Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence, and Identity (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

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Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism

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Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

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Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism Language,Violence, and Identity Sarah Colvin

Rochester, New York

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Copyright © 2009 Sarah Colvin All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2009 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.camden-house.com and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-415-8 ISBN-10: 1-57113-415-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Colvin, Sarah. Ulrike Meinhof and West German terrorism : language, violence, and identity / Sarah Colvin. p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-415-8 (hbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-57113-415-8 (hbk.: alk. paper) 1. Meinhof, Ulrike Marie. 2. Terrorism in literature. 3. Women terrorists — Germany (West) 4. Terrorism — Germany (West) — History. 5. Political violence. I. Title. HV6433.G3C65 2009 363.325092 — dc22 2009021014 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

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In memory of Helmut John (1935–2005), the kindliest of mentors For my parents, Jean and Charles Colvin, with thanks

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Contents Preface Acknowledgments

xiii

Note on the Text

xv

Introduction: Terrorists, Language, and the State

1

Language: Why (Else) Would a Terrorist Read Wittgenstein?

2

The Case of Ulrike Meinhof

4

The Context of West Germany

8

Terrorism and Language 1: Fighting Talk (1959–69): From the Peace Movement to the Revolutionary Legitimacy of Violence

11 21

The Riemeck Affair

23

Emergency?

26

Nazis, “New Fascism,” and the “New Jews”

27

Terrorists and Resistance Fighters

31

1968

33

Violence

36

The Frankfurt Arsonists

42

2: The Personal Is Political (1966–70): From Feminism to a Language for the Revolution

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xi

50

“Die Verhältnisse”: Children in Care

51

“Authentic” Politics: The Personal as Political

54

The Politics of the Personal

56

The Staffelberg Project

62

On Solidarity

67

A Language for the Revolution?

69

Beyond Language

72

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viii

CONTENTS

3: The Shrinking Circle (1970–72): From Die Rote Armee aufbauen to the May Bombings

79

Revolutionary Language: Die Rote Armee aufbauen

80

Das Konzept Stadtguerilla

87

Dem Volk dienen: Stadtguerilla und Klassenkampf

99

Justifying Violence

106

The May Bombings

107

The Frankfurt “Teach-In”

108

A Shrinking Circle

110

4: Drawing a Line Between the Enemy and Ourselves: The Language Trap The RAF versus the Left

117

The RAF versus the East

119

The RAF versus the State

120

“The Right-wing Army Faction”: The Left versus the RAF

125

Genscher and the Terrorists: The State versus the RAF

128

Political versus Criminal

136

Nothing in Between: The Language of War

137

5: Violence as Identity: Prison Writing, 1972–76

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116

149

Isolation and Identity

153

Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München

156

The info

161

Fighting Language

165

Baader, the Guerilla Incarnate: letzte texte von ulrike

172

6: Violence as a Woman’s Identity? Terrorism and Gender

188

Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain

189

“Something Irrational”: Feminism and Terrorism

194

“Cunt Chauvinism”

199

“not raf . . . but cunt”

206

A Woman’s Place is in the RAF?

215

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CONTENTS

Conclusion: From Warrior Revolutionaries to Logical Fallacies: Language, Violence, and Identity

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ix

225

Identity

228

Violence

229

Language

231

Works Cited

237

Index

251

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Preface

U

MARIE MEINHOF (1934–76) cofounded the organization that would later call itself the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) in 1970, after helping Andreas Baader (1943–77) to escape from a Berlin prison where he was serving a sentence for arson. Baader’s girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin (1940–77), their lawyer Horst Mahler (b. 1936), medical student Ingrid Schubert (1944–77), and an inmate from a corrective home for girls whom Meinhof had befriended, called Irene Goergens (b. 1951), were among those involved in the founding “operation.” Initial attempts by press and police to name the group led first to “Baader-Mahler-Meinhof,” then to “Baader-Meinhof” (Ensslin never got a mention); in 1971 the group christened itself the RAF collective, apparently oblivious to the overlap with the acronym used by the British air force. Its intention — following Bolivian revolutionary Che Guevara’s (1928–67) “focus theory,” which said the preconditions for a revolution can be created by an armed avantgarde — was to provoke the West German state, through acts of terrorism, into a vicious response that would lead the German people to revolt against capitalism, globalization, and the war in Vietnam. For the group’s so-called first generation, who are the subject of this book, it was a short-lived endeavor. Following a brutal bombing campaign in which four American soldiers were killed and soldiers and civilians injured, all the core members were arrested during the summer of 1972. Efforts by a “second generation” to secure their release via hijacks and kidnappings led to further deaths, including that of the prominent Frankfurt banker Jürgen Ponto in July 1977, and of the driver and three bodyguards of industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, who was abducted by the RAF in September of the same year. In custody, group member Holger Meins (1941–74) died from malnutrition during a hunger strike. Meinhof was found hanged in her cell in Stuttgart-Stammheim’s high-security prison on the morning of 9 May 1976. Following a failed hijack by Palestinian terrorists (intended, like the Schleyer kidnap, to force the release of the prisoners), Baader, Ensslin, and their associate Jan-Carl Raspe (1944–77) were found dead in their cells on 18 October 1977 — Ensslin by hanging, and the two men shot in the head. The autopsy verdict was suicide; RAF member Irmgard Möller (b. 1947), who survived the night of 17–18 October with knife wounds to her chest and heart area, told a tale of execution by a ruthless state. LRIKE

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xii

PREFACE

Schleyer was killed by his captors the following day, his body left in the boot of a car. Less than a month later, Ingrid Schubert (who had been part of the original operation to free Baader) was discovered hanged at the window of her cell in Stadelheim prison. Further generations of anticapitalist radicals continued the terrorist project in Germany. The RAF finally disbanded with an official statement to the press in 1998.

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Acknowledgments

A

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT Foundation Fellowship at the University of Potsdam enabled me to begin work on this project under the mentorship of Professor Helmut John; the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh facilitated the continuing research and writing process. Special thanks to my wonderfully supportive colleagues in German at Edinburgh, who took time out to listen and comment on work in progress. This monograph was completed in the context of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Major Research Project called Representations of Women and Death in German Literature, Art, and Media since 1500, which I was privileged to codirect with Professor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly. Helen knows the debt of gratitude owed her for her energy and support over many years. Thanks are due to all who participated in that project, particularly to Kathrin HoffmannCurtius, who relentlessly supplied me with media coverage of Germany’s renewed interest in the RAF, and to Clare Bielby, who was a wonderful conversation partner in the context of her own PhD work. Many thanks to Herr Schwarz and his colleagues at the RAF Archive of Hamburg’s Institut für Sozialforschung, who provided expert advice and practical support, and delivered quantities of files to my desk with uncomplaining efficiency, and to Jim Walker at Camden House, for being the engaged, expert, and encouraging editor that he is. Special thanks, too, to Ingo Cornils for his careful reading of the manuscript — well beyond the call of duty — and his uncompromisingly helpful comments. For their affection and support my thanks to Jean Colvin, Charles Colvin, Stephen Colvin, Mark Taplin, Shauna Powers, and to Cary Parker, without whom this book would have been possible, but not in its current form.

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N

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Note on the Text

T

HE ABBREVIATION RAF for Rote Armee Fraktion — after years of being considered a term used only by those declaring sympathy with the organization — is now a conventional and nonpartisan way of referring to the group in academic discourse. The alternative term, “Baader-Meinhof Group,” gives a tendentious and arguably inaccurate impression of the group’s internal structure, within which Gudrun Ensslin was at least as prominent as Ulrike Meinhof. I have occasionally used West Germany is as shorthand for the more correct but cumbersome West Germany and West Berlin. I have referred the reader to translations of Meinhof’s work where they exist, but I have not myself necessarily followed those translations. Translation is a subjective procedure, and readers may find it useful to have two English versions to compare. Every translation is simultaneously an interpretation; nonetheless, I have done my best to translate and quote in a way that is true to the original context. In the typewritten documents of the RAF, the writers indicate emphasis by underscoring and capitalization — which I have left in the original form — and by spacing: m u s s, for example, which I have rendered muss.

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Introduction: Terrorists, Language, and the State wir freuen uns über jeden bullen, der umgelegt wird, umgelegt worden ist und jeder im knast, der bullen reingelegt und umgelegt hat, ist unser bruder, schwester, genosse, freund, einer von uns. [we delight in the death of every cop who gets killed or has ever been killed, and anyone in prison who has tricked and killed the pigs is our brother, sister, comrade, friend — one of us.] — Ulrike Meinhof, August 1974 I propose to make use of a simple image . . . This image is of an imaginary circle that each person draws around him/herself. We shall call this “the circle of empathy.” On the inside of the circle are those things that are considered deserving of empathy and the corresponding respect, rights, and practical treatment as approximate equals. On the outside of the circle are those things that are considered less important, less alive, less deserving of rights. — Jaron Lanier, November 2000

“I

DENTITY” IS A SLIPPERY NOTION.

Do we define ourselves (for example by constructing a “constitutive outside”:1 an idea of what we are not), or are we defined by our historical circumstances: the social and linguistic context in which we live?2 Suggesting that we define ourselves raises the difficulty of accounting for an “I” that preexists self-definition, but saying that circumstances are everything removes human agency from the equation in a way that is equally (not least morally) problematic. In this book I am going to suggest that identity derives both from what we do in language (who we say we are, or are not), and from what language does to, or says about, us — that is, from a discursive context that is socially and historically contingent and preexists the individual subject. I shall also suggest that identities are supported, even protected, by what Lanier calls the circle of empathy, and that when identity seems under threat, in times of crisis, there is an impulse to draw the bounds of our empathy circles ever more tightly (nationalism in times of war is one example; the closeness of a gang facing rival gangs, or of an extremist or illegal group, is another).3 Group identity gives a strong sense of self embedded in a context (the football fan in a crowd at a match, the patriot

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INTRODUCTION: TERRORISTS, LANGUAGE, AND THE STATE

in time of war), but the price of that protected identity is that it lacks flexibility — any shift by an individual within a tightly knit community necessarily disturbs others in the network and is likely to meet with sanctions or resistance. To say that (terrorist) violence is an identity mode is not to trivialize it; on the contrary, it is to underline the dangerous inaccessibility of terrorists to all who find themselves outside of their circle. My subject is Ulrike Marie Meinhof, a writer who became a terrorist in the historical context of West Germany. This is the first full-length study of Meinhof in English. The material I am working with is Meinhof’s writing: her language and ideas, first in her journalistic texts and later in her writings for and about the RAF, including a wide range of unpublished sources. Most of the texts are available only in the original German; I am giving parallel English translations for those who cannot access the German. How individuals use language to construct and support identity, how the linguistic or discursive context in which they live and think affects or interacts with that, and which is more powerful — the language or the individual (inasfar as the two are separate) — are central questions in this book. Complete neutrality is impossible, but studies of Meinhof and the RAF have tended to be dogged by its opposite. In focusing on the texts she wrote, I have tried to avoid the kind of anecdotal evidence that feeds myth.4 To give the fullest picture I can, I have cast the net wide in my selection of materials, which range from articles about politics and society written at the height of her journalistic career to notes sent secretly to other RAF members in prison. This is not a biography — not even a “political biography”5 — but an account of how a writer’s language developed, and with it her ideas; from her work for the political magazine konkret from 1959 through 1969, via the texts she produced as the “voice” of the Red Army Faction after 1970, to the more introspective reflections on self and language that she wrote while in prison. That may not account for why Meinhof, at thirty-five, left her career and her six-year-old twins to cofound a terrorist organization, but it does provide a basis for understanding how it happened, and how she herself managed to justify it.

Language: Why (Else) Would a Terrorist Read Wittgenstein? Meinhof was found hanged in her cell in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison on the morning of 9 May 1976. The police report describes the state in which the cell was found: In der Zelle ist keine Beleuchtung eingeschaltet. Dazu ergibt sich, daß die Neonröhre des an der Zellendecke installierten Hauptbeleuchtungskörpers fehlt, andererseits ist aber an der Tischlampe, die

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an einem etwa im Mittelteil der Zelle stehenden Tisch befestigt ist, eine Glühbirne eingeschraubt. Auf dem erwähnten Tisch herrscht augenfällig eine starke Unordnung, auf die aber im einzelnen hier nicht eingegangen wird, zumal sich keine tatrelevanten Spuren, Hinweise oder Aufzeichnungen, auf dem Tisch befinden. Auf dem Tisch fällt lediglich auf, daß dort u.a. das Buch mit dem Titel “Philosophische Grammatik” von Ludwig Wittgenstein liegt. Von dem Buch sind die Leseseiten 84/85 aufgeschlagen.6 [There is no light on in the cell. In that regard it can be observed that the neon tube is missing from the ceiling light fitting, but that a light bulb has been screwed into the table lamp fixed to a table standing roughly in the central area of the cell. On the aforementioned table are books and papers in significant disarray, but nothing that need be described in detail here, particularly given that there are no traces, clues, or pieces of writing on the table that are relevant to the case. The only thing of note on the table is that among the books is one with the title Philosophical Grammar by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is open to pages 84–85.]

Curiously, Meinhof was not the only RAF member to have been reading Wittgenstein. Among the books found in Jan-Carl Raspe’s cell after his death in 1977 was Über Gewißheit (On Certainty)7 — the same book had been ordered by Gudrun Ensslin via her lawyer on 16 May 1974, alongside the Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations) and another whose title is missing. Ensslin emphasizes that she is asking for three titles by Wittgenstein,8 so it is conceivable that the Grammar came into the group’s possession via her order too. No gifts of books could be brought or sent to the RAF prisoners, not even by family or lawyers; all reading material had to come directly from the publisher or bookshop, and would pass through the hands of the prison authorities.9 The prisoners sent orders via their lawyers, and the legal records therefore give a clear picture of the RAF’s preferred reading. It is strikingly functional: “Ulrike M. would like bibliographic hints on the topics of militant antifascism and antifascism generally,” Meinhof’s lawyer wrote on her behalf to a publisher in 1973, “but especially on commando operations, the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, the uprising in Buchenwald, the communist cells, sabotage, etc.” (“Ulrike M. hätte gern bibliografische Hinweise zum Thema: Militanter Antifaschismus bzw. Antifaschismus überhaupt. Aber speziell: Kommandoaktionen, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto, Aufstand in Buchenwald, KP-Zellen, Sabotage etc.”).10 Wittgenstein is one of only two philosophers (the other is Sartre) to have the honor of appearing on a political “schooling list” (Schulungsliste) compiled probably by Meinhof and Ensslin for the edification of their imprisoned comrades;11 this time,

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however, it is Wittgenstein’s early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, that is listed. Whatever it was Meinhof hoped to glean from Wittgenstein for the armed struggle (and whether or not that hope was based on a defensible reading of his philosophy — Lenin had, after all, lambasted the work of Wittgenstein’s fellow logical positivist, Ernst Mach),12 it is likely to have been something she imagined might be practically applicable. The Tractatus (which Wittgenstein himself later repudiated) takes as its central premise that all of the problems of philosophy can be solved via a logical understanding of language. I am going to argue in this book that a great many of the problems associated with the RAF can be, if not solved, then at least better comprehended if we can come to an understanding of its language. I shall also suggest that Meinhof, in the last years of her life, struggled painfully with her own relationship with language, and with her identity as a writer.

The Case of Ulrike Meinhof In 1996, the memorial conference that marked the twentieth anniversary of Meinhof’s death took place against the backdrop of an enormous image of her head (taken from a pretty, sanitized photograph of her when she was a young journalist) set within what appears to be a divine halo of light. In the opening speeches of the event, ex-RAF member Monika Berberich touched on Meinhof’s posthumous significance in left-wing mythology as the “icon, the sublime warrior, the martyr” (“die Ikone, die hehre Kämpferin, die Märtyrerin”).13 Even before her death, elements on the left chose to construct Meinhof as different and separate from the violent, armed group with which she identified. “You’re different, Ulrike” (“Du bist anders, Ulrike”), wrote her foster mother Renate Riemeck in a sentimental appeal after Meinhof went underground with the RAF.14 For some, Meinhof had taken up where Rosa Luxemburg left off; the comparison with Luxemburg was being made as early as 1958,15 and after her death in 1976 the poet Erich Fried would send a funeral telegram in praise of “the greatest German woman since Rosa Luxemburg.”16 Even during her lifetime Meinhof began to acquire a reputation for purity of purpose: “intellectual integrity incarnate” (“fleischgewordene intellektuelle Redlichkeit”) is her ex-husband Klaus Rainer Röhl’s designation.17 Even though the radical left consciously rejects any association with Röhl, who is vilified, Berberich echoed that notion in 1996 when she spoke of the “moral integrity” (“moralische Integrität”) that, in her view, still defined Meinhof.18 In 2003, a biography by Alois Prinz drew a picture of Ulrike Meinhof as a kind of fallen angel.19 The idea of Meinhof as an angelic child seems

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to have originated with Riemeck, who takes time out in her otherwise largely self-glorifying autobiography to propound a sentimental vision of her foster daughter that is somewhere between avenging angel of justice and mater misericordiae.20 Meinhof as angel of justice figures in Mario Krebs’s biography (“the young Ulrike had a powerful sense of justice, and so she very often took up the cudgels for those weaker than her”),21 and in Stefan Aust’s influential Baader-Meinhof-Komplex.22 In the eyes of some admirers Meinhof rode into battle like Joan of Arc: fearless and self-sacrificing.23 Joan is an emblem of French history, and there is a sense that the story of Meinhof and Germany’s history in the mid twentieth century go hand-in-hand, too.24 Prinz notes that her birth in October 1934 coincided with the rise of the Nazi party — that is, with the death of democracy in Germany,25 and the academic psychologist Peter Brückner titled his account of her political work Ulrike Marie Meinhof und die deutschen Verhältnisse (Ulrike Marie Meinhof and the German Situation).26 The fates of the other terrorists — Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, or Inge Viett (b. 1944) of the 2 June Movement, for example — are never connected with Germany’s national history in quite the same way. Meinhof is again somehow separate, somehow different. For her konkret columns, Meinhof — presumably advised by Röhl — used her full name Ulrike Marie; the connotations of purity inherent in that middle name may well be what has led biographers to reiterate it in accounts of her life. Two recent biographies (the first, incidentally, to have been written by women authors) do show an impulse to look for new approaches to her story, and take a tone noticeably different from previous accounts.27 In 2007, ex-Green party activist Jutta Ditfurth moved away from tales of Meinhof as a maternal angel and later victim of her fellow revolutionaries to a more sober assessment of her political motivation and her real influence in and on the organization RAF;28 East German academic Kristin Wesemann, in a noticeably less sympathetic account of Meinhof’s intentions and intelligence, offers a bitter critique of her adherence to the communist ideal and the failure to engage critically with the real-life problems of “lived socialism” in the East.29 Meinhof’s biography brings us face-to-face with difficult facts:30 her active participation in deliberate killing (notably the May bomb campaign of 1972), her ruthless rhetorical functionalization of Auschwitz and the Jewish experience, and her complete lack of sympathy for the Israeli athletes killed in Munich after their abduction from the Olympic games by Palestinian extremists in 1972.31 No one has yet engaged with this “feminist icon’s”32 rejection of the liberal women’s movement in Germany as “Votzenchauvismus” (cunt chauvinism).33 In the United States, where homegrown terrorism took the form of the Weathermen — later the Weather Underground and contemporaries of the RAF — there is obvious discomfort not only because acts

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of terrorism happened, but because of who perpetrated them: “Violence against the state is not supposed to happen — not in formally democratic societies . . . And not, certainly, at the hands of well-educated youths of the middle or upper classes,” Jeremy Varon explains; political violence is supposed to be “the last resort of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, fighting oppression in societies that permit them no other choice.”34 In Meinhof’s case, the notion that terrorist violence is the recourse only of those who have no other means of being heard is difficult to uphold. During the 1960s she was a high-profile media figure who broadcast her political and social views on the radio (still a very powerful medium in the sixties) as well as publishing in books, newspapers, and in the magazine she also edited, konkret. A terrorist is not necessarily underprivileged, undereducated, or a hapless victim of world politics: Meinhof attended grammar school and university, and came from a intellectual environment that was certainly above average (both her mother and her foster mother were university-trained teachers, her father, who died when she was very young, an art historian). As a young adult she was well informed in matters of politics, economics, and society. That renders attempts made by, among others, her ex-husband Röhl and family friend Aust to portray her primarily as the victim of the RAF unconvincing.35 The documentary evidence suggests that she actively helped plan and shape the Red Army Faction. Her politics, and importantly her diction — the words and images she chose to use in her writing — were a decisive influence on the language and therefore on the actions of the organization. Politics for Meinhof was a spectrum that extended far beyond party political matters or the domestic and foreign policies of the Federal Republic. In her columns for konkret, world politics (particularly the burgeoning postcolonial movements in the wake of Western imperialism), the developing world, and social justice and gender politics at home in Germany were all matters of urgent concern. In the late 1960s her focus on social justice, gender, and the domestic context sharpened; that culminated in the preparation and filming of a television drama, a piece of documentary fiction about a Berlin girls’ home, called Bambule (Riot). Her success as a journalist and columnist throughout the 1960s was the result not only of a journalist’s “nose” for the right material, but also of her rhetorical skills. Meinhof knew how to present material in a persuasive and engaging manner. “With her typewriter and on the editorial board of konkret,” Röhl recalls, “she was a profound influence on an entire generation of young people who would one day themselves influence society” (“Mit ihrer Schreibmaschine und am Redaktionstisch von konkret beeinflußte sie zehn Jahre lang nachhaltig eine ganze Generation von jungen Multiplikatoren”).36 That promise of persuasive influence was not least what made her such a desirable addition to the RAF: “everyone knows you were, are, will be our voice” (“jeder weiß, daß du die stimme

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warst, bist, sein wirst”), Ensslin assured her.37 The Red Army Faction may have discussed and determined its agenda collectively, but it relied on Meinhof to write it down, to present its arguments and raison d’être to the outside world. I shall be distinguishing three phases in her life as a writer: her journalistic work to 1970, when the Red Army Faction was founded; then the revolutionary theory she wrote on behalf of the collective during her time as a RAF member operating underground; and finally the texts written after her arrest in 1972 until her death in 1976, as a core member of the imprisoned collective. About half of the columns and articles she wrote during her ten years at konkret have been reprinted: the Berlin publisher Klaus Wagenbach, a personal friend of hers, published two volumes of her journalistic work, called Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar (Human Dignity is Violable) and Deutschland Deutschland unter anderm (Germany, Germany — among other things).38 Both titles are taken from her columns for konkret; the former deliberately reverses the well-known first article of the West German constitution, which states that human dignity is inviolable (“die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar”), while the latter is a drily humorous reminder that the Federal Republic has, or ought to have, put away the nationalism contained in the first verse of its national anthem just as it has jettisoned that first verse, which is no longer sung. A selection of the journalistic texts has recently appeared in English translation, with the title (again taken from one of her columns) Everybody Talks about the Weather . . . We Don’t.39 The difficulty with assessing Meinhof’s writing after 1970 is not only that much of it was written “collectively,” but that there is no politically neutral edition of her writing after that time. Some of the later and last texts, especially from the period 1974–76 (the two years before she died), are the most interesting on the subject of identity and violence. They are available in posthumously published collections, all of which, however, were produced by editors or editorial cooperatives with a strong political agenda. Two volumes, called letzte texte von ulrike (ulrike’s last texts) and texte: der raf (texts: of the raf; both titles are in lower case to reflect the RAF’s, or raf’s, own practice) were collated and published shortly after her death by an International Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Western Europe, founded in 1975 by RAF attorney Klaus Croissant. Dutch lawyer Pieter Bakker Schut subsequently edited a collection of prison letters, called das info (the info).40 While there is no reason to suppose that the texts published in these collections are not authentic,41 each of the three volumes presents the reader with a selection; what we see of Meinhof’s writing is controlled by those who had access to the original documents. Lurking suspicions that the selections reflect a particular image of Meinhof and the RAF that seemed desirable to those editors at that particular time are confirmed by a number of letters and documents that were not

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reprinted. The latter chapters of this book give access to some of those documents: unedited copies of the original texts from the archived collection of RAF documents in Hamburg’s Institute for Social Research.

The Context of West Germany Until recently Germany found the history of home-grown terrorism almost too hot to handle. In 2005 the Süddeutsche Zeitung suggested that the events of the nineteen-seventies still ranked among the elements in the German past that Germans least wanted to face up to.42 It is a history of violence and killing that is uncomfortably difficult to separate from another history of violence and killing — the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945, to which 1970s terrorism is certainly, at least in part, a reaction. “The immense social and psychological significance of the RAF for the Federal Republic of Germany is that it reopens a chapter of the murderous history that preceded its foundation,” a weighty German study of left-wing terrorism posited recently.43 German authors have tended to apologize or excuse themselves when engaging with the subject: in the early 1990s, a book about the structure of the RAF worried that it was “exotic” or even “unrespectable” to address the history of a terrorist organization,44 and a dissertation published in 1999 still found it “relatively problematic” to tackle the topic in any form.45 In 2004 — six years after the final dissolution of the Red Army Faction in 1998 — established writer and journalist Alois Prinz would still introduce his biography of Ulrike Meinhof cautiously, in case it might be received as support for terrorist violence.46 But in the new millenium Germany has been discovering an increasing will to look back, evidenced in a burgeoning of academic and popular publications;47 in 2005 the controversial exhibition in Berlin, Zur Vorstellung des Terrors: Die RAF — The RAF: Regarding Terror was launched; and in the autumn of 2008 Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex), a major film by Bernd Eichinger, based on the book by Stefan Aust, was released both in Germany and internationally.48 The 1960s saw a gradual shift in the West German parliament from center right to center left. Until 1966 the government was conservative, under Adenauer and his successor Ludwig Erhardt; from 1966–69 it constituted itself via an unusual “grand coalition” of conservative Christian Democrats and left-leaning Social Democrats under Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and from 1969 Germany was ruled by the Social Democrats under Chancellor Willy Brandt. All governments, however, found themselves confronted by the Extraparliamentary Opposition (Außerparlamentarische Opposition, or APO for short): a conglomerate of elements on the liberal and radical left that rejected the mainstream parties, and was championed by (among others) Ulrike Meinhof.

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Whatever West Germany’s domestic difficulties were, the most highprofile social disturbance of the 1960s — the student movement — was triggered by an event on the other side of the world: the war in Vietnam. The first American protest march against the war was in 1964, and demonstrations grew in size and frequency throughout the later 1960s. In 1967, an international association of academics under philosopher Bertrand Russell established a War Crimes Tribunal, which compared events in Vietnam to crimes perpetrated by the Nazis during the Second World War. Reports of napalm attacks on peasants and children reached the United States and Europe through the new medium of television, a medium that “brought the war home” to people in an unprecedented way. The only time anything similar had been seen was when film footage of the death camps was released by the Allies after 1945. “For many of us the pictures coming out of Vietnam . . . made us think of Auschwitz,” exRAF member Birgit Hogefeld has recalled, and in the light of Germany’s past, that had a particular effect: “For many of us that meant the absolute necessity . . . to take action and to take responsibility.”49 That might be Hogefeld’s post-hoc rationalization of terrorist violence, but it is also true that the students did take action. The winter semester 1965–66 in Berlin was declared a “Vietnam semester,” and students shared information about the war during “sit-ins” and “teach-ins”: a vocabulary borrowed from their American counterparts. In February 1968, Berlin’s Technische Universität hosted the International Vietnam Congress, concluding with a twelve-thousand-strong antiwar march through the city. But Vietnam was only one of a number of foreign states that German socialist student organizations felt duty bound to protect from the machinations of the capitalist West (which they read, with Marx and Lenin, as imperialist). Their parents’ generation had failed to demonstrate the political conscience necessary to nip Nazi empire-building in the bud, and the new generation was driven by a powerful need to act, and be seen to act, differently. Iran, a country largely made up of very poor peasants, ruled by the enormously wealthy Shah Reza Pahlavi, was among their targets, and when the shah visited Berlin in 1967 a key event shifted the tenor of the whole movement: policeman Heinz Kurras, on duty during the demonstration that greeted the Shah, shot and killed a young student protester called Benno Ohnesorg, apparently in a moment of panic but without provocation. Ohnesorg’s fellow students were profoundly shocked. Many later identified that moment as a moment of internal radicalization, a moment when violence suddenly became real and possible. (The recent discovery that Kurras was also working for the East German secret police has reopened some debates, but does not alter the effect of events at the time.)50 Similar responses were provoked by the shooting of the leader of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke, on the streets of Berlin by a young right-winger called

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Josef Bachmann (Dutschke survived the attack, but his death twelve years later was a consequence of his injuries). Bommi Baumann of the 2 June Movement has described his internal monologue on hearing of the Dutschke shooting: “that bullet was meant for you . . . Before I let myself get carted off to Auschwitz I’d rather shoot first.”51 The students’ stance was in essence Marxist-Leninist, but also neoMarxist, drawing on the political philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, whose theory of “repressive tolerance” critiqued liberal pacifism and provided a basis for justifying revolutionary violence.52 That basis was further developed in Frantz Fanon’s widely-read The Wretched of the Earth, an account of the Algerian uprising that appeared in German in 1966 with a forward by Jean-Paul Sartre. Violence (Sartre summarizes Fanon) is an expression of identity: “The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self.”53 Inspired not only by the collapse of colonialism, but by the postwar analyses of Marcuse’s fellow Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, the students’ position was emphatically antiauthoritarian. In response to what had happened in Germany and central Europe under National Socialism, Adorno and colleagues in the United States had developed the notion of what they called the “authoritarian personality.” The project was looking to establish what kind of an individual, under what circumstances, can be persuaded to contribute to the building of a dictatorship: is there such a thing as a fascist personality? A core notion is that attraction to a strong leader — that is, the will to subject oneself to authority in order to be part of an “in-group” — goes handin-hand with a willingness to reject and stereotype minority groups, and that the attraction to or need for strong leadership arises out of a certain (authoritarian) style of childrearing.54 For young people, rebelling against instances of authority such as the university, their parents, or the state could therefore be seen both as a step towards personal emancipation and as a step away from the Nazi past. But the students’ fierce language drew criticism from many (including Frankfurt School philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer, who spoke of “left-wing fascism” and incipient totalitarianism)55 that they were reprising the repressive tactics of Nazism. Similar accusations were, and continue to be, leveled at the RAF: in 2002 a publication commemorating the victims of the German Autumn of 1977, edited by the head of the Dresdner Bank, would still assert that the RAF (“these self-styled ‘antifascists’”) in fact showed a “totally fascist” disregard for humanity.56 There are uncomfortable indicators that Germany’s left-wing extremists may have carried forward a tradition of antisemitism. In his memoir of his involvement in the 2 June Movement, Wie alles anfing (How It All Started), Bommi Baumann describes an antisemitic flyer produced

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by left-wingers in 1969 — which he read with approval rather than disturbance. On the thirty-first anniversary of the fascist Kristallnacht, several Jewish memorials in West Berlin had been smeared with the words “shalom napalm” and “El Fatah,” [sic] and a firebomb had been planted in the Jewish community center. The leaflet Baumann cites with praise refused to condemn such actions, reading them not as right-wing extremism but as “a decisive expression of international socialist solidarity,” based on the notion that “the Jews who were hounded by fascism have now have become fascists themselves.”57 The accusation that Israelis are the new fascists is echoed in Meinhof’s own Schwarzer September (Black September) text of 1972, about the abduction of Israeli athletes from the Munich Olympics (discussed in detail in chapter 5), and at Horst Mahler’s trial later in the same year she would even attempt to argue that German antisemitism was not really antisemitism at all, but an expression of natural and proper anticapitalism: “The Jews were identified with their business activity,” she claimed, “antisemitism was in essence anticapitalist” (“Die Juden wurden mit ihren Geschäften identifiziert. Der Antisemitismus war seinem Wesen nach antikapitalistisch”).58 When Palestinian and German extremists abducted an Air France flight in June 1976, the plane was forced to land at Entebbe airport, Uganda. After some days the nonJewish passengers on board were released; the “selection” of the Jewish passengers who were forced to remain involved two German terrorists, Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann — not RAF members, but members of the “Red Cells” (Rote Zellen or RZ). Nearly thirty years later, radical left-wing commentator Joachim Bruhn would argue from the perspective of 1998 that the RAF, which saw itself as internationalist, was in fact “entirely German”;59 by this he means primarily that the terrorists failed to emancipate themselves from German antisemitism, not least in their solidarity with Palestinian nationalists. The activities of the terrorists are a painful element in recent German history. It is no coincidence that some of those who experienced the difficult and eventful decade between the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg in 1967 and the German Autumn of 1977 have become its most prominent historians;60 the need to reassess events and their fallout is clearly being felt by those who experienced it at first hand. In the recent explosion of German publications on the topic, we are seeing something like a new process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: the project of dealing with the national past.61

Terrorism and Language “Terrorism,” writes Joanne Wright, “is a strategy, not an ideology.”62 Charles Townshend appears to contradict when he decides that “terrorism appears to be a state of mind rather than an activity.”63 Both decline

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to pin down a single idea or set of ideas regarding what constitutes terrorist activity and motivation. Even though we may feel that we recognize acts of terrorism, it is difficult to define a “terrorist” in the abstract: to distinguish terrorist activity, in every form it takes and has ever taken, from criminal violence or military action. For German terrorism expert Uwe Backes in 1991, the phenomenon was “a political strategy employed by minority groups, politically relatively without influence,” and characterized by “the systematic use of acts of violence, which are intended to engender existential insecurity in the social groups under attack, as well as to educate, mobilize, and revolutionize the ‘oppressed’ elements in society they seek to win over.”64 Writing more recently of the challenge posed by both the RAF and Al-Qaida, Henner Hess has observed that “terrorism is in the eye of the beholder”:65 definitions of legitimate and illegitimate violence will always reflect the standpoint of the definer. Terrorism, like criminality, is an idea that acquires meaning from its historical and political context. In real terms, it is the state (government and judiciary, supported by the police force and, if necessary, the armed forces) that decides who is a terrorist, just as it is the state that decides who is a criminal. For the state, a terrorist act is a criminal act; to accept the notion of political violence would tend to undermine the political legitimacy of government. For terrorist groups, by contrast, it is important to differentiate themselves from “common” criminals, to legitimize their actions by asserting a necessity that goes beyond self-interest. That means that a group other than the terrorists needs to be identified in whose interest the acts of violence are allegedly being committed: what Herfried Münkler has called a “third party with an assumed interest . . . a nationally, ethnically, or sociologically [these days we might add: religiously] defined tranche of the population in whose ‘objective interest,’ the terrorists insist, their operations are carried out.”66 Backes was reproducing a widespread view when he defined terrorism as “aggressive” but also “communicative” — as something that depends for its success not so much on its physical as on its psychological effect.67 Andreas Musolff refines that when he redefines acts of terrorist violence as a pathological style of political communication.68 The point is not the violence itself, but the “terror” — destabilization and fear — it engenders. The RAF did not refer to itself as a terrorist organization; it preferred the designation “guerilla.” That is a deliberate, and arguably misleading allusion to the South American context; it is also a rhetorical tactic. Speaking of a “guerilla fighter” tends to express, and invite, political sympathy where speaking of “terrorists” does not.69 The notion of the guerilla connotes a (civil) war situation, and war legitimizes acts of violence that would otherwise be regarded as criminal: in times of war, a murder becomes a justified killing (which may be called a casualty, or collateral damage, or

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an execution). Guerilla fighters and revolutionaries underpin their sense of their difference from murderers or criminals exactly as national armies do: by strict codes of discipline. In his “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War” (1936), Mao insisted on political and practical discipline among revolutionaries, while Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella, in his Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla of 1969, emphasized the guerilla’s clear focus on government and capitalist-imperialist targets. Che Guevara in Guerilla Warfare (1961) measured the difference between bandits and partisans by the support they found among the people. Historian David Fromkin’s differentiation between guerilla and terrorist activity is pragmatic. In Fromkin’s analysis, a guerilla army attacks a target (such as a railway line) with the intention of destroying the target — that means that the physical result of the attack is the primary intention. Terrorists, by contrast, attack targets with the intention of provoking a reaction — so the psychological result of the attack is the primary intention. Fromkin’s point is that terrorist strategy is remarkable because its aims are achieved not through actions, but through the response to those actions; it is a strategy of provocation.70 By that definition the proper designation for the RAF is terrorist. In order for the provocation to be understood, an act of terrorism needs to be correctly “read,” and terrorist activity of the 1970s was unfailingly accompanied by verbal statements from the perpetrators. Peter Waldmann’s rather worrying dictum that “terrorism is primarily [!] a communicative strategy”71 is echoed in a letter from Gudrun Ensslin to the RAF group in 1973: “only a free man speaks of oppression in language that is no longer the language of oppression,” she wrote; “that is what makes communication so difficult. but our language begins with what we do . . . words, expressions are actions. actions are words” (“erst der befreite spricht von der unterdrückung nicht mehr in der sprache der unterdrückung. das macht die verständigung so schwierig. aber der ausgangspunkt unserer rede ist unsere handlung . . . wörter, begriffe sind aktionen. aktionen sind begriffe”).72 The word “terrorism” itself is often used rhetorically, with a certain persuasive force or intention. Defense lawyer Josef Grässle-Münscher explains that, when the designation “terrorist organization” (terroristische Vereinigung) was introduced into German law in August 1976, one vital consideration was its “public effectiveness”: it created an overlap between the politicians’ assessment of the RAF and the group’s legal status in a (literal) legitimization of the government perspective.73 From the perspective of terrorists, who are seeking to avoid criminal status, at least in the eyes of the people, self-justification or legitimization is just as important as it is for government. In the case of Meinhof and the RAF, I am going to argue that terrorist activity — violence — went hand-in-hand with self-invention in language. The group around Baader, Ensslin, and

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Meinhof may have claimed that deeds rank above words, but words — as anyone who has read the exhaustingly extensive revolutionary documents of the RAF will know — were a major part of its practice. There is a clear and demonstrable continuity between the texts Meinhof wrote as a journalist and the revolutionary writings of the RAF’s socalled first generation. Both are characterized by assertions that pretend to logic, but actually fail to fulfill the rules of logical argument. In the classic demagogic manner, Meinhof argues with valid premises to draw invalid conclusions. She routinely employs what philosophers call “useful fictions,” which overlap with what literary critics call “metaphor” or in some cases “personalization”: the technique of associating one thing with another. That may be harmless (if I call you a lamb, or a gene “selfish”) or dangerous (if I say you are a plague or its carrier and should be destroyed). The danger goes beyond the individual: we need to take the caution to heart that “this kind of useful fiction is perilous. . . . too much talk of selfish genes or purpose in evolution can lead people to mistake fictions for facts. Useful fictions are most useful when they are most clearly fictions.”74 Meinhof’s metaphorical and rhetorical language has attracted both admiration and anxiety: Eberhard Itzenplitz, who directed her television drama Bambule (Riot), subsequently recalled her “striking gift for the rhetorical, for argument”; later, a government-sponsored analysis of terrorist activity in West Germany would shift that up a gear when it deemed her “demagogically rhetorical” (“demagogisch-rhetorisch”).75 In her equations of Auschwitz with Vietnam (for example), or of Nazi Germany with the Federal Republic (both of which will be discussed in detail in chapter 1), Meinhof was creating fictions in place of argument: both of these comparisons are fallacious, in the manner of the “masked man” fallacy, which suggests — illogically — that X and Y are identical if anything that is true of X is also true of Y.76 In fact, X and Y are only identical if they share all of the same properties, but once one has started calling democratic West Germany “Nazi Germany,” Vietnam “Auschwitz,” and Israelis the new fascists, it becomes possible — for Meinhof as much as for her readers — to mistake fiction for fact. In the current world context of a “war on terror,” Germany is a useful point of reference: the Germans are digesting their terrorist past, and assessing not only how the trouble started, but where reactions to terrorism in government and society may have made things worse. German political analysts noticed some time ago that the “aggressive rhetoric” of the so-called war on terror is more likely to aggravate than to relieve the situation.77 The RAF shook West Germany in the 1970s not least because the population no longer knew whether it could believe in a Rechtsstaat, or ethical government. The German example demonstrates how much

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damage is done to the reputation and practices of a democratic state when the violence of terrorists is reflected back in the prophylactic and punitive activities of the government that finds itself under attack. Historian Martin Jander observes the threat to democracies from their reaction to terrorism. “The fact is that their democratic credentials only emerge when they are challenged,” he argues. “Whether the Federal Republic of Germany can claim those democratic credentials for itself in the matter of how it dealt with prisoners from the terrorist groups is going to have to be a subject for political scientists and others to debate.”78

Notes The citations for the two epigraphs in this chapter are as follows: Meinhof, document titled “14. Mai Notizen,” in RAF-Archiv des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung (henceforth cited as HIS) Me,U/025,006, 3; Lanier, http://www. edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_index.html (accessed April 2008). Lanier is Interdisciplinary Scholar-in-Residence, UC Berkeley. 1

See Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 8. 2

See, e.g., Identity: A Reader, ed. Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans, and Peter Redman (London: Sage, 2000). 3

Thanks to Cary Parker for his useful clarification of this point.

