfurt.
May 2, 1983
The Stuttgart OLG sentences alleged RAF supporter Helga Roos to four years and nine months in prison.
June 25, 1983
U.S. Vice President George Bush Sr. visits Krefeld in North Rhine Westfalia. Autonomen and anti-imps demonstrating in the city are attacked by the SEK and suffer numerous injuries and arrests. Conservatives in the “peace” movement condemn the radicals.
Autumn 1983
Grußaktion an die politischen Gefangenen (Greetings Action to the Political Prisoners), mobilizing supporters to write letters to political prisoners.
October 1, 1983
Following a vote of no confidence the FDP breaks with the SPD, allying itself with the Christian Union parties. Helmut Kohl becomes CDU Chancellor in a CDU-CSU-FDP Coalition government. Former Nazi Friedrich Zimmermann (CSU) becomes minister of the interior.
October 25, 1983
U.S. Marines invade Grenada.
November 24, 1983
Susanne Matthes, who had been active at the women’s resistance camp at Hunsrück, is raped and murdered in West Berlin. A week later, 2,000 women attend a response demo in West Berlin.
1984
May 7, 1984
The Stuttgart OLG sentences RAF defector Peter-Jürgen Boock to three times life plus fifteen years in prison for his role in the murders of Ponto and Schleyer and the attempted attack on the BAW.
March 26, 1984
The RAF robs a bank in Würzburg, making off with 171,000 DM.
June 22, 1984
RAF member Manuela Happe is captured in Deizisau.
July 2, 1984
RAF members Helmut Pohl, Christa Eckes, Stefan Frey, Ingrid Jakobsmeier, Barbara Ernst, and Ernst-Volker Staub are arrested in Frankfurt after one of them accidentally discharges a gun into the apartment below their safe house. The neighbor calls the police when he sees a hole in his ceiling and a bullet lodged in his floor.
July 9, 1984
Heidi Hutt is arrested and charged with supporting a criminal organization in connection with the RAF group arrested on July 2.
December 4, 1984
In trial statements prisoners from the RAF Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar offer an appraisal of the RAF’s 1977 offensive, as well as analyzing the situation facing the left in the post-1977 period. Prisoners from the RAF commence their ninth collective hunger strike, setting off an unprecedented wave of attacks from the aboveground
resistance. Shortly thereafter, the first issue of the illegal RAF support newspaper Zusammen Kämpfen (Struggling Together) appears.
Bibliography
Unless otherwise noted, those websites listed were last accessed on December 8, 2012.
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