4

See Sarah Colvin, “Witch, Amazon, or Joan of Arc? Ulrike Meinhof’s Defenders, or How to Legitimize a Violent Woman,” in Women and Death 2: Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1500, ed. Colvin and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), 250–72. 5

As a recent academic study of Meinhof describes itself: see Kristin Wesemann, Ulrike Meinhof: Kommunistin, Journalistin, Terroristin: Eine politische Biografie (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2007). 6

Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs, “Rückgabe von sichergestellten Gegenständen” (document of 17 September 1976 detailing items removed from Meinhof’s cell), in HIS Me,U/016,001. 7

Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, List of books found in Raspe’s cell, in HIS Te/006,005. 8

Klaus Croissant to Buchhandlung Wendelin Niedlich (16 May 1974), in HIS En,G/008,001. 9

Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs, “Beschluss: Baader, Ensslin, Meins, Raspe” (27 September 1972), in HIS En,G/002,002. 10

The publisher was Ebehardt Zamory, at konkret Verlag in Hamburg. See HIS Me,U/004,004. 11

Kollektiv RAF, “Schulungsliste,” in HIS Ba,A/025,004.

12

See Peter Kampits, Eine kleine Geschichte der österreichischen Philosophie (Vienna: Österreichische Bundesverlag, 1984).

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13

See http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/PolitischeStroemungen/Stadtguerilla+RAF/ RAF/ulrike_meinhof/va20/va20podium.html (accessed November 2006). The image is reproduced in a photograph of Berberich at the event, in taz (= Die Tageszeitung), taz-Journal: die RAF, der Staat, und die Linke: 20 Jahre Deutscher Herbst (1997), 83. 14

Renate Riemeck, “Gib auf, Ulrike!” in konkret 22 (1971).

15

“Ulrike Meinhof hatte mit klarer, melodisch klingender Stimme gesprochen. Man konnte später hören: ‘Sie hat geredet wie eine Rosa Luxemburg.’” Jürgen Seifert, “Ulrike Meinhof,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), 1:350– 71; here 354. 16

Cited in Klaus Wagenbach’s afterword in Meinhof, Bambule: Fürsorge — Sorge für wen? (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1971). 17

Klaus Rainer Röhl, Fünf Finger sind keine Faust: Eine Abrechnung, 3rd edn. (Munich: Universitas, 1998 [1974]), 99. 18

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/PolitischeStroemungen/Stadtguerilla+RAF/ RAF/ulrike_meinhof/va20/va20podium.html (accessed 1 July 2008).

19

Alois Prinz, Lieber wütend als traurig: Die Lebensgeschichte der Ulrike Marie Meinhof (Weinheim: Beltz, 2003). 20

Renate Riemeck, Ich bin ein Mensch für mich: Aus einem unbequemen Leben (Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1992). 21

“Die junge Ulrike habe einen starken Gerechtigkeitssinn gehabt und sich deshalb vor allem für die Schwächeren eingesetzt.” Mario Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof: Ein Leben im Widerspruch (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988), 22. Krebs specifically gives Riemeck as his source. 22

Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2008 [1985]), 46. See also the film based on the book: Der Baader-MeinhofKomplex, dir. Bernd Eichinger (Germany, 2008). 23

See Colvin, “Witch, Amazon, or Joan of Arc?”

24

On the connection of woman and nation, see Clare Bielby, “Attacking the Body Politic: The Terroristin in 1970s German Media,” in Reconstruction 7.1 (2007); http://reconstruction.eserver.org/071/bielby.shtml (accessed 15 January 2008). 25

“Man könnte sagen, dass Ulrike Meinhofs Leben begann, als in Deutschland die Demokratie zu Grabe getragen wurde.” Prinz, Lieber wütend, 22. 26

Peter Brückner, Ulrike Meinhof und die deutschen Verhältnisse (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1976]).

27

Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof: Die Biografie (Berlin: Ullstein, 2007), 129–30; Wesemann, Ulrike Meinhof. 28

Ditfurth has nonetheless attracted criticism for an overly positive portrayal. See, e.g., Reinhard Mohr, “Terroristen ausmisten,” in Spiegel Online (20 November 2007); http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,518534,00.html (accessed 26 April 2008). Ditfurth’s more recent account of the “friendship” between Meinhof and student leader Dutschke is an opportunistic and unconvincing piece of writing that has been deservedly lacerated by reviewers; see Ditfurth,

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Rudi und Ulrike: Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Munich: Droemer, 2008); see also, e.g., Michael Sontheimer, “Die trügt wie gedruckt,” in Spiegel Online (7 April 2008); http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/0,1518,545852,00.html (accessed 26 April 2008). 29

Wesemann, Ulrike Meinhof, 30, passim.

30

Not least her daughter’s account of her life: see Bettina Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß! Ulrike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl, und die Akte konkret (Hamburg: EVA, 2006). 31

See chapters 3 through 5; on the latter also Wolfgang Kraushaar, “Antizionismus als Trojanisches Pferd: Zur antisemitischen Dimension in den Kooperationen von Tupamaros West-Berlin, RAF und RZ mit den Palästinensern,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:676–95; here 689–90. 32

Klausjürgen Hehn, “Im Tod größer als im Leben,” Frankfurter Rundschau (9 September 2008), 13. 33

See chapter 5.

34

Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2004), 2. 35

See, e.g., Klaus Rainer Röhl, “Ulrike Meinhof — Gefangene der BaaderGruppe?” konkret 14 (1972): 17–19; Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex. 36

Klaus Rainer Röhl, “Vorbemerkung,” in Ulrike Meinhof: Dokumente einer Rebellion. 10 Jahre “konkret”-Kolumnen (Hamburg: konkret, 1972), 5–6; here 5. 37

Letter from Ensslin, cited in Pieter Bakker Schut, Stammheim: Der Prozeß gegen die Rote Armee Fraktion: Die notwendige Korrektur der herrschenden Meinung (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1997), 287. 38

Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1980]); Deutschland Deutschland unter anderm: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995). 39

Everybody Talks About the Weather . . . We Don’t: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof, ed. Karin Bauer (New York: Seven Stories, 2008). 40

Meinhof, letzte texte von ulrike, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa (Eigendruck im Selbstverlag, June 1976); texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa, Sektion BRD, Stuttgart (Lund: Verlag Bo Cavefors, 1977); das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973–1977: Dokumente, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1987). 41

Letters in Bakker Schut’s das info were shortened (or cut) and the orthography altered before publication. See Olaf Gäthje, “Das ‘info’-System der RAF von 1973 bis 1977 in sprachwissenschaftlicher Perspektive,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:714–35. 42

“eines der am brüchigsten aufgearbeiteten Themen bundesdeutscher Zeitgeschichte.” Gottfried Oy, “Vom Hass zum großen Sprung: Zurückgeworfen auf die Familie: Die Gefängnisbriefe Gudrun Ensslins an ihre Geschwister,” in Süddeutsche Zeitung (17 May 2005), 16.

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43

“Die immense sozialpsychologische Bedeutung der RAF für die Bundesrepublik liegt darin, dass mit ihr ein Kapitel der mörderischen Geschichte, die ihrer Gründung vorausging, wieder aufgeschlagen wurde.” Christian Schneider, “Omnipotente Opfer: Die Geburt der Gewalt aus dem Geist des Widerstands,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 2:1328–42; here 1341. 44

“exotisch, wenn nicht . . . anrüchig.” Gerd Rosenkranz, introduction to Uta Demes, Die Binnenstruktur der RAF: Divergenz zwischen postulierter und tatsächlicher Gruppenrealität (Münster: Waxmann, 1994), 1. 45

“relativ problematisch . . . , sich in welcher Form auch immer mit dieser Thematik auseinanderzusetzen.” Caesar Martin Kedzierski, Sprache und Politik: Exemplarisch dargestellt am Beispiel Ulrike Meinhofs (Marburg: Tectum, 1999), 4. 46

“Ist es immer noch so, . . . dass bereits ‘das bloße Verstehen-Wollen’ als ein geheimes Einverständnis mit den Taten der RAF-Täter gewertet wird?” Prinz, Lieber wütend, 7. 47

Most recently, e.g., Sven Felix Kellerhof, Was stimmt? RAF: Die wichtigsten Antworten (Freiburg: Herder, 2007); Ulf G. Stuberger, Die Akte RAF: Taten und Motive, Täter und Opfer (Munich: Herbig, 2008); Willi Winkler, Die Geschichte der RAF (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2008); Daniela Fleischhauer, Vom Protest zur gewaltsamen Aktion: Gründe für den Weg von Ulrike Meinhof in den Terrorismus (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2008). 48

Aust’s book was originally published in English and German in 1985, but has been republished in an updated version in both languages to accompany the release of the film. See Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, and Aust, The BaaderMeinhof Complex (London: Bodley Head, 2008). 49

“Für viele hat sich bei den Bildern aus Vietnam . . . die Parallele zu Auschwitz aufgedrängt. . . . Für viele ergab sich daraus zwingend die Notwendigkeit . . . zu handeln und Verantwortung zu übernehmen.” Hogefeld, “Zur Geschichte der RAF,” in Carlchristian von Braunmühl, Hogefeld, Hubertus Janssen, Horst-Eberhard Richter, and Gerd Rosenkranz, Versuche, die Geschichte der RAF zu verstehen: Das Beispiel Birgit Hogefeld (Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 1996), 19–58; here 30. 50

See, for example, Süddeutsche Zeitung (22 May 2009): 1.

51

“Die Kugel war genauso gegen dich . . . Bevor ich nun wieder nach Auschwitz transportiert werde, denn schieß ich lieber vorher.” Michael (Bommi) Baumann, Wie alles anfing (Munich: Trikont, 1980), 38–39. 52

Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in A Critique of Pure Tolerance, ed. Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 95–137. 53

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface,” in Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (London: Penguin, 2001 [1965]), 18–19. The German edition has the title Die Verdammten dieser Erde. 54

Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950). 55

Habermas, cited in Ditfurth, Rudi und Ulrike, 87; Horkheimer, “Die Motive der rebellierenden Studierenden” (1968), cited in Susanne Kailitz, Von den Worten

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zu den Waffen: Frankfurter Schule, Studentenbewegung, RAF und die Gewaltfrage (Wiesbaden: VS, 2007), 83. 56

“dass diese selbst ernannten ‘Antifaschisten’ schon in ihren ersten Handlungen mit absolut faschistischer Menschenverachtung ans Werk gingen.” Freiheit und Demokratie: 25 Jahre nach dem “Deutschen Herbst”: Herausforderungen und Verpflichtungen für Bürger und Staat in einer freiheitlichen Demokratie, ed. Bernd Fahrholz (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2002), 67. 57

“Beide Aktionen sind . . . ein entscheidendes Bindeglied internationaler sozialistischer Solidarität . . . Aus den vom Faschismus vertriebenenen Juden sind selbst Faschisten geworden.” Baumann, Wie alles anfing, 81. 58

Cited in Otto Schily and Hans-Christian Ströbele, Plädoyers einer politischen Verteidigung. Reden und Mitschriften aus dem Mahler-Prozeß, ed. Rote Hilfe Westberlin (Berlin: Rote Hilfe, 1973), 141–42. 59 “überaus deutsch.” Bruhn, “Vorwort,” in Emile Marenssin, Stadtguerilla und soziale Revolution: Über den bewaffneten Kampf und die Rote Armee Fraktion (Freiburg i. Br.: Ca ira, 1998), 2. 60

Notably Wolfgang Kraushaar, most recently in his Achtundsechzig: Eine Bilanz (Berlin: Propyläen, 2008); see also Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof; Gerd Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt: Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002) and Vesper, Ensslin, Baader: Urszenen des deutschen Terrorismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003); Klaus Pflieger, Die Rote Armee Fraktion — RAF (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2004).

61

See, e.g., Schneider, “Omnipotente Opfer,” 1341.

62

Joanne Wright, Terrorist Propaganda: The Red Army Faction and the Provisional IRA, 1968–86 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), xi. 63

Charles Townshend, Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 3.

64

“eine politische Strategie nicht über Herrschaftsmittel verfügender, politisch relativ einflußschwacher . . . Minderheiten . . . durch den systematischen Einsatz massiver, als Überraschungsschläge durchgeführter Gewalttaten gekennzeichnet, die ein Gefühl existentieller Verunsicherung bei zu bekämpfenden sozialen Gruppen erzeugen sowie der Bewußtseinsformung, Mobilisierung und Revolutionierung bei ‘unterdrückten’ und zu gewinnenden gesellschaftlichen Schichten dienen sollen.” Uwe Backes, Bleierne Jahre: Baader-Meinhof und danach (Erlangen: Straube, 1991), 32. Emphasis in original. 65

Henner Hess, “Die neue Herausforderung: Von der RAF zu Al-Qaida,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:103–22; here 104. 66

Herfried Münkler, “Guerillakrieg und Terrorismus: Begriffliche Unklarheit mit politischen Folgen,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:78–102; here 94. See chapter 3. 67

“Nicht die physische, sondern die psychische Wirkung terroristischer Aktionen steht im Vordergrund.” Backes, Bleierne Jahre, 31–32. Emphasis in original. 68

“Terrorismus als pathologischer Typus politischer Kommunikation.” Andreas Musolff, “Bürgerkriegs-Szenarios und ihre Folgen: Die Terrorismusdebatte in

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der Bundesrepublik 1970–1993,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 2:1171–84; here 1172. 69

See Münkler, “Guerillakrieg und Terrorismus,” 79.

70

Fromkin, “The Strategy of Terrorism,” in Foreign Affairs (July 1975): 683– 98. 71

“Terrorismus, das gilt es festzuhalten, ist primär eine Kommunikationsstrategie.” Peter Waldmann, Terrorismus: Provokation der Macht, 2nd edn. (Hamburg: Murmann, 2005), 15. 72

Letter from Ensslin to other RAF prisoners of early 1973, in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 14. 73

“Maßgeblich für die Aufnahme des Tatbestandes der ‘terroristischen Vereinigung’ in das Strafgesetzbuch war die öffentliche Wirksamkeit. . . . Damit war ein Gleichklang von politischer Bewertung und rechtlicher Bewertung hergestellt. Das politische Verfolgungsinteresse traf sich unmittelbar mit der rechtlichen Bewertung und wurde durch dieses legitimiert. Wenn der Politiker das Wort Terrorismus aussprach, so sprach er in einem Atemzug über eine Straftat (terroristische Vereinigung).” Josef Grässle-Münscher, Kriminelle Vereinigung: Von den Burschenschaften bis zur RAF (Hamburg: EVA, 1991), 163. 74

Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl, The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 64. Thanks to Cary Parker for the reference. 75

“ihre auffallende Gabe zum Rhetorischen, zum Argumentieren.” Itzenplitz, “Nachwort,” in Meinhof, Bambule, 130; “demagogisch-rhetorisch.” Iring Fetscher, Herfried Münkler, and Hannelore Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Fetscher and Günter Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 1) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 228. 76

Baggini and Fosl, The Philosopher’s Toolkit, 103.

77

For the recent British context, see Alan Travis, “Whitehall draws up new rules on language of terror,” in The Guardian (4 February 2008): 1. 78

“die mögliche Bedrohung der Demokratien durch ihre Reaktion auf den Terrorismus selbst . . . Denn für Demokratien gilt: Erst wenn sie herausgefordert sind, erweist sich ihre Wetterfestigkeit. Ob die Bundesrepublik Deutschland diese im Falle des Umgangs mit Häftlingen aus Terrorgruppen für sich reklamieren kann, muss künftig ein wesentlicher Gegenstand politikwissenschaftlicher und anderer Erörtungen werden.” Jander, “Isolation: zu den Haftbedingungen der RAF-Gefangenen,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 2:973–93; here 973–74.

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1: Fighting Talk (1959–69): From the Peace Movement to the Revolutionary Legitimacy of Violence der Friede ist zum bestimmenden Faktor politischen Handelns geworden. [peace is now the driving factor for political action.] —Ulrike Meinhof, October 1959 Gewalt . . . [ist] ein Mittel, das wir weder kategorisch ablehnen noch willkürlich anwenden werden, dessen Methodik und revolutionärer Legitimität wir vielmehr in theoretischer Reflexion und praktischer Anwendung erlernen und begreifen müssen. [Violence . . . is an instrument we shall neither categorically reject nor use arbitrarily, one whose effectiveness and revolutionary legitimacy we need to learn to understand in a process of theoretical reflection and practical use.] —Ulrike Meinhof and the Berlin Editors’ Collective, June 1968

A

KLAUS RAINER RÖHL TELLS IT, the magazine that would establish Meinhof’s name began life in 1955 as a student newspaper called Das Plädoyer (The Appeal).1 It was rechristened Studentenkurier (The Student Courier) before acquiring its lasting name konkret (written without a capital “k” in the spirit of orthographic antiauthoritarianism) in the autumn of 1957. Röhl may have had a less prominent role in konkret’s founding than his own account suggests — some impetus certainly came from his friend Klaus Hübotter, who was affiliated with East Germany’s Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend). As Röhl has long since made public, konkret’s secret sponsor was the East German government.2 Its East German sponsors encouraged the team at konkret to connect with one of the biggest oppositional movements in postwar West Germany: the antinuclear peace movement (Anti-Atom-Bewegung), led at Münster university by a student activist named Ulrike Meinhof.3 At its national forefront was Professor Renate Riemeck — Meinhof’s foster mother. Röhl’s coworker Reinhard Opitz and later Röhl himself took on the task of persuading Meinhof to join them in Hamburg. Röhl clearly

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FIGHTING TALK (1959–69)

enjoys telling the story of how he won the young peacenik, for himself and the magazine: in his version his friend Opitz falls in love with her, but it is he and not Opitz who carries home the trophy (the “precious prey,” Röhl calls her),4 after wooing her by waxing lyrical on the benefits of communism and playing her love songs on the juke box. Röhl and Meinhof met for the first time at a convention of the antinuclear student committees held in Frankfurt in May 1958. Her biographers regularly retell a “hate at first sight” story (“Abneigung auf den ersten Blick”), Röhl’s tale of a mutual dislike that gave way to courtship and marriage; the story recalls the spirited heroine of romantic fiction, who first loathes but then loves the hero. But one of the konkret crew who was on that trip to Frankfurt contradicts, remembering considerable erotic interest, on Röhl’s side at least.5 Whatever her motivations for joining konkret were, in October 1959 Meinhof’s first column appeared, called “Der Friede macht Geschichte” (Peace is Making History). In it, she described the visit of Nikita Krushchev to the United States — the first Soviet leader to be received there — and his historic but unsuccessful attempt to negotiate controlled bilateral disarmament with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.6 By the mid 1960s she was konkret’s star columnist, writing for a leftwing readership of more than one hundred thousand. Ironically, the magazine had a right-wing politician to thank for a surge in numbers: Franz Josef Strauß, then federal minister for defense and leader of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), had tried to have it banned. The reasons he cited were vulgarity and crass immorality — accusations that immediately swelled the paper’s sales.7 Tense relations between Strauß and konkret were nothing new: in 1961 he had sued Meinhof for an article called “Hitler in euch” (Hitler Within You), which took as its starting point the trial of the prominent Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. She had predicted that her own generation would one day be questioned by their children about Strauß in the same way they questioned their own parents about Hitler.8 The parallel was clearly and unashamedly provocative. Her defense lawyer, Gustav Heinemann (who from 1969–74 would be West Germany’s president), argued that despite the provocation Strauß had no case — Meinhof had not actually compared him with Hitler. The Hamburg courts threw the case out. Strauß put a dent in his own reputation with the notorious Spiegel affair of 1962. In October, the left-leaning current affairs magazine published a detailed report on the federal army, the Bundeswehr. A fortnight later, in a secret overnight operation, Defense Minister Strauß had the magazine’s offices in Hamburg occupied by police, the editors’ homes searched, and the editors themselves arrested. He had not informed the federal minister for justice, nor the home office, nor the chancellor of his intentions, however, and the operation cost him his cabinet post.

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Three years later, and no longer minister for defense, he sued Meinhof again — this time because she had dubbed him Germany’s most despicable politician (“den infamsten deutschen Politiker”).9 Her lawyer was Hans-Heinz Heldmann (later one of the Red Army Faction’s lawyers and the author of a book querying the odd circumstances of its leaders’ deaths in Stammheim prison),10 and on this occasion she was ordered to pay a fine, and konkret to print a withdrawal of her claims; but her reputation was growing, and with it her confidence — in May 1966 she wrote a column titled “Franz Strauß,” in which she cheekily referred both to the disastrous Spiegel episode, and to his campaigns against her and her magazine.11 From 1964 a photograph of Meinhof appeared next to her column on the magazine’s opening page. That created a visual link between konkret and its heavyweight competitor Stern, whose columnist “Frau Sibylle” (the journalist Anneliese Friedmann) was presented in just that way,12 but it also reflected her increased prominence, and her selling power. Meinhof was part of an Extraparliamentary Opposition (Außerparlamentarische Opposition, or APO) that refused to credit any mainstream party in the postwar period with political integrity, and insistently scrutinized West German politics for traces of the fascist endeavor. In practical terms she was selling the magazine; in political terms she was “selling,” ever more overtly, an idea of the Federal Republic that ran counter to its official self-representation as a denazified, democratic state. Both her daughter, Bettina Röhl, and East German academic Kristin Wesemann have attributed that project to the “pull” of the socialist East.13 One must also ask about the “push” factor, however: what real or imagined circumstances impelled Meinhof to launch a journalistic attack on the democracy that had succeeded the Hitler regime, and how did she move from championing peace to advocating what she came to call “emancipatory violence”?

The Riemeck Affair In August 1960, both issues of konkret (which was now successful enough to appear fortnightly rather than monthly) engaged with events surrounding the sudden early retirement from university teaching of Meinhof’s foster mother, Renate Riemeck. Riemeck had adopted both the fourteenyear-old Ulrike and her elder sister Wienke after their mother’s death in 1949. At that time Riemeck herself was only twenty-nine; at thirty-two she became the youngest woman professor in Germany, when the Ministry for Culture in Hanover offered her a professorship without requiring that she complete the normal professorial qualification (the Habilitation). But in the summer of 1960 North Rhine-Westphalia’s minister for culture, Werner Schütz of the Christian Democrats, required her to stand down as an examiner for history and politics at the Pädagogische Akademie in

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Wuppertal — she was effectively relieved of her duties. His explanation was that measures were necessary to protect her from public attack, on account of her political connections with the East.14 Schütz’s reasoning had a context. Riemeck was at the forefront of the left-wing peace movement, and where left-wingers saw remilitarization as a step back in the direction of imperialism and therefore as tendentially fascist, the right argued that opponents of nuclear armament were in the pockets of the communist East, looking to leave the Republic defenseless against communist expansion. On 5 April 1957, West Germany’s first postwar chancellor, Konrad Adenauer (CDU), had declared that the Bundeswehr would be equipped with the most up-to-date weapons — including nuclear weapons. Riemeck responded by formulating a petition, signed by forty-four West German professors, calling on the trades unions to oppose nuclear armament.15 The implicit threat to the federal government was that most powerful of civic protests: a general strike. Her foster daughter Meinhof responded to Schütz’s action against Riemeck using the vocabulary of Nazi oppression. In “Geschichten von Herrn Schütz” (Tales of Herr Schütz), her commentary on the scandal, she made the spectacular assertion that — for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic — an academic had been removed from post not for any concrete offense or suspected criminal activity, but for ideological reasons (“Erstmalig in der Bundesrepublik wurde am 14. Juli 1960 ein Professor nicht wegen einer etwaigen Verletzung des Grundgesetzes, auch ohne den Verdacht einer straffälligen Tat, nur um seiner oppositionellen Anschauungen gegenüber der Regierungspolitik willen faktisch seines Lehramtes entkleidet”).16 It is not quite true that Riemeck, a leading figure on the West German left after the war, was removed from post: rather than face disciplinary proceedings, she resigned her professorship, as Meinhof very well knew. What Meinhof did not know was that her foster mother had reason to avoid a public inquiry; it has emerged only recently that Riemeck had been a member both of the Nazi party and of the Association of National Socialist Women Students (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Nationalsozialistischer Studentinnen).17 Meinhof ’s article implies that the government was revealing its totalitarian (Nazi) tendencies by refusing to tolerate political opposition: “if the minister for culture’s campaign is not halted,” she concludes dramatically, “there is no saying where his cleansing of German universities will end” (“Wenn dem Durchbruch des Kultusministers nicht Einhalt geboten wird, ist nicht abzusehen, wo die begonnene Säuberungsaktion deutscher Hochschulen enden wird”).18 According to Jürgen Seifert, a friend of Münster university days, Meinhof’s political identity at this time in her life was heavily influenced by Riemeck,19 but the impassioned rhetoric of this article seems to reflect not only a political but a personal response to events (it is also one of the

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longest columns Meinhof ever wrote). Her dismay at the character assassination of her foster mother finds expression in an oddly familiar formula: Am 26. November 1959 war ein Artikel . . . in der “Deutschen Zeitung” erschienen unter der Überschrift “Professor Riemeck prüft Marx.” . . . Das Geschichtsbild von 900 Millionen Menchen, die auf unserer Erde leben, hat den deutschen Wissenschaftler und Lehrer nicht zu interessieren — nach Meinung der “Deutschen Zeitung.” Im März 1960 erschien das Rotbuch des Komitees “Rettet die Freiheit,” in dem Hunderte von Professoren — darunter auch Renate Riemeck — der “Ostanfälligkeit” und des Handlangerdienstes für den Kommunismus verdächtigt wurden. Gegnerschaft gegen atomare Aufrüstung ist Handreichung für den Kommunismus — nach Meinung des Rotbuches. . . . Die Politik der Bundesregierung darf nur kritisieren, wer zuvor die DDR verurteilt — nach Meinung der Anonymen in der “Westdeutschen Rundschau.” . . . Die Öffentlichkeit der Bundesrepublik rekrutiert sich aus “Deutscher Zeitung,” Rotbuch und zwei anonymen Lesern — nach Meinung des Kultusministers. [On 26 November 1959 an article . . . appeared in the “Deutsche Zeitung” with the title “Professor Riemeck teaches Marx.” . . . German academics and teachers are not supposed to show an interest in a [Marxist] view of history shared by 900 million people living on this earth — according to the “Deutsche Zeitung.” In March 1960 the Committee for Freedom produced its Red Book,20 in which hundreds of professors — including Renate Riemeck — were accused of “susceptibility to the East” and of being in bed with Communism. Opposition to nuclear armament is being in bed with Communism — according to the Red Book. . . . Only those who have already damned the GDR outright may go on to criticize the politics of the West German government — according to the anonymous contributors to the “Westdeutsche Rundschau” . . . The West German public is made up of the “Deutsche Zeitung,” the Red Book and two anonymous readers — according to the Minister for Culture.21]

The repetition of “according to” eventually provokes puzzlement in the reader, and then doubt; the need asserted by Schütz to protect Riemeck from public attack suddenly seems based on opinion and interpretation (the world according to a nationalist newspaper, an anticommunist pamphlet, and some anonymous letter-writers), and not on hard facts. It recalls the famous speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where, by repeating that “Brutus is an honorable man,” Mark Antony calls into

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question the veracity of those words. Meinhof throws doubt on the integrity of those she imagines have assassinated the character of Riemeck, cast as Caesar to her own Mark Antony. She herself stands, like Mark Antony, indignant, pained, and profoundly disappointed by the machinations of a state that ought to be just.

Emergency? A month later she was engaging with government plans for emergency laws (Notstandsgesetze). Until the Federal Republic passed special legislation for a national emergency, the Western allies (France, Britain, and the United States) would have the right to intervene in a national crisis; in this sense the plans were a move towards sovereignty. Opponents, however, were troubled by historical precedents: the Weimar Republic’s Article 48 had once given the head of state powers that arguably assisted Hitler’s rise to dictatorship. Meinhof’s column “Notstand? Notstand!” (Emergency? Emergency!) opens with the assertion that one in three West Germans believes the situation in 1960 comparable with 1933. The reason, says Meinhof, is that professors are losing their jobs and status now as they did then (“Deutschland 1960 — jeder Dritte vergleicht es mit dem Deutschland von 1933 . . . Professoren fliegen ‘wie damals’ aus Amt und Würden”).22 “Professors” should be singular, not plural: there was at the time no other case in point except Riemeck (the Radikalenerlaß, a law excluding political radicals from public service professions, was not passed until 1972). 1933, the year Hitler made himself dictator, was also a time when many Germans had not yet noticed, or did not want to notice, the implications of domestic events. Meinhof is cautioning her contemporaries that Germany may yet repeat the trajectory of the Hitler regime after 1933 — if Germans are again prepared to put their heads in the sand and let it. She waves the red rag of Article 48: “we don’t want to start asking,” she continues (although she clearly does want people to ask), “whether Hitler was able to institutionalize twelve years of German Fascism because or in spite of that article” (“wir wollen nicht in den Streit . . . einsteigen, ob Hitler vermittels oder trotz dieses Artikels zwölf Jahre deutschen Faschismus institutionalisieren konnte”). Now as then, she tells us, trade unionists are being designated enemies of the people (Volksfeinde), and strikes could again be classed as national emergencies and violently put down by the police and army. In a mental leap she takes her readers from the emergency laws to Auschwitz: words like Volksfeind, we are reminded, are the language of 1933, and that ended in the concentration camps (“Gewerkschaftler als Volksfeinde, Streiks als Aufruhr, Lohnkämpfe als Notstand — das ist die Sprache von Sozialistengesetz und März 33, das gipfelte in Festungshaft und KZ”).23

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In fact, Volksfeind is an implied rather than actual quotation. It serves Meinhof’s useful fiction:24 namely, that West Germany in 1960 could be best understood by analogy with German fascism. She highlights two salient features in the Federal Republic’s postwar constitution that, for her and many others, had seemed the guarantors that the historical mistakes that enabled Nazism could not be repeated: military disarmament and the constitutional enshrinement of civil liberties. By 1960, however, disarmament had been abandoned: West Germany became a member of NATO in 1955, and membership brought with it the requirement to have a national army. Rearmament began with the introduction of the Wehrartikel (arms article), a new clause that provided for the creation of the Bundeswehr as a national defense army, and military service was reintroduced in July 1956. With the principle of disarmament already abandoned, argues Meinhof, the other founding principle of the nation — civil liberty — is now under siege. She conjures a vision of civilian protests literally under fire: in future, she warns, the new laws will permit mass uprisings to be shot down (“oppositionelle Massen können in Zukunft zusammengeschossen werden”).25 Images of brutally repressed civil protests deliberately evoke the Nazi era. Hitler is mentioned by name, side-by-side with a reference to the German passion for orderliness — ”der deutsche Sinn für Ordnung” — which, she asserts, was behind the deaths of six million Jews in the gas chambers. The planned emergency laws are mentioned in the same sentence, directly next to a reference to murdered Jews. Emergency laws are not Auschwitz, but the historical parallel suggests forcefully to Meinhof’s readers that they might be. Hindsight says the Federal Republic was a stable enough democracy, and it is difficult to empathize with the mindset that leads a writer to functionalize the Shoah for rhetorical effect. From the historical perspective of 1960 we might read it as a desperate measure in what she believed were desperate times, arising out of a genuine fear that the German past was about to repeat itself. For Meinhof personally, that fear was intimately connected with the Riemeck affair, which clearly still informed the “Emergency!” article as well as her “Tales of Herr Schütz.” The two pieces together mark a significant development in a narrative by which Nazi history was already in the process of repeating itself.

Nazis, “New Fascism,” and the “New Jews” From the Riemeck affair on, the rhetoric of Nazis and Jews, oppressors and oppressed, takes hold in Meinhof’s journalism. She is not alone in that: to describe anything or anyone as fascist or Hitleresque in the postwar period is to make possibly the most powerful and damaging metaphorical connection available.26 Nazism and the Jewish experience were

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the rhetorical cudgels of the left and the right throughout the later 1960s. Meinhof used the comparison to lambaste postcolonial conditions across the world; in an (unreprinted) article for konkret in July 1960, titled “Fortsetztung des Nazismus in der globalen Politik” (Ongoing Nazism in Global Politics), she wrote of “concentration camps” in French-occupied Algeria.27 But the specter of National Socialism also lurks in her reports on political conditions at home in the Federal Republic. Meinhof was working in a context of a young investigative journalism that was understandably allergic to the recent past. In January 1960, konkret had published an article on antisemitism in the Republic. Its author, Dieter Großherr, counted at least three hundred attacks on Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in Germany since the official end of Nazism in 1945. He also cited a survey — taken seven years earlier in 1953 — which found that well over half (59 percent) of West Germans were still fundamentally antisemitic.28 The cover of the issue listed the names of ex-Nazis active in the new federal democracy — in the criminal justice system, in politics, and in the military (in 1956 the German government had been forced to admit that thirty-one of thirty-eight generals in the newly created Bundeswehr had also belonged to Hitler’s Wehrmacht).29 Parliament itself was not immune to the problems of reconstituting a postfascist state: in 1961 (after Spiegel had given critical coverage of the case in March, and the GDR’s weekly television program Schwarzer Kanal in April), konkret published a piece tracking the career of Dr. Hans Globke, secretary of state to Adenauer.30 Globke, who was consistently supported by Adenauer, had been senior adviser (Oberregierungsrat) to the Hitler government, and coauthor of a commentary justifying the Nuremberg Laws of 1933 — laws that, among other things, forbade marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Because he had never actually become a member of the Nazi party, Globke was able to duck postwar denazification and continue his political career. Another scandal blew up when it emerged that West Germany’s president, Heinrich Lübke, had drawn up plans for concentration camps in the office in which he worked as an architect during the war.31 These were real issues facing the Federal Republic in the postwar period, issues that were being addressed by investigative journalists, not only on the team at konkret. That makes it disappointing when one finds Meinhof concentrating less on the genuine problems faced by a society in the aftermath of dictatorship, and more on creating dramatic rhetorical connections between Nazism and those who oppose the things she supports — such as disarmament and demilitarization — or support what she opposes. In an article of May 1960 called “Neue deutsche Ghetto-Schau” (The New German Ghetto), she mobilizes the connotations of the ghettos — where the Nazis robbed and starved entire Jewish populations prior to deportation or murder — to garner sympathy for contemporary anti-

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nuclear campaigners. The new ghetto, says Meinhof, is no longer for Jews or the Polish intelligentsia but for those who oppose nuclear armament in West Germany (“Die Eingezäunten sind diesmal nicht Angehörige der polnischen Intelligenz, auch nicht Juden und halbe und nur zum Teil Kommunisten; umgattert finden sich vielmehr die engagierten Skeptiker im Raum bundesrepublikanischer Atompolitik”).32 Extending the metaphor, that makes peace activists (like Meinhof herself) the new Jews to the federal government’s oppressive Hitler. The comparison is profoundly disrespectful of those who suffered in the real ghettos. The “Hitler Within You” column, with its notorious reference to Strauß, appeared in konkret in May 1961. Even without its reference to a contemporary right-wing politician the article is provocative — not least because Meinhof appears to include her readers (the “you” of the title) but not herself in the ranks of those within whom the spirit of Hitler lives on. At the time of writing the Eichmann trial was in progress; it is mentioned in a cursory manner. But the focus is on developing her metaphor: namely, that those (like herself) who oppose current mainstream politics are Germany’s new Jews: in the contemporary context, she tells us, anyone who criticizes antisemitism must “speak up for freedom wherever it is currently under threat” (“wer den Antisemitismus geißelt, muß der Freiheit, wo sie heute bedroht ist, das Wort reden”). Fair enough, we might think, but the specific value of critiquing antisemitism is quickly undermined: replacing antisemitism with prosemitism, Meinhof argues, is not an answer; what is needed is that we “reject every kind of political terror that is practiced in the form of administrative measures against those who think, believe, and feel differently” (“Eine Revision des Antisemitismus . . . ist als Prosemitismus nur eine halbe Antwort, erfordert vielmehr die Absage an jeden politischen Terror vermittelst administrativer Maßnahmen gegen Andersdenkende, Andersglaubende und Andersfühlende”).33 Thinking hard about the real-life effects of antisemitism under Hitler is not, in Meinhof’s view, what is really needed — the realities of the Shoah seem to take a back seat to “administrative measures” against her foster mother Riemeck. In her “Emergency!” column she had deliberately used an item of Nazi vocabulary to characterize political practice in West Germany: the verb gleichschalten, which described Hitler’s policy of forcing institutions and individuals to toe the political line. The word returns as a noun in her column of August 1966, “Joachim Fest oder die Gleichschaltung” (Joachim Fest or Gleichschaltung). In 1960 Meinhof rode into battle for Riemeck, and now she was back on her rhetorical charger for West German television’s Panorama presenter Fest, who had criticized the emergency laws — still, in 1966, in the planning stages — on his show in early June. He was subsequently relieved of his duties by the state television channel ARD. The government is silencing its critics,

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observes Meinhof, and that proves that the much-cited Rechtsstaat (the just or constitutional state of Federal West Germany) is neither democratic nor just, but a sham.34 There is a clear echo of her “Emergency!” article: “Soldiers against workers — soldiers deployed to enforce domestic order — soldiers against civilians — is that something new in Germany?” she asked then, only to answer her own rhetorical question: “No — the only new thing is that such methods of interaction between the power of the state and its people are being called democracy” (“Soldaten gegen Arbeiter — Soldaten im Einsatz zum Schutz der inneren Ordnung — Soldaten gegen Zivilisten — ist das neu in Deutschland? Nein — neu ist nur eins: Solche Methoden des Umgangs zwischen Staatsmacht und Volk Demokratie zu nennen”).35 Meinhof eventually coins a term for that state of affairs, in the column “Demokratie spielen” (Playing at Democracy) of 1968: “new fascism.” The article addresses the case of Federal President Lübke. Unlike the chancellor, the president is not the political so much as the moral figurehead of the Federal Republic, but Lübke’s history as an architect of the concentration camps had become an open secret. There was no mileage to be had from exposing him; instead, Meinhof represents him as a straw man, his story a handy alibi for those who do not wish investigations into their own political history. Whether Lübke stays or goes, she asserts, is irrelevant, because “it is irrelevant for the new fascism whether its figurehead built concentration camps or not” (“ob Lübke bleibt oder geht, ist belanglos für die demokratische Zukunft der Bundesrepublik, wie es auch belanglos ist für den neuen Faschismus, ob an seiner Spitze einer steht, der KZ’s gebaut hat oder keine”).36 “New fascism” would become a familiar rhetorical formula in the writings of the mainstream left;37 here Meinhof was either coining the term or writing down an idea in spoken circulation. She does not explain its causes or workings (we are not told what “new fascism” is); but its existence is asserted, and while there is an implication, via the historical-political link to fascism, that she is basing her assertion on evidence or argument, no arguments are actually made, and no evidence given. This kind of implied reasoning would characterize the texts of the RAF. Critics have noted that organization’s failure properly to define or historically analyze its notion of fascism,38 but Meinhof in her journalism was already failing in exactly the same way. The result is an inflationary use of the term to mean all things negative.39 That inevitably slides towards opportunism, and thus devalues language: the specific historical and political meaning of the word gets lost in a bid for effect. Particularly after the Riemeck affair, “fascism” acquired momentum as a metaphor in Meinhof ’s writing. Her assumption that a “new fascism” defined the West German state stabilized her own position in opposition to it — she comes to occupy a position that is based on a metaphor

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she herself created. That position identified her, and those who were “with” her in the Extraparliamentary Opposition, both in contradistinction to the German fascists of the past, and among fascism’s victims in the present: metaphorically, she and her fellow travelers were now the new Jews.

Terrorists and Resistance Fighters Like fascism, terrorism (often just called Terror in German) is a powerful item of vocabulary. It first gained currency during the French Revolution of 1789, and has historically been used to stigmatize those seen as revolutionary: communists, anarchists, and social democrats, among others. It was mobilized by the National Socialists under Hitler to devalue their political opponents, and then, after 1945, to describe the activities of the Nazis.40 In the 1960s the word re-emerged in the context of the student movement, used to describe both the rebellious students and those who opposed them. In 1967, in a television documentary about the death of student protester Benno Ohnesorg, Meinhof referred not only to a “police state” but to “police and press terrorism.”41 Like “fascist,” “terrorist” is a word used to damn the other side. That means that its application to one’s own side has to be resisted, and early in 1968 Meinhof answered an attack on the students in Die Zeit that both characterized their verbal interventions during lectures as “terrorism,” and evoked fascism: back in 1933, the author claims, the young felt similarly superior to the old (“Damals (1933) wie heute wurde ein mystisch-biologischer Wert ‘jung’ einem mystisch-biologischen Unwert ‘alt’ entgegengestellt”).42 The implied context is Nazi eugenics, but Meinhof immediately counters that: this kind of rhetoric is demonization, she argues, and fans the flames of conflict (“So verhärtet man antidemokratisches und antisozialistisches Ressentiment, . . . so verteufelt man die Studenten”).43 As one journalist reading another, she identifies the rhetorical intention (which is, indeed, to demonize the students by making Nazis or “new fascists” of them), and moves in immediately to unmask it. (That does not appear to have any impact on her own practice — rhetoric, it seems, is irresponsible only when it is used by the other side.) The title she gave her defense of the students was “Gegen-Gewalt” (Counter-Violence; Meinhof did not invent that descriptor: student leader Rudi Dutschke was using counter-violence as a term of self-defense as early as 1967).44 “Tales of Herr Schütz” and her “Emergency!” article had constructed the context of a violent, oppressive state, and that context now provided the basis for a legitimization of resistance. Meinhof tells the story of a protest during the matriculation ceremony at Hamburg University in the winter of 1967:

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Als . . . ein paar SDS-Studenten die Feier störten und diese Störversuche während des wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Vortrags des neuen Rektors allmählich heftiger wurden und allmählich unüberhörbar und für den Vortrag des neuen Rektors unerträglich, der Schillers Wirtschaftspolitik rechtfertigte und antigewerkschaftliche Thesen vortrug, wie z. B. die These von der Lohn-Preis-Spirale und über Entwicklungshilfe redete, als gäbe es keine Ausbeutung der Dritten Welt, als das allmählich einer Mehrheit der Studenten im Auditorium maximum zuviel wurde und sie eben diesen reaktionären Vortrag nicht länger unwidersprochen hinnehmen wollte, nicht schweigen wollte wo die Arbeiterschaft beleidigt und der deutsche Imperialismus gerechtfertigt wurde, da gab es einen Punkt, wo die Stimmung endgültig gegen Rektor und Professoren und Feierlichkeit und Immatrikulationsbrimborium umzuschlagen drohte und keiner sein eigenes Wort mehr verstand und kein Mikrophon dagegen ankam und die Feier zu platzen drohte.45 [When . . . a couple of students from the Socialist Students’ Union disturbed the ceremony during the lecture on economics delivered by the new rector, and their attempts to create a disturbance grew gradually more extreme and gradually impossible to ignore, and rendered untenable the lecture being given by the new rector, who was justifying Trade and Industry Minister Schiller’s economic policies and expounding theories critical of the trades unions such as the theory of the wage/price spiral and talking about development aid as if exploitation in the third world did not exist, when that gradually got too much for the majority of students in the great hall and they no longer wanted to swallow his reactionary lecture without protest or stand silent while the working classes were insulted and German imperialism justified, the moment came when the mood finally threatened to turn against rector and professors and ceremony and all the paraphernalia of matriculation and no one could hear themselves speak any more and no microphone could change that and the ceremony threatened to collapse.]

The exhaustingly long sentence is deliberate. Meinhof is using language to make her readers feel what she is trying to communicate. Relentless repetition (“and” is repeated thirteen times!) and the overly long sentence force the reader to experience vicariously the unstoppable and seemingly endless speech given by the rector, to make us feel the linguistic “violence” done to the listening students. Her subject, however, is resistance — “counter-violence” — and there is a turning point in the narrative and in the syntax. The moment comes, she tells us, when the students started to get the upper hand. Now the conjunction “and” becomes a sign of the students’ triumph: no longer signaling violence but counterviolence, the repeated “and” marks their successful resistance in the face

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of (linguistic) oppression. Syntactically the students are shown to be a match for institutional or university authority. Both the story and its syntax are designed to persuade us that “counter-violence” is justified, justifiable, and above all an effective response to violence. What Die Zeit called “terrorism” is being redefined as resistance — in postwar Germany by implication antifascist. Meinhof was beginning to create an idea that would become a key part of her thinking: the figure of the warrior-revolutionary who smashes (verbally, for the moment) the structures of institutionalized violence. That implicit notion would become explicit in the columns of 1968, the year in which she moved, in her own words, “from protest to resistance.”

1968 During the 1960s Ulrike Meinhof (who was also known by her married name, Ulrike Röhl) was a successful journalist and by all accounts a popular party guest in Hamburg high society. The writer Peter Rühmkorf, a family friend, has described her as an exotic addition to such circles, a kind of mascot of the liberal establishment.46 She later characterized herself disparagingly during this period as a “jester for the revolution” (“Revolutionskasperle”).47 In February 1968, very soon after she wrote her column on the Hamburg students’ “counter-violence,” Meinhof left the detached villa she shared with Röhl in Hamburg and moved to Berlin with her twin daughters Regine und Bettina. The separation was final — Röhl was seeing another woman, not for the first time — and she applied immediately for divorce via her solicitor Kurt Groenewold (later a defense lawyer for the Red Army Faction). For the time being she continued to write for konkret, which had by now acquired a readership of around one hundred forty thousand.48 1968 has become synonymous with the student movement. In the course of that year the political situation in West Germany and West Berlin grew explosive. In February the International Vietnam Congress drew students from home and abroad, and concluded with a protest march involving more than twelve thousand antiwar demonstrators. On 11 April 1968, twenty-three-year-old Josef Bachmann identified and shot Rudi Dutschke on West Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm. In Bachmann’s pocket was an article cut from the right-wing Nationalzeitung with the title “Stoppt Dutscke jetzt” (Stop Dutschke now). Dutschke survived, but the attack was followed by demonstrations directed against the publishing house of Axel Springer, whose widely read Bild-Zeitung had fanned the flames of public feeling against Dutschke and the students (Bachmann, however, claimed at his trial that he was not a reader of Springer’s newspapers).49 During the demonstrations — at which Meinhof, who now lived in Berlin, was present — home-made explosives were thrown; a short film shown at

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the Technical University had demonstrated what its title promised: The Making of a Molotov Cocktail.50 It was the work of Holger Meins, a film student who would later be a core member of the Red Army Faction.51 Meinhof’s columns of 1968 document a critical year not only in West Germany and West Berlin, but in the development of her own politics. Soon after the anti-Springer protests she wrote a piece called “Vom Protest zum Widerstand” (From Protest to Resistance).52 Using the slogan of the American student movement, it built on the notion of fighting back — counter-violence — raised in her account of the Hamburg protest. There the key term “resistance” (Widerstand) was never actually used; in her defense of the radical students’ (verbal) attacks on university staff, she had recourse to the more legalistic notion of self-defense (Notwehr). Now, in tracking a development from “protest to resistance,” she found a name for the activism of the warrior-revolutionary that distinguished it from the violence of the state and its institutions: the heroic term Widerstand. Where “terrorism” is negatively laden, “resistance” has powerfully positive connotations.53 It is the polar opposite of the Nazi metaphor — it connotes not only difference from fascism, but the courage to fight it. On the streets of Berlin (and elsewhere), the rioters of 1968 had attacked and damaged the publishing premises of Springer, and Meinhof draws on the positive connotations of Widerstand to render that a heroic act. The protesters are not vandals or terrorists, but resistance fighters: warrior-revolutionaries. The distinction she makes between “protest” and “resistance” is that the former is verbal (and toothless), the latter physical (and effective) violence. The move from words to physical acts of violence crosses a boundary, she tells us, in bouncy syntax that communicates excitement rather than dismay: Die Grenze zwischen verbalem Protest und physischem Widerstand ist bei den Protesten in den Osterfeiertagen erstmalig massenhaft, von vielen, nicht nur einzelnen, über Tage hin, nicht nur einmalig, vielerorts, nicht nur in Berlin, tatsächlich, nicht nur symbolisch — überschritten worden.54 [During the protests over the Easter holiday period the boundary between verbal protest and physical resistance was crossed for the first time en masse, not by the few but by the many, and not just once but over a period of days, and not just in Berlin but across Germany, and not just symbolically, but for real.]

The defense of verbal “counter-violence” has developed into a justification of violent action against private property and objects.

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On 30 May 1968 the emergency laws were finally passed despite massive peaceful protest. A “star march” (Sternmarsch) on 11 June 1968 brought around sixty thousand demonstrators marching in a star formation (that is, radiating in from different locations) to Bonn, the center of government — and was ignored by that government. The article in which Meinhof responds to this failure to influence policy: “Notstand — Klassenkampf” (Emergency — Class War) expressed a doubt that had much wider implications: the doubt whether political battles fought peacefully, and in words, have any currency at all. She describes the ten-year struggle against the passing of the laws, but even as she writes she is also reflecting on the effectiveness — or otherwise — of language. As a writer, she dismisses the notion that words genuinely contribute to the struggle for political change. Can one even call it a struggle, she asks, given that so far it has been conducted “only in writing, harmless speechifying and verbal shows of strength?” (“was heißt hier schon Kampf, wo er doch bisher nur mit Schriftsätzen, harmlosen Veranstaltungen, verbalen Kraftakten geführt wurde”).55 She does not, on this occasion, say what beyond verbal shows of strength might qualify as genuine resistance. Instead, for now, she stays with language, transforming the word Kampf (“struggle” or “battle”) into the related phrase “Klassenkampf” (“class war”). The decision to oppose the emergency laws by the democratic method of peaceful demonstration was not just unsuccessful, she argues; it was a wrong decision. Given that a capitalist democracy is a contradiction in terms, peaceful protest within the capitalist system is a naïve waste of time; capitalism, according to Meinhof, requires dominators and dominated if it is to function, and is therefore of its nature antidemocratic. Oppositional energy needs to focus more radically on the business of overturning the system — on class war in the Marxist sense: Wir haben die politische Demokratie verteidigt, anstatt die gesellschaftlichen Mächte, die Unternehmerverbände samt ihren Dependancen in Staat und Gesellschaft selbst anzugreifen. . . . Wir haben gegen die Notstandsgesetze argumentiert, anstatt gegen die Macht der Konzerne zu kämpfen . . . es [ist] uns nicht gelungen . . . , Klassenkampf zu machen. (143) [We have defended political democracy instead of attacking the institutions of power — the associations of employers and their fiefdoms in state and society . . . We have argued against the emergency laws instead of doing battle with the power of big business . . . we have not managed to engage in class war.]

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In her article on the Hamburg “counter-violence,” the syntax conveyed the relentless force of the rector’s address; here it evokes the growth of capitalism, communicating the unstoppability of a process: So konnte gleichzeitig mit der Bewegung gegen die Notstandsgesetze der Springerkonzern wachsen, und die Herren an der Ruhr konnten ihre Subventionen einstreichen und die Haus- und Grundbesitzer sich einen Lücke-Plan machen lassen, kurz: gleichzeitig und von der Bewegung gegen die Notstandsgesetze ganz unbehindert wuchs auch die Macht der Gesellschaftsinhaber und nicht mal nur ihre wirtschaftliche Macht, auch ihre politische Macht. (143) [While we protested against the emergency laws Springer’s publishing business was able to grow, and the powerful industrialists in the Ruhr were able to benefit from subsidies, and the house- and landowners were able to make their own Lücke plan [a ruling passed in 1960 to reduce controls on landlords and rents], in short: simultaneous with the movement against the emergency laws, and entirely unhindered by it, the power of those who own our society was growing, and not only their economic power, but their political power.]

The familiar repetition of “and” (five times in one sentence) communicates unstoppability, and adds to the sense of capitalism’s bulldozing force. Despite her expressed doubt that language is a valid form of resistance, Meinhof was still using it to persuade her readers.

Violence In the same issue of konkret a long article appeared, attributed to the “Berlin Editors’ Collective” (Berliner Redaktionskollektiv). Since Meinhof’s departure, tensions had arisen between konkret’s Hamburg team and contributors to the magazine around Meinhof in Berlin, who now formed an alternative “Editors’ Collective”: a group of high-profile leftwingers including student leader Dutschke, Iranian political exile and author Bahman Nirumand, and the writers Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Gaston Salvatore, and Peter Schneider.56 As individuals they were all highly desirable contributors to the magazine (which by 1968 was losing its political credentials, as Röhl — after losing his East German support in 1964 because he would not toe the party line — included more sex to make more money), but the condition they imposed for their continued input was that their articles should be collectively written, and published without editorial interference in Hamburg, exactly as delivered. Their contribution in June 1968 has the simple title “Gewalt” (Violence). It is a long, inflammatory piece, rarely discussed because it has never been reprinted. Röhl, its original publisher, describes it with some

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justification as a piece of writing that prepared the ground for the later theories of the Red Army Faction.57 It picks up where Meinhof’s column on class war (at the front of the same the issue) leaves off. After demonstrators attacked Springer premises in Berlin in response to the shooting of Dutschke, the unrest spread across cities in West Germany. Demonstrations ended in street battles. What that means, the Berlin Editors’ Collective explains to a konkret readership, is that violent protest is no longer the exception that proves the (nonviolent) rule. Now the “revolutionary legitimacy” of violence is being put to the test; violence is “an instrument we shall neither categorically reject nor use arbitrarily, one whose effectiveness and revolutionary legitimacy we need to learn to understand in a process of theoretical reflection and practical use” (“ein Mittel, das wir weder kategorisch ablehnen noch willkürlich anwenden werden, dessen Methodik und revolutionärer Legitimität wir vielmehr in theoretischer Reflexion und praktischer Anwendung erlernen und begreifen müssen”).58 Like Meinhof herself so often, the collective writes in the “we” form, implying that these are not the opinions of the one, but the many. “We” refers both to the collective and to those who are now at last uniting to protest against the system. It creates an in-group that the reader is encouraged, even manipulated, to feel part of. The article directly develops ideas rehearsed by Meinhof in her pieces on counter-violence and class war. Nonviolent action, the collective maintains, is useless to the point of being counterrevolutionary. Words are toothless. Violence is the only language the system understands because capitalism relies on violent oppression for its continued existence; violence is the language of capitalism (“die Sprache des Systems”). In that context, any violence “we” engage in is a justified response. Not only that: because force or violence is the only language the system understands, counter-violence is actually virtuous in that it instigates communication: “only since we have started using violence ourselves has a realistic dialogue begun to develop, as the system is having to pull back its veil and speak” (“Erst seitdem wir beginnen, selbst Gewalt anzuwenden, entsteht ein realistischer Dialog, den das System mit unverhülltem Gesicht sprechen muß”; 24). The system — as the RAF will later insist — is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a mask-wearing fascist monster that must be provoked into revealing its true face. But a delicate process of differentiation is necessary if “oppressive violence,” as the veiled but true essence of capitalism, is to be distinguished from “counter-violence”: the ingenuous resistance practiced by opponents of the system. There is clearly something counterintuitive in the argument that violence is not the same as violence. On this point the collective proceeds both defensively and with a (verbal) offensive. Necessary discussions about left-wing violence are being held back, it argues, by bourgeois humanism, bourgeois morality, and pacifism (reading between

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the lines: not everyone on the left they have spoken to on the subject of violence agrees with them). The student movement and those associated with it distinguished between violence against things — buildings, cars, and so forth, called Gewalt gegen Sachen — and violence against other people, Gewalt gegen Personen — which it rejected. To take things forward the collective feels that certain “differentiations” need to be made (24).59 The article’s first section is spent constructing these differentiations or distinctions. It is a process of self-justification clearly intended to legitimize brutal action, something the collective, in a frightening turn of phrase, calls “enlightening violence” (aufklärerische Gewalt). The first differentiation is between hidden or latent and open or manifest violence: “zwischen mittelbarer (latenter) und unmittelbarer (manifester) Gewalt.” Latent violence, we have already been told, is the essence of capitalism: “the class system created by organized capitalism,” says the collective, “is per se a single gigantic act of violence” (“die Klassengesellschaft des organisierten Kapitalismus ist an sich selbst ein einziger gigantischer Akt der Gewalt”). The second differentiation is between “repressive” and “emancipatory” violence (“unterdrückender (repressiver) und befreiender (emanzipierender) Gewalt”), where the latter is to be understood as the solution to the former — the violently oppressed subject emancipates him- or herself via an act of reciprocal violence, or counter-violence (24–26, emphasis in original). It is crucial to the argument that this is the only possible solution: only violence, the argument runs, can overthrow violence. That violence against persons is meant is suggested by the implicit appeal to the theories of postcolonialist writer Frantz Fanon, widely read on the West German left. Fanon had worked as a psychiatric doctor in a hospital in Algeria, and his book Les damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961) drew on his experience of the Algerian uprising against the French. It appeared in German in 1966 with a translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s original foreword, summarizing Fanon’s argument: “No gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them,” declared Sartre; successful resistance to colonialism means violence to the point of killing: “in the first days of the revolt you must kill.”60 The Berlin collective’s article is remarkable for its decisive move away from the students’ taboo that forbade violence against other human beings. The attacks on Springer’s publishing house were conceived as violence against things: buildings, not people. In the course of the protests, however, two fatal accidents had occurred: one in which a press photographer was hit and killed by a stone, another when a student was killed by a block of wood; both objects were thrown by persons unknown. The Berlin authors declare the photographer and the student, along with Benno Ohnesorg and Rudi Dutschke, victims of state violence. Ohnesorg and Dutschke were in fact shot in very different circumstances — Ohnesorg

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by a policeman during a demonstration, Dutschke when going about his daily business (buying nose-drops for his baby son, the story goes). But the collective takes all four casualties as proof that the state has already committed violence against persons — and that makes counter-violence against persons an appropriate response. The authors return to the legal notion of self-defense we met in Meinhof’s piece on counter-violence: “as long as Axel Springer is allowed to go on with his murderous campaign against us, which has already resulted in two cases of murderous attack [Dutschke and Ohnesorg], and as long as the political parties are behind Springer,” they argue, “we are acting in self-defense” (“Solange Springer seine Mordhetze, die schon zwei Mordanschläge zur Folge hatte, weiterverbreiten darf, solange die Parteien sich hinter Springer stellen, handeln wir in Notwehr”; 25, emphasis in original). In the liberal and democratic West Germany of 1968 the Berlin authors seem to know they are walking on thin ice, and they look to bolster their position rhetorically. The method they choose is familiar from Meinhof’s columns: implied reasoning, or argument by association. They legitimize their right to violence by associating themselves and their situation with other situations and other societies. That begins with an emotive link to the developing world, where “the violent plundering of the colonies gave the capitalists their first riches (“Durch die gewaltsame Ausplünderung der Kolonialländer haben die Kapitalisten ihre ersten Reichtümer angehäuft”). Not only did the empire-builders use violence to ensure the continuing ascendancy of capital, but “bombs, napalm, and machine guns maintain imperial dominance today in the face of the liberation movements: in Vietnam, in Latin America, in Africa” (“Mit Gewalt wurde die Verlängerung der Herrschaft des Kapitals durch den Imperialismus durchgesetzt, und mit Bomben, Napalm und Maschinengewehren wird sie heute gegen die Befreiungsbewegungen aufrechterhalten: in Vietnam, in Lateinamerika, in Afrika”; 26). What links the developing world with West Germany is capitalism. Many things differentiate the Federal Republic from the developing world, of course, but the collective ignores that, instead mobilizing the simple and specious formula, “because A equals C, and B equals C, A must also equal B” (“because my dog likes carrots and rabbits like carrots, my dog must be a rabbit”). Because the system in West Germany is capitalist and capitalism is colonial, those who resist the German system are equated with colonized peoples in countries now engaged in a struggle for self-government. That legitimizes the implicit identification with Fanon. But Fanon’s argument rests on a set of case studies he encountered in the hospital where he worked. He outlines the psychological response of a local man whose wife was raped by French soldiers, and of another who survived the massacre of his entire village by the French army. He lists mental disorders caused by torture, alongside descriptions of the various

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forms of physical abuse and brainwashing used by the French police in Algeria — descriptions provided by the sufferers he treated — as well as the distressing medium- and long-term effects in the victims. Intentionally or not, Fanon’s case studies explain the anger that led him to support an armed response. “The native,” he observed, “knows that he is not an animal; and it is precisely at the moment he realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure its victory.”61 It is more difficult to understand the insistence of the Berlin collective that violence against human beings is now a necessary thing for the emancipation of West Germany. (The connection they make between the Federal Republic and the third world, like Meinhof’s between the Federal Republic and the Third Reich, would nonetheless inform the thought processes of the Red Army Faction.) Identification with history’s victims — Vietnamese civilians were appearing in newspaper pictures and on television screens in a real-life horror show that for many German viewers recalled postwar footage of the concentration camps — may well have provided a level of relief for a people impelled, after both world wars, to identify as perpetrators. It is used by Meinhof and her collective to justify the most extreme forms of “resistance.” In March 1968 Meinhof cited rumors that the United States was about to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. She juxtaposed these with rumors of more local relevance: namely, that the regional government in Berlin was planning to get tougher on anti–Vietnam War and anti-Springer protesters. Her implication: American foreign policy mirrors Berlin’s local government, and if that is the case then the situation of the North Vietnamese must mirror that of the German students. American imperialism will destroy the world that it dominates before it will allow itself to be defeated, she asserts, and Berlin’s bureaucrats and administrators — in a constructed parallel — will destroy democracy rather than give up their positions.62 Protesters in Germany, it seems, are no longer the new Jews — now they have become the new Vietnamese. Meinhof supports and justifies the student’s own protest slogan, “Berlin is Vietnam!”63 The Berlin collective would tell us three months later in its piece on violence that the whole process of recognizing the capitalist system for the inherently violent thing it is began with Vietnam.64 In the spirit of nineteenth-century orientalism (whereby the self is recognized the more clearly in the mirror of the exotic other), the idea is that the true face of capitalism is revealed in the third world. Recognizing it there — in a place external to the West — enables a clearer view of the wolf beneath the sheep’s clothing at home. The latent brutality of Western governments can only be unmasked if it is provoked; in its response to the demonstrators of ’68, capitalism is showing its true face. That was initially

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revealed only to the countries of the third world — but “now we too are feeling the pressure of beatings and shootings” (“der Kapitalismus zeigt sein wahres Gesicht, das er vorerst nur die Länder der dritten Welt hat sehen lassen: es wird gehetzt, geschlagen und geschossen”; 27). There is self-dramatization here: a heroic pose, as well as a choice to identify with those (like Fanon’s Algerians) who were genuinely involved in a life-ordeath struggle. But to compare the conflict of the German state and the student movement with the brutal postcolonial crisis in Algeria is radically inaccurate rather than radical politics. The next mental shift is from the West German struggle to the Black Power movement. The U.S. civil rights campaigner and black activist Stokely Carmichael is cited (Carmichael first opposed, but later supported the use of violence). Here the collective has the grace to recognize that its own situation is not identical with the situation of those still struggling for basic civil rights: “We are reaching the objective limits of our use of the term counter-violence,” it concedes; “we are not living in the slums of Detroit or New York . . . We are white. We can’t claim to be exploited, because we belong to the privileged classes” (“Gleichzeitig stoßen wir hier auf die objektiven Grenzen unserer Anwendung von Gegengewalt. Wir leben nicht in den Slums von Detroit und New York. . . . Wir sind selber weiß. Wir können auch nicht behaupten, daß wir ausgebeutet werden, denn wir gehören zu den Privilegierten”; 28). There are nonetheless, in the Berlin authors’ final analysis, two things that justify the use of violence. The first is the (reiterated) notion that their kind of violence is, in fact, counter-violence. It does not originate with them. Because property and profit must needs be defended, violence is an inevitable part of capitalism: violence, says the collective, belongs to capitalism as the policeman belongs to private property, and as long as capitalism exists violence will not disappear (“Gewalt gehört zum Kapitalismus wie der Polizist zum Privateigentum, und solange es den Kapitalismus gibt, wird die Gewalt nicht verschwinden”). If capitalism can only function when it is enforced, there can never be a capitalist system that is not violent; that makes it appropriate to overthrow the violent system violently: “we can do without violence,” say the Berlin authors (even though they clearly do not intend to); “capitalism can’t. We can abolish violence — but only after we have done away with the violent system” (“Wir können auf die Gewalt verzichten. Der Kapitalismus nicht. Wir können die Gewalt abschaffen, aber erst, wenn wir das System der Gewalt beseitigt haben”; 25, 27). There is, they claim, a need to demonstrate to those who do not belong to the privileged classes (and therefore lack access to the revolutionary polemics published in journals like konkret) that the system is brutal. To that end it is their moral duty to provoke the system, through acts of violence, into showing its true face to the masses.

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The Frankfurt Arsonists Vietnam was the trigger and justification for the best-known incident of “violence against things” of Germany’s 1968. In October, Meinhof went to Frankfurt to interview four young anti–Vietnam War protesters accused of committing arson in the city’s department stores. Two of them, Gudrun Ensslin and her boyfriend Andreas Baader, would later be core members of the Red Army Faction. Alongside Thorwald Proll (b. 1941) and Horst Söhnlein (b. 1942) they were charged with planting flammable devices in two city center stores during the night of 2 April 1968. In court, the foursome explained that it had been their intention to focus public attention on the situation in Vietnam, which was also in flames; the only difference was that in Vietnam it was people rather than consumer goods that were burning.65 The column Meinhof wrote after her visit to Frankfurt is one of her best known and most frequently cited. She titled it straightforwardly “Warenhausbrandstiftung” (Setting Fire to Department Stores).66 In the context of her two previous articles on counter-violence and violence, what we find in this column is disturbing, but should not come as a surprise. It is the next step in a train of thought that would later inform the self-justification of the RAF: that violence not only can but must be met with violence, and that the value of violence may well be symbolic. In her article, Meinhof censures the Frankfurt fire bombs because insurance companies will pay for the damage and capitalism is therefore bolstered, not hindered; this, she argues, renders arson tendentially supportive of the system, and therefore counterrevolutionary (“eher systemerhaltend, konterrevolutionär”).67 But at the same time she praises a revolutionary element in the act of breaking the law that protects department stores because it is, she maintains, a false law that shields property rather than people; the disadvantage of arson is that the insurance company pays (so store owners may even profit), but the advantage of arson is that it breaks the oppressive law that protects property. Violence against property, Meinhof argues, is a justified attack on a system that privileges ownership and profit while permitting exploitation in the workplace and the violation of human dignity. Her analysis has been taken to signal a shift away from the “playful” ambiguity of revolutionary rhetoric, where demands can be read as provocative word play, toward a serious call to violent action. It is possible to ascribe a violent agency to the language that makes it practically an act of violence in itself.68 But Meinhof does not herself ascribe agency to language. In her conclusion she admires a clever linguistic formulation, citing with approval a quip by Fritz Teufel (a member of Berlin’s famous commune, the Kommune 1), that it is better to set fire to a department store than to run one;69 she clearly sees this kind of play with words as distinct from the revolutionary action of lawbreaking.

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Röhl has refused to read his ex-wife’s column on arson as an incitement to violence against persons because, he argues, her essay condones the breaking not of all laws, but of laws relating specifically to the protection of property. She is therefore still upholding the binary of violence against things as opposed to human beings.70 But Röhl is conveniently choosing to forget the June issue of his magazine, just four months earlier, which included two contributions on the subject of violence, one of them authored and one coauthored by Meinhof (with the Berlin collective). The arson column repeats the argumentative structures developed there: it is justified, she reiterates, to break the laws of an unjust system because that is counter-violence. Lawbreaking is paradoxically made legitimate; within a system that has been identified as corrupt, resistance becomes criminal activity. With the end of 1968, one column marks the beginning of the end of Meinhof’s career as a journalist. “Kolumnismus” (Columnism) appeared just before Christmas,71 and sets out arguments against her own primary activity. Her essay attacks the role and function of columnists like herself: they are, she says, little better than court jesters — they entertain readers with political polemic, conjuring the illusion that the paper they write for is radical and free. On 26 April 1969 she would publicly end her work for konkret with a statement in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper to the effect that the magazine was becoming an instrument of the counterrevolution, and she did not wish her contribution to disguise that.72 Her developing sense of herself as a revolutionary figure is tangible — the mere presence of a column by Ulrike Meinhof, her statement suggests, would act as a (deceptive) guarantor for konkret’s radical credentials. One possible alternative to leaving konkret, of course, would have been to use her influence as former editor to take the magazine over and reshape it as an organ of the revolution. Röhl’s version is that on 7 May a group from Berlin, organized by Meinhof and including the father of Ensslin’s child, Bernward Vesper, attacked konkret’s Hamburg premises with the intention of occupying the offices — a hostile takeover in a literal sense. Röhl had been warned and the office was empty. The frustrated group moved on to break into his private home in Blankenese, a wealthy suburb of the city (the home he had previously shared with Meinhof), and vandalized the property. Meinhof was widely criticized for her part in events. Biographer Jutta Ditfurth suggests that Röhl’s version of the story deliberately exaggerates both the drama of events and the damage done, and that Meinhof herself arrived on the scene too late to have been actively involved.73 Perhaps because of her origins in the peace movement, Meinhof is remembered by many as a Sophie Scholl figure: she is the “conscience” of the postwar German left, the ethical element in the RAF, a nonviolent individual.74

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But the later pieces for konkret — most particularly the Berlin collective’s article on violence — clearly demonstrate how far both she and a highprofile group of left-wing thinkers had come by the end of the 1960s in their will to justify violent action. Meinhof was a key player in a project to create a language that justified violence to the point of killing, and to define those who engaged violently with current events as warrior-revolutionaries and heroes of the resistance. Incidents such as the police killing of student protester Ohnesorg and the random assassination of Dutschke may well have widened her audience, but in postwar West Germany — not, in fact, a police state — it was only really possible to make the arguments she wished to make by means of metaphor. The Federal Republic “is” a fascist state, it “is” Nazi Germany, it “is” Vietnam or Algeria. These are useful fictions with a rhetorical impetus: metaphors that justify counter-violence. But in the game of smoke and mirrors that metaphor plays, it is possible for the writer as well as her reader to lose track of what is real. Parallels between German radicals and suffering Vietnamese and Algerians conceal rather than examine the crucial differences between life in the Federal Republic and life in the third world. We are left facing the question whether Meinhof still remembered that this was a rhetorical technique rather than a representation of reality, whether the writer or the language was really in control. Recently there has been severe criticism of her “obsessive” use of holocaust symbols, and of her ruthless functionalization of the Jewish experience.75 We face the question why a serious journalist felt that such drastic use of language, leading toward the justification of extreme violence, was necessary or excusable. Her columns suggest that the dramatic end of Riemeck’s professorial career affected her profoundly, coinciding as it did with parliamentary discussion of the emergency laws as a further attack — in Meinhof’s perception — on political freedom and civil liberties. When the laws were passed in the face of massive peaceful protest, she clearly felt she had failed politically; not even her expert use of language had been enough to influence the course of events. That coincided with the activities of the Frankfurt arsonists, who seemed to demonstate the high-profile effects of action over words. There is developing notion, over ten years of column-writing, that journalistic intervention in politics — verbal protest — is simply not enough. It does not deserve the heroic term Widerstand (resistance). From here it is a small step to the idea that language is politically toothless, that action trumps words. In her earlier journalism she had functionalized Auschwitz to demonize a postwar government, and her Berlin Editors’ Collective used the notion that “new fascism” already existed to propose the use of violence in West Germany and West Berlin. Violence against persons was justified via identification with groups perceived to be exposed to unjustifiable violence: later no longer the Jews, but the peoples of Vietnam and

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the third world, Black Power activists, and the German proletariat. Meinhof metaphorically associated victimhood under fascism with whomever she currently identified with: in her earlier career with West Germany’s peace activists, later with anti–Vietnam War protesters, finally with the Red Army Faction. As she sought to demonstrate with her Berlin Editors’ Collective and argued in “Columnism,” group activity trumps individual effort. Columnism, insisted Meinhof, is a cult of the individual (Personenkult), and for that reason always already opposed to the socialist ideal, but it is also politically ineffective because the columnist is isolated: “the left-wing position . . . is reduced in columnism to the position of isolated individuals” (“Die linke Position . . . wird im Kolumnismus wieder zur Position Einzelner, Vereinzelter”). What is needed is solidarity in the group. The twin notions of action over words and group solidarity were at the heart of her last journalistic project: her script for a television drama, called Bambule (Riot).

Notes The citations for the two epigraphs in this chapter are as follows: Meinhof, “Der Friede macht Geschichte,” in konkret 19–20 (1959), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1980]), 7–13; and Berliner Redaktionskollektiv, “Gewalt,” in konkret 6 (1968): 24–28 and 35; here 24. 1

Former owner-editor Röhl tells his version of its story in his autobiography Fünf Finger sind keine Faust: Eine Abrechnung, 3rd edn. (Munich: Universitas, 1998 [1974]); here 59. 2

See Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof: Die Biografie (Berlin: Ullstein, 2007), 129–30; K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 59–85. It was Hübotter who bought the title back when konkret went bankrupt under Röhl in 1973. 3

K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 206. Bettina Röhl confirms this: B. Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß! Ulrike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl und die Akte konkret (Hamburg: EVA, 2006).

4

K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 101; “kostbare Beute” is the term Röhl uses.

5

Jürgen Manthey, cited in B. Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß!, 216.

6

Meinhof, “Der Friede macht Geschichte.”

7

“sittengefährdend,” “krasses Beispiel der Abwertung christlicher Moralbegriffe,” cited in K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 159. 8

“Wie wir unsere Eltern nach Hitler fragen, so werden wir eines Tages nach Herrn Strauß gefragt werden.” Meinhof, “Hitler in euch,” in konkret 10 (1961), reprinted in Meinhof, Deutschland Deutschland unter anderm: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995), 38–42. Translated as “Hitler Within You,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks about the Weather . . . We Don’t: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof, ed. Karin Bauer (New York: Seven Stories, 2008), 138–43.

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46 9


Meinhof, “Koalitionskrise,” in konkret 10 (1964): 3.

10

Heldmann, Selbstmord oder Mord (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1988).

11

“Strauß [müsste] nur aufhören, Augstein einsperren zu lassen und ein paar Prozesse halbwegs gewinnen, um wieder ganz salonfähig zu werden.” Meinhof, “Franz Strauß,” in konkret 10 (1966), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 84–87; here 84. 12

See B. Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß, 423.

13

B. Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß, 31–32 and passim; Kristin Wesemann, Ulrike Meinhof: Kommunistin, Journalistin, Terroristin — eine politische Biographie (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008). 14

See B. Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß, 357.

15

The petition was titled “Appell an die Gewerkschaften gegen die atomare Aufrüstung der Bundeswehr.” 16

Meinhof, “Geschichten von Herrn Schütz,” in konkret 15 (1960), reprinted in Meinhof, Deutschland Deutschland, 22–30; here 22. 17

See Jürgen Seifert, “Ulrike Meinhof,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition 2006), 1:350– 71; here 360; Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 37–40. 18

Meinhof, “Geschichten von Herrn Schütz,” 29.

19

Seifert, “Ulrike Meinhof.”

20

The real title of the so-called Rotbuch was Verschwörung gegen die Freiheit. Die kommunistische Untergrundarbeit in der Bundesrepublik (The Conspiracy Against Liberty: Communist Underground Activity in the Federal Republic.) The information was collected by the Munich-based Arbeitsgruppe Kommunistische Infiltration und Machtkampftechnik (Working Group on Communist Infiltration and Takeover Techniques), one branch of the publicly funded committee Rettet die Freiheit (Save our Liberty). It was a response to the Braunbuch (Brown Book), produced in the GDR, which listed prominent ex-Nazis. See, e.g., the commentary by Hans Magnus Enzensberger in konkret 18 (1960): 5. 21

Meinhof, “Geschichten von Herrn Schütz,” 22–23.

22

Meinhof, “Notstand? Notstand!” in konkret 18 (1960), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 14–19; here 14. 23

Meinhof, “Notstand? Notstand!” 14–15. Emphasis in original.

24

See Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl, The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 64. See also my Introduction. 25

Meinhof, “Notstand? Notstand!” 14.

26

See Georg Stötzel, “Der Nazi-Komplex,” in Kontroverse Begriffe: Geschichte des öffentlichen Sprachgebrauchs in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994), 355–82, esp. 370–71. 27

Meinhof, “Fortsetzung des Nazismus in der globalen Politik,” in konkret 13 (1960): 3.

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28

Dieter Großherr, “ . . . und höret nimmer auf? Der Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik seit 1945,” in konkret 2 (1960): 2–5. 29

Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 96.

30

V. H. [sic], “Glatt glätter Globke,” in konkret 14 (1961), reprinted in 30 Jahre KONKRET, ed. Hermann L. Gremliza (Hamburg: konkret, 1987), 47–48. See also Moritz Pfeil, “Globke und andere Deutsche,” Spiegel 13 (1961): 18; Der schwarze Kanal (10 April 1961); transcript at http://sk.dra.de/kanal_pdf/E065– 02–04_0001054.pdf. 31

See, e.g., Meinhof, “Demokratie spielen,” in Meinhof, Die Würde, 134–37.

32

Meinhof, “Neue deutsche Ghettoschau,” in konkret 10 (1960), reprinted in Meinhof, Deutschland Deutschland, 14–21; here 14. Translated as “New German Ghetto Show,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks, 110–20. 33

Meinhof, “Hitler in Euch,” 41.

34

Meinhof, “Joachim Fest oder die Gleichschaltung,” in konkret 8 (1966): 2–3; here 2. 35

Meinhof, “Notstand? Notstand!” 17.

36

Meinhof, “Demokratie spielen,” 134.

37

Bernhard Gierds attributes the “handy formula” (“griffige Formel”) to André Glucksmann in Glucksmann et al., Neuer Faschismus, Neue Demokratie: Über die Legalität des Faschismus im Rechtsstaat (1972); see Gierds, “Das ‘Konzept Stadtguerilla’: Meinhof, Mahler und ihre strategischen Differenzen,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:248–61; here 252. In fact, as we see, Meinhof was using the idea some years earlier. 38

See, e.g., Gierds, “Das ‘Konzept Stadtguerilla,’” 251–52; Iring Fetscher, Herfried Münkler, and Hannelore Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Fetscher und Günter Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 1) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 165–66 and 187–88. 39

“inflationärer Gebrauch” is Gierds’s term; see Gierds, “Das ‘Konzept Stadtguerilla,’” 252. 40

Andreas Musolff has described the use of the word “terrorism” in Germany since the nineteenth century. See Musolff, Krieg gegen die Öffentlichkeit: Terrorismus und politischer Sprachgebrauch (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 143. 41

“Die Proteste gegen einen Polizeistaatschef entlarvten unseren Staat selbst als Polizeistaat. Polizei- und Presseterror erreichten am 2. Juni in Berlin ihren Höhepunkt.” Meinhof, Kommentar zum Schah-Besuch in Berlin, Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Wiesbaden, Potsdam-Babelsberg (SFB), 1967; cited in B. Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß, 560. 42

“Wenn aber dreihundert einen einzelnen ‘fertigmachen’ — das ist, zu welchen erhabenen Zwecken es auch immer dienen mag, Terror.” R. W. Leonhardt, cited in Meinhof, “Gegen-Gewalt,” in konkret 2 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Deutschland Deutschland, 126–29; here 126. Translated as “Counter-Violence,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks, 234–39. Leonhardt was writing in Die Zeit (29 December 1967).

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48 43


Meinhof, “Gegen-Gewalt,” 129.

44

Dutschke, cited in Jutta Ditfurth, Rudi und Ulrike: Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Munich: Droemer, 2008), 88. 45

Meinhof, “Gegen-Gewalt,” 126–29.

46

“[ein] gern herumgereichtes Exotikum, als Überbaukrönung eines pluralistischen Establishments.” Rühmkorf, Die Jahre, die ihr kennt: Anfälle und Erinnerungen (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1972), 225. 47

K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 177.

48

From September 1968 Röhl published fortnightly during periods when the readership permitted it. See K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 225. 49

Wolfgang Kraushaar, “Kleinkrieg gegen einen Großverleger: Von der AntiSpringer-Kampagne der APO zu den Brand- und Bombenanschlägen der RAF,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 2:1075–1116; here 1094. 50

Herstellung eines Molotow-Cocktails. Compare Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, The Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley: U of California P, 2004), 39–40. 51

Some of the Molotovs that flew at the Springer buildings seem to have been provided by the government agent Peter Urbach, who would also later infiltrate the RAF. Compare, e.g., Mario Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof: Ein Leben im Widerspruch (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988), 162. 52

Meinhof, “Vom Protest zum Widerstand,” in konkret 5 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 138–41. Translated as “From Protest to Resistance,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks, 239–43.

53

“ein Hochwertwort des politischen Sprachgebrauchs nach 1945, das die Gegenwehr gegen eine illegitime Herrschaft kennzeichnete.” Musolff, Krieg, 151. 54

Meinhof, “Vom Protest zum Widerstand,” 138.

55

Meinhof, “Notstand — Klassenkampf,” in konkret 6 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 142–45; here 142. Further references appear in the text.

56 This is the list of authors as remembered by Klaus Röhl; see Fünf Finger, 241. The list of names on the article includes additionally Michael Schneider, Jürgen Horlemann, and Eckhard Siepmann, but does not mention Meinhof. 57

Klaus Röhl, Fünf Finger, 244. Dutschke is unlikely to have actively contributed to this piece, given that he had been badly hurt by the shooting in April 1968. 58

Berliner Redaktionskollektiv, “Gewalt,” in konkret 6 (1968): 24–28 and 35; here 25. Further references appear in text.

59

“Um die Diskussion über Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit der Anwendung von Gewalt aus dem Dunstkreis von bürgerlichem Humanismus, moralischen Vorurteilen und einem besinnungslosen Pazifismus herauszuholen, müssen wir einige grundsätzliche Differenzierungen im Begriff der Gewalt machen.” 60

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface,” in Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (London: Penguin 2001 [1965; first French edition 1961]), 18–19. The German edition has the title Die Verdammten dieser Erde.

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FIGHTING TALK (1959–69) 61

49

Fanon, The Wretched, 33.

62

“Aber die Völker der dritten Welt, die sich auf ein zweites und drittes Vietnam vorbereiten, wissen schon jetzt, mit wem sie es zu tun haben. Und die Studenten . . . wissen es auch: daß der amerikanische Imperialismus entschlossen ist, die Welt, die er beherrscht, zu vernichten, bevor er selbst abtreten muß. Daß die Berliner Bürokratie und Administration . . . bereit sind, die Demokratie zu zerstören, bevor sie ihre Positionen aufgeben müssen.” Meinhof, “Der Kampf in den Metropolen,” in konkret 3 (1968): 3. 63 “Berlin ist Vietnam!” See Peter Brückner, Ulrike Marie Meinhof und die deutschen Verhältnisse (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1976]), 141. 64

“Wir haben erst durch den offenen Ausbruch dieser Gewalt in Vietnam dieses Wesensmerkmal des Kapitalismus wiederentdeckt.” Berliner Redaktionskollektiv, “Gewalt,” 26. 65

Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2008 [1985]), 108. 66

Translated as “Setting Fire to Department Stores,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks, 244–48. 67

Meinhof, “Warenhausbrandstiftung,” in konkret 14 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 155–56; here 154. 68

Musolff, for example, argues that in Meinhof’s analysis of department store arson (verbal) ambiguity is resolved and a dynamic of ever more brutal actions replaces rhetorical radicalism: “In Meinhofs Kaufhausbrand-Analyse wurde diese Mehrdeutigkeit aufgehoben und an die Stelle rhetorischer Radikalität eine Dynamik immer brutalerer Aktionen gesetzt.” Musolff, Krieg, 155. 69

“es ist immer noch besser, ein Warenhaus anzuzünden, als ein Warenhaus zu betreiben.” Teufel, cited in Meinhof, “Warenhausbrandstiftung,” 156. 70

K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 258.

71

Meinhof, “Kolumnismus,” in konkret 21 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 153–56. Translated as “Columnism,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks, 249– 55. 72

“Instrument der Konterrevolution,” cited in K. Röhl, Fünf Finger, 271.

73

Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 254–55.

74

E.g., by Röhl, Fünf Finger, 223–24; Alois Prinz, Lieber wütend als traurig: Die Lebensgeschichte der Ulrike Marie Meinhof (Weinheim: Beltz, 2003), 221.

75

See, e.g., Wolfgang Kraushaar, “Antizionismus als Trojanisches Pferd: Zur antisemitischen Dimension in den Kooperationen von Tupamaros West-Berlin, RAF und RZ mit den Palästinensern,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:676–95; here 690–92.

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2: The Personal Is Political (1966–70): From Feminism to a Language for the Revolution Privatangelegenheiten sind immer politisch . . . Kindererziehung ist unheimlich politisch, die Beziehungen, die Menschen untereinander haben, sind unheimlich politisch, weil sie etwas darüber aussagen, ob Menschen unterdrückt sind oder frei sind. [Personal matters are always political . . . Raising children is totally political; the relationships people have with each other are totally political — because they say something about whether people are oppressed or free.] —Ulrike Meinhof, Christmas 1969

I

N 1969 THE IRANIAN EXILE Bahman Nirumand (b. 1936), a fierce critic of the shah’s regime, was facing extradition from West Germany after extension of his leave to remain was refused. Ulrike Meinhof appealed to konkret readers to demonstrate their solidarity with him,1 but she used her regular column in the magazine to address the situation faced by his wife and daughter. “Alle reden vom Wetter” (Everybody Talks about the Weather) asks why protest on behalf of women and children is perceived as emotional rather than political. “It is unpolitical to protest over a woman’s fate,” Meinhof complains: “what is experienced as unpolitical is the . . . oppression of women” (“Es ist unpolitisch, wegen der Frau zu protestieren . . . was da als unpolitisch empfunden wird, ist die . . . Unterdrückung der Frauen”). And yet the oppression of women needs to be understood not as separate from, but as part of, capitalism’s structures:

Dann erst, wenn der Protest wegen der Frau und des Kindes . . . die Klassenstruktur der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft angreift, zu deren strukturellen Merkmalen die Unterdrückung von Frauen und Kindern gehört, dann wird auch kein Senat es mehr wagen, Bahman Nirumand die Aufenthaltsgenehmigung zu verweigern.2 [Only when protest about this woman and this child . . . attacks the class structure of capitalist society — which is structurally characterized by, among other things, the oppression of women and children — will no senate dare any longer to refuse Bahman Nirumand leave to remain.]

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THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL (1966–70)

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Surprisingly little attention has been paid to Meinhof’s engagement with the emerging West German women’s movement. The slogan of that movement — the personal is political (das Private ist politisch) — informed not only her article on Nirumand, but the research into children’s homes and young offenders that was a significant part of her journalistic work. In late 1968 she was approached by Dieter Waldmann, director of drama for South-West German broadcasting (Südwestfunk), to write a documentary drama for television about conditions in the homes. Bambule (Riot), Meinhof’s story of rebellion in a secure institution for girls was a joint project with director Eberhard Itzenplitz. It was programmed to show on 24 May 1970. On 14 May Meinhof participated in an armed operation to free Andreas Baader from prison — the first public action of the Red Army Faction — and the drama’s broadcast was canceled.3 Heinrich Böll would later characterize Bambule as the key to understanding what had happened to Meinhof. In a contentious article on Meinhof and the RAF, written for Spiegel in January 1972, he drew attention to the fact that the group was constituted of people who had previously engaged with society’s underprivileged. There may, he suggested, be a connection between the insight they had acquired into social conditions in Germany (“die Verhältnisse”) and their declaration of war on German society: “There is, after all, Wagenbach’s Red Book no. 24,” Böll reminded his readers, “title: ‘Bambule,’ author: Ulrike Marie Meinhof.”4

“Die Verhältnisse”: Children in Care But Bambule was not Meinhof’s first foray into the subject of children in care. In September 1966 two pieces had appeared, one of them in konkret, the other, a longer version of the same material, in the more academically oriented Frankfurter Hefte. Both drew on material she had collected for a radio program broadcast on 12 January 1966.5 The article for konkret has the attention-grabbing headline “Flucht aus dem Mädchenheim” (Escape from a Girls’ Home).6 It tells the reallife story of a girl who spent her life in care, to whom Meinhof gives the pseudonym “Margarete M.” Margarete, we learn, was born illegitimate in 1949 — when single mothers were practically forced to give up their children. Because her mother could not finally make up her mind to sign the adoption papers, Margarete spent her entire life in care until, aged 16, she disappeared from a hospital where she was being treated after involvement in drugs and prostitution. Meinhof presents Margarete to her readers not as exceptional, but as the inevitable product of the care system. In her piece for the Frankfurter Hefte: “Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik: Aufgehoben oder abgeschoben?” (West German Children in Care: Protected or Rejected?), Meinhof explains that the child she calls Margarete spent her early life being transferred from home to home.

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That was not, she concedes, a deliberate policy: already insecure children were uprooted and moved from place to place for the most banal of reasons — because renovation work was needed in a particular children’s home, or because of overcrowding; there was always something. “There would be nothing further to say on the matter,” writes Meinhof, “if it were not for the fact that it destroys them” (“Es wäre nichts Besonderes dabei, wenn es nicht mörderisch ware”).7 What is destroyed is the child’s potential to develop, most particularly to develop stable relationships with other human beings: being in a home means the impossibility of making and maintaining such relationships (“Heim: das ist die Unmöglichkeit, Bindungen einzugehen und festzuhalten”).8 Margarete M.’s file describes her as “schwererziehbar” (a problem case), but Meinhof responds to the term angrily: “she wasn’t a problem case, she was just done for” (“Sie war aber nicht schwererziehbar, sie war nur fertig”).9 She makes the striking choice to replace the academic term schwererziehbar with the colloquial fertig (“done for”); children in care, she is implying, need academic analysis less than they need dependable, consistent human contact. Events in Germany seemed to support Meinhof ’s argument that denying continuity of care had significant and destructive results. In January 1968, konkret had published her assessment of the Jürgen Bartsch case: twenty-one-year-old Bartsch, another ex-care child, had just been convicted for the murder of four little boys. Eschewing the lurid details that covered the pages of the popular press, Meinhof went straight from the murders to their context: contemporary West German society. For her, the trial of Jürgen Bartsch revealed not only the unspeakable misery of an individual, but the misery of the society in which he lived and committed murder. And his trial did everything possible to avoid making Germans confront that unpalatable truth: the court, Meinhof insisted, did everything in its power to prevent the social circumstances from coming to trial, everything to deny the possibility that the boy’s fate could have been different; it thereby stymied any possible chance that this trial might lead this society to understand that it was in need of change and that change was possible (“das Gericht hat alles Menschenmögliche getan, um zu verhindern, daß die Verhältnisse . . . zum Prozeßgegenstand werden, alles, um die Möglichkeit auszuschließen, daß der Junge sich bessert, . . . und hat damit gleich die andere Möglichkeit ausgeschaltet, daß diese Gesellschaft an diesem Prozeß begreift, daß sie änderungsbedürftig, änderbar ist”).10 Rather than describe the shocking crimes of Bartsch, Meinhof narrates the shocking circumstances of the life that preceded them. She tells the story of a senselessly spun-out adoption process that left the little boy in care for much longer than he really needed to be; of Bartsch being sent back to the home when his adopted mother had to go out to work and no

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other childcare arrangements seemed possible or affordable; of a system that later sent the boy to another, even more authoritarian institution, for no better reason than that he got older; of him running away, and being caught and punished; of a homosexual love affair; and of beatings and abuse when he started work. But for the court, she asserts, “the care route is not a catastrophe; for the court corporal punishment is not an issue; for the court a sixty-hour working week seems about right, as a way of keeping him out of mischief” (“für das Gericht ist der Heimausweg keine Katastrophe, für das Gericht ist Prügelpädagogik kein Prozeßgegenstand, für das Gericht ist eine 60-Stunden-Woche gerade recht, damit er auf keine dummen Gedanken kommt”). And applause from the public benches when Bartsch received a life sentence was not quelled by the presiding judge, she complains; this is a judge who says nothing, schweigt, wo eine Gesellschaft sich durch ihren Haß auf einen Kindermörder jenes gute Gewissen verschafft, das sie braucht, um zum Kindermorden in Vietnam schweigen zu können und zur Barbarei im Umgang mit Kindern im eigenen Land, in der eigenen Familie. [says nothing when a society uses its hatred of a child murderer to construct the clear conscience it needs to say nothing in the face of child murder in Vietnam and the barbarous treatment of children in its own country, its own families.]

The sudden leap to Vietnam seems to be the expression of a rhetorical habit;11 Meinhof’s focus here is in fact on the domestic context. Jürgen Bartsch’s life — the life of a desperate young criminal — is ruined, but the real crime is that the desperate social circumstances that shaped the young murderer remain unchanged (“Jürgen Bartschs leben ist verpfuscht. Aber . . . die Verhältnisse bleiben dieselben”).12 For Meinhof, the issue of children in care is not primarily personal, but political from the very start, not least because it is exclusively (she claims) proletarian children who are taken into care (“Es sind ausschließlich proletarische Jugendliche, die in Fürsorgeerziehung kommen”).13 In 1969 she addressed 150 listeners in a Bremen youth home on the double burden borne by working women with children: emancipation and equal rights for women can only be achieved if the maxims and laws of profit-obsessed capitalist society were changed, a newspaper reported her saying (“Die Emanzipation und Gleichberechtigung der Frau könne nur erreicht werden, wenn die Maximen und Gesetze der kapitalistischen Profit- und Leistungsgesellschaft verändert werden”).14 There is clearly a link in Meinhof’s mind between the problem of children’s homes and the woman question: both figure as exemplary expressions of the capitalist dynamic. So it should not surprise us that Bambule is set in a home for girls.

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“Authentic” Politics: The Personal as Political Bambule plays over the space of a few days in the Berlin Eichenhof home (in the film, the name is changed to Reinickendorf). It is a case study of the mechanisms of control and the potential for revolution. We are shown how the lives of the girls are organized to suppress any questioning of the system: the monotony and drudgery of their everyday existences, and an education that offers them no life skills, but instead mimics the luxury of literary study enjoyed by the bourgeoisie (the girls are made to read facile, moralizing stories out loud in class), supplemented, as if to highlight the mockery and pointlessness of it all, by proletarian “women’s work” in the laundry or the sewing room. Many of them have been involved in drugs or prostitution; some are meeting their sexual and emotional needs in lesbian relationships. We see them running away, even when they know that outside the home there is very little waiting for them. Running away at least provides a distraction from the senseless monotony. Punishment is the “bunker”: a barely furnished cell in which the real-life girls interviewed by Meinhof reported being kept in isolation for up to a week at a time.15 The home is a miniature version or microcosm of the class-based capitalist state, and a concrete illustration of how necessary it is to understand the connection between the personal (the gender of the girls, their sex lives, their home backgrounds) and the political (their exploitation as domestic workers, their sexual abuse by men, the way their education ignores sex and class issues). The birth of the postwar women’s movement in West Germany has been seen to coincide with a famous speech delivered by Helke Sander (founder of the Council for Action for Women’s Liberation — Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frau) to the Socialist Students’ Union (SDS) autumn conference of 1968. In German it is sometimes called the Tomatenrede (tomato talk); in its wake women delegates were moved to throw tomatoes at male speakers.16 In an article for konkret called “Die Frauen im SDS oder In eigener Sache” (Women in the SDS, or An In-House Matter), Meinhof responded enthusiastically to that.17 Her subtitle, “In eigener Sache,” is playful: the German phrase most often heads an editorial response or statement in a journal or newspaper. But in eigener Sache also has the more literal meaning “in one’s own (self-)interest.” Meinhof describes — with relish — how women students at the conference protested against continuing sexism by hurling tomatoes at the men; in eigener Sache certainly refers to the self-interest of the women who bombarded with vegetables those they felt were ignoring their issues. But it also signals Meinhof’s personal involvement: in eigener Sache suggests this issue is also her issue; she is expressing a solidarity with their position that derives from her own personal experience. Action based on personal experience, she insists, is political behavior that is pathbreakingly authentic. When German students who had read or

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heard about exploitation in Iran threw tomatoes and eggs at the visiting shah in 1967, they were responding to a situation they had never experienced personally, but the women at the SDS conference of 1968 staged a protest that was entirely about their own oppression. The tomatoes they hurled were not symbolic; on the contrary, “the woman who threw the tomatoes and the woman who provided the theoretical basis for doing so were not speaking from borrowed, effortfully acquired experience; they were speaking and acting . . . for themselves” (“die Frau, die die Tomaten warf, und die, die die Begründung dazu lieferte, die redeten nicht aufgrund entlehnter, mühsam vermittelte Erfahrung, die sprachen und handelten . . . für sich selbst”). Anyone who has a family, she continues, is familiar with the issues at stake; what is important is the signal this protest has sent that the work/ family conflict need not stay hidden in the domestic sphere (“den [Konflikt] kennt, wer Familie hat, auswendig, nur daß hier einmalig klargestellt wurde, daß diese Privatsache keine Privatsache ist”).18 Rather than spelling out what she means by the conflict women face, Meinhof — herself a divorced mother of twins — let her women readers draw on their own experience. The rhetorical effect is that they thereby become part of a group gathered around her, of those “in the know” about family life. And her oblique account of what it is that women with families know (namely, that the problems they face could better be solved if they were not kept hidden in the personal or domestic sphere) is clearly also directed at those “in the know” about second-wave feminism when it deliberately echoes its slogan “the personal is political.” At the turn of the year 1969–70 — just a little over a year since tomatoes had flown at the SDS conference, and just months before she abandoned her journalistic career to cofound the RAF — Meinhof gave an interview to filmmaker Helma Sanders-Brahms. The interview has been made much of, as an indicator that she knew she was shortly to abandon her family,19 but that focus on the personal has led commentators to ignore the development in her political thinking it reveals. Explaining the difficulties of combining motherhood and political activism, Meinhof reiterated the point central to her narrative of the tomato-hurling, which would inform Bambule and later the RAF’s position: not only is the personal political, but the political is of necessity personal, if political activity is to be seen as authentic: “that, if you like, is at the heart of every woman’s oppression,” she explained; “that her personal life is portrayed in opposition to any kind of political life. Even though you could turn it around and say: if our political work has nothing to do with our personal lives, then there’s something not right about it” (“wenn man so will, ist das die zentrale Unterdrückung der Frau, daß man ihr Privatleben als Privatleben in Gegensatz stellt zu irgendeinem politischen Leben. Wobei man umgekehrt sagen kann, da, wo politische Arbeit nicht was

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zu tun hat mit dem Privatleben, da stimmt sie nicht”).20 In 1968 she had celebrated the SDS women for privileging action over theory, for not caring whether what they had to say met the usual theoretical standards of a male-oriented organization (“es scherte sie einen Käse, ob das, was sie zu sagen hatten, das ganz große theoretische Niveau hatte, das sonst im SDS anzutreffen ist”).21 During the interview with Sanders-Brahms she moves subtly on from that observation. The idea that the personal is always also political is shifted to become the more prescriptive notion that there is something not right about politics that do not arise out of personal experience. That is not yet the RAF notion that action based on personal experience trumps any level of theoretical political expertise. But Meinhof has massaged the slogan of the women’s movement to ordain that one’s political work ought to arise out of personal experience — otherwise there is “something not right” about it.

The Politics of the Personal One element in her critique of the care system was that the homes failed to provide their charges with an education relevant to their gender. Girls in care are taught nothing about women’s equality before the law, nothing about the practical discrimination that occurs against women at work despite the law, nothing about the real-life situation of women in West Germany, Meinhof complained.22 In a piece called “Falsches Bewußtsein” (False Consciousness, 1968), she described the basic tension women experience between earning a living and having a family (“Die Frauen sitzen in einer Klemme, in der Klemme zwischen Erwerbstätigkeit und Familie, genauer: Kindern”).23 Oddly enough, Meinhof the social revolutionary accepts the socially conservative assumption that children need a mother above all else; even grandmothers and female neighbors (fathers do not get a mention) cannot replace the mother as primary carer (“Selbst Omas und nette Nachbarinnen sind nur ein unzulänglicher Ersatz für die Mutter als ausschließliche Bezugsperson”; 126–27). When we meet protagonist Monika in Bambule, it soon becomes clear that one of Monika’s major difficulties is a dysfunctional relationship with her mother, who in her helplessness encourages her daughter to lean emotionally and practically on her grandmother. Yet Meinhof recognizes that society’s fetishization of the maternal role stymies women’s political development: the problems faced by working women, she argues, are augmented by the “ideology” attached to motherhood (“Zu den tatsächlichen Schwierigkeiten der arbeitenden Frauen kommt also die Ideologisierung der Mutterrolle als Belastung hinzu”). The ideology of motherhood paralyzes working mothers as political beings: as long as she believes that she ought to be at home with her children, a working mother will never demand her rights (“Wie aber

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soll eine Arbeiterin um bessere Löhne und Arbeitsbedingungen kämpfen, wenn sie ihre Berufstätigkeit für eine Verfehlung ihrer wahren Bestimmung halten muß . . . ?”). A working woman is caught between a rock and a hard place; at home she cannot engage in the struggle, and at work she feels alien (“Sie sitzt in der Klemme. Im Haus, wo sie hingehört, kann sie nicht kämpfen, im Betrieb, wo sie kämpfen müßte, ist sie fehl am Platz”; 129–30). In her tomato article Meinhof had outlined structural links between the politics of gender and the politics of class, whereby men, whether they like it or not, are the “class enemy” of the private sphere (“die Männer [sind] in dieser Privatsphäre objektiv die Funktionäre der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft zur Unterdrückung der Frau . . . , auch dann, wenn sie es subjektiv nicht sein wollen”).24 Yet in “Falsches Bewußtsein” she disagrees profoundly with bourgeois feminists’ assumption that the gender hierarchy (rather than the class system) is the root of all evil. There is no gain to be had from fighting men as a political category when the focus should be on fighting capitalism, she maintains, and if women’s emancipation is their freedom to earn money and spend it — to participate in consumer culture — that is a poor kind of freedom (119). It is a basic error of thought when women’s emancipation is understood separately from the emancipation of humankind: real emancipation is a demand that has to be made at a higher level, of society and the state, and the key to it is solidarity: “How can solidarity with women be practiced in the unions,” she demands, “if the oppression of woman is no longer understood as part of a universal oppression, and her emancipation is not seen as a step towards freedom for all humanity?” (“Wie soll in den Gewerkschaften Solidarität mit den Frauen praktiziert werden, wenn . . . die Unterdrückung der Frauen nicht mehr als Bestandteil der Unterdrückung aller begriffen wird, ihre Gleichberechtigung als Schritt zur Befreiung aller?”; 130). She is clear that girls in care have been victims of social discrimination not only because of their working-class backgrounds, but also because of their sex. Their discrimination is perpetuated by social services, who have the power to interpret past events in their lives, and who do so on the basis of petit-bourgeois assumptions about class and gender, effectively rewriting the girls’ exploitation as a narrative of personal failure: “Men who have left them holding a baby are read as irresponsible behavior on their part,” she complains; “if they left jobs as home helpers because they were being barbarically exploited, that is read as their failure, and if the man they are apprenticed to goes to bed with them, that is read as evidence of their sexual incontinence” (“Männer, die sie mit einem Kind sitzen lassen, werden ihnen als Leichtsinn ausgelegt. Haushaltsstellen, aus denen sie weggelaufen sind, weil sie barbarisch ausgenutzt wurden, werden ihnen als Versagen ausgelegt. Lehrstellen, wo der Meister mit ihnen ins Bett gegangen ist, werden als sexuelle Haltlosigkeit ausgelegt”).25

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This is the real relevance of politics to the personal: if you are a woman or working class you must expect to be professionally and personally disadvantaged. Against this kind of social background, failing to teach girls in care about issues relating to their gender is worse than negligence: it is the suppression of information that would enable action for change. The homes change nothing in the situation of the young people they are supposed to care for,26 Meinhof argues, echoing her analysis of the Jürgen Bartsch case. What is more — she now develops that argument — they intend to change nothing. She moves increasingly towards the view that children in care are politically and personally handicapped by the system, not by accident, but on purpose. In November 1969, during the filming work on Bambule, a radio feature drawn from Meinhof ’s visit to a home in the Hessian town of Guxhagen was broadcast: “Mädchen in Fürsorgeerziehung” (Girls in Care). One of the first problems touched on is class identity. Working-class youngsters in care, the voiceover tells us, have middle-class cultural norms forced on them that have nothing to do with their own social origins or, indeed, with their likely futures. They are taught to ape the manners of bourgeois children without ever being offered the same chances. The result is that they lack awareness of their proletarian identity — an identity that would build class solidarity and therefore the potential for revolution. Meinhof makes no secret of her belief that this is a conscious strategy. The commentary goes on to explain how the education of working-class youngsters by petit-bourgeois care workers is designed to prepare them for a lifetime of work as the servants of the privileged classes (“Ihnen soll die Artigkeit und Angepaßtheit bürgerlicher Jugendlicher anerzogen werden ohne Chancengleichheit”).27 Children’s homes, Meinhof tells us, are the bogeyman of the controlling state: proletarian youths are faced with the threat of being taken into care if they fail to adapt to and accept their underprivileged status; they are punished by being taken into care if they make any attempt to better their pathetic situation through acts of individual liberation such as theft or truancy (“Mit Fürsorgeerziehung wird proletarischen Jugendlichen gedroht, wenn sie sich mit ihrer Unterpriviligiertheit nicht abfinden wollen. Mit Fürsorgeerziehung werden sie bestraft, wenn sie durch individuelle Befreiungsaktionen versucht haben, ihre miese Lage zu verbessern”). The system intends to bully working-class children into believing that there is simply no point in wanting anything but lifelong work on a factory floor, and no option but submission to middle-class authority.28 In Bambule, relations between the care workers and the inmates are rigidly hierarchical. When returned runaway Monika (who has injured her foot while escaping) is visited by the home’s director in the “bunker,” their conversation illustrates a particular mode of linguistic interaction:

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FRAU TURM:

MONIKA (steht auf): FRAU TURM:

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Monika! Man muß auf seinen Körper achten, auch das gehört zu einer guten Erziehung. . . . Man steht übrigens auf, wenn man mit einem Erwachsenen spricht. Aua, mein Fuß! Ach so! Setz dich! Ich vergaß, daß du einen kranken Fuß hast. (Pause) . . . Aber du kannst aus Schaden noch klug werden.29

[FRAU TURM:

Monika! We have to look after our bodies. It’s all part of a good upbringing. . . . We stand up, don’t forget, when we are speaking with a grown-up. MONIKA (stands up): Ouch, my foot! FRAU TURM: Oh. Sit down! I forgot that you had hurt your foot. (Pause) . . . But you can still learn from your mistakes.]

Frau Turm resists making a personal connection with Monika, both in refusing to register the reality of her injury and by upholding the hierarchical distinction between adult and child in the language she uses. Her platitudes stand in for genuine communication. It seems that those in authority resist genuine communication, and they thereby resist identification and the risk of solidarity with their young charges that would bring with it. That is what the “language of the system” — Frau Turm’s formal banalities — achieves. Not only are the care workers compelled by the language they use to avoid feeling empathy, they also practice pedagogical methods that suppress it in the girls. Divisive tactics undermine group solidarity. Monika is later told that she is to be sent back to the convent she loathed, not because the local authority has ordained it (which is the truth), but — says Frau Turm — because a protest on her behalf was staged by the other girls while she was in the bunker. It is an effective tactic: Monika’s sense both of specific solidarity with her fellows, and of the usefulness of solidarity in general, is undermined. She is led to blame the other girls for a decision they have actually had no part in: “I hate you,” she tells them, “it’s your fault” (“Ihr seid gemein . . . Ihr habt die Schuld”; 70). Care workers in the home reveal a habit of punishing all the girls if one or several of them misbehave, and the police, summoned to deal with a dormitory riot, do the same. These are not accidental occurrences, but illustrate divide-andrule tactics routinely employed by those in power. In the face of such tactics young people in care are left with a sense of powerlessness, as a girl in Meinhof’s radio program told listeners: “The things they do to you. To start with I answered back and complained. But the grown-ups stick

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together and they’re always right” (“Was die alles mit einem machen. Am Anfang habe ich geschimpft und mich beschwert. Aber die Erwachsenen halten zusammen und haben immer recht”).30 Against all this Meinhof sets a natural impulse to solidarity. Both published versions of the “Margarete M.” story include, in detail, the story of the fish. It is told to us again by Monika in Bambule, and runs as follows: the “problem” child Margarete/Monika is forced to sit for hours in front of a plate of fish she cannot eat, because fish makes her feel sick. When the authoritarian social worker who has imposed the punishment is called away for a moment, another child runs into the room, quickly eats up the fish, and thus secures her release. The care worker is unaware he has been tricked, and congratulates himself on the success of his approach — the other child’s act of solidarity is beyond his imagination and makes a fool of him. The story does not only demonstrate children’s natural capacity to adapt and survive even in the most uncongenial circumstances; it is a story about the meaning and consequences of solidarity. It is not yet a story about change in the system — after all, the care worker believes his pedagogical measure was successful, so is unlikely to change his methods — but it is about the potential of the system’s victims to resist repressive authority by showing solidarity with each other. This is the seed corn of revolution that the system is desperate to suppress. We see it again in the friendships, and particularly in the lesbian relationships, between the girls. In Bambule, lesbianism is a metaphor for solidarity; it signals marginalized social status and the potential that nonetheless inheres in human relationships. Frau Lack is the care worker the girls like most — she is kinder and more sympathetic to their needs than her colleagues, and when she visits Monika in the bunker, the younger woman is moved to investigate: MONIKA: Sind Sie lesbisch? . . . FRAU LACk: Ich bin verheiratet, das wißt ihr doch. MONIKA: Sie sind aber anders. (53) [MONIKA: Are you lesbian? . . . FRAU LACK: I’m married, you all know that. MONIKA: But you’re different.]

Monika translates her sense that Frau Lack is different (because she shows a certain empathy or solidarity with the girls) into lesbianism. Same-sex love in a single-sex environment is a powerful human connection, one the drama shows those in power at pains to suppress. In a striking episode the film flashes back to Monika kissing another girl in the convent. The nuns’ response is to force her to pack — they send her away more or less on the

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spot. The girls who have formed a bond are punished with immediate separation; continuity and security are once more dislocated in their lives. Ex-care child Peter Brosch would later support the notion that homosexuality is to be understood as a form of resistance, and insist that the extreme forms of punishment young people in care suffer for homosexual activity occur not for “moral” reasons but in fact because love is the first step toward solidarity (“Liebe ist der erste Schritt zur Solidarität”).31 One of the duties radical solidarity brings with it, as a RAF document of 1972 called Dem Volk dienen (Serve the People) would insist, is the obligation to fight left-wing liberalism.32 In Bambule Meinhof uses Frau Lack, the kindly care worker, to demonstrate the dangers of soft liberalism, which puts a Band-Aid over the problem rather than genuinely trying to cure it. When the girls tell her unpalatable truths, Frau Lack refuses to believe them: she blocks out knowledge of the things she does not want to be true. Monika tells the shocking story of when the nuns forcibly cut off her hair as a punishment for using make-up (the film shows the episode as a memory flashback, so that viewers will “know” it is true). But Frau Lack’s response is denial: FRAU LACK: Die Geschichte glaub’ ich dir nicht. MONIKA (erregt vom Erzählen): Fragen Sie die andern! FRAU LACK: Das kann nicht wahr sein. MONIKA : Und wenn es doch wahr ist? Was is’n dann?! (39) [FRAU LACK: I don’t believe that story. MONIKA (worked up from telling it): Ask the others! FRAU LACK: That can’t be true. MONIKA : And what if it is true? What happens then?!]

The end result of her politically unfocused empathy with the girls is that Frau Lack helps perpetuate the system by making it superficially bearable. Towards the drama’s conclusion, a sign of the learning process is that one of the girls, Iv, recognizes that: “Frau Lack,” she says, “needs to come out and tell us where she stands. Either you’re with us or you’re against us” (“Frau Lack . . . soll mal Farbe bekennen. Die guten ins Kröpfchen, die schlechten aufs Töpfchen”; 91). Iv’s “with us or against us” uses a structure that terrorism analysts would later call psychological dualism. “Either-or” formulae reflect a black and white, friend-or-foe mode of thinking that characterizes situations of war and the ideological positions of terrorists: “you’re either human or a swine . . . either the problem or the solution” (“entweder mensch oder schwein . . . entweder problem oder lösung”) would be Holger Meins’s notorious formulation.33

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The Staffelberg Project Böll’s observation that the RAF was composed of people who had engaged in social work referred not only to Meinhof — Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin had also worked with young offenders and youngsters in care. Böll’s reading drew on a notion of liberal altruism, but Baader and Ensslin (and later Meinhof) were working with a theory that saw marginalized groups — society’s outsiders — as the stuff of the revolution. In the nineteenth century, Marx had seen the working classes as the fuel and subject of the revolution, but if the working classes are satiated with consumer goods in a capitalist economy then revolutionary potential is to be sought on society’s margins, posited German-American social philosopher Herbert Marcuse in his influential critique of capitalist society, OneDimensional Man (1964).34 In Marcuse’s argument, capitalism has made the workers its slaves (in the sense that they now perceive themselves as upwardly mobile consumers). It is therefore those marginalized by capitalism (that is, those who cannot afford to consume) who must take the place of Marx’s workers on the revolutionary front: the unemployed, the homeless, and working class youth35 — particularly youngsters in care. Gerd Koenen, a sideline participant in Germany’s 1968 and now one of its historians, suggests that this is why the young inmates of the homes had a place in the limelight of “our little German cultural revolution” (“unserer kleinen deutschen Kulturrevolution”): Neben die Archetypen des “Proletariers,” des “Guerilleros,” des “Ghettokämpfers” trat nun der “Heimzögling,” der aus allen ursprünglichen Bindungen herausgerissen und von der staatlichen Repression potenziell schon zusammegeschweißt und gehärtet worden war.36 [Alongside the archetype of the “proletarian,” the “guerilla,” the “ghetto fighter,” there now entered the “youngster in care,” torn from all his original family ties and potentially already welded and toughened by state repression.]

After their conviction for the Frankfurt department store arson and pending the result of an appeal, Baader and Ensslin were released on bail. They had plans for a project working with youngsters who had either run away from secure homes or broken off an apprenticeship. It became known as the Staffelberg project, after the Staffelberg home in Marburg-Biedenkopf (around 70 km north of Frankfurt am Main) where it began. On 28 June 1969 they their co-arsonist Thorwald Proll joined around two hundred activists — many of them students from Frankfurt University — on a visit to the Staffelberg home, which had opened as a model facility for young male delinquents in 1963 (it closed

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in January 2002). The visit was not the brainchild of the ex-arsonists; it was the climax of a campaign that had been running for some time already, led by students of pedagogy at Frankfurt and by local Maoist groups.37 Like most political activity of the time it involved organized talk; one of the boys later described the arrival of the campaigners and the discussion forum they initiated: 250 Lehrlinge, Schüler, Studenten und interessierte Leute aus der Bevölkerung, zusammen mit 80 Polizisten, sind “zu Besuch” bei den Zöglingen des Erziehungsheims Staffelberg/Hessen. In einer öffentlichen Diskussion prangern Besucher wie Zöglinge die Zustände im Heim an: gefängnisähnliche Isolation und Einsperrung, miese Berufsausbildung, autoritäre Erziehungsmethoden.38 [250 apprentices, school pupils, students, and other interested members of the public, together with 80 policemen, “pay a visit” to the young inmates of the Staffelberg home in Hessen. In a public discussion both visitors and inmates criticize the conditions in the home: isolation and lockups like in a prison, a hopeless lack of preparation or education for future work, authoritarian methods.]

The intention of the forum was to give the youngsters a voice, in hopes of empowering them to articulate their needs and wishes in further discussions with care workers and home directors. So far, so good, but when, after this meeting, needs and wishes were articulated — such as the wish of the Staffelberg inmates to play an active role in running the place themselves — the home’s director simply refused, whereupon about half of the boys went AWOL and had to be taken in privately by their student mentors.39 Ensslin, often reported to have been impressive in her engagement on behalf of others, spoke to local government officials in Frankfurt.40 With the support of council representative Herbert Faller, she and Baader acquired with living spaces where the youngsters — who were now arriving from other Hessian homes, including Guxhagen, on which Meinhof had reported41 — could be helped to build a life for themselves in collectives. The most high-profile of the youngsters involved in Staffelberg is nowadays Peter-Jürgen Boock, a home escapee who later took a leading role in the activities of the RAF’s so-called “second generation” (the generation whose entire raison d’être until 1977 was to secure the release of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and the other founder members from prison). The project may have hoped to profit from the revolutionary potential of the young rebels it collected, but according to another of the boys involved, it did little to profit them. Peter Brosch was, like Boock, an escapee from the Staffelberg home, but unlike Boock he later rejected the political principles of the RAF rather than joining the organization. Like Boock he had spent almost his entire life in care. In 1972 — two

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years after the RAF’s formation — Brosch published a book drawing on his experiences both in the home and the Staffelberg project, called Fürsorgeerziehung: Heimterror und Gegenwehr (The Care System: Terror in the Homes and Methods of Resistance). The boys Baader and Ensslin rehomed, he claimed, learned nothing positive from collective living, supported by financial handouts extracted from the sympathetic left; instead they learned not to go to work, not to earn a living, not to find a place for themselves in West German society. He accuses Baader in particular of irresponsible behavior — of looking primarily to provide teenage kicks rather than a serious education for change. Baader, it seems, formed a group around himself as charismatic leader, and the Baader group, Brosch reports, “bribes its apprentices with adventure games . . . With the Baader lot there’s always something ‘up’” (“die Baader-Gruppe [besticht] die Lehrlinge mit Abenteuerspielchen . . . Bei den Baaders ist immer was ‘los’”). He criticizes the failure of Baader’s disciples to see the importance of organized political action at the basis — they thought factory work a waste of time and (following Marcuse, presumably as taught them by Baader) believed the only true revolutionaries were the marginalized groups: home inmates and criminals (“Die Baader-Gruppe wehrte sich mit Händen und Füßen dagegen, daß der ökonomische Bereich Schwerpunkt wurde. Für sie war Betriebsarbeit Zeitverschwendung, Revolutionär seien nur Randgruppen, wie Zöglinge und Kriminelle”).42 Brosch rounds off his critique (and brandishes his Marxist-Leninist credentials) when he accuses Baader and his associates of ideological subjectivism with absolutist tendencies, and of a disregard for the real experience of the proletariat (161–62). He finally blames the group around Baader for the failure of the Staffelberg project, which never achieved its end of replacing the homes with self-determining collective living. (More recent reviewers of the project disagree with Brosch’s negative assessment, and see Staffelberg as the beginning of the end of the traditional, repressive system of care in the Federal Republic.43) For Ensslin and Baader, work with the Staffelberg youths ended abruptly when their appeal was turned down in November 1969. Instead of returning to prison to complete their sentences, they abandoned their young charges and drove to Paris. Meinhof was not present at the Staffelberg home meeting in June 1969, but she did hear about the project and traveled to Frankfurt to observe it (she had met Ensslin and Baader a year previously, when she interviewed them for her article for konkret on the department store arson). Her own work on the conditions in homes in the Federal Republic had, up until that time, reflected the investigative interest of a socially engaged journalist rather than post-Marxist revolutionary theory (Meinhof had not read Marcuse).44 Noticeable is that between writing the articles in 1966 and her work on Bambule nearer the end of the decade (she

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submitted the first version of the manuscript for the drama at the end of 1968, and rewriting and filming work with Itzenplitz took place in 1969– 70), her political convictions shifted — her position on the care system grew significantly more radical. In earlier articles she had suggested that abuses in the system were the result of a negligent state and an indifferent society. But Bambule insists they are deliberate. The “impossibility of making and maintaining relationships” that Meinhof had once identified as a defining problem of the care system is no longer presented as accidental damage, but as the system’s most basic tool for preventing solidarity, identification, and class awareness. By 1970 at the very latest — when the drama was being filmed — Meinhof had received and accepted the Marcusian line that informed the Staffelberg project: namely, that marginalized youngsters were the stuff and soldiers of the revolution. (That belief must have felt as if it had become reality when the girl she befriended in the Eichenhof home, nineteen-year-old Irene Goergens, joined the RAF for its very first operation: the liberation of Baader. Goergens was one of the first members of the group to be arrested, along with Horst Mahler, Brigitte Asdonk, and Ingrid Schubert, on 8 October 1970; she was sentenced to six and a half years imprisonment for her involvement.) Where in her earlier work Meinhof criticized the care system from a humanitarian perspective, in late 1969 she shifted to a position from which she saw it as the instrument of a repressive state. Her belief was not only that young people in care were destined to drive the revolution, but that the West German state believed that too. That is why it had created a system designed to repress their revolutionary potential; what is generally assumed to be malpractice in the homes, says Meinhof (as somebody who herself used to make that assumption), “is actually their practice and principle. Conformity and discipline are the pedagogical intention” (“Was gemeinhin für Mißstände in den Heimen gehalten wird, ist deren Praxis und Prinzip. Anpassung und Disziplinierung sind das Erziehungsziel”).45 A driving factor in that development was almost certainly her visit to the Staffelberg activists. With its emphasis on self-organization and nonauthoritarian structures, Baader’s and Ensslin’s work seemed to showcase a genuine alternative to the system: one based on solidarity, rather than division. Brosch’s account of the politics of the system chimes strikingly with Meinhof’s conspiracy theories — and it is likely that both are reiterating ideas current in the Staffelberg circle in which they moved. In the homes everything possible is done to prevent groups from forming and developing group solidarity, writes Brosch: “it is obvious why the formation of groups and the development of collective solidarity is suppressed: it could become dangerous, could mean a rebellion, could preserve and foster proletarian class consciousness” (“Warum die Gruppenbildung und das Herausbilden kollektiver Solidarität verhindert wird, ist klar: sie könnte gefährlich werden, könnte Auflehnung bedeuten, könnte proletarisches

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Klassenbewußtsein bewahren, weiterentwickeln”; 73–74). He is sharply critical of the kind of liberal humanitarian approach Meinhof had still espoused in 1966, and dismisses the “bleeding heart” empathy of liberals: “the major error made by liberal critics is that they fail to recognize the primary intention of children’s homes, which is to divide and intimidate the proletariat” (“Der Hauptfehler der liberalen Kritiker ist, daß sie nicht den Hauptzweck der Erziehungsheime sehen, nämlich: das Proletariat zu spalten und einzuschüchtern”; 79–80). At the very latest after her visits to the Staffelberg project, Meinhof saw the primary intention of the homes in exactly the way Brosch describes it. The notion that they exist to divide and intimidate the proletariat, and the hope that marginalized young people will become the dynamite of the revolution are the ideas driving the docudrama whose full title is Bambule: Fürsorge — Sorge für wen? (Riot: The Care System — Caring for Whom?). To understand that title, and to get an answer to the question it puts, we only need to look as far as Brosch, who asks and then answers a similar question: “What is the care system trying to achieve? It is not helping to rectify the causes of disruptive behavior in children . . . It is about caring for the state, not for the proletariat” (“Was will die Fürsorge? Sie hilft nicht, die Ursachen des auffälligen Verhaltens bei den Kindern zu beseitigen. . . . Sie sorgt für den Staat und nicht fürs Proletariat”; 80). For Brosch as well as for Meinhof this is unquestionably a conspiracy: the capitalist state has built the care system to protect its interests against those too poor to participate in consumer culture. In Bambule we are supposed to see that the homes do not just accidentally or coincidentally affect a child’s emotional development; in interfering with the relationship-forming process — the child’s ability to interact with its peers — they systematically undermine class awareness and solidarity, and thereby safeguard the existing social hierarchies. Meinhof has perceptibly shifted ground: her interest is now far less in the purely humanitarian issue that children in care, like all children, must learn to form loving relationships, and far more in the notion that interpersonal bonds are the basis for political action to overturn the system. Meinhof’s understanding of her own drama does not appear to have been clear to her director, Itzenplitz. Meinhof and Itzenplitz had severe differences during the filming process: her will to take an uncompromising political line met his will to make popular television, and the result is an odd hybrid of a film. When the broadcast was cancelled after the operation to free Baader, and Meinhof became a wanted person, Itzenplitz responded in vague and sentimental terms, searching vainly for connections between the “distress” and “longings” experienced by girls in care and Meinhof’s own “aberrant” behavior. He appears to believe that her impetus for cofounding the RAF could only have been personal: “where is the connection between the neediness, the longing of those girls in the

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homes and the fate of a journalist who had been describing their acute situation with passion, using legitimate media, long before she herself went astray?” (“Was hat die Not, haben die Sehnsüchte jener Mädchen in den Fürsorgeheimen mit dem Los einer Journalistin zu tun, die lange vor dem eigenen Fehlverhalten leidenschaftlich und mit legitimen Mitteln die Notsituation dieser Mädchen beschrieb?”).46 Itzenplitz is justifiably upset about the act of censorship that has banished his work from television. The point he seems to be missing, though — remarkably, for the film’s director — is that the “connection” he is looking for is to be found in the film he has just made, that the portrayal of the girls in Bambule as a marginalized group, with the potential to be politicized for the revolution, may do more to explain Ulrike Meinhof’s decision to found the Red Army Faction than any intuitive response to their neediness.

On Solidarity Solidarity is a crucial factor in Meinhof’s thinking. In the last section of the RAF document Dem Volk dienen, which has the title Über Solidarität (On Solidarity), she describes it as the opposite pole of capitalism: “Solidarität, indem sie nicht von den Kriterien des Marktes ausgeht, setzt diese außer Kraft” (Solidarity, because it does not take the criteria of the market as its starting point, disables the market’s criteria). She is not talking only about support for groups or individuals; solidarity, she explains, is a political force because it is a refusal to operate only under the pressure of market forces, and only with an eye to the value of commodities (“Solidarität ist politisch nicht erst als Solidarität mit Politischen, sondern als Weigerung, nur unter dem Büttel des Wertgesetzes, nur unter dem Aspekt von Tauschwert zu handeln”). Solidarity is essentially antihierarchical, and as such “a form of resistance against the influence of the ruling classes on people’s relationships with each other; as resistance against the ruling classes it is always right behavior” (“Solidarität ist ihrem Wesen nach herrschaftsfreies Handeln, als solches immer Widerstand gegen den Einfluß der herrschenden Klasse auf die Beziehungen der Menschen zueinander, als Widerstand gegen die herrschende Klasse immer richtig”); solidarity equals resistance, and becomes a weapon when it is used in an organized and consistent manner (“Solidarität wird zur Waffe, wenn sie organisiert und konsequent angewendet wird”).47 The theme of Bambule is how rebellions start — and it seems that they start when those who are oppressed understand the principle of solidarity, and thereby acquire a sense of themselves. Solidarity is how the personal becomes political: it is the impetus for action that arises when we feel empathy and identification with another human being, or with a group. Bambule demonstrates repeatedly that this is what the state, in the microcosm of the care home, seeks to undermine. The question asked in

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the drama’s subtitle — ”Fürsorgeerziehung: Sorge für wen?” (The Care System: Caring for Whom?) — is answered: the intention of the system is to take care of those already in power, and not to empower the youngsters who are its casualties. At the end, the girls have begun to understand that neither the “polite” language nor the “polite” behavior imposed on them will free them from the confines and limitations of their situation. Irene plans a riot for the coming evening: “start doing terrorist stuff and they’ll throw you out,” she tells the other girls; “behave yourself and they’ll forget you even exist” (“Wer Terror macht, den schmeißen se [sic] raus. Wer sich gut fügt, der wird vergessen” 100). If the home is a miniature or microcosmic representation of the state, and the system and its representatives relate to the girls as capitalism and its representatives relate to the people, then terrorism, the drama suggests, is an appropriate response. But for Meinhof, in the end, a fictive revolution was not enough. Toward the end of filming she seems to have grown more and more dissatisfied with the project. In a letter to Waldmann, who had commissioned the piece, she complained that it brought no practical or tangible change in the lives of its subjects (thus replicating the practice of the homes themselves); it is “a television play that betrays the girls: so a piece of shit, I’d say” (“ein Fernsehspiel, das die Mädchen verschaukelt, man darf sagen: ein Scheißspiel”). The film merely aestheticizes the problems experienced by proletarian youngsters, she observes bitterly, and that makes it worthless: in her words, “Revolutionsgewäsch” (revolutionary drivel).48 One of the problems exposed in the drama — that the care workers resist empathy and identification with the girls in their care — also seems, for its author, to be a problem about the drama. The abstract distance that television creates is going to make it possible for middle-class audiences to resist identification with the girls, just as the care workers do, and to substitute gawking for action. That matters because identification is a necessary prerequisite for change. In Meinhof’s conception, identification is a form of solidarity, and solidarity is the basis for action — nothing will change without it. That is why the question of solidarity, its revolutionary potential, and how it is systematically undermined by the system, is so central in Bambule. The uselessness of a drama that will probably, anyway, only be watched by the liberal left wing — by Frau Lack and her ilk — echoes through the final dialogue, after Irene has dispatched the well-meaning care worker in tears: IV: IRENE: IV: IRENE: IV:

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Mit Frau Lack hast du die falsche erwischt. Die hört wenigstens mal zu. Man kann’s doch nur einem sagen, der zuhört. Und das ist dann der falsche. Dafür kann ich nicht. Das nützt aber nichts. (100)

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[IV: IRENE: IV: IRENE: IV:

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Frau Lack’s not the one you need to get at. At least she listens. You can only say it to someone who listens. And that’s not the person you need to get through to. Nothing I can do about that. But it doesn’t help.]

“It doesn’t help” is the insight that work on the drama has brought her, Meinhof tells Waldmann. A real-life riot in a home is worth more than any number of television films because things will only change when the oppressed take action themselves (“ein Aufstand im Heim, die Organisierung der Jugendlichen selbst, [sind] tausendmal mehr wert als zich Filme. Ändern wird sich nur etwas, wenn die Unterdrückten selbst handeln”). Anyone who wants to help has to get their hands dirty; solidarity can only be demonstrated through action, she concludes (“Es kommt darauf an, selbst mitzumachen”).49 She appears to have come to the view expressed during the Frankfurt arson trial of 1968: “We have learned,” Ensslin explained then, “that it is wrong to use words without action” (“Wir haben gerlernt, daß Reden ohne Handeln unrecht ist”).50

A Language for the Revolution? But the disappointment expressed in her letter to Waldmann could only have arisen out of an initial expectation that writing a television drama might achieve change, and Bambule is an experiment (albeit in Meinhof’s view a failed experiment) in marrying words to action. It certainly offered her the opportunity to experiment with a different kind of language. Because drama uses direct speech — dialogue — it provided a form of linguistic freedom that had not been available to her as a columnist. In her columns she had adhered to high-register diction. Elevated diction has the advantage of making an argument less immediately accessible and hence more difficult to refute; it also wins respect for the writer in a society that admires the kind of language that is enabled by an advanced (and often expensive) education. Even her notorious column on the arson attacks in Frankfurt, for all its radical content, used language that signaled educated status: “Das progressive Moment einer Warenhausbrandstiftung” (the progressive element in department store arson), she observed formally, liegt nicht in der Vernichtung der Waren, es liegt in der Kriminalität der Tat, im Gesetzesbruch. . . . Hat also eine Warenhausbrandstiftung dieses progressive Moment, daß verbrechenschützende Gesetze dabei gebrochen werden, so bleibt zu fragen, ob es vermittelt werden kann, in Aufklärung umgesetzt werden kann.51

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[is not the destruction of goods but the criminality of the deed, in the act of breaking the law. . . . If, therefore, the progressive impetus that comes from breaking laws that protect capitalist criminals is inherent in an act of arson in a department store, then we must ask whether that impetus can be communicated, whether it can be turned into a useful lesson.]

Her very last column for konkret, on the subject of columnism, appeared to vent some anger and frustration in expressions such zum Kotzen (makes me sick) and quatsch nicht so viel (shut up, will you),52 but both phrases occur in the context of implied reported speech (the implication on both occasions is that we are hearing the editors of the journal speaking), which excuses the linguistic informality; something similar was happening in one of her last investigative reports, called “Doof — weil arm” (They’re Dumb — Because They’re Poor).53 Even if the title seems to challenge the high-register norm (doof belongs to the language of children and young people), by reading on we discover the word is implicitly spoken by pupils at a special school interviewed for the piece — so again, implied direct speech excuses the stylistic transgression. In dramatic dialogue, by contrast, informal spoken style is the norm. It follows that when a character — such as Frau Turm — speaks in the formal mode of written language, we are being asked to sit up and take notice, to observe that formal language goes hand-in-hand with hierarchical structures, and hierarchical structures permit solidarity only between those in power. That was Sartre’s argument in his preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth: Sartre suggests that colonizing Europeans deliberately disabled gifted youngsters in the colonies by forcing them to speak the language of their enslavers. “Not so very long ago,” he tells us, “the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men, and one thousand five hundred million natives.” The differentiation between “men” and “natives” depended on their access to the language of power — the language of the colonizers: “The former had the Word; the others had the use of it,” he goes on; the European élite “picked out promising adolescents; . . . they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. . . . These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed.”54 Meinhof (who has read Fanon) is showing us something similar in the context of a German children’s home. As part of the process of teaching working-class charges to ape middle-class habits, senior staff in the home attempt to enforce the use of “high-sounding phrases.” On one occasion access to cigarettes is used as a tool: MONIKA: FRAU TURM:

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Ach, Frau Turm, ich hab’ so’n Astpiepen. Du wolltest sagen, du hast Appetit auf eine Zigarette.

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[MONIKA: FRAU TURM:

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Oh Frau Turm, I’m gagging for a smoke. You’re trying to tell me that you would rather like to have a cigarette.]

This is not just a matter of manners: it is a divide-and-rule strategy that is part of the system of control. Petit-bourgeois Frau Turm adopts an almost comically elevated style when addressing her teenage charges: “Ich hoffe, Monika, ich hoffe, du hast eingesehen, daß es keinen Zweck hat zu entweichen” (I hope, Monika, I hope that you have understood that there is nothing to be gained from absconding; 25–26). Her “grand glutinous words” stand in ludicrous contrast to the authentic Berlin dialect spoken by the girls. For Sartre, the language of the conquerors is false in the mouths of the colonized who speak it. It undermines (and is intended to undermine) their national and racial identity. For Meinhof, the language of the ruling classes undermines (and is intended to undermine) class identity in the children of the proletariat. The “gifted adolescents” among the natives Sartre writes of are not being empowered when they are taught the language of the powerful because, in learning that (European) language, they are isolating themselves from their “brothers.” Their European teachers are reducing the chances that talented elements in the colonized population will use their gifts to lead a revolution. For Meinhof, the elevated style imposed on the girls in Bambule similarly seeks to isolate them from their class background. It immobilizes them in established structures rather than offering them an education for change. The language used by those in power is banal and rigid: “it is forbidden” is the mantra of those who rule the girls, and is the first thing we hear from Frau Turm — ”it is forbidden to stand about in the yard before lunchtime!” (“Es ist verboten, vormittags auf dem Hof herumzustehen!”), echoed soon after by their class teacher: “smoking in class is forbidden” (“Das Rauchen in der Klasse ist verboten”; 19, 23). This is a language that demands obedience, not understanding; its intention is to disempower, not to empower. Its formality circumvents personal engagement, and so averts the risk that Frau Turm (for example) will accidentally start feeling solidarity with her charges instead of with the establishment that employs her. Petit-bourgeois Frau Turm, after all, is the object as well as the subject of linguistic oppression; her stilted use of elevated style is comic because it is fakery, an impersonation of a class she does not belong to either. One of the characters, Irene, was based on the girl Meinhof befriended during work in the Eichenhof home, and who later joined the RAF: Irene Goergens. Near the end of the drama, Irene makes the crucial discovery that she has subject status — that she can take control of language and make it say what she wants it to say. In the drama’s concluding sequence, she interrupts Frau Lack to assert her own right to speak, in her own words:

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FRAU LACK: IRENE: FRAU LACK: IRENE:

Irene! Nein, ich rede. Ich! Laß mich doch mal was . . . ICH!!!! (99)

[FRAU LACk: IRENE: FRAU LACK: IRENE:

Irene! No, I’m talking now. ME! Let me just say . . . ME!!!!]

Subject status is a prerequisite for revolution — I cannot rise up and demand my rights or change society if I do not believe that I am in charge of, or the subject of, my own destiny. In grammatical terms, that means the ability to say “I” — literally to make myself the subject of the sentence, which is the discovery Irene has made.

Beyond Language In her writing as a journalist during the decade from 1959–69, Meinhof was prepared to use formal language as a way of securing her intellectual position, and in order to be taken seriously. In political journalism, seriousness commands respect, and seriousness was one element in her journalistic persona. Seriousness is the first thing Röhl claims to have noticed about his future wife: “She was serious,” he tells us, “and people who knew her well would go further than that and say: she never laughs” (“Sie war ernst, und wer sie länger kannte, wusste das sogar noch zu präzisieren: Die lacht ja nie”).55 Anyone who writes for or speaks to an audience needs to gain that audience’s trust, to assert what in rhetorical theory is called ethos. That her seriousness was an effective form of ethos was certainly the view of Meinhof’s friend and co-campaigner Jürgen Seifert; as students together in Münster in the late 1950s, they had published a series of antinuclear pamphlets called Das Argument.56 “Es war die Ernsthaftigkeit, die überzeugte” (it was her seriousness that persuaded people), Seifert later wrote.57 But in a short essay of 1968 called “Revolutionsgerede” (Revolutionary Talk), Meinhof put forward the notion that now only action could be understood as serious. Language by itself — theoretical talk and writing — could not. The essay, which appropriately is only five sentences long, opens: “talking about revolution means being serious about it” (“Von Revolution reden heißt, es ernst meinen”).58 Being serious here is synonymous with taking action; serious language is necessarily coupled with action. The article goes on to attack the revolutionary theorizing of left-wing intellectuals in West Germany that had, to date, not led them to engage in revolutionary activity (Meinhof, we might notice again, does

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not regard writing as a form of action). She contrasts their “talk” with the real-life situations of the underprivileged: the temporary laborers at the docks, the workers in chemical plants now threatened with job losses in the face of automation, and the metal workers whose minds, she claims, are numbed by the monotony of mechanization; as well as women who “live like dogs with their masters.”59 These are the real-life situations that will not be improved by mere theories or intellectual game-playing. In this ultra-short essay Meinhof seems to be both using and leaving language. She invites the German left to do the same, declaring that its future will depend on whether it is able to start a “necessary and possible” process of consciousness-raising among the working classes (“Die Zukunft der deutschen Linken wird davon abhängen, ob sie diesen notwendigen und denkbaren Bewußtwerdungsprozeß in Gang setzen kann oder nicht”). Revolutionary talk, she advises, is “a good starting point if [the left] wants to free itself from internalized oppression and . . . scruples, and get down to work. The question is whether the left will ever make it beyond this act of self-liberation” (“Revolutionsgerede ist sicherlich die Voraussetzung dafür, sich von verinnerlichter Herrschaft und . . . Skrupeln frei zu machen, um an die Arbeit gehen zu können. Die Frage ist offen, ob sie über diesen Akt der Selbstbefreiung hinauskommt”).60 The question she chooses not to address is what, exactly, lies “beyond” language? We must assume that what lies beyond revolutionary language is revolutionary action: the act of self-liberation that Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth and Sartre in his preface to that work identified as the act of violence. In his opening chapter, “Concerning Violence,” Fanon defined violence in the postcolonial context of Algeria as “a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”61 Sartre comments: “Fanon . . . shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is . . . man re-creating himself.” The suggestion is that there is something peculiarly human about the act of violence in a situation of oppression — even though the clear implication is that it will be perpetrated against another human being, and may well cause that person’s death. Sartre, who is fairly sure that the person killed will not be him, is sanguine: “in the first days of the revolt,” he writes, you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot.62

In a letter from prison to other RAF prisoners in 1973, Ensslin would quote Sartre’s preface — ”either one stays terrorized or one becomes a terrorist. That is to say, we either abandon ourselves to the dissipation of a

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life that is false, or we re-achieve the unity we were born with” (“man bleibt entweder terrorisiert oder wird selbst terroristisch. Das heißt: sich entweder den auflösungsprozessen eines verfälschten lebens überlassen oder die ursprüngliche einheit erringen”).63 The way to achieve that originary unity — a dream of human wholeness — is not language, but violence. In Bambule, the moment comes when violent resistance to the system is clearly defined as a positive response. It is called Terror (terrorism) by the speaker, Irene: “Wer Terror macht, den schmeißen se [sic] raus. Wer sich gut fügt, der wird vergessen” (start doing terrorist stuff and they’ll throw you out. Behave yourself and they’ll forget you even exist; 100). The motivation for the kind of radical life change enacted by Meinhof immediately after Bambule was filmed could only be complex. Quite aside from developments in her writing career (leaving konkret, for example, and writing Bambule) there were other developments in her life. In 1969 she discovered that her father, Werner Meinhof (who had died in 1940), had joined the Nazi party almost immediately after it took power in 1933; her own family, then, had not been in the ranks of the resistance. Her uncle sent her papers that included Werner Meinhof’s party membership book.64 That news is likely to have come as an uncomfortable shock. But on this we can only speculate. Bambule provides tangible indicators for a development in Meinhof’s ideological position. She was clearly drawing on the Staffelberg project, and on her contact with Baader and Ensslin — particularly in her notions that youngsters in care are the new revolutionary proletariat, and that children’s homes are set up deliberately to repress that potential. Other ideological elements are adapted from early second-wave feminism: not only, for Meinhof, is the personal political, but authentic political action can only arise out of subjective, personal experience; she has developed the tenet of the women’s movement into a line of reasoning that would soon inform the RAF’s implementation of the primacy of praxis (Primat der Praxis). In his critique of Staffelberg, Brosch asserted that “in the end the mistakes of Baader & Co. are based in their ideological subjectivism. They took their own experience as the starting point and made it absolute” (“Letzlich sind diese Fehler von Baader & Co. in ihrem ideologischen Subjektivismus begründet. Sie gingen von ihren Erfahrungen aus und verabsolutierten sie”; 162). Brosch was anticipating later left-wing critiques of the inward-focused group thinking and haphazard approach to theory demonstrated by the RAF. But Meinhof, too, was already tending to make her own experience absolute. In her radio feature on girls in care she began to put forward the notions later explored in Bambule: namely, that homes actually set out to alienate the children in their care from their proletarian roots, but the only proof of her argument she gives is that this is what she observed when she visited.

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The notion of solidarity as the precondition for political action, explored in Bambule, is crucial. Solidarity — the most personal element in the entire political process — would be at the center of the RAF’s selfdefinition as a collective. In her interview with Helma Sanders-Brahms, Meinhof had translated the slogan of the women’s movement, “the personal is political,” into “only what pertains to my own experience is authentically political”; when that shifts toward “anything I feel subjectively is authentically political,” we are nearing the credo and self-justification of the RAF.

Notes The citation for the epigraph in this chapter is as follows: Meinhof, interview with Helma Sanders-Brahms, conducted during the filming of Bambule. Cited in Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2008 [1985]), 151–53. 1

Meinhof, “Ausweisung von Nirumand verhindern!!!” in konkret 4 (1969): 10.

2

Meinhof, “Alle reden vom Wetter,” in konkret 4 (1969), reprinted in Ulrike Meinhof: Dokumente einer Rebellion. 10 Jahre “konkret”-Kolumnen, ed. Klaus Rainer Röhl (Hamburg: konkret, 1972), 99. Translated as “Everybody Talks about the Weather,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks about the Weather . . . We Don’t: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof, ed. Karin Bauer (New York: Seven Stories, 2008), 184–89.

3

Bambule was eventually broadcast for the first time on German television on 24 May 1994. 4

“Schließlich gibt es das Rotbuch 24 des Wagenbach Verlags, Titel: ‘Bambule,’ Verfasserin: Ulrike Marie Meinhof.” Böll, “Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade oder freies Geleit?” in Spiegel 3 (1972), reprinted in Die Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe, ed. Reinhard Rauball (Berlin: De Gruyter 1973), 212–21; here 218. 5

The Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) lists Meinhof’s “Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik” among programs broadcast by them, in a letter to her lawyer Klaus Croissant dated 13 December 1976. See HIS Me,U/028,005. 6

Meinhof, “Flucht aus dem Mädchenheim,” in konkret 9 (1966): 18–23.

7

Meinhof, “Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik: aufgehoben oder abgeschoben?,” in Frankfurter Hefte: Zeitschrift für Kultur und Politik 21.9 (1966): 616– 26; here 621. 8

Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” in Meinhof, Bambule: Fürsorge — Sorge für wen? (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1994 [1971]), 9. The preface or “Vorbemerkungen” to Bambule is not an original piece of writing by her but a digest of comments from her radio features on children’s homes, compiled by an unnamed person or persons. 9

Meinhof, “Heimkinder,” 622.

10

Meinhof, “Jürgen Bartsch und die Gesellschaft,” in konkret 1 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen ist anstabar: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1980]), 112–16; here 112.

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See chapter 1.

12

Meinhof, “Jürgen Bartsch,” 115–16. In 1976 Bartsch had himself castrated in order to qualify for possible release; he died from complications following the operation. As it happened, his death on 28 April occurred just days before Ulrike Meinhof’s own. 13

Meinhof, Guxhagen — Mädchen in Fürsorgeerziehung: Ein Heim in Hessen (typescript, Hessischer Rundfunk, November 1969), 5; see also Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” 7. 14

Bremer Nachrichten, cited in konkret 7 (1969): 54.

15

Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” 12.

16

“[Helke Sanders] ‘Tomatenrede’ hat einen hohen symbolischen Stellenwert in der Debatte um 1968, weil sie für viele als Geburtsstunde der neuen Frauenbewegung gilt.” Ute Kätzel, Die 68erinnen. Porträt einer rebellischen Frauengeneration (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2002), 13. 17

Meinhof, “Die Frauen im SDS oder In eigener Sache,” in konkret 12 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 149–52. 18

Meinhof, “Die Frauen im SDS,” 149–50.

19

E.g. by Aust, Der-Baader-Meinhof Komplex, 153.

20

The interview is available to watch on baader-meinhof.com. It is transcribed in Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, 151–53; here 152. 21

Meinhof, “Die Frauen im SDS,” 149.

22

“über die gesetzliche Gleichberechtigung der Frau und ihre praktische Diskriminierung im Betrieb erfahren sie nichts.” Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” 10. 23

Meinhof, “Falsches Bewußtsein,” in Emanzipation und Ehe, ed. Christa Rotzoll (Munich: Delp, 1968), 33–50; reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 117–33. 24

Meinhof, “Die Frauen im SDS,” 151. Extracts from Sander’s speech at the conference were published in the same number of konkret; see Helke Sander, “Der SDS — ein aufgeblasener konterrevolutionärer Hefeteig,” reprinted in 30 Jahre KONKRET, ed. Hermann L. Gremliza (Hamburg: konkret, 1987), 122. 25

Meinhof, Guxhagen, 4; reprinted in Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” 10.

26

“Weil die Mädchen niemand und nichts hatten und sich nicht damit abfinden wollten, kamen sie ins Heim. Daran, dass sie niemanden und nichts haben, hat das Heim nichts geändert.” Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” 9. 27

Meinhof, Guxhagen, 5.

28

“Heimerziehung, das ist der Büttel des Systems, der Rohrstock, mit dem den proletarischen Jugendlichen eingebläut wird, dass es keinen Zweck hat, sich zu wehren, keinen Zweck, etwas anderes zu wollen, als lebenslänglich am Fliessband zu stehen, an untergeordneter Stelle zu arbeiten, Befehlsempfänger zu sein und zu bleiben, das Maul zu halten.” Meinhof, “Vorbemerkungen,” 8. 29

Meinhof, Bambule: Fürsorge — Sorge für wen? (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1994 [1971]), 26. Further references appear in text. 30

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31

Peter Brosch, Fürsorgeerziehung: Heimterror und Gegenwehr (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1971), 14. 32

“Zur Solidarität gehört: den Liberalismus innerhalb der Linken bekämpfen.” Kollektiv RAF, Dem Volk dienen, in Rote Armee Fraktion: Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF, ed. Martin Hoffmann (Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1997), 112– 44; here 143. 33

Iring Fetscher, Herfried Münkler, and Hannelore Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Fetscher und Günter Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 1 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 180; Meins, letter to Manfred Grashof (1 November 1974), in HIS Me,H/006,006; reprinted in edited form in das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973–1977: dokumente, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1987), 183–86. 34

Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge, 2002 [1964]). 35

Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 260–61.

36

Gerd Koenen, Vesper, Ensslin, Baader: Urszenen des deutschen Terrorismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003), 241. 37

Journalist-historian Butz Peters’s version of the story is misleading; see Peters, Tödlicher Irrtum: Die Geschichte der RAF (Berlin: Argon, 2004), 123. Accounts of this visit vary quite widely; an image of the ex-arsonists and students at the home on 28 June 1969 is reprinted in Koenen, Vesper, Ensslin, Baader, 217–18. An interesting account, with a fairly positive view of the outcome of the project, is given by Klaus Stern and Jörg Herrmann, Andreas Baader: Das Leben eines Staatsfeindes (Munich: dtv, 2007). 38

Brosch, Fürsorgeerziehung, 7.

39

Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof: Ein Leben in Widerspruch (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988), 185. Krebs gives 70 as the number of runaways; other accounts suggest 40.

40

Herbert Faller’s praise of Ensslin is cited by Peters, Tödlicher Irrtum, 124.

41

Stern and Herrmann, Andreas Baader, 143.

42

Brosch, Fürsorgeerziehung, 124 and 161. Further references appear in the text.

43

Stern and Herrmann, Andreas Baader, 141.

44

She admits this in an undated document on “Vietnamisierung” (1973) in HIS Me,U/008,010. 45

Meinhof, “Vorbemerkung,” 12.

46

Itzenplitz, “Über die Filmarbeit mit Ulrike Meinhof,” in Meinhof, Bambule, 111–35; here 130. 47

Kollektiv RAF, Dem Volk dienen, 143.

48

Cited in Reinhard Mohr, “Revolutionäres Gewäsch,” in Spiegel 33 (1996): 136–39; here 137. 49

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Mohr, “Revolutionäres Gewäsch,” 137.

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78 50


Cited in Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, 108.

51

Meinhof, “Warenhausbrandstiftung,” in konkret 14 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 153–56; here 154–55. See chapter 1. 52

Meinhof, “Kolumnismus,” in konkret 21 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 166–69; here 167. 53

Meinhof, “Doof — weil arm,” in konkret 5 and 6 (1969), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 173–84. 54

Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface,” in Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farringdon (London: Penguin, 2001 [1965; first French edition 1961]), 7–26; here 7. 55

K. Röhl, Fünf Finger sind keine Faust: Eine Abrechnung (Munich: Universitas, 1988 [1947]), 91. Emphasis in original. 56

See Seifert, “Ulrike Meinhof,” 354–55. Seifert cowrote issues 2–8 of the pamphlet. 57

Cited in Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof, 38.

58

Meinhof, “Revolutionsgerede,” in Revolution gegen den Staat? Die außerparlamentarische Opposition — die neue Linke, ed. Hans Dollinger (Berne: Rütten + Loening, 1968), 208–9; here 208. 59

“die unständigen Hafenarbeiter und die von Entlassung durch Automation bedrohten Chemiearbeiter und die von Monotonie durch Mechanisierung verblödeten Metaller und die in Herr & Hund-Verhältnissen lebenden Frauen.” Meinhof, “Revolutionsgerede,” 208. 60

Meinhof, “Revolutionsgerede,” 209.

61

Fanon, The Wretched, 74.

62

Sartre, “Preface,” in Fanon, The Wretched, 19.

63

Letter from Ensslin (early 1973), reprinted in Bakker Schut, das info, 14. My translation. The English translation in the Penguin edition of Fanon diverges from the German translation Ensslin is citing here. See Sartre, “Preface,” in Fanon, The Wretched, 18. 64

See Kristin Wesemann, Ulrike Meinhof: Kommunistin, Journalistin, Terroristin — eine politische Biographie (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2007), 301–2.

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3: The Shrinking Circle (1970–72): From Die Rote Armee aufbauen to the May Bombings Kontakte, Beachtung zu haben gehört zu meinem Beruf als Journalistin und Sozialist, verschafft mir Gehör über Funk und Fernsehen . . . Menschlich ist es sogar erfreulich, deckt aber nicht mein Bedürfnis nach Wärme, nach Solidarität, nach Gruppenzugehörigkeit. [Gaining contacts and recognition is part of my profession as a journalist and socialist, means people listen to me on radio and television . . . On a human level I even enjoy it, but it doesn’t satisfy my need for warmth, for solidarity, for the feeling of being part of a group.] —Ulrike Meinhof, Autumn 1967

A

T ELEVEN O’CLOCK on 14 May 1970, an armed group entered the reading room of the Social Studies Institute of West Berlin’s Free University,1 where Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof were sitting. Medical student Ingrid Schubert, nineteen-year-old Irene Goergens (a former inmate of the Eichenhof home in which Bambule was filmed), and two masked accomplices — subsequently supposed to have been Gudrun Ensslin and Hans-Jürgen Bäcker — burst in. Ironically it was Bäcker, hired by the group as a “specialist” for the occasion, who panicked and fired his gun, but it was Meinhof’s photograph that appeared the following day on “wanted” posters across the Federal Republic. Baader had jumped bail with Ensslin on 10 June 1969, abandoning the Staffelberg project when their appeal against three-year prison sentences for arson was turned down. The couple traveled to Paris. On the advice of their lawyer Horst Mahler — who had hopes of using them to realize his plans for an armed underground organization that would spark the revolution in West Germany — they returned in January 1970, taking refuge in Meinhof’s apartment in Berlin. Discussions about the formation of a guerilla organization, drawing on the Latin American model, began. On 4 April, however, Baader was re-arrested, after being stopped in his car by a police patrol — probably after a tip-off from Peter Urbach, the same government agent who had provided the anti-Springer demonstrators of 1968 with their Molotov cocktails.2 He was taken to Berlin’s Tegel prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.

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THE SHRINKING CIRCLE (1970–72)

His fellow guerillas-in-waiting had been counting on his charisma and energy. Baader tends to be misrepresented in accounts of the RAF: while he could certainly be bullish and offensive, the 974 books found in his cell after his death (which included the philosophical works of Wittgenstein alongside social and political theory) suggest he was not unintelligent.3 Ensslin, Mahler, and Meinhof looked for ways to free him. In early May 1970, Roland Deber, the governor of Tegel prison, received a copy of a book contract from the publishing house Wagenbach. Owner Klaus Wagenbach was a close friend of Meinhof’s (he would later publish both her konkret columns and her drama Bambule), and the contract was for a study of marginalized youth, to be cowritten by the journalist Meinhof and the prisoner Baader. Mahler simultaneously requested permission for Baader to meet with his coauthor to conduct research. On 14 May Baader was brought from prison to the library in the Miquelstraße, where he and Meinhof sat down to work. By all accounts they smoked and talked quietly until the armed “liberators” arrived. The bullet fired by Bäcker hit an employee of the library, Georg Linke, injuring him badly. Baader jumped through a window, and Meinhof followed his example, making her escape with the rest of the group. She forgot her handbag, and the police report describes a revolver found inside it, a detail that casts doubt on the version of events that says her decision to leave with the group was unplanned and taken at the very last moment.4 Had that been the case, it would have made no sense to carry a gun (whose discovery would have severely undermined any tale of surprised innocence). The gun in her handbag suggests Meinhof intended to make her escape with the others into an illegal “underground.”

Revolutionary Language: Die Rote Armee aufbauen The attack that freed Baader might have been just another criminal incident in the absence of two important details: the involvement of the highprofile journalist Meinhof, and a statement released by the perpetrators soon afterward. Die Rote Armee aufbauen (Build the Red Army) appeared in the radical left-wing paper Agit 883 on 5 June 1970. “Genossen von 883” (comrades at 883), it began, es hat keinen Zweck, den falschen Leuten das Richtige erklären zu wollen. Das haben wir lange genug gemacht. Die Baader-Befreiungs-Aktion haben wir nicht den intellektuellen Schwätzern, den Hosenscheißern, den Alles-besser-Wissern zu erklären, sondern den potentiell revolutionären Teilen des Volkes. Das heißt, denen, die die Tat sofort begreifen können, weil sie selbst Gefangene sind. Die auf das Geschwätz der “Linken” nichts geben können, weil es ohne Folgen und Taten geblieben ist.

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[there’s no point trying to explain what’s right to the wrong people. We’ve done that long enough. We don’t need to explain the liberation of Baader to any chattering intellectuals or know-alls, shitting their pants in fear; we need to explain it to the potentially revolutionary elements in the people. That means: the ones who will get it right away because they are themselves held captive. The ones who don’t give a shit for left-wing chatter, because it’s had no results and led to no action.]

Among the potentially revolutionary elements it names “the girls in the Eichenhof home, in the Ollenhauer, and in Heiligensee; the boys in the youth centers, in the Grünes Haus, and in the Kieferngrund” (“[die] Mädchen im Eichenhof, in der Ollenhauer, in Heiligensee, [die] Jungs im Jugendhof, in der Jugendhilfstelle, im Grünen Haus, im Kieferngrund”).5 We are seeing a trace of Meinhof’s, Ensslin’s, and Baader’s work with youngsters in care. The notion that revolutionary support is waiting in the homes was still fueling the group’s hopes at this point, encouraged no doubt by the presence of Irene Goergens among its founder members. Die Rote Armee aufbauen is not least a text about difference; surprisingly, not so much the difference between the RAF and what one would take to be its enemies — the German government, capitalism, imperialism, the right wing — but far more about the difference between itself and the remainder of the West German left. When the piece opens with the assertion that there is no point trying to explain what is right to the wrong people, it is not immediately obvious who “the wrong people” are. It emerges only gradually that they are other left-wingers; designated “petit-bourgeois intellectuals” (“kleinbürgerliche Intellektuelle”) just a few lines on, whose revolutionary talk has “had no results and led to no action.” The RAF, by contrast, has made the move from impotent chatter to action, the potency of which is demonstrated in the successful freeing of Baader. That puts its members a position they themselves (for all their antiauthoritarianism) understand as dominant, and permits them to issue instructions: your job, they tell their left-wing readers, is to go out and explain what we have done: Den Jugendlichen im Märkischen Viertel habt ihr die Baader-Befreiungs-Aktion zu erklären, den Mädchen im Eichenhof . . . Denen habt ihr die Aktion zu vermitteln, die für die Ausbeutung, die sie erleiden, keine Entschädigung bekommen . . . Denen — und nicht den kleinbürgerlichen Intellektuellen — habt ihr zu sagen, daß jetzt Schluß ist . . . daß wir die Rote Armee aufbauen. (24) [Your job is to explain the liberation of Baader to the young people in West Berlin’s high-rise quarter and to the girls in the Eichenhof home . . . your job is to explain our actions to those who

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aren’t compensated for the exploitation they suffer . . . your job is to tell them, not the petit-bourgeois intellectuals, that we’ve had enough . . . that we’re building the Red Army.]

Legally operating left-wingers are now the linguistic footsoldiers of those who have moved beyond impotent theory (“chatter”) to the language of violent action. Action is what differentiates the RAF from the left; it differentiates them even from those they call “comrades” at Agit 883. That form of address soon gives way to “ihr Arschlöcher” (you assholes) and “ihr Torfköppe” (you numbskulls), and the remainder of the document is peppered with implicit orders, all using the formula “habt ihr . . . zu tun” (your job is to . . .). In the final paragraph, explicit orders take over: “don’t sit there on your police-raided sofas,” the RAF commands; “build up a propaganda apparatus, dump the wimps who’re wetting themselves . . . find out where the care homes are . . . and don’t get caught” (“Sitzt nicht auf dem hausdurchsuchten Sofa herum. . . . Baut den richtigen Verteilungsapparat auf, laßt die Hosenscheißer liegen . . . Kriegt raus, wo die Heime sind . . . Und laßt euch nicht schnappen”). This attitude of dominance is justified in language that sounds oddly childish: “don’t tell us it’s too hard,” the text insists; “the operation to liberate Baader wasn’t exactly easy” (“Quatscht nicht, das sei zu schwer. Die Baader-Befreiungs-Aktion war auch kein Deckchensticken”; 25–26). The key members of the founder group were (with the notable exception of Baader) university educated, and included high-profile professionals such as the journalist Meinhof and the lawyer Mahler. Ensslin had been enrolled in a PhD program. When they devalue political theory and academic debate as the chattering of (other) middle-class intellectuals, who are too comfortable or too lily-livered to admit that personal engagement and action are what really matters, the new revolutionaries are distancing themselves from their own social and intellectual backgrounds. Their declared identification now is with the workers and with society’s outcasts. The notion that marginalized groups (such as young people in care) will rise and join them is coupled with the expectation that other elements among the people will be fired up by their action. It is clearly not uppermost in their minds that the operation to free Baader has in practical terms done nothing for the workers and nothing for the outcasts, but was primarily an expression of solidarity with one of their own. They call it an Aktion (operation), a key word in German left-wing parlance. Aktion means not only “the spontaneous yet organized, collective, focused realization of the revolutionary spirit in practical action,” but “emergence from the stage of merely having a political opinion to changing the world, with a will to go all the way, even to practice violence.

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Aktion means strength, power.”6 If the RAF’s audience accepts the term, then liberating Baader becomes an emancipatory act in the wider sense of “changing the world,” and not just the release from prison of the individual Andreas Baader. That, importantly, makes it an altruistic act. Where criminals operate for personal gain, in the RAF’s construction of its own identity the notion of altruism is key. The manifesto is written in the voice of the collective. It is attributed by some sources to Ensslin;7 Ensslin herself, however, designated Meinhof the “voice” of the RAF,8 and as a rule RAF documents were written by Meinhof, in the context of discussion with the group. In Die Rote Armee aufbauen, the shift into a revolutionary mode is signaled via a shift into radically low register, reminiscent of the rebellious colloquial energy of the television drama Bambule. Like Bambule, the manifesto reads like a practical experiment in rejecting the conventions of language. In her drama, Meinhof had tested the idea that formal language supports the hierarchies of a class-based system, and is used to disable action for change. As the language of the system, it is the means by which the system protects itself. But another kind of language — the low-register, “proletarian” speech used by the girls — is revolutionary language; it establishes solidarity and transports energy for change. This is the language that leaps off the page at us in the RAF’s first manifesto. What Die Rote Armee aufbauen fails to acknowledge is that this language is as inauthentic to most members of the RAF as middle-class diction was to the girls in the Eichenhof home. Words and phrases associated with low-register speech are the hallmark: “assholes” and “numbskulls,” as well as the informal, second-person plural ihr address (rather than the more conventional and formal Sie). Key words in the RAF vocabulary begin to emerge, such as “chatter” (Geschwätz); any kind of political theory or argument that is not tied to armed activity is now chatter, and those who indulge in it, chatterers or Schwätzer (24). Chatter is the polar opposite of action: in her column for konkret after the emergency laws were passed despite peaceful (verbal) protest, Meinhof had asserted that the alternative to class war was “empty chatter” (“leeres Geschwätz”).9 For Meinhof, and now for the RAF, theory without action is empty language: it is language that has lost the power to signify. What signifies is armed action. When she heroicized the demonstrations that followed the gun attack on Rudi Dutschke in 1968, Meinhof described acts of physical violence that, to her mind, deserved the positively connoted term resistance. That was a move away from the child’s play of verbal protest to something altogether more serious: in her concluding words, “the fun’s over now” (“der Spaß hat aufgehört”).10 A similar ominous excitement accompanies the move from the “play” of verbal combat to the world of actual violence in Die Rote Armee aufbauen.

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Die Rote Armee aufbauen flouts a range of conventions. It flouts the rules of courtesy with — for example — the abusive “you assholes” and “you numbskulls.” Not only the words but the grammar offends against convention: in its first revolutionary text, the RAF refuses to observe the basic grammatical standards that were an unquestioned part of Meinhof’s journalistic work — such as constructing sentences that contain main verbs. Because formal language is associated with powerful institutions (schools, universities, the government, the law), the deliberate subversion of its rules can be read as rebellious, even as revolutionary. The implication of “numbskulls” and “assholes” is superiority or authority: the RAF has established itself (in its own view) as a revolutionary avant-garde and has thereby (in its own view) acquired a right to address the legally operating left in this way. The notion that actions are superior to language, and that the members of the RAF have cut the Gordian knot of language’s limitations, goes some way towards explaining the tone and style. The cavalier approach taken to linguistic conventions signals a diminishment of the status of language that is in keeping with the primacy of praxis.11 It is not enough to dismiss the manifesto as an adolescent-sounding explosion, inappropriate in the educated adults who collectively wrote it. Traversing the boundaries of language — breaking the rules — is a significant act. For real adolescents, crossing the boundaries of polite language goes hand-in-hand with crossing other thresholds in life. Whether in adolescents crossing over to become adults, or in adult RAF members throwing over their previous lives to become revolutionaries, it is an attempt at self-empowerment; it expresses a will to occupy a position of authority rather than submitting (in a childlike way) to authority. It is also a moment of risk, because asserting an empowered self means that elements in life that once were play — the kind of practice and experimentation with ideas and things that are part of a child’s development — become serious, and may have life-or-death consequences. (A year after this text was written, twenty-year-old Petra Schelm became the first RAF member to die in an exchange of fire with police, and it was unclear for some time whether the Berlin library worker Georg Linke would survive his liver injury.) The bravado of Die Rote Armee aufbauen almost certainly reflects, or is an attempt to hide, the nervousness and insecurity of the group in its new context of armed violence. Strikingly different from Meinhof’s journalistic texts is its use of the “we” form. In her columns, which normally had the rhetorical function of including her readers, an “insider” group was created that implicitly shared her views and was allied with her. In her self-reflexive piece on the role of the columnist, for example, Meinhof had complained of the “alibi” function of columnists like herself — their unrestricted polemic, she argued, is a cover-up for the reactionary position of editors who are

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looking only for sales. “We are not looking for sainthood,” she asserted, on behalf of herself and other columnists, “we only ask that resistance is practiced and nobody tries to sell submission to the rules of the market as free journalism” (“Wir wollen keine Heiligen, wir verlangen nur, daß Widerstand geleistet wird und die Unterwerfung unter die Gesetze des Marktes nicht als freier Journalismus ausgegeben wird”).12 The first person plural gathered an imaginary group of like-minded people around herself, and thereby lent her own view the weight of common opinion. In Die Rote Armee aufbauen the “we” form functions differently. Instead of including the group addressed, the pronoun excludes its audience. The impetus is toward separateness rather than togetherness, something that comes to characterize the textual stance of the RAF. “We maintain that organizing armed resistance groups in the Federal Republic and West Berlin at this point in time is right, is possible, and is justified,” its next collective publication would declare (“Wir behaupten, daß die Organisierung von bewaffneten Widerstandsgruppen zu diesem Zeitpunkt in der Bundesrepublik und Westberlin richtig ist, möglich ist, gerechtfertigt ist”).13 It is perfectly clear that the “we” used here has no intention to include imaginary or real others: “we” are the RAF and only the RAF; there is an inside and an outside, an “us and them” structure. No surprise, then, when reactions from the left sound like Til Schulz’s in 1974: “the groups engaged in armed struggle are representative of nobody but themselves” (“Die den bewaffneten Kampf führenden Gruppen repräsentieren nur sich selbst”).14 Other rhetorical practices in evidence in the RAF texts mirror Meinhof’s earlier work. One of her columns, about a popular Crimewatchor America’s Most Wanted–style television series, opened with a typically polemical assertion: “the television program The XY File — Case Unsolved is a mammoth, fantastical fraud” (“Die Fernsehunterhaltungssendung ‘Aktenzeichen XY — ungelöst’ [ist] ein großangelegter, phantastischer Massenbetrug”).15 This is an opinion, but the form in which it is presented coerces the reader into accepting it as fact. Something structurally similar is happening at the beginning of Die Rote Armee aufbauen. First the recipients of the RAF’s message are divided into two groups: the “chattering intellectuals” are distinguished from the potentially revolutionary elements among the people. Then the second group, the revolutionary elements, is defined more precisely: “That means: the ones who will get it right away because they are themselves held captive” (“Das heißt, denen, die die Tat sofort begreifen können, weil sie selbst Gefangene sind”; 24). In both cases — the column and the manifesto — the verb “to be” is being used polemically: the TV program is a mammoth fraud (we are not told why), the German underclasses are prisoners like Baader. A rhetorical bridge is built between ex-convict Andreas Baader and those who are, metaphorically, prisoners of their social circumstances.

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It is a weak bridge, a “chatterer” might protest: the situation of one individual in custody like Baader cannot be equated with the situation of an entire underclass on the margins of society. The comparison only stands up if the energy of the text distracts the reader from looking more closely, or thinking too carefully. Because the RAF hopes for their support, those who are socially marginalized in the Federal Republic are redefined as like the group’s leader, Andreas Baader.16 Looking back, it seems odd that the group harbored any hopes at all of sparking a revolution in affluent West Germany. But the name it adopted — Rote Armee Fraktion — expresses the notion that, as a faction or fraction, it was in fact one part of a greater whole. Its sense of itself is in an international rather than national revolutionary context: what is just starting in Germany, says the RAF, has already started in Vietnam and across the world (“das, was hier jetzt losgeht, [ist] in Vietnam, Palästina, Guatemala, in Oakland und Watts, in Kuba und China, in Angola und New York schon losgegangen”; 26). In her columns Meinhof had routinely used historical and geographical parallels to dramatize the West German situation: peace protesters were the new Jews under a new fascism, and student rebels the new Vietnamese, under fire from imperialist forces in Berlin;17 now the RAF was framing its actions in a world context that constructed the group as part of a global movement. Meinhof’s journalistic parallels were unsubstantiated (peace activists did not suffer the fate of European Jews, and student protesters in Germany were not napalmed), and the Red Army Faction was overstating the global revolutionary movement that appeared to make sense of its existence. The struggles for freedom abroad that were its points of inspiration — Bolivia, Vietnam, China, Cuba, Russia, Uruguay — were nationally focused responses to situations of domestic crisis. West Germany in 1970 was not in a comparable situation. The RAF’s internationalist stance made more sense in the context of German history than world geography, and more sense psychologically (as self-justification) than strategically: the National Socialists under Hitler self-identified, as the party’s name suggested, in the first instance as fighters for national freedom — even as revolutionaries in the national cause — and when the RAF constructed itself as a “fraction” of a world movement or global revolution, rather than as a national activist group, that enabled it to step around the historical bearpit of German nationalism. Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth suggested that when the inhabitants of the colonies turn around and seek violently to overthrow the self-appointed masters, they are meeting violence with justified violence, something Meinhof in her columns for konkret came to describe as counter-violence, and later as resistance.18 Algeria and West Germany are, socially and politically speaking, worlds apart, but in identifying with the postcolonial situation, the RAF was able to present its

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members after the liberation of Baader as local heroes of an international resistance movement.

Das Konzept Stadtguerilla Either you are a member of the RAF, or you are not “one of us.” That was a core message of Die Rote Armee aufbauen. The group’s next position paper, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla (Concept Urban Guerilla), developed and solidified that approach, borrowing from one of America’s Black Panther leaders, Eldridge Cleaver, to assert that “with us” or “against us” are the only options: “there’s nothing in between” (“Dazwischen gibt es nichts”).19 The piece appeared in the newsmagazine Spiegel on 26 April 1971,20 released, again, in the name of the collective (the RAF consistently placed the group above the individual, a reason why the courts later found it so difficult to sentence individual members of the organization). After the successful operation to free Baader, the RAF’s first press release had harangued the West German left in what looked like the expectation of unconditional admiration. The much longer second manifesto has a more defensive feel. It shows the group addressing the robust rejection (rather than admiration) it has met with on the left. Its members have been called anarchists, irresponsible, unscrupulous, hierarchical in their internal organization, and ruthless in their methods.21 The first section of the Konzept engages with these and other accusations. There is a tangible sense of injury, but the group also feels a threat to its ethos or reputation. Critics of the RAF are called denouncers (“falsch und denunziatorisch”);22 the connotations of denunciation during Nazism metaphorically position the RAF on the courageous, selfless side of the resistance. Criticism of the group had focused on an interview conducted with Meinhof, while she was in hiding, by French journalist Michèle Ray, excerpts of which had been published in Spiegel. Meinhof knew Ray through her own work in journalism, but the Konzept dismisses the interview as inauthentic. Among other things, the Spiegel piece included a reference to Andreas Baader as a “cadre” — read on the left as (further) evidence of the RAF’s elitism — and transcribed a couple of sentences spoken by Meinhof that would become notorious. Questioned by Ray on the subject of the police, Meinhof reportedly answered: Wenn man es hier mit den Bullen zu tun hat, wird argumentiert, die sind ihrer Funktion nach natürlich brutal, ihrer Funktion nach müssen sie prügeln und schießen und ihrer Funktion nach müssen sie Unterdrückung betreiben, aber das ist ja auch nur die Uniform und es ist nur die Funktion, und der Mann, der sie trägt, ist vielleicht zu Hause ein ganz angenehmer Zeitgenosse. Das ist ein Problem und

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wir sagen natürlich, der Typ in der Uniform ist ein Schwein, das ist kein Mensch, und so haben wir uns mit ihm auseinanderzusetzen. Das heißt, wir haben nicht mit ihm zu reden und es ist falsch, überhaupt mit diesen Leuten zu reden, und natürlich kann geschossen werden.23 [When you’re dealing with the pigs, people argue that it’s just their function to be brutal; it’s their function to beat people up and shoot and it’s their function to practice oppression, but really that’s just the uniform and just a function, and the man in the uniform might be quite a nice kind of guy when he’s at home. That’s a problem, and our response to it of course is that the guy in uniform is a swine, not a person, and we’re going to deal with him on those terms. That means we’re not going to talk to him, and that it’s wrong to engage in any kind of talk with these people, and of course shooting is a possibility.]

Almost immediately left-wing author Günter Wallraff responded, in a piece called “Ulrikes Rote Armee” (Ulrike’s Red Army). Wallraff objects strongly to the dehumanizing of the police as “swine” and the superhumanizing of Baader as a “cadre.” He rejects the idea that the RAF is a left-wing organization: the equation of police officers with swine that can be killed, he says, has “placed the ‘Red Army’ group outside of any kind of socialist endeavor to change the world” (“Die Gleichsetzung der Polizeiangestellten mit Schweinen, die man umbringen kann . . . stellte die Gruppe der ‘Roten Armee’ außerhalb jeder sozialistischen Anstrengung zur Veränderung der Welt”). He reminds his readers of the fate of Georg Linke, noting that Meinhof has neglected to mention whether the sixty-year-old librarian, who almost lost his life, was a “swine” who could be shot without scruple (“Meinhof ist uns leider die Antwort darauf schuldig geblieben, ob auch der sechzigjährige Institutsangestellte, der bei der Befreiung fast ums Leben gekommen wäre, ein ‘Schwein’ ist, das man ohne Skrupel erschießen könnte”).24 In the Konzept Stadtguerilla that question is answered: the RAF insists that violence against persons was not intended: “the question whether we would have gone ahead with the operation to liberate Baader if we had known that a Linke [in German, Georg Linke’s name permits a pun on “left-winger”] would be shot during it, can only be answered with a No” (“Die Frage, ob die Gefangenenbefreiung auch dann gemacht worden wäre, wenn wir gewußt hätten, daß ein Linke dabei angeschossen wird . . . kann nur mit Nein beantwortet werden”). That is a step back from the glorification of the armed struggle in Die Rote Armee aufbauen. But the RAF’s new logo — a machine gun embellishes the letters RAF that head the paper — does not encourage us to believe that the group is really rethinking its position on violence, nor does its justification of its continued existence: “We maintain,” this section of the text concludes,

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“that the organizing of armed resistance groups in the Federal Republic and West Berlin at this point in time is right, is possible, and is justified” (“Wir behaupten, daß die Organisierung von bewaffneten Widerstandsgruppen zu diesem Zeitpunkt in der Bundesrepublik und Westberlin richtig ist, möglich ist, gerechtfertigt ist”; 30–31). In her last months as a journalist, Meinhof had reformulated the slogan of the women’s movement — ”the personal is political” — to suggest that only what we experience personally can be the basis for authentically political action.25 Section 4 of the Konzept opens with an excerpt from Mao’s speech “On Practice” of 1937: Wer ein bestimmtes Ding oder einen Komplex von Dingen direkt kennen lernen will, muß persönlich am praktischen Kampf zur Veränderung der Wirklichkeit . . . teilnehmen, denn nur so kommt er mit der Erscheinung der betreffenden Dinge in Berührung, und erst durch die persönliche Teilnahme am praktischen Kampf zur Veränderung der Wirklichkeit ist er imstande, das Wesen jenes Dinges bzw. jenes Komplexes von Dingen zu enthüllen und sie zu verstehen. (36)26 [If you want to know a certain thing or a certain class of things directly, you must personally participate in the practical struggle to change reality, to change that thing or class of things, for only thus can you come into contact with them as phenomena; only through personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the essence of that thing or class of things and comprehend them.]

Again, personal experience is the basis for revolutionary action, and the remainder of the lengthy Konzept Stadtguerilla is structured to demonstrate why the strategies and opinions of the RAF, derived from personal experience, are (a) right, (b) possible or realizable, and (c) justified. After accusations from the left have been countered, and counteraccusations made, the text tackles the question why the creation of a West German urban guerilla is right. The answer it gives is that the Federal Republic is a key player in the U.S.-led project that is global capitalism. That is what makes it necessary, in the context of the battle against capitalist imperialism, to destabilize, and ideally disable, the West German government from within. A third section then deals with what has made the creation of a West German guerilla possible, and here the RAF’s answer is: the student movement. Yet another aspect of the difference between the Red Army Faction and the left, we are instructed, is that the RAF does not deny its origins in the student movement (“Die Rote Armee Fraktion leugnet im Unterschied zu den proletarischen Organisationen der Neuen Linken ihre Vorgeschichte als Geschichte der Studentenbewegung nicht”;

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36–40). The movement is credited with recognizing that it is the world context that makes sense of revolutionary activity in West Germany: the students, we are told, saw that in the face of imperialism’s global strategy the perspective of national struggles had to be international (35).27 In something of a turnabout from its antitheoretical, anti-intellectual stance in Die Rote Armee aufbauen (and possibly in a belated bid for more student support), the RAF now gives the students credit for raising the profile of Marxist theory: Es ist das Verdienst der Studentenbewegung in der Bundesrepublik und Westberlin . . . den Marxismus-Leninismus im Bewußtsein wenigstens der Intelligenz als diejenige politische Theorie rekonstruiert zu haben, ohne die politische, ökonomische und ideologische Tatsachen und ihre Erscheinungsformen nicht auf den Begriff zu bringen sind. (34) [It is the achievement of the student movement in the Federal Republic and West Berlin to have reconstructed Marxist-Leninist thought in the consciousness at least of the intelligensia as the political theory without which political, economic and ideological facts and the forms in which they are expressed cannot be given a name.]

That, crucially, provided the language that was needed for a critique of capitalist ideology. The phrase used here for “giving a name” to something: auf den Begriff bringen, is extremely important in the RAF vocabulary. Begriff is the noun from the German verb begreifen (to understand), where greifen means literally to grasp or get hold of. It is a physical notion: naming (auf den Begriff bringen) arises out of understanding the things we have experienced (begreifen), where experience is the basis for the subjective politics of the RAF. (It so happens that, on the page of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Grammar that was open on Meinhof’s desk when she died, Wittgenstein was describing the process of acquiring knowledge through experience: begreifen.)28 The student movement only failed, the argument continues, because the students’ relationship with revolution was too abstract; they did not recognize that it is learning through personal experience that renders political activity authentic and effective: “trust your own experience!” the Konzept quotes Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael in the original English (44). Exactly that had been Meinhof’s argument in her piece on the tomato-throwing women of the SDS.29 The fourth section addresses the primacy of praxis, and accounts for why a practicing guerilla in the Federal Republic is justified. West Germany’s working classes are not yet ready to lead the revolution, it admits, nor even to be organized by enlightened intellectuals (such as the students) into revolutionary activity. But precisely for this reason (as Che Guevara’s

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focus theory had suggested) a practical revolutionary example needs to be set — those, like the RAF, who have grasped the necessity of change will have to lead from the front: Wir behaupten, daß ohne revolutionäre Initiative, ohne die praktische revolutionäre Intervention der Avantgarde, der sozialistischen Arbeiter und Intellektuellen, ohne den konkreten antiimperialistischen Kampf es keinen Vereinheitlichungsprozeß gibt, daß das Bündnis nur in gemeinsamen Kämpfen hergestellt wird oder nicht, in denen der bewußte Teil der Arbeiter und Intellektuellen nicht Regie zu führen, sondern voranzugehen hat. (37) [We assert that without a revolutionary initiative, without a practical revolutionary intervention from the avant-garde from socialist workers and intellectuals, without a concrete anti-imperialist struggle there can be no unifying process; that a revolutionary alliance will be forged — or not — only through common battles, which the classaware among the workers and intellectuals should not try to direct, but should go on ahead and fight.]

Praxis, in this argument, is the only way forward, and for this reason the example of revolutionary violence provided by the RAF is justified. The section of this paper that deals specifically with the notion of an urban guerilla opens with another reference to Mao, who in 1958 had called Western imperialism a “paper tiger.” If that is right, the Konzept muses, und wenn die These der chinesischen Kommunisten richtig ist, daß der Sieg über den amerikanischen Imperialismus dadurch möglich geworden ist, daß an allen Ecken und Enden der Welt der Kampf gegen ihn geführt wird, so daß dadurch die Kräfte des Imperialismus zersplittert werden und durch ihre Zersplitterung schlagbar werden — wenn das richtig ist, dann gibt es keinen Grund, irgendein Land und irgendeine Region aus dem antiimperialistischen Kampf . . . auszuschließen. (40) [and if the hypothesis of the Chinese communists is right: namely, that victory over American imperialism has become possible because the battle against it is now being fought in every corner of the world — with the result that imperialism’s energies are being shattered, and because they are shattered, can be defeated — if all that is right, then there is no reason to exclude any country or any region from the anti-imperialist struggle.]

For once the focus is, rather than on their squabbles with the West German left, on what we might assume to be the “real” enemy: global imperialism. But the RAF quickly returns to familiar local territory. Just thinking about the anti-imperialist struggle takes the group back to the old differences: “the

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contradiction between the honest comrades in the organizations — leaving aside the chatterers for now — and the Red Army Faction,” they decide, “is that we reproach them with sapping the energy of the revolution and they suspect us of uselessly expending the energy of the revolution” (“Der Widerspruch zwischen den ehrlichen Genossen in den Organisationen — lassen wir die Schwätzer mal raus — und der Roten Armee Fraktion, ist der, daß wir ihnen vorwerfen, die Kräfte der Revolution zu entmutigen, und daß sie uns verdächtigen, wir würden die Kräfte der Revolution verheizen”; 40). Having established that guerilla activity in West Germany is right, possible, and justified, the Konzept goes on to outline a methodology: the strategy of the urban guerilla. Revolutions, we are reminded, have already happened or are in progress in Russia, China, Cuba, Algeria, Palestine, and Vietnam. In the context of the time, one should not forget how recent were events in Cuba, where in 1959 Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had led a successful Communist revolution, in the face of opposition from the United States. Castro’s guerilla was largely rural rather than urban, but for those who wanted to believe revolution was possible, it was an inspiring example: relatively small armed units led by Castro, Che, and Camilo Cienfuegos defeated a U.S.-supported government force to take power in Cuba’s capital city Havana — a modern David-and-Goliath story. Unsurprising, then, that Latin America is the RAF’s most specific source of inspiration in its concept for an urban guerilla: there as here, says the RAF, the guerilla was “the method of revolutionary intervention practiced by what are on the whole weak revolutionary energies” (“Es ist dort, was es auch hier nur sein kann: die revolutionäre Interventionsmethode von insgesamt schwachen revolutionären Kräften”; 41–43). Events in Latin America have shown that even when “weak revolutionary energies” are massively outflanked, the guerilla may win through with the support of the people. The Konzept Stadtguerilla predated the collapse (in 1972) of the Uruguayan Tupamaros, who in 1971 still looked like the perfect example of functioning urban guerillas. They had managed the successful kidnapping, ransom, and release of prominent figures as well as some spectacular robberies with subsequent Robin Hood–style handouts to the workers and underclass,30 and were the direct inspiration for groups of radical activists in the Federal Republic: the Tupamaros München and the Tupamaros West-Berlin. The urban element in the RAF’s concept derives neither from Cuba nor directly from Uruguay, however, but from a pamphlet written by the Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella: the Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla of 1969. Marighella, who had founded the Aliança Libertadora Nacional (ALN) in Brazil in 1968 and was shot dead by Brazilian police in 1969, provided theoretical guidelines for an urban or city-based guerilla. His Minimanual is cited by the RAF as an authoritative document (42).

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With a revolutionary methodology in place, the sixth and final section tackles issues of legality and illegality, and the important question why the RAF, unlike other organizations, has chosen to abandon the path of legally acceptable political agitation. In the face of accusations that the illegality of the RAF is damaging to the left as a whole, and permits or even encourages a “police state,” the argument opens with the (correct) recognition that legality is a question of power, and that the notion of the criminal is constructed by those in power to isolate individuals and groups who threaten to undermine the system. In March 1970, Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD) had persuaded a majority in parliament to pass an amnesty for all demonstration-related crimes that attracted a prison sentence of less than eight months. That was, in effect, a move to decriminalize and rehabilitate a large body of middle-class students and protesters who had fallen foul of the law, and is analyzed by the RAF as such: Indem man die Kriminalisierung hunderter von Studenten aufhob, kamen diese mit dem Schrecken davon, wurde weiterer Radikalisierung vorgebeugt, wurden sie energisch daran erinnert, was die Privilegien bürgerlichen Studentenseins wert sind . . . So wurde die Klassenschranke zwischen ihnen und dem Proletariat wieder aufgerichtet. (47) [reversing the criminalization of hundreds of students achieved the effect that the students got off with a scare, further radicalization was avoided, and they were energetically reminded of how much the privileges of a bourgeois student existence are worth, . . . In this way the class divide between the students and the proletariat was reerected.]

Criminalization, then, is a moment of possible connection between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and the RAF argues that it has reestablished that connection through its decision to embrace illegality. (Nonetheless, after their arrests in the summer of 1972, the same RAF members would invest enormous amounts of energy in the fight to be recognized as political prisoners rather than criminals). Linguistically speaking, the Konzept Stadtguerilla has a distinctly calmer feel after the exhilarated overexcitement of Die Rote Armee aufbauen. To some extent its language continues to flout formal register: we find adjectives like mies (lousy) and durchgeknallt (mental), and verbs such as reinlegen (bamboozle) or abhauen (scram). Nouns like Dreck (muck) feature alongside Knarre (piece, a slang word for a gun) and Bullen for police officers (pigs, literally bulls; the American term “pigs” is also used in its original form, borrowed from the writings of the Black Panthers; 27–30). All of these words belong to a left-wing revolutionary jargon that had also informed the language of Die Rote Armee aufbauen.

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But in long sections of the RAF’s second publication — far more so than in the first — the educated voice familiar from Meinhof’s journalism returns: Unter dem Deckmantel des politischen Reformismus nimmt im übrigen die Monopolisierung von staatlicher und wirtschaftlicher Macht zu, was Schiller mit seiner Wirtschaftspolitik betreibt und Strauß mit seiner Finanzreform durchgesetzt hat, die Verschärfung der Ausbeutung durch Arbeitsintensivierung und Arbeitsteilung im Bereich der Produktion, durch langfristigere Rationalisierungsmaßnahmen im Bereich der Verwaltung und der Dienstleistungen. (75) [Under cover of the political reform movement, the monopolization of state and economic power is still growing — Minister for Trade and Industry Schiller is supporting it with his economic policies, and Finance Minister Strauß is pushing it through with his monetary reform; we now have increased exploitation, through the intensification of labor and division of labor in the area of production, and through more long-term rationalization measures in the areas of administration and the service industries.]

This is a paragraph that — like a number of others in the Konzept — could have been lifted directly from konkret. In a column called “Vietnam und die Deutschen” (Vietnam and the Germans) of 1967, Meinhof had propounded the notion that anyone who does not absolutely reject the situation in Vietnam is, willy-nilly, a full-blown supporter of U.S. imperialism: “anyone who does not deny the war in Vietnam support and sympathy,” she declared, “is, whether they like it or not, on the side of America’s struggle for world hegemony” (“Wer dem Krieg in Vietnam Zustimmung und Sympathie nicht verweigert, steht, ob er das will oder nicht, auf der Seite des amerikanischen Hegemoniestrebens in der Welt”). “Anyone who does (or is) this, must also do (or be) that” is a formula that is as effective as it is dishonest: it pretends to logic, but in fact seeks to manipulate via a logical fallacy. “Anyone who conducts a discussion using a rubber truncheon,” the essay continues, “anyone who denies the populace the facts about the character of the American war in Vietnam . . . is turning a democracy into a police state, and citizens into lackeys” (“Wer die Diskussion mit dem Gummiknüppel führt . . . wer der Bevölkerung die Tatsachen über den Charakter der amerikanischen Kriegsführung in Vietnam vorenthält, . . . macht aus der Demokratie einen Polizeistaat, aus Staatsbürgern Befehlsempfänger”).31 We meet the formula again in the Konzept Stadtguerilla. Defending itself against fierce criticism that it is replicating Nazi structures, the RAF goes on the offensive with the assertion that anyone who imagines that the illegal organization of armed resistance is akin to Nazi

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violence is himself looking to provoke a (Nazi-style) pogrom (“Wer sich die illegale Organisation von bewaffneten Widerstand nach dem Muster von Freikorps und Feme vorstellt, will selbst das Pogrom”; 28). The anyone who formula prescribes, even enforces a definition of the person or group it pertains to. Anyone who thinks, wants, or does one thing, the sentence structure insists, is unavoidably linked with another. The implied causal link may not actually exist, of course: behind the anyone who formulation lurks rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Another common language trick works in a similar way. In one of her last essays for konkret Meinhof had stated plainly: “columns are luxury goods” (“Kolumnen sind Luxusartikel”).32 The simplicity invites acceptance of the sentence as a truism. But if we look just a little more closely, it emerges that the apparently plain statement is in fact a metaphor: one thing is being compared with another, but — in the way of metaphor — without the comparative element (“like”) being made explicit. The verb “to be” often tricks us into accepting an arbitrary comparison as fact. “Columnism is personalization,” Meinhof goes on; “opportunism is when in practical terms you reproduce the conditions that you theoretically pretend to be opposing” (“Kolumnismus ist Personalisierung. Opportunismus ist, wenn man die Verhältnisse, die man theoretisch zu bekämpfen vorgibt, praktisch nur reproduziert”).33 The second assertion, about opportunism, is less obviously metaphorical, but nonetheless an equivalence is suggested between things that are not necessarily the same. Opportunism is in her opinion defined by situations such as she describes, and Meinhof is asserting a writer’s authority to define things on her audience’s behalf. That technique also has a tradition in political speech: “The trade unionist politics of the working classes is precisely the bourgeois politics of the working classes,” the Konzept cites Lenin (“die tradeunionistische Politik der Arbeiterklasse ist aber eben bürgerliche Politik der Arbeiterklasse”; 39, my emphasis.), and we find it again in the well known opening of “Vom Protest zum Widerstand” (From Protest to Resistance): “protest is when I say that I object to something or other,” Meinhof announced there; “resistance is when I make sure that the thing that I object to stops happening. Protest is when I say I’m not going to put up with it any more. Resistance is when I see to it that no one else puts up with it either” (“Protest ist, wenn ich sage, das und das paßt mir nicht. Widerstand ist, wenn ich dafür sorge, daß das, was mir nicht paßt, nicht länger geschieht. Protest ist, wenn ich sage, ich mache nicht mehr mit. Widerstand ist, wenn ich dafür sorge, daß alle andern auch nicht mehr mitmachen”).34 It is common usage — we all do it — but it deserves our attention, not least because it is a usage that blurs the boundaries between opinion and reality, and would come to characterize the texts of the RAF. Meinhof’s defining use of the verb “to be” has a variant that uses the verb “to mean.” “Stadtguerilla heißt, sich von der Gewalt des Systems

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nicht demoralisieren zu lassen” (urban guerilla means not being demoralized by the violence of the system; 42, my emphasis), the Konzept tells us, and continues: Die Studentenbewegung als kleinbürgerliche Revolte abtun, heißt: sie auf die Selbstüberschätzung, die sie begleitete, reduzieren; heißt: ihren Ursprung aus dem konkreten Widerspruch zwischen bürgerlicher Ideologie und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft leugnen; heißt: mit der Erkenntnis ihrer notwendigen Begrenztheit das theoretische Niveau verleugnen, das ihr antikapitalistischer Protest schon erreicht hatte. (34, my emphasis) [Dismissing the student movement as a petit-bourgeois revolt means reducing it to the overconfidence that accompanied it; means denying its origin in the genuine contradiction between bourgeois ideology and bourgeois society; means recognizing its necessary limitations without seeing the theoretical level its anticapitalist protest had achieved.]

That mode of assertive defining has a history in political discourse, too: “victory means accepting in principle that life is not a revolutionary’s most valuable possession” the Konzept cites French political scientist Régis Debray (“Siegen heißt, prinzipiell akzeptieren, daß das Leben nicht das höchste Gut des Revolutionärs ist”). In the case of both the “is” and the “means” formula, the speaker implies that his understanding of a situation is the correct one — he has grasped the real meaning of things, and is sharing it. The RAF is seeking to demonstrate that it, like Lenin and Debray, has the power to define, to give meaning, particularly, of course, to the practice of armed violence: Praxislos ist die Lektüre des “Kapital” nichts als bürgerliches Studium. Praxislos sind programmatische Erklärungen nur Geschwätz. Praxislos ist proletarischer Internationalismus nur Angeberei. Theoretisch den Standpunkt des Proletariats einnehmen, heißt ihn praktisch einnehmen. (39–40, my emphasis) [Without translation into practice, reading Marx’s Das Kapital is nothing more than bourgeois study. Without translation into practice, programmatic declarations are no more than chatter. Without translation into practice, proletarian internationalism is just showing off. Taking the proletarian standpoint theoretically means also taking that standpoint in practical terms.]

Here the rhetorical device of repetition (“without translation into practice”) is joined to the effect of the defining verbs “to be” and “to mean.” In the classical rhetorical manner, it is a triple repetition; exactly the same

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technique is used in the Konzept’s description of the recent history of leftwing protest in Germany. The left knew, we are told, daß es richtig sein würde, sozialistische Propaganda im Betrieb mit der tatsächlichen Verhinderung der Auslieferung der Bild-Zeitung zu verbinden. Daß es richtig wäre, die Propaganda bei den GIs, sich nicht nach Vietnam schicken zu lassen, mit tatsächlichen Angriffen auf Militärflugzeuge für Vietnam zu verbinden, . . . Daß es richtig wäre, die Kritik an der Klassenjustiz mit dem Sprengen von Gefängnismauern zu verbinden. (36, my emphasis) [that it would be right to combine socialist propaganda in the factories with physically preventing the Bild-Zeitung from being delivered. That it would be right to combine propaganda telling the GIs not to let themselves get sent to Vietnam with physical attacks on military aircraft destined for Vietnam, . . . That it would be right to combine criticism of class-based justice with breaking down the prison walls.]

The device becomes ubiquitous; the urban guerilla, we learn, geht davon aus, daß es die preußische Marschordnung nicht geben wird, in der viele sogenannte Revolutionäre das Volk in den revolutionären Kampf führen möchten. Geht davon aus, daß dann, wenn die Situation reif sein wird für den bewaffneten Kampf, es zu spät sein wird, ihn erst vorzubereiten. Daß es ohne revolutionäre Initiative in einem Land, dessen Potential an Gewalt so groß, dessen revolutionäre Traditionen so kaputt und so schwach sind wie in der Bundesrepublik, auch dann keine revolutionare Orientierung geben wird. (41, my emphasis) [assumes that the Prussian marching order, in which many so-called revolutionaries want to lead the people to revolutionary battle, will not happen. Assumes that when the situation is ripe for the armed struggle it will be too late to begin organizing it. That without a revolutionary initiative in a country whose potential for violence is so great, and whose revolutionary traditions are so broken and weak as in the Federal Republic, there will be no revolutionary orientation.]

We can compare this with Meinhof’s account for konkret in 1968 of the scandal surrounding West Germany’s president, Heinrich Lübke, and his Nazi past: Tatsächlich ist es nur ein Symptom, tatsächlich ist auch das ganze Drum und Dran nur symptomatisch für die Funktionsunfähigkeit dieser Demokratie, ihre Inhaltslosigkeit, ihre radikale Unglaubwürdigkeit. Da steht gleichrangig neben dem Vorwurf, daß Lübke KZ’s gebaut

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hat, der Vorwurf, daß seine Frau sich ihres hohen Alters schämt . . . Da steht gleichrangig neben dem Vorwurf, daß Lübke mit KZ-Häftlingen gearbeitet hat . . . der Vorwurf, daß er sich öfters bei seinen Reden verhaspelt, . . . Da steht gleichrangig neben dem Vorwurf, daß Lübke ein Vertrauensmann der Gestapo war . . . der Vorwurf, daß er das alles zu vertuschen versucht hat.35 [In fact it is just a symptom; in fact the whole business is symptomatic for this democracy’s inability to function, its emptiness, its radical dishonesty. Right up there with the accusation that Lübke built concentration camps we find the accusation that his wife is ashamed of being so old . . . Right up there with the accusation that Lübke worked with concentration camp prisoners . . . we find the accusation that he frequently loses track during his speeches . . . Right up there with the accusation that Lübke was trusted by the Gestapo . . . we find the accusation that he tried to cover everything up.]

By the time the RAF released its Konzept Stadtguerilla, nearly a year after Baader’s spectacular liberation, the group was feeling the necessity to check its fences — or possibly reinforce its barricades — in the face of criticism from the left. In her writing for konkret Meinhof had habitually used elevated diction as a means of shoring up her position. The Konzept has an oddly hybrid style: alongside “mies” (lousy) we find the more sophisticated adjectives skrupellos (unscrupulous) and belanglos (irrelevant), as well as ideas like Pogrom (pogrom), psychische Mechanismen (psychic mechanisms), and Verfasser, the high-register term for author. Less-thanaccessible words of foreign origin feature (in German called Fremdwörter and often a sign of educated style) such as firmieren (to call oneself something), Prosperität (prosperity), and even the Latin contradictio in adjecto (contradiction in terms; 28, 46). The argument has been put forward that Fremdwörter in the late 1960s and ’70s are another element in the jargon of the left: “the sign of a (left-wing) comrade”;36 nonetheless the RAF seems, after all, to be producing words for intellectuals — even if those are left-wing intellectuals — rather than the actions for the masses that its first manifesto promised. It is necessary to say a word at this point about Horst Mahler’s piece Über den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa (On the Armed Struggle in Western Europe), published by Wagenbach in 1971, and attributed to the RAF collective.37 Mahler’s text, written from prison, initially appeared under a false title to avoid censorship, masquerading as Die neue Straßenverkehrsordnung (The New Highway Code);38 it summarized left-wing

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revolutionary theory and history, and tried to assess the current role and revolutionary potential of the proletariat and the revolutionäre Intelligenz (revolutionary intelligensia) while protesting the necessity of an urban guerilla with terrorist methods.39 Mahler had been among the very first members of the RAF to be arrested and imprisoned, in Berlin on 8 October 1970 (with Brigitte Asdonk, Monika Berberich, Irene Goergens, and Ingrid Schubert). After an extended period of tension with the group he was formally excluded from the RAF in a statement delivered by Monika Berberich during the court case pertaining to the liberation of Baader on 27 September 1974.40 Despite Wagenbach’s attribution of authorship, neither Meinhof nor other group members were involved in its writing. The next piece produced by Meinhof with the collective was called Dem Volk dienen (Serve the People).

Dem Volk dienen: Stadtguerilla und Klassenkampf “Serve the People” was the title of a speech delivered by Mao on 8 September 1944. The RAF’s version begins with a quotation from China’s revolutionary leader that adapts a Chinese proverb on death: Der Tod ist jedem beschieden, aber nicht jeder Tod hat die gleiche Bedeutung. . . . Stirbt man für die Interessen des Volkes, so ist der Tod gewichtiger als der Tai-Berg; steht man im Sold der Faschisten und stirbt für die Ausbeuter und Unterdrücker des Volkes, so hat der Tod weniger Gewicht als Schwanenflaum. [Death comes to us all, but not every death has the same significance. . . . The death of a man who dies in the interest of the people weighs heavier than the Tai mountain, but if he is in the pay of the fascists and dies in the service of the exploiters and oppressors of the people, then his death weighs lighter than swansdown.]

Death was understandably on the minds of the RAF members in the spring of 1972: the armed struggle had brought its first fatalities, not only to the Bullen or policemen Meinhof had declared fair game. Police officer Norbert Schmid had been shot dead during the arrest of a RAF member in October 1971, his colleague Herbert Schoner during a bank robbery in December, and policeman Hans Eckhardt died following an exchange of fire in March 1972, but there had been fatalities among the group and its associates, too. All of the dead were painfully young: twenty-yearold Petra Schelm, who had joined the RAF in 1970, was shot dead after breaking through a police cordon in a stolen car on 15 July 1971, just a month before her twenty-first birthday; twenty-four-year-old Georg von Rauch, not a RAF member but an anarchist on the run after escaping police custody, was shot in the head during an exchange of fire on

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4 December 1971. Twenty-three-year-old Thomas Weisbecker, who had joined the group in 1971, was shot through the heart on 2 March 1972 when he and another RAF member, Carmen Roll, were spotted by police in Augsburg. For the group personally, the loss of their comrades and friends weighed heavy. There was a need to make sense of the deaths, and the text does that in the terms of the proverb borrowed from Mao. “Petra, Georg, and Thomas died in the battle against death in the pay of the exploiters” (“Petra, Georg und Thomas starben im Kampf gegen das Sterben im Dienst der Ausbeuter”), it asserts, and death in the pay of the exploiters is the fate of the people under capitalism. That may take the form of fatalities in cars built for profit rather than for people, or (in a tendentious argument) death by suicide: “12,000 people commit suicide every year because they don’t want to die slowly in the service of capitalism,” the RAF insists; “they’d rather put an end to things themselves” (“12,000 Menschen begehen jedes Jahr Selbstmord, weil sie nicht im Dienst des Kapitals hinsterben wollen, machen sie lieber selber mit allem Schluß”).41 The deaths of Schelm, von Rauch, and Weisbecker are meaningful because they died resisting the capitalist system that kills the people in these ways. The RAF was coping not only with its first fatalities, but with its first “traitors.” Karl-Heinz Ruhland (b. 1938), a car mechanic who had joined the group in the autumn of 1970 and been arrested in December of the same year, began to give information to the police shortly after his arrest. Peter Homann (b. 1936) was a former member of the konkret team who had been Meinhof’s lover in Berlin. He traveled to Jordan with the group after the liberation of Baader, but got into a dispute with the others during their training by the PLO. Homann returned separately and gave information to friends of Klaus Röhl that led to the discovery of Röhl’s and Meinhof’s twin daughters, who had been hidden from their father in Sicily, apparently on Meinhof’s instructions, after their mother went underground. (One story runs that the RAF had arranged for them to be transported from there to a PLO orphanage, and that Röhl’s friend Stefan Aust used Homann’s information to rescue them in the nick of time; another that Meinhof herself was on her way to fetch them, and collapsed when she arrived to find that Aust had whisked them back to their father.)42 Another RAF member, nineteenyear-old Beate Sturm, left the group in early January 1971 and returned home to her parents. The RAF comments on these three, whom it has lost not through death but defection: Ruhland fühlt sich in seiner alten Rolle als krimineller Proletarier wohl, in Handschellen und ausgebeutet. Homann in der Rolle des lumpenproletarisch-verlorenen Sohnes, der wie eh und je auf dem Strich der Bourgeoisie — beim Spiegel und konkret — seine Haut . . .

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zu Markte trägt; die Sturm ist von einem Seitensprung heimgekehrt in den Schoß der Familie. . . . Die psychische Verfassung des Verräters ist käuflich und konservativ.43 [Ruhland feels comfortable back in the familiar role of the criminal proletarian, in handcuffs and exploited; Homann in the role of the lost son from the underclass who has always — in Spiegel and in konkret — pimped himself to the bourgeoisie and . . . sold his skin; the girl Sturm has returned after her little affair to the bosom of the family . . . The psychology of the traitor is commodified and conservative.]

While the opening section of Dem Volk dienen — not least the dubious assertion that all suicides occur because people would rather die than live under capitalism — does not stand up as political analysis, the text goes on to provide a fair critique of West Germany’s relationship with the regime in Iran as profit- rather than ethics-driven. In this, the researchbased knowledge of ex-journalist Meinhof shines through. Iran, with its acute poverty problems and overprivileged royal family (Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was finally deposed in the theocratic revolution of 1979 that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power) had been a favorite topic of Meinhof as a journalist, and one of her close friends was the Iranian exile and political writer Bahman Nirumand, whom she defended and supported in a number of articles for konkret.44 Meinhof’s “Offener Brief an Farah Diba” (Open Letter to Farah Diba), the shah’s wife, was published in 1967 and is one of her most mordant pieces of journalism.45 From there, though, we shift back into all-too-familiar territory, as Iran becomes the basis for yet another attack on the West German left: instead of looking at the political situation internationally (as the RAF does, and as always, the RAF is right), the left, we are told, has looked locally. Not only that: it has dared to critique the RAF’s Konzept Stadtguerilla from a local perspective, to suggest that an armed guerilla is unrealistic and unpracticable in the domestic context. The RAF feels forced again to defend its perspective on violent struggle, and to reassert the need for an underground resistance movement. In support of that argument it cites the biggest strike in the Federal Republic since the war: the chemical and metal workers’ strike of 1971. The outcome of that — a wage rise considerably lower than demanded — is taken as proof that the trade unions are actually complicit with West Germany’s social democratic government. Even though (the RAF insists) the workers are ever more willing to fight, their scope to fight effectively is curtailed because their unions are now in bed with the state, and the state with international industrialists. The strike and its outcome are presented as indicators of the future for workers in West German industry — a future that will be determined not in the local or national, but in the international context.


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And (the argument continues) the European economy is increasingly under pressure from the United States. Because American companies are bigger, they have lower costs; therefore, the future of industry in Europe is its concentration into fewer, much larger companies. With hindsight that argument — which the RAF gleaned from British journalist Hugh Stephenson46 — is an accurate prediction, and anticipates the development of multinational concerns. The other accurate prediction is that industry is going to move away from paying appropriate wages to domestic workers and instead relocate in countries where wages are low, in order to increase profits. The RAF notes West Germany’s powerful economic presence in countries with problematic human rights records, such as Iran and apartheid South Africa. But the analysis is once again reminiscent of Meinhof’s columns and essays: her painstaking analysis in 1968 of the new tarifs for women’s work (that were concealed under the heading “light labor”), for example, or her detailed report on the situation of German immigrant or “guest” workers (Gastarbeiter) of 1966 for konkret show a similar thoroughness in the research.47 The RAF, almost certainly via Meinhof, is sending the message that it is serious, armed with facts, and in touch with current events. So far, so good — the RAF’s argument seems to be substantiated by the facts, and by developments in the world economy between 1972 and the present day. But in the context of global industrialization, something begins to emerge that would soon grow out of all proportion for the group and find expression in the May bombings of 1972 (just a month after Dem Volk dienen was released): the notion that the United States is Europe’s — and most specifically Germany’s — political and economic nemesis. In the RAF’s imagination, the United States would come to figure as a capitalist fascist devil, whose evil seems to eclipse and almost obscure the historical problem of German fascism. For now, however, the argument is still primarily economic: the exploitation of the workers is to be expected in the capitalist context, the RAF argues, and it is no surprise that the industrialists in the chemicals industry have used their power mercilessly in wage negotiations: “It is wrong to see a particular wickedness in industrialists in the chemicals industry just because they are focusing their efforts on suppressing wage levels by exploiting slave labor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America” (“Es ist falsch, eine spezifische Bosheit der Chemie-Industriellen darin zu sehen, daß sie bestrebt sind, das Lohnniveau durch Ausnutzung der Sklavenarbeit in Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika zu drücken”), the argument progresses: Die Brutalität ihrer Handlungen als Ausbeutung, als politische Unterdrückung, als das Bestreben, die Reproduktionskosten der Ware Arbeitskraft auf ein Minimum zu drücken, entspricht die Rationalität des Systems, als Druck der nordamerikanischen Konkurrenz auf die Wirtschaft Westeuropas.48


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[The brutality of their exploitative actions, the political oppression, the effort to reduce to a minimum the price they pay for work all correspond to the rationale of the system — the pressure exerted by North American industry on the European economy.]

Eventually, however, everything circles around and returns (predictably) to the existence, identity, and rightness of the organization RAF. The central point is that capitalism is organized internationally, while the workers can only operate within the national framework provided by the trades unions;49 for this reason, we are told, the international focus of the Red Army Faction makes sense in the West German context. The objection of its critics that the Federal Republic is not Latin America, the RAF asserts, does more to cover up the situation at home than to expose it: Das Argument, die Bundesrepublik sei nicht Lateinamerika, verschleiert die hiesigen Verhältnisse mehr, als daß es sie aufdeckt. Gemeint ist damit — sofern es nicht nur schwatzhaft in die Debatte geworfen wird — : Hier herrscht nicht dieselbe katastrophale Armut wie dort, hier ist der Feind nicht eine ausländische Macht, hier ist das Regime dem Volk nicht so verhaßt, hier herrscht noch keine Militärregierung. [What that argument is saying — in so far as it is not being thrown into the debate as mere chatter — is that we do not find poverty to the same catastrophic extent here as there; that the enemy here is not a foreign power; that the regime here is not hated as much by the people; and that we are not yet ruled by a military junta.]

The text nonetheless engages in some fact- and figure-juggling attempts to show that poverty in West Germany could arguably permit a comparison with Latin America. According to RAF sources, fourteen million West Germans and West Berliners live in conditions that amount to poverty, and German schools are turning into slums that deny children their basic right to education.50 None of this obscures the bare fact that the RAF — for all its primacy of praxis — has so far done nothing, nationally or internationally, except acquire basic military training for itself as a favor from Palestinian activists in Jordan, and rob a number of West German banks. There is, then, some logic in the fact that Dem Volk dienen concludes with a defense of bank robbery and a promise of logistical progress. Robbing banks, we are told, ist logistisch richtig, weil anders das Finanzierungsproblem gar nicht zu lösen ist. Er ist politisch richtig, weil er eine Enteignungsaktion ist. Er ist taktisch richtig, weil er eine proletarische Aktion ist. Er ist strategisch richtig, weil er der Finanzierung der Guerilla dient. (141)


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[is logistically a right decision because our financial problem cannot otherwise be solved. It is politically a right decision because it is an act of expropriation. It is tactically a right decision because it is a proletarian action. It is strategically a right decision because it serves to finance the guerilla.]

The repetitive rhetorical sledgehammer that is wielded here may well be intended to stun critics into silence. Like Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, Dem Volk dienen shows clear echoes of Meinhof’s journalism. Definitions are asserted (using heißen — to mean — and sein — to be), and the effect is heightened by the familiar technique of repetition. In certain sections it reads less like an extremist manifesto and more like a piece for a political magazine — the use of collected facts and figures to support a polemic is reminiscent of many a konkret article, even if the RAF insists that its approach is distinct from middle-class journalism; such authors are different from the RAF, we are told, because they deal with the results of their research via the comfortable route of verbal protest (“Sie arrangieren sich mit ihren Recherchenergebnissen durch verbalen Protest”: 131). Thus the group both uses the hard data won by other writers and denies those writers political integrity; rightness is and remains the preserve of the RAF. In a manner familiar from Die Rote Armee aufbauen and Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, lines of demarcation between self and other are drawn, not least between the West German left and the heroic, resisting RAF; between “the legal left and the number-one enemy of the state” (“der legalen Linke und dem Staatsfeind Nr. 1”; 127). “They” (the left) and “we” (the RAF) are divided by the personal pronoun in what is quite literally a grammar of “them and us”: Wenn immer noch ein Teil der revolutionären Linken . . . uns . . . falsche Begründungen unterstellt, falsche Positionen anhängt, dann löst sie damit den Widerspruch nicht zwischen ihren Erkenntnissen vom Stand der Klassenkämpfe und ihren Vorstellungen von revolutionären Interventionsmethoden — dann schiebt sie als subjektives Problem auf uns ab, was ihr und uns objektives Problem ist. (115– 16, my emphasis) [Whenever certain elements on the revolutionary left try . . . to accuse us of acting for the wrong reasons and positioning ourselves wrongly, they fail to resolve the mismatch between their assessment of the current state of class warfare and their envisaged methods of revolutionary intervention — what they are doing is trying to turn something into our subjective problem that is actually both their and our objective problem.]


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But the most remarkable instance of separating self and other occurs in the section of the text called “Die Dialektik von Revolution und Konterrevolution” (The Dialectic of Revolution and Counterrevolution). Here, another group is rhetorically conjured to stand opposite the RAF. This is not in itself remarkable (conjuring opponents is one of the things the RAF does best); remarkable is that this group is simply called “most people” (“die meisten”). Now not only the left, not only the state and the forces of world imperialism, but most people are seen to contrast with the exclusive “we” of the Red Army Faction: Die meisten sagen: Es geht nicht. Die meisten sagen: Die Massen wollen nicht. . . . Sie sehen in der politischen Apathie des Proletariats nur die Apathie, nicht der Protest gegen ein System, für das es sich nicht zu engagieren lohnt. . . . Sie sehen in unserer Isolierung von den Massen nur unsere Isolierung von den Massen, nicht die wahnwitzigen Anstrengungen, die das System unternimmt, um uns von den Massen zu isolieren. . . . Wir sagen nicht, daß es leicht ist, Guerilla zu machen . . . Wir aber glauben vor allem nicht, daß die Situation von selbst umschlägt . . . Wir meinen, daß die Idee der Guerilla . . . eine gute Idee ist, daß niemand mehr sie vom Tisch fegen kann. (137) [Most people say: It isn’t possible. Most people say: The masses don’t want it . . . They see only apathy in the political apathy of the proletariat, not a protest against a system that is not worth engaging with . . . In our isolation from the masses they see only our isolation from the masses, not the crazed efforts the system is making to keep us isolated from the masses . . . We are not saying that guerilla warfare is easy . . . But we absolutely cannot believe that the situation will change of its own accord . . . We think that the idea of guerilla action is . . . a good idea, and that no one is going to be able to make that idea go away.]

Despite what most people think, the RAF still thinks that its idea — guerilla warfare in West Germany — is a good idea. Having failed to find the support they predicted or expected for themselves as an exemplary avant-garde, they now construct that failure as a mistake on the part of others, not a mistake they have made themselves. Instead of rethinking on the basis of experience, the RAF closes ranks and consolidates something that was always a part of its self-construction: namely, the notion that its members are a tiny minority with exclusive access to knowledge of what is true and right.


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Justifying Violence Serious journalists like Meinhof, I have argued, need to assert ethos: a persona that encourages their audience to perceive them as credible.51 Terrorists need that even more. In order for their language and actions to be persuasive and effective, they must be seen to be motivated by something beyond self-interest.52 The Red Army Faction — whose name, RAF, would appear for the first time on the Konzept Stadtguerilla of 1971 — began its existence with an operation that was only arguably terrorist. Baader’s break-out from prison certainly sent a signal (namely, that an armed operation to cheat the criminal justice system is possible), but for the group it was primarily practical: the restoration of the person Baader to their company. All three RAF manifestos can be read as speech acts in Austin’s sense: as language that intends not just to say something, but to do something.53 “I now pronounce you husband and wife” is the classic example, but whether or not something is accomplished by that depends on whether the speaker is a registrar and/or whether those listening accept the personal and legal implication of the words. If they do, the speech act can be said to have been successful or felicitous; if they do not, it is infelicitous or unsuccessful (some linguists use the terms “happy” and “unhappy”).54 In the revolutionary texts, the RAF was looking to do two things: to provoke the West German government, and to assert its position visà-vis the legally operating left. In the first case it was, as the next chapter will argue, to some extent successful. In the second, it was not; the RAF members may present themselves as the left’s natural leaders — a revolutionary avant-garde — who deserve to be emulated and obeyed, but there is no indication that the left, on the whole, accepted that. In that regard the texts are “unhappy,” infelicitous, or failed speech acts. The left did not respond to the RAF as an exemplary avant-garde, and that may be why, in its later papers, the RAF felt forced to draw ever more heavily on Meinhof’s conventional journalistic skills. For Meinhof, the language experiment begun in Bambule and continued in Die Rote Armee aufbauen was soon over; it was succeeded by a return to the educated mode with its implicit assertion of authority (bitterly critiqued in Bambule), in what becomes an ever-more-effortful attempt to justify the RAF. In her piece “Revolutionäres Gerede” (Revolutionary Talk), written while she was still a journalist, Meinhof had insisted that talking about revolution means being serious about what you say.55 That is distinct from “empty chatter”; what gives content to language and renders it no longer empty is, as we discover soon after in the RAF’s manifestos, violent action. In the context of a West German state that will not listen, a United States of America that keeps on bombing Vietnam despite the widespread protests, and an already-tangible shift towards the globalization of industry in


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the interest of maximizing profit, words seem to have lost their meaning because they have lost their power to change anything. Die Rote Armee aufbauen is an experiment in finding a language for change. That is more than just participating in radical slang (the low-register diction that identifies an opponent of the system); it means using words to valorize violent deaths and violent action. The armed operation to free Baader is justified and contextualized as the first step in the revolution, the deaths of RAF members glorified as martyrdom in the service of the people. Language, however, relies on consensus: we can only use words to bestow meaning on objects or actions if that meaning is accepted by our interlocutors, and the meaning the RAF gave its actions was not, on the whole, accepted by the West German left. But when words fail and seem to lose their force in the world — when one’s authority is not being recognized and one is not being taken seriously — language can be replaced with violence.

The May Bombings In May 1972 the RAF carried out six bomb attacks. On 11 May three bombs planted by a “Petra Schelm Commando” detonated in the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Fifth Corps, stationed in the IG-Farben building in Frankfurt. One person died and eight were injured. The following day two attacks followed in Bavaria: one on German police headquarters in Augsburg and another in the car park of the Bavarian Criminal Investigation Bureau (Landeskriminalamt) in Munich. Two out of three of the bombs planted in Augsburg — this time by a “Thomas Weisbecker Commando” — exploded, causing seven casualties; ten people were injured by the Munich car bomb. On 15 May, RAF members planted a further device in a car belonging to federal judge Wolfgang Buddenberg. His wife, who happened to be driving the car that day, was badly injured when it exploded. A “Manfred Grashof Commando” later claimed responsibility; the reason given was that Buddenberg was responsible for moving the badly injured RAF member Grashof from hospital into a prison cell at a time when his life was still at risk. The students’ campaign of 1968 against the Springer publishing house was adopted and developed by the RAF in its own particular way during May 1972. On 19 May five bombs were planted in the Hamburg premises of Axel Springer by a “2 June Commando” — the date commemorated the death in 1967 at the hand of a policeman of student demonstrator Benno Ohnesorg. Thirty-six workers in the twelve-story Springer building were injured in the resulting explosions (three of the bombs fortunately failed to detonate), after a warning to evacuate the building came too late or was not followed in time.56 The last of the bombings, on 24 May, involved two further car bombs, both of which


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detonated in U.S. Army headquarters in Heidelberg. One soldier was literally torn apart by the explosion, a further two died almost immediately of severe injuries. Several others were wounded but survived. A “15 July Commando” (the date in 1971 on which RAF member Petra Schelm had been shot dead) described the attack as a response to the extended U.S. bombings in Vietnam.57 Each of the bombings was followed by a statement (Erklärung). In German, Erklärung literally means “explanation” or “elucidation,” and the next chapter will look in detail at their content. The Erklärungen are what their German name suggests: interpretations or post-hoc translations of violence into words, for the purpose of justification. The bombing campaign was followed by the RAF’s first audio performance: the Frankfurt University “teach-in.”

The Frankfurt “Teach-In” The notion of the teach-in was a coinage of the 1960s — it developed the idea of peaceful protest inherent in the notion of the “sit-in.” Originally associated with the war in Vietnam, the teach-in was an event, usually in a university context, that offered space for discussion as a form of demonstration. It is difficult to know whether it was primarily solidarity or curiosity (immediately after the May bombings) that on 31 May 1972 drew two thousand listeners to lecture theater six of Frankfurt University to hear Meinhof’s voice on tape. This was a RAF teach-in organized by the support group of the radical left, the Rote Hilfe. Gerd Koenen, a commentator who regularly draws on his personal recollection of events, does not on this occasion make clear whether he was or was not present. His account of Meinhof’s address is oddly flowery, casting her (in his words) as a siren to the left’s fascinated but frightened Odysseus. “Mit ihrer hohen, singenden Stimme” (with her high melodious voice), he recalls, wandte sich die Unsichtbare direkt an die Versammelten und an jeden einzelnen . . . offensichtlich genug waren es Sirenenklänge, vor denen man das fasziniert lauschende Auditorium und sich selbst an den Mast binden mußte. . . . so blieb ihre wie ein verletzter Vogel zitternde Stimme in der Erinnerung vieler haften.58 [the invisible presence addressed those who were collected there directly, addressed them both collectively and individually . . . this was obviously the sound of siren voices, for fear of which one had to tie both oneself and the entire fascinatedly listening auditorium to the mast . . . her voice, which trembled like an injured bird, stayed in the memory of many.]


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Meinhof emerges from this description as both dangerously and vulnerably feminine, but Koenen does not explain his terms. He does suggest that the effect of her “fascinating” taped address could have been significant, if only her own arrest and that of all the other core members of the RAF had not followed within the next fortnight. Possibly he is right. There is a difference between written and spoken language, and the sound of Meinhof’s voice may well have been more emotive and therefore more effective than what the RAF released in writing. But the impetus of her speech is rhetorical to the point of demagogy; at times the rhetoric is almost a parody of itself. Its dynamic relies on insistent, repetitive structures familiar from her most impassioned journalistic work (such as her defense of Riemeck in the persona of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony),59 and developed in the RAF papers. Her audience were the same left-wingers the RAF had been attacking and distancing itself from since its foundation. “Comrades,” she opened, “some of you still believe that they can safely ignore the Red Army Faction. Some of you still believe that the pigs will relieve them of the problem of the armed struggle in the urban context. Some still believe what it says in the newspapers” (and here the triple repetition of “some of you” shifts to repetition of the conjunction “that”): “that the RAF is on the run, that it is split, that it has a hierarchical structure, that it is isolated” (“Genossen, einige von euch glauben immer noch, daß sie sich mit der Roten Armee Fraktion nicht auseinanderzusetzen brauchen. Einige von euch glauben immer noch, die Bullen würden ihnen das Problem des bewaffneten Kampfes in den Metropolen schon vom Halse schaffen. Einige glauben immer noch, was in den Zeitungen steht: daß die RAF auf der Flucht sei, daß sie gespalten sei, daß sie eine hierarchische Struktur habe, daß sie isoliert sei”).60 The repetition is combined with an equally familiar opposition of “them” and “us,” as Meinhof continues her critique of the “soft” left: Sie beklagen die Todesstrafe in Persien und der Türkei, sie wünschen dem palästinensischen Widerstand Erfolg, sie beklagen den Terror in Griechenland und Spanien, sie beklagen die Komplizenschaft des Systems mit diesen faschistischen Regimes . . . Sie haben offenbar Angst, selbst einzugreifen und selber zu handeln. . . . Wir sind anderer Ansicht als diese Genossen. [They express dismay at the death penalty in Iran and Turkey; they wish every success to the Palestinian resistance movement; they express dismay at the terror in Greece and Spain; they express dismay at the complicity of the system with these fascist regimes . . . They are clearly afraid to get involved themselves and take action themselves. . . . We are of a different mind than those comrades.]


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As the speech nears its climax, rhetoric shifts towards demagogy: she makes a direct appeal that is manipulative in its repetitive form, its emotive content, and its second-person plural address: Genossen, hört auf, euch hinter den Massen zu verschanzen! Hört auf, die Frage des Widerstandes auf die Massen abzuwälzen! Hört auf, eure Angst vor der maßlosen Gewalttätigkeit des Systems als Vermittlungsproblem zu rationalisieren! Hört auf, eure Ratlosigkeit als Belesenheit auszugeben, eure Hilflosigkeit als den großen Durchblick! [Comrades, stop hiding behind the masses! Stop leaving the question of resistance to the masses! Stop rationalizing your fear of the untrammeled violence of the system as a difficulty in communication! Stop disguising your cluelessness as learnedness and your helplessness as some kind of great insight!]

These appeals at least still have an identifiable situation-specific content; whether or not she is right in her analysis of her comrades’ behavior, she is at least — at this point — addressing her audience in language that has some kind of content. By the end of her speech meaningful language has given way to overt demagogy — unspecifically emotive, programmatic slogans of the revolution: Habt Mut zu kämpfen, habt Mut zu siegen! Zersplittert und zerschlagt die Kräfte des Imperialismus! Es ist die Pflicht jedes Revolutionärs, die Revolution zu machen! Es lebe die RAF!61 [Have courage to fight, have courage to win! Shatter and defeat the powers of imperialism! It is the duty of every revolutionary to make the revolution happen! Long live the RAF!]

Those last four words, with which she closes her speech, say a lot about the level of self-absorption the RAF has come to: not “long live the people,” not even “long live the revolution,” but “long live the RAF.”

A Shrinking Circle62 Given that its declared doctrine was the primacy of praxis, there is a certain irony in the enormous volume of words on paper produced by the group around Meinhof. One reproach directed at the RAF by its critics is that its theory merely legitimized its practice retrospectively, constructing a political reality to fit that practice.63 In one way that is true: the RAF texts are post-hoc justifications of their actions (getting Baader out of jail, stealing cars, robbing


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banks). But until the May bombings the RAF had taken very little in the way of revolutionary action — there was not, in fact, much practice to legitimize. One could, therefore, argue that the revolutionary texts are less post-hoc justifications, and more the expressions of a fantasy of violent identity. When that does not resonate with its audience on the left, and the RAF is not taken seriously, it finds itself almost forced to make the fantasy reality. That is not to say that, if the left had reacted differently, the RAF would not have planted the bombs. A situation is created — in and through language — in which violence will be the result either way. If the left rejects the RAF, then the RAF will commit acts of violence in order to show that it is serious. If the left accepts the RAF, that confirms that the RAF is right, and violence, again, is the way forward. Meinhof had already begun to develop the means to justify violence — to the point of violence against human beings — in her late columns for konkret. The process begins with empathy: for Meinhof, as konkret’s foreign correspondent in the early days of her career as a journalist, empathy with the oppressed peoples of the third world; later she empathizes with young people in care homes, and with the situation of other working women with families. For the RAF the objects of empathy are similarly the colonized and oppressed, internationally and at home: the RAF exists, in its own words, to “serve the people.” The next step in the process is to look for a perpetrator — the system, the state, U.S. imperialism — who is taken to be the originator of violence, and then to assert that “counter-violence” is an appropriate and morally necessary response. Metaphorical associations are made with what is understood to be the ultimate in violence (Auschwitz and Vietnam), so that the ultimate in counter-violence (killing human beings) is rendered rhetorically justifiable. If Vietnam “is” the new Auschwitz, if the United States and West German governments “are” the new fascists, then history proves that resistance is morally necessary to the point of murder. Killing U.S. soldiers in their German headquarters or trying to blow up a judge becomes the equivalent of eliminating Hitler. A corollary of this process is that empathy turns into identification. Meinhof’s drama Bambule portrayed that as a positive and necessary step on the path to solidarity — if we resist identification, she suggests, change cannot happen. But identification with outside groups gradually gives way to identification exclusively with the group of which one is part (it is as if, once one has notionally “become” the thing one identifies with — whether that is “Jewish” or “Vietnamese” or a “victim of capitalism” — any real-life outside instance loses relevance), and the circle of empathy shrinks. An enormous amount of the RAF’s energy goes into differentiating itself from other elements on the West German left — into developing a group identity, a “we” that is radically exclusive. The point of both theory and action now is to shore up the identity of the RAF, and


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to justify and prolong its existence, which is defined as struggle, battle, or fight (Kampf).

Notes The citation for the epigraph in this chapter is as follows: Diary entry by Ulrike Meinhof, cited in Bettina Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß! Ulrike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl und die Akte konkret (Hamburg: EVA, 2006), 572. 1

The Zentralinstitut für Soziale Fragen. The Freie Universität was named to emphasize the political distinction perceived in the West between its own newly built campus and East Berlin’s Humboldt University. 2

See chapter 1, note 51.

3

List of books in Baader’s cell, in HIS Te/006,005. See also Klaus Stern and Jörg Herrmann, Andreas Baader: Das Leben eines Staatsfeindes (Munich: dtv, 2007). 4

As told e.g. by Mario Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof: Ein Leben im Widerspruch (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988), 213, and most recently by Sven Felix Kellerhof, Was stimmt? RAF: Die wichtigsten Antworten (Freiburg: Herder, 2007), 23. 5

Kollektiv RAF, Die Rote Armee aufbauen: Erklärung zur Befreiung Andreas Baaders vom 5. Juni 1970, in Rote Armee Fraktion: Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF, ed. Martin Hoffmann (Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1997), 24–26; here 24. Further references appear in the text. 6

“eines der wichtigsten Schlagwörter der Neuen Linken. . . . Es bedeutet spontane und doch organisierte, kollektive und doch zielgerichtete Verwirklichung des revolutionären Geistes als praktisches Tun, Heraustreten aus dem Stadium der bloßen Gesinnung, Verändern der Welt, zum Äußersten entschlossen, auch zur Gewalt. ‘Aktion’ bedeutet Stärke, Macht.” Rolf Bachem, “Sprache der Terroristen: Analyse eines offenen Briefes,” in Der Deutschunterricht 30.5 (1978): 61–79; here 71. 7

See, e.g., Gerd Koenen, Vesper, Ensslin, Baader: Urszenen des deutschen Terrorismus (Cologne: Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 2003), 257; Kellerhof, Was stimmt, 25. 8

“jeder weiß, daß du die stimme warst, bist, sein wirst.” Letter from Ensslin, cited in Pieter Bakker Schut, Stammheim: Der Prozeß gegen die Rote Armee Fraktion: Die notwendige Korrektur der herrschenden Meinung (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1997), 287. 9

Meinhof, “Notstand — Klassenkampf,” in konkret 6 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1980]), 142–45; here 144. See chapter 1.

10

Meinhof, “Vom Protest zum Widerstand,” in konkret 5 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 138–41; here 140. See chapter 1.

11

This piece of Maoist terminology is used and expounded on in Kollektiv RAF, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 27–48; here 36. 12

Meinhof, “Kolumnismus,” in konkret 21 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 166–69; here 169.


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113

Kollektiv RAF, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, 31.

14

Til Schulz, “Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis: Abenteuer des falschen Bewußtseins,” in Kursbuch 35 (1974): 135–52; here 141. 15

Meinhof, “Aktenzeichen XY — aufgelöst,” in konkret 17 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 161–65; here 161. 16

The RAF, as a collective, denied that Baader was, in conventional terms, its leader, but Meinhof would later admit that he at least embodied “the function of leadership.” See chapter 5. 17

See chapter 1.

18

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (London: Penguin, 2001 [1965; first French edition 1961]). See chapter 1. 19

Cited in Kollektiv RAF, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, 48.

20

It was republished in the same year in the Rotbuch series, in a special edition on urban guerilla movements: Tupamaros in Uruguay — Rote Armee Fraktion in der BRD (Rotbuch 26), ed. Alex Schubert (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1971). 21

See chapter 4.

22

Kollektiv RAF, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, 27–28. Further references appear in the text. 23

[Michèle Ray], “Flucht der Baader-Befreier,” in Der Spiegel 25 (1970): 71–75.

24

Günter Wallraff, “Ulrikes Rote Armee,” in konkret 14 (1970): 7.

25

See chapter 2.

26

The English translation cited here is taken from Mao, “On Practice,” at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/ mswv1_16.htm (accessed 14 September 2007). 27

“Sie machten zum Inhalt ihrer Agitation und Propaganda das, worauf sie sich angesichts der deutschen Verhältnisse hauptsächlich berufen konnten: Daß gegenüber der Globalstrategie des Imperialismus die Perspektive nationaler Kämpfe internationalistisch zu sein hat.” 28

“Verstehen = be-greifen = einen bestimmten Eindruck von dem Gegenstand erhalten, ihn auf sich wirken lassen” (“understanding = begreifen = receiving a particular impression from the object, allowing it to work on one”). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Grammatik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 84. My translation. 29

See chapter 2.

30

See Thomas Fischer, “Die Tupamaros in Uruguay: Das Modell der Stadtguerilla,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), 2:736–50. 31

Meinhof, “Vietnam und die Deutschen,” in konkret 11 (1967), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 108–11; here 108–9. 32

Meinhof, “Kolumnismus,” in konkret 21 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 166–69; here 166. My emphasis. 33


Meinhof, “Kolumnismus,” 169. My emphasis.

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Meinhof, “Vom Protest zum Widerstand,” 138. My emphasis.

35

Meinhof, “Demokratie spielen,” in konkret 4 (1968), reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 134–37; here 136. My emphasis. 36

“Fremdwörter weisen aber auch gewissermaßen den Genossen aus.” Herbert Jäger, Gerhard Schmidtchen, and Lieselotte Süllwold, Lebenslauf-Analysen (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 2) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 97. 37

Kollektiv RAF, Über den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa (Rotbuch 29) (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1971). 38

Verkehrsrechts- und Verkehrsaufklärungsheft. Die neue Straßenverkehrsordnung mit den neuen Verkehrszeichen und Hinweisschildern sowie Bußgeldkatalog. 39

Mahler, Über den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa, in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 49–111. 40

“Erklärung der Gefangenen aus der RAF zum Ausschluß von Horst Mahler aus der RAF — Monika Berberich für die Gefangenen der RAF im Prozeß BaaderBefreiung am 27. September 1974.” In Der Kampf gegen die Vernichtungshaft, ed. Komitee gegen Folter an politischen Gefangenen in der BRD (n.p., n.d.), 24–29. 41

Kollektiv RAF, Dem Volk dienen, in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 112– 44; here 112–13. 42

The first version of the story is told by Aust himself, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, 192–97; the second by Jutta Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 290–92. 43


44

See chapter 2.

45

Meinhof, “Offener Brief an Farah Diba,” reprinted in Meinhof, Deutschland Deutschland unter anderm: Aufsätze und Polemiken (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995), 116–21. Translated as “Open Letter to Farah Diba,” in Meinhof, Everybody Talks about the Weather . . . We Don’t, ed. Karin Bauer (New York: Seven Stories, 2008), 171–77. 46

Die Welt (23 February 1972); Die Welt reprinted, in German, an article by Hugh Stephenson that had originally appeared in the Times. See Kollektiv RAF, Dem Volk dienen, 117. 47

Meinhof, “Falsches Bewußtsein,” in Emanzipation und Ehe, ed. Christa Rotzoll (Munich: Delp, 1968), 33–50; Meinhof, “Kuli oder Kollege? Gastarbeiter in Deutschland,” in konkret 11 (1966), reprinted in Meinhof, Deutschland Deutschland, 97–107. 48


49

“das Kapital ist international organisiert, die Arbeiterklasse kann immer noch nur im nationalen Rahmen handeln.” Kollektiv RAF, Dem Volk dienen, 125. 50

Kollektiv RAF, Dem Volk dienen, 127–29. The sources referred to (with their original publication details) are Jürgen Roth, Armut in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt am Main: Melzer, 1971); Luc Jochimsen, Hinterhöfe der Nation: Die deutsche Grundschulmisere (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1971). Further references are given in the text.


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See chapter 2.

52

See my introduction.

115

53

See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1962); also John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969). 54

“Happy” and “unhappy” are Austin’s terms. Other speech act theorists, especially Searle, helped develop the notion of felicity conditions; see Searle, Speech Acts, 60–70. 55

Meinhof, “Revolutionsgerede,” in Revolution gegen den Staat? Die außerparlamentarische Opposition — die neue Linke, ed. Hans Dollinger (Berne: Rütten + Loening, 1968), 208–9. See chapter 2. 56

There are two versions of this story. The RAF in its post-bombing declaration asserts the latter; some commentators argue for the former, e.g. Klaus Pflieger, whose book on the RAF has a cover and title reminiscent of a gravestone for the organization: Die Rote Armee Fraktion: 14.5.1970 bis 20.4.1998 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), 33. 57

Pflieger, Die Rote Armee Fraktion, 31.

58

Gerd Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt: Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2004 [2002]), 335–36. 59

See chapter 1.

60

Kollektiv RAF, Tonbandprotokoll von dem Teach-In der Roten-Hilfe Frankfurt/ M: Erklärung vom 25.5.1972, in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 148–51; here 148. My emphasis. 61

Kollektiv RAF, Tonbandprotokoll, 149–50. Emphasis in original.

62

“Circle of Empathy” is Jaron Lanier’s term. See Lanier, “One Half a Manifesto,” http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_index.html (accessed July 2008). 63

“Die Theorie legitimiert die bereits stattgefundene Praxis und zeichnet zugleich ein Bild der politischen Realität, das zu dieser Praxis paßte.” Iring Fetscher, Herfried Münkler, and Hannelore Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Fetscher and Günter Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 1) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 16–271; here 181.


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4: Drawing a Line Between the Enemy and Ourselves: The Language Trap entweder mensch oder schwein entweder überleben um jeden preis oder kampf bis zum tod entweder problem oder lösung dazwischen gibt es nichts. [either human being or swine either survival at any cost or fight to the death either the problem or the solution there’s nothing in between.] —Holger Meins, 1974

A

MAY BOMBS of 1972, the police hunt for the RAF was stepped up, and by July all its core members had been arrested. In late 1974, when Holger Meins issued his “human being or swine” ultimatum (to fellow prisoner Manfred Grashof), the group was on hunger strike. Baader, writing from his cell, described his view of the collective in defensive isolation: “totally surrounded; we have only our consciousness, our history, our understanding of our situation + this heap of bones to develop the struggle . . . freedom is only possible if we’re fighting” (“in der situation totaler einkreisung, in der wir nur unser bewusstsein, unsere geschichte, unser verständnis unserer situation + diesen haufen knochen haben, um den kampf zu entwickeln . . . freiheit ist nur im kampf möglich”).1 The implicit quotation from Lenin reveals rather than conceals a problem: instead of fighting for the freedom of others, the group now relies on constant struggle to maintain its own identity — the RAF is only the RAF if it is fighting. A guerilla group ought (to use Mao’s metaphor) to have been moving among the people like fish in the sea, but drawing the dividing line between self and other (following another Maoist directive) has left the RAF isolated, or, in Baader’s heroic fantasy, back-to-back and isolated in a kind of last stand. One factor in the group’s political isolation was its assumption that everyone and everything existed to serve the RAF. In a note to her fellow prisoners, Meinhof outlines an approach to political theory: “I prefer . . . going first to praxis, then to the classic writers,” she explained: “it’s not


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that the raf is right because you can already find all that in lenin; it’s that lenin is good because he says the same things as the raf — and that’s what makes him an authority for us” (“ich bin aber für den umgekehrten weg: von der praxis zu den klassikern. . . . nicht die raf hat recht, weil dies alles schon bei lenin steht, sondern lenin ist gut, weil er dasselbe sagt wie die raf — und deswegen ist er auch ne autorität für uns”).2 The only conceivable function of anything non-RAF (such as Lenin) is to support the position of the RAF. Anything deemed useless or without a function for the RAF is rejected absolutely: the West German left, for example. Another isolating factor is the “conflict model” embraced by the RAF and all terrorist groups: war.3 “you’re complaining,” wrote Meinhof to fellow prisoner Hanna Krabbe, “that it’s a situation of war after you’ve already clearly joined our side in this war and started fighting” (“du . . . bejammerst, dass krieg ist nachdem du dich in diesem krieg klar auf unsere seite gestellt hast und angefangen hast, zu kämpfen”).4 A situation of war justifies black-and-white, friend-or-foe thinking, and the only possible outcomes are, in Meins’ words, victory or death (“sieg oder tod”).5 “There can be no doubt about it,” Heinrich Böll had written in early 1972, “Ulrike Meinhof has declared war on this society.”6 But Böll’s most pressing concern was what would happen if the state were drawn into participating in that “war” — because it is not in fact a war, but a metaphor. He pleads for its deconstruction, as both unapplicable to the situation at hand, and dangerous. War rhetoric can become a self-fulfilling prophecy,7 and it is in the way of wars to take a toll of deaths.

The RAF versus the Left In its position papers, the RAF established group identity in contradistinction to the legally operating left, which found itself — somewhat to its surprise — functioning as the group’s “constitutive outside.”8 Soon the beginnings of a left-wing response to the RAF began to emerge. The journal Meinhof had left in 1969 on the grounds that it was an instrument of the counterrevolution responded to Baader’s jailbreak by throwing that accusation back: “useful idiots” (Lenin’s term for capitalists who unintentionally furthered the revolution) is how konkret describes Meinhof and her new companions, on the grounds that they are furthering the counterrevolution.9 The author’s name is given as “Claus Fried,” but the piece may well have been written by Klaus Röhl, who regularly contributed to his own journal under a pseudonym, and in the context of konkret spelled his name Claus;10 “Fried” in German means “peace.” Baader-Meinhof is playing into the hands of those who would extend police powers, the article argues; if the government needed a reason to make the laws tougher, then the Baader escape has provided it.11


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A longer report, called “Die Bombenleger von Berlin” (The Bombers of Berlin), coauthored by the same Claus Fried, is illustrated with a picture of Max Hödel, known in German history as another useful idiot. Hödel’s harebrained attempt in 1878 to take a potshot at Emperor Wilhelm I gave Otto von Bismarck the reason he needed to pass a “socialist law” (Sozialistengesetz) banning the Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP). The image supports konkret’s Marxist-Leninist argument that “individual” acts of violence — as opposed to organized political opposition — further rather than counter state oppression. And Meinhof’s own favorite parallels with fascism are used against her when konkret compares the Baader jailbreak with the Reichstag fire of 1933. The causes of that fire were never properly explained, but it allowed the Nazis to crack down on and all but eliminate their communist opposition in Berlin.12 The specter of fascism haunts the debate around the RAF from the start. In July 1970, Günter Wallraff (one of a number of konkret’s original staff who later rose to prominence in the German literary establishment) responded to what he calls “Ulrike’s Red Army” by linking the group with German fascists past and present. He has heard only one admiring response to Baader-Meinhof, says Wallraff — and that came from a member of West Germany’s extreme right, an NPD man (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) who declared himself impressed by their comradely solidarity and ability to shoot (“‘Eins muß man euch lassen, ihr haltet zusammen, einen Kameraden im Stich lassen tut ihr nicht, und schießen könnt ihr auch.’ Der mir das sagte, war NPD-Mann”).13 konkret at this time was only arguably a serious political journal: Röhl was translating and serializing European erotic novels for his magazine, and a “news” article on some aspect of sex in the Federal Republic appeared in every issue. It was nonetheless (or, in Röhl’s view, for that reason) the bestselling left-wing publication after Spiegel, and after the events of 14 May it conducted a poll among prominent representatives of the West German left. Their response was not enthusiastic. A speaker for IG-Metall (one of Germany’s largest and most powerful trades unions) complained that the RAF was imitating South American practices — not just useless in the German context but actively counterproductive, because it was fanning the flames of anti-left feeling.14 The communist party (DKP or Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, founded in 1968 after its forerunner, the KPD, had been banned in 1956) agreed: if activists behave in ways that allow government and media to demonize the left, they are helping the enemy, regardless how pure their motives, a DKP speaker insists.15 And not everyone is as charitable as he regarding purity of motivation: the question whether the RAF is damaging the revolutionary cause accidentally (“objectively”) or on purpose (“subjectively”) is at issue. The standard view, for the moment, is that Baader-Meinhof is “objectively” counterrevolutionary (“objektiv konterrevolutionär”);16


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that is, the group is a menace to left-wing interests, but is not doing it on purpose. The question of its subjective intention is left open by all but the harshest critics — among them Wolfgang Gehrke of the German Socialist Worker Youth (SDAJ), who declares the damage such that they might as well have been doing it on purpose: “We can’t practice solidarity with these objective and subjective henchmen of the right, who are destroying any kind of working-class solidarity,” Gehrke fulminates (“Mit solchen objektiven und subjektiven Handlangern der Reaktion, die jede Solidarität der arbeitenden Massen zunichtemachen, können wir nicht solidarisch sein”).17

The RAF versus the East In June 1970, the newly formed RAF had been allowed to travel to Amman in Jordan via East Berlin’s Schönefeld airport for training by the PLO subgroup Al-Fatah. Since the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989 there has been much interest, fueled by a few spectacular revelations, in the cooperation of the East German secret service (the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit; MfS or Stasi for short) with the Red Army Faction. Most spectacular were the arrests, after the fall of the wall, of ex-terrorists who had “retired” under pseudonyms in the socialist republic.18 To the question of the neighbor state’s motives, the most likely answer seems to be that the GDR’s secret police thought that if they did not engage with the extremists, then their western equivalents would.19 As a result, the Stasi was better informed about the terrorists than any other government organization at the time, including West Germany’s federal criminal bureau (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA). Genuine political sympathy with the RAF is the least likely explanation for the help the MfS offered. Much like the Marxist-Leninist groups in the West, East German officials considered the terrorists, politically speaking, a bourgeois waste of time. They were certainly not inclined to risk the GDR’s national security for the sake of the RAF. Meinhof had been a member of the KPD (illegal in West Germany) and made a number of high-ranking contacts in the East through her work for konkret, and after joining the RAF she met with Stasi officials on 17 August 1970. It seems she used the meeting to enquire whether the RAF might operate out of the GDR, using the East as a base from which to attack the West German state, and that she was turned down.20 In propaganda terms, however, the RAF was useful. In January 1972 the GDR magazine for foreign affairs, Horizont, reported that the “so-called Baader-Meinhof Group” was providing the capitalist neighbor state with a justification for reactionary measures (“die sogenannte Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe fungiert sozusagen als ‘linkes Gegengewicht,’ als Rechtfertigung für rechten Terror”). The West German government,


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it implied, was cynically willing to play up the danger of a tiny revolutionary group for propaganda purposes: Horizont conjures the image of “Meinhof mouse” that has created enough panic to justify the “elephant” of West Germany’s emergency laws (“Die ‘Meinhof-Maus’ wird zur ‘nationalen Gefahr’ hochgespielt, um den Notstandselefanten zu rechtfertigen”). The state is playing cat-and-mouse with the terrorists, the article goes on, shifting metaphor: “We wonder whether it has ever occurred to the ‘Baader-Meinhof Group’ that Home Secretary Genscher would have to invent them if they did not exist” (“Man spielt mit ihnen Katz und Maus. Ob der ‘Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe’ wohl schon einmal in den Sinn gekommen ist, daß Genscher sie erfinden müßte, wenn es sie nicht gäbe”). For Horizont the group’s members are not Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, but disappointed children of the petite bourgeoisie (“keine Revolutionäre, keine Marxisten-Leninisten, sondern enttäuschte Kleinbürgerkinder”).21 Despite some interaction between the GDR and the RAF, political relations did not really improve: a Stasi document of 1987 would complain of the “fixed, pseudorevolutionary attitude” of the RAF (“ihrer verfestigten pseudorevolutionären Haltung”) and its lack of respect for the socialist authorities it was dealing with (“Nichtanerkennung unserer Positionen”).22 The distinguished East German lawyer Friedrich Karl Kaul was perhaps the only representative of the GDR publicly to express (qualified) respect — specifically for the will to revolutionary self-sacrifice displayed by RAF members. But even Kaul rejected their acts of “individual terrorism” and criticized the departure from the pure theories of Marx and Lenin. Random acts of violence are not the path to social change, he objected: “Marxism and individual terrorism are mutually exclusive. It was not bombs thrown at the tzars and their ministers by impatient students that created the conditions in Russia for the October Revolution” (“Marxismus und individueller Terror schließen sich aus. Nicht die Bombenwürfe ungeduldiger Studenten gegen die Zaren und ihre Minister schufen in Rußland die Voraussetzungen für die Oktoberrevolution”).23

The RAF versus the State Shortly after each of the May bombings of 1972, explanatory or justificatory statements (Erklärungen) were released by the “commandos” responsible. These statements contained demands and threats aimed directly at the West German government, intended to inform its domestic and foreign policy. The first Erklärung was sent on 14 May to the German Press Agency (dpa) in Munich, following an attack on the U.S. Army base in Frankfurt of 11 May. It gave the number and weight of the devices that detonated: three bombs containing eighty kilograms of TNT — thus demonstrating


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the (literally) explosive power of the RAF in order to lend weight to the demands that followed: “we demand an immediate end to the bomb blockade against North Vietnam. We demand an immediate halt on the bomb attacks on North Vietnam. We demand the withdrawal of American troops from Indochina” (“Wir fordern den sofortigen Abbruch der Bomben-Blockade gegen Nordvietnam. Wir fordern die sofortige Einstellung der Bombenangriffe auf Nordvietnam. Wir fordern den Abzug aller amerikanischen Truppen aus Indochina”). In a practical sense, those demands are directed at the West German and U.S. governments. But the concluding lines address a different audience: “have courage to fight — have courage to win! Let’s make two, three, many Vietnams!” (“Habt Mut zu kämpfen — habt Mut zu Siegen! Schafft zwei, drei, viele Vietnam!”), the statement ends, in the words of Che Guevara.24 None of this (yet) attempts to justify killing a soldier and injuring eight others, even though the self-designation “commando” suggests this is military activity (normally held to be justified — but only in defense of a nation state). May 11, the statement declares, is the anniversary of the day the bombardment of Vietnam began, and even though the coincidence in the dates has been created by the RAF, it acquires mythical meaning: we are in a “hand of fate” fantasy, whereby the actions of the U.S. Army have returned to haunt it. That is justified revenge in the eye-for-an-eye mode: the RAF becomes the avenger of Vietnamese suffering, offering bombs for bombs in an act of counter-violence.25 In order to show that they are not mere murderers, terrorist groups need to assert they are acting not in self-interest (as a criminal group would), but for the good of others. Herfried Münkler has called that group of others the “third party with an assumed interest.” This third party, he explains, “is a nationally, ethnically, or sociologically defined tranche of the population in whose ‘objective interest,’ the terrorists insist, their operations are carried out.”26 That tranche of the population is also the recipient of the message, contained in the act of violence, that resistance is necessary and possible.27 Looked at in this light, the May bombing statements have three functions. Firstly, they directly make demands of the government — some of them on behalf of the third party or parties (the Vietnamese people, the German people) the RAF claims to represent. Secondly, each statement celebrates the bombing as proof that resistance is possible — that a revolutionary David can fight the Goliath of the state. They further seek to persuade the West German public, the other audience of the statements, that this act of violence was morally right and tactically justified. The vocabulary of war rhetorically conjures circumstances in which killing is accepted as justified: the terrorists legitimize murder by declaring a war situation.28 Nonetheless, the name the authors of the first statement give themselves — ”Kommando Petra Schelm” — suggests something other than


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a selfless urge to avenge suffering caused by the Vietnam War: namely, a personal response to the shooting of a comrade. The Thomas Weisbecker commando, whose statement was sent to the press agency in Hamburg on 16 May, after bombs had exploded on police premises in Munich and Augsburg, is explicit about that: “Thomas Weisbecker was murdered on 2 March in Augsburg, in a carefully prepared surprise operation, by an execution squad consisting of Munich detectives and Augsburg police” (“Thomas Weisbecker ist am 2. März in Augsburg im Zuge einer lange vorbereiteten Überraschungsaktion von einem Exekutionskommando aus Münchener Kripo und Augsburger Polizei . . . ermordet worden”). That is revenge of a less altruistic nature, even though the words have been chosen to indicate that it is justified: the shooting of Weisbecker is presented as premeditated murder by a state that “executes” without trial. This time pseudomythical meaningfulness is implicit in the geographical connection: one of the bombs exploded in the town where Weisbecker died. “The investigating authorities should now take note that they cannot liquidate one of us without reckoning with a response: we will hit back” (“Die Fahndungsbehörden haben nunmehr zur Kenntnis zu nehmen, daß sie keinen von uns liquidieren können, ohne damit rechnen zu müssen, daß wir zurückschlagen werden”), declares the commando: that is an assertion of strength, in the David-and-Goliath mode, but it is not altruism. This time there is no specific mention of Vietnam. In a belated bid for “third party” justification, the Weisbecker commando describes its bombs as just one skirmish in “the long and weary battle for freedom from fascism, from capitalist exploitation, and the oppression of the people” (“den langen und langwierigen Prozeß des Befreiungskampfes vom Faschismus, von kapitalistischer Ausbeutung und Unterdrückung des Volkes”) — the RAF, we infer, supports those who are oppressed abroad and at home.29 But no demands are made of the government; instead, a call to (counter-)violence is directed at a wider audience: “Resist the SS-style practices of the police! Resist the exploiters and the enemies of the people!” (“Kampf der SS-Praxis der Polizei! Kampf allen Ausbeutern und Feinden des Volkes!”). After a further bomb was planted in Federal Judge Wolfgang Buddenberg’s car in Karlsruhe on 16 May, a statement from the Manfred Grashof commando, dated 20 May, was found in an abandoned travel bag. Grashof had been injured in an exchange of fire with police before he was arrested in Hamburg (one of the policemen, Hans Eckhardt, was killed). No reference is made to the fact that Buddenberg’s wife was injured because she, rather than he, happened to use the car that day. The focus is on Buddenberg’s “crimes,” which justify the attack: “Buddenberg, the swine, had Grashof moved from hospital into a prison cell at a time when moving him and the risk of infection were still life-threatening issues” (“Buddenberg, das Schwein, hat Grashof zu einem Zeitpunkt vom


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Krankenhaus in die Zelle verlegen lassen, als der Transport und die Infektionsgefahr im Gefängnis noch lebensgefährlich für ihn waren”). This is a shift into familiar and dangerous metaphorical territory: those whom the RAF designate not persons but swine are fair game, and it is, metaphorically speaking, animal slaughter rather than murder to kill them. Further justification is provided by the specter of fascism: it is institutionalized fascism in the criminal justice system (“der bereits institutionalisierte Faschismus in der Justiz”) that has determined the conditions in which RAF prisoners like Grashof are being held. After the Buddenberg bombing any “third party” seems forgotten; the demands made in that statement suggest the RAF has come to a position where it is fighting only for its own. “We demand of the criminal justice system that the life and health of the [RAF] prisoners should no longer be systematically targeted and destroyed,” it insists: “We shall carry out bomb attacks against judges and federal lawyers until they have stopped breaking the law with regards to the political prisoners” (“Wir verlangen von der Justiz, daß das Leben und die Gesundheit der Gefangenen nicht länger systematisch angegriffen und zerstört werden. Wir werden sooft und solange Sprengstoffanschläge gegen Richter und Staatsanwälte durchführen, bis sie aufgehört haben, gegen die politischen Gefangenen Rechtsbrüche zu begehen”).30 When third parties are absent, the RAF’s justification is revenge, drawing on the notion of resistance in the face of oppression: counter-violence. It found itself on thin ice, however, after the bombing (by a commando led by Meinhof) of the Springer publishing house in Hamburg on 19 May. Workers were injured in the attack, and endangering the lives of “civilians” — those who are not official representatives of the enemy state — offends against a terrorist code of honor. (That code of honor is now outmoded, as more recent terrorist attacks across the world have made perfectly clear.) A pragmatic reading of the code might be that it is not in the interest of terrorists to be seen to harm the people they claim to represent. The excuse given by Meinhof’s 2 June Commando (named after the day in 1967 that Benno Ohnesorg died) is that the telephone warnings it issued were ignored, and the Springer building was not evacuated. The explanation accounts for almost two-thirds of the entire statement: exact details of who called whom, and when, are followed by a blanket critique of Springer and capitalism — but also by the only apology the RAF ever made with regard to its bombings. “Springer,” says the statement, ging lieber das Risiko ein, daß seine Arbeiter und Angestellten durch Bomben verletzt wurden, als das Risiko, ein paar Stunden Arbeitszeit, also Profit, durch Fehlalarm zu verlieren. Für die Kapitalisten ist der Profit alles, sind die Menschen, die ihn schaffen, ein Dreck. — Wir bedauern, daß Arbeiter und Angestellte verletzt worden sind.31


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[would rather take the risk of his workers and employees being injured by bombs than lose a couple of hours of labor time — profit — after a false alarm. For capitalists profit is everything, but they regard the people who create it for them as muck. — We regret that workers and employees were injured.]

Finally, on 25 May, a statement regarding the attack on U.S. Army headquarters in Heidelberg a day earlier was sent to the Frankfurter Rundschau by the 15 July Commando — named for the day on which Petra Schelm was shot. Again, the military might of the RAF is advertised: the two bombs that detonated contained two hundred kilograms of TNT, we are told.32 Again, Vietnam is the justification, but it is doubleweighted, because Auschwitz is the metaphor. Vietnam, asserts the commando, is “genocide, the destruction of an entire people, it is a plan for a ‘final solution’: it is Auschwitz” (“Das ist Genozid, Völkermord, das wäre die ‘Endlösung,’ das ist Auschwitz”).33 The commando’s will to functionalize Auschwitz does not stop there. People in the Federal Republic, the statement asserts hopefully, are not helping police in their search for the May bombers because the people “want nothing to do with the crimes of American imperialism, nor with the ruling classes here who permit those crimes. Because they have not forgotten Auschwitz, Dresden, and Hamburg” (“Die Menschen in der Bundesrepublik unterstützen die Sicherheitskräfte bei der Fahndung nach den Bombenattentätern nicht, weil sie mit den Verbrechen des amerikanischen Imperialismus und ihrer Billigung durch die herrschende Klasse hier nichts zu tun haben wollen. Weil sie Auschwitz, Dresden und Hamburg nicht vergessen haben”).34 The juxtaposition of the extermination camp Auschwitz (that is, a war atrocity driven by Germans) with the bombflattened cities Dresden and Hamburg (war atrocities driven by the British) is startling because it implies that all three were situations in which the German people were not perpetrators, but victims; that it was not the “little people” who were responsible for Auschwitz, but their rulers, whose British counterparts ordered the bombings of German cities. The RAF is offering ordinary Germans a chance to declare themselves victims of the Nazi past — the only condition attached to this happy state of guilt avoidance is that they support the RAF in its bombing campaign. The wording of the May statements may not be consciously cynical. Language has a dangerous power to make things seem real, and the rhetoric may well have persuaded the rhetoricians. That the RAF believes its own rhetoric, however, does not diminish its intention to persuade (and manipulate) its audience. The reiterated insistence of the statements that this “is” a situation of war rhetorically exacts both from the RAF collective and from left-wing comrades external to it the absolute discipline of wartime, including absolute support and the suspension of criticism at


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a time when human beings were dying and being injured. Anything else is treason (Verrat) or cowardly (feige). The group was building what has been called a “framework,” meaning that ideas such as armed struggle, Auschwitz, and people’s war no longer functioned as isolated metaphors, but came together in a kind of complex of ideas that together made up the RAF world: the only true reality.35 Such a framework can turn the murder of a human being into an execution or sometimes animal slaughter. In the taped interview released by journalist Michèle Ray in 1970, shortly after the formation of the Red Army Faction, Meinhof’s notorious words had been that “the guy in uniform is a swine, not a person, and we’re going to deal with him on those terms” (“der Typ in der Uniform ist ein Schwein, das ist kein Mensch, und so haben wir uns mit ihm auseinanderzusetzen”).36 The dehumanizing of the enemy — “not a person” — continued in the May bombing statements: Buddenberg is “Buddenberg, the swine,” the police remain, as ever, “pigs” and Bullen. “All species of monster will be exterminated!” the RAF cites Mao,37 after its second attack on a U.S. Army base, which took the number of dead American soldiers to four. “Monsters” (Ungeheuer) may not quite be the “vermin” (Ungeziefer) of Nazi anti-Jewish rhetoric under Hitler’s propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, but language is being used in a similar way, and with a similar purpose.

“The Right-Wing Army Faction”: The Left versus the RAF Until early 1972 — that is, till just before the May bombings — the general opinion on the West German left had been that the real danger lay in the opportunity the RAF was giving the government to develop police powers and thereby tighten its hold on the state. The group was not regarded as directly threatening. Böll had famously declared that the Republic was engaged in a war of “six against sixty million” (“ein Krieg von 6 gegen 60,000,000”); a dreadfully dangerous situation, he writes, his text dripping with angry sarcasm.38 On 24 February konkret followed suit, noting that of more than six thousand shootings that occurred in Germany in 1971, the RAF was responsible for just six. The popular press, the magazine argued, was portraying a group that was actually no more dangerous than a firecracker as if it were an atom bomb.39 At this point the left seemed prepared to overlook the fact that violence against human beings had been part of the RAF’s activities and credo from the start. After the May bombings, however, the tone sharpened. In konkret, journalist Ernst Alexander Rauter used the column space formerly reserved for Meinhof to respond to the bombs, in a piece called “Die Rechte Armee-Fraktion” (The Right-Wing Army Faction). The title


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sounds a little clumsy, but function is leading form here, and Rauter is clearly angry. Curiously, his argument shows little concern for the American soldiers who died in the bombings. His primary complaint is that Baader-Meinhof are still useful idiots because their bombs have coincided with the election campaign and are likely to provide a boost for the conservatives. The RAF’s spectacular activities are negating years of painstaking progress. Frustration has turned to anger on the left, and anger entails less of a will to believe that the perpetrators are subjectively well-meaning: “objectively speaking,” says Rauter, “the bombers were right-wingers — can only be right-wingers. Someone who wants to change society for the better and is simultaneously in his right mind does not throw bombs at people” (“Objektiv waren die Bombenleger Rechte — können nur Rechte sein. Jemand, der die Gesellschaft zum Besseren verändern will und gleichzeitig über einen intakten Verstand verfügt, wirft keine Bomben auf Menschen”).40 For its next issue konkret conducted another poll. Neither the editors nor those interviewed could have foreseen that by the time the magazine went on sale, on 15 June, all of the core members of the RAF would have been arrested — Meinhof on the day of publication. This time the question is: “Für wen bombt die RAF?” (Who is the RAF bombing for?). Nobody seems to know. In frustration they resort to polemic. Jochen Steffen of the SPD suggests the group is fueling modern fascism (“Die RAF fördert die Kräfte eines modernen Faschismus”), and Wolfgang Roth of the Young Socialists recommends honorary membership of the more right-wing branch of the conservative party (“Der RAF gebührt die Ehrenmitgliedschaft in der CSU”).41 Konkret’s own journalist, Wallraff, uses historical metaphor to throw a sinister light on the bombings: we should cast our minds back to events of the Weimar era, he tells us, when Nazi provocateurs murdered and assassinated in order to fuel suspicion and anger against the left. “The strategy of the RAF,” he continues, not mincing his words, “is counterrevolutionary, illusionistic, elitist, and a betrayal of the interests of the working classes” (“Die Strategie der RAF ist konterrevolutionär, illusionistisch, elitär und Verrat an den Interessen der Arbeiterklasse”). Echoing Rauter’s accusation of useful idiocy, he paraphrases Voltaire’s quip that if God did not exist we should have to invent him: if the RAF did not exist, says Wallraff, then either the CIA or German fascists would invent it (“Die ‘RAF’ — gäbe es sie nicht — müßte zur gegenwärtigen Zeit von der CIA oder unseren Faschisten erfunden werden”). Konkret summed up a widespread feeling on the left: Die Illusion der RAF besteht . . . darin, daß ihre Mitglieder glauben, die Revolution jetzt, selbst, quasi durch Willensentscheidung machen zu können. Sie will die Revolution nicht machen, weil die ökonomischen Voraussetzungen sie ermöglichen und erfordern,


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sondern weil sie Bock darauf hat, und deshalb macht sie auch nicht Revolution, sondern Putz. Und genau deshalb hat sie nichts mit der Linken zu tun.42 [The illusion of the RAF is . . . that its members believe they can create the revolution now, themselves, almost through an act of will. Their intention is not to start the revolution because the economic conditions make it possible and necessary, but because they feel like it, and that means they are not starting a revolution — they are just making a nuisance of themselves. And for exactly that reason they have no connection with the left.]

That is a reasonable analysis, and nonetheless, the left had entered the language trap. It was constructing itself as different from the RAF in the same kind of absolute terms in which the RAF had rejected the left. By late 1977, members of the Red Army Faction had murdered Federal Attorney General Siegfried Buback (shot on 7 April 1977) and the chief executive of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto (killed on 30 July 1977), and abducted and killed industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer (who was kidnapped on 5 September and shot dead by his captors after the deaths in Stammheim of Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe on 18 October 1977). New laws were created in the wake of RAF terrorism, including the so-called “radicals decree” or Radikalenerlaß of January 1972, which barred those deemed left-wing extremists from public service professions (such as university professorships). The antiterrorism laws included the “contact block” or Kontaktsperrgesetz of September 1977, which limited the rights of defense lawyers to the extent of blocking their contact with clients. Predictions of the RAF’s counterrevolutionary impetus seemed to have fulfilled themselves, and few left-wing commentators were shy of associating the group, implicitly or explicitly, with Germany’s Nazi past. A rare exception was political essayist Walter Boehlich. In October 1977 Boehlich reacted to the kidnap of Hanns Martin Schleyer and to journalist Jillian Becker’s popular account of the RAF, Hitler’s Children.43 Schleyer was not only the current president of the German industrialists’ association (Arbeitgeberverband) but also a former SS man; Boehlich’s argument is that it is not the RAF so much as successful ex-Nazis like Schleyer who are at the root of the malaise in contemporary West Germany. The would-be revolutionaries, he contests, are not Hitler’s but Schleyer’s children; they are motivated not by what happened under Hitler in Germany but by what Schleyer and his ilk are getting away with in the Federal Republic of the late 1970s (“nicht Kinder Hitlers sind die politischen Täter, sondern Kinder Schleyers; nicht, was unter Hitler einmal getan worden ist, motiviert sie, sondern was die Schleyers heute tun, tun dürfen”).44 The RAF is responding with its actions to Germany’s present, not to its past, Boehlich’s argument runs; in this sense rhetorical


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references to Nazism on the part of its critics are inappropriate. Like Böll when he defended Meinhof in 1972,45 Boehlich was taking an unpopular stance in asking for reasoned understanding rather than polemic regarding the terrorists, and like Böll’s, his intelligent defense of the RAF was badly undermined by the group’s brutal actions — Schleyer was “executed” or murdered on 19 October. It is difficult to remain rational in the face of murder, but Boehlich was right: the RAF was not, in fact, a Nazi organization. To reduce it to that was an act of self-distancing on the left that replicated the group’s own black-and-white, “us and them” thinking. It was a form of complicity in the RAF’s own fantasy of war.

Genscher and the Terrorists: The State versus the RAF The terrorists’ primary strategy was to entrap not the left, but the government into participating in that fantasy. Outside of wartime, measures regarded as acceptable in times of national emergency will call a state’s political legitimacy into question: they will be seen as undemocratic or raise the specter of the “police state.” The RAF would both construct a war situation and complain bitterly of government measures that departed from the normal practices of a democracy in peacetime; that may seem contradictory, but if the primary aim is to destabilize the relationship between the people and the state, such tactics make sense. The RAF knew that it was possible to destabilize a nation by shaking the relationship of a government to its citizens: Meinhof spelled that out in a speech delivered in court in 1974, on trial for her part in the operation to free Baader. The strategy of the anti-imperialist struggle, she declared, is that the enemy (the state) reveals its true face when put on the defensive, so that the people see “the reaction of the system, the escalation of the counterrevolution, the transformation of the political state of emergency into a military state of emergency.” The anticipated result is that the state “turns the masses against itself, sharpens the contradictions, makes the revolutionary struggle unavoidable.”46 We should not underestimate the need felt by the West German government, post-1945, to defend its legitimacy. The absolute illegitimacy of the Third Reich and its practices had a shock effect that left Germans (as well as their European neighbors) with an unsettling sense of what is possible. West German politics was haunted by Nazism for years after 1945, and the ethos of the new republic was called into question every time a scandal regarding the political past of one its representatives blew up. Meanwhile, across the border to the east, a competitor German state existed whose political identity seemed to present a threat to the future of Western capitalism. Even a perceived lack of legitimacy is destabilizing;


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this is one of the problems posed by terrorism to a fledgling democracy like the FRG in 1970. Whether or not its reaction to the provocation offered by the terrorists was consistently legitimate — which is a matter for debate — it led to a deterioration in its perceived legitimacy that hit its lowest point during the German Autumn of 1977. Part of the government’s response was to commission a series of academic publications called Analysen zum Terrorismus (Analyses of Terrorism). In the wake of the German Autumn, the standing committee of home secretaries for the federal states (the Innenmininisterkonferenz or IMK) charged a working group with the task of “informing the population in detail about the aims, methods, and activities of the terrorists, as well as about their context and background — political extremism — and about the dangers they threaten.”47 Out of the working group came four volumes, published between 1981 and 1984, academic in tone but with the stated purpose of “rendering the public debate more objective, in order to avoid errors in the public’s understanding of terrorism and reaction to it.”48 The state was keen to regulate the discourse of its citizens. The Analysen tackle the questions the German public is assumed to be asking. “How much legitimacy does the Federal Republic of Germany have?” is one example.49 “Is the state overreacting to the terrorists?” is another question assumed to be on the minds of the populace;50 it had been answered with an implicit “yes” in Heinrich Böll’s novel Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, oder wie Gewalt entsteht und wohin sie führen kann (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead) of 1974, but gets a far more reassuring “no” from political scientist Ulrich Matz in the Analysen. He defends the nature and intensity of the state’s response: “We may take as a basic rule of thumb,” he argues, “that politically motivated attacks on an established order will always provoke a relatively intensive level of alarm, because order is the basic value that every society relies on” (“Grundsätzlich dürfte gelten, daß politisch motivierte Angriffe auf geltende Ordnungen überall einen relativ intensiven Alarm auslösen, weil diese Ordnung den Grundwert jeder Gesellschaft darstellt”).51 In Matz’s account it is not the reaction of the state to the terrorists, but the reaction of the terrorists to the reaction of the state (!) that has caused levels of violence to escalate so alarmingly.52 More recently the suggestion has been made that the Federal Republic — even while it suffered or feared a certain destabilization — may actually have used the black-and-white world created by terrorism and antiterrorist activity to stabilize its own identity as a young democracy.53 Rather than falling into the language trap, that implies, the West German government participated cynically in a discourse of war. The business of defining a good democratic “self” in contradistinction to a bad terrorist “other” can shore up and strengthen the identity of the state; not only


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the terrorists were organizing their world in a “morally dualized” way. Rumors and accusations that the state was (at worst) actually orchestrating pseudo-terrorist attacks or (at best) laying the blame for random events at the terrorists’ door were certainly sown and fed (and possibly believed) by the RAF. On 25 September 1975 the prisoners in Stuttgart-Stammheim responded angrily when blame for a bomb in Hamburg’s central station was laid at the door of their organization. They countered with the accusation that the real culprits were the CIA or the West German secret service, acting with the intention of turning the people against the RAF. There is indignation that the game of domestic destabilization might now be being played against them. Destabilization is a terrorist activity, and there is, therefore, a certain logic to the RAF’s assertion that the state, in causing it, is terrorist: “this act of terrorism against the people is intended to force identification with the state by causing fear and confusion in the populace,” it objected (“Terror gegen das Volk [ist] darauf aus, durch die Erzeugung von Angst und Diffusion im Volk Identifikation mit dem Staat zu erzwingen”).54 Terrorist is a stigma word: generally the person or organization so designated is deemed politically unacceptable and to be shunned.55 The RAF is quick to take the opportunity to reassign the stigma to the state: “the urban guerilla represents the only possible way of fighting the terrorism of the state,” it continues (“Die Stadtguerilla zeigt den Weg, wie der staatliche Terrorismus allein zu bekämpfen ist”). For itself it retains the designation “urban guerilla”: “The political and military activities of the urban guerilla are never directed against the people . . . In its offensive against the state, terrorism can never be the weapon of the urban guerilla” (“Die politisch-militärische Aktion der Stadtguerilla richtet sich nie gegen das Volk. . . . In der Offensive gegen den Staat kann Terrorismus keine Waffe der Stadtguerilla sein”).56 In its earlier papers, the RAF had followed Marighella, who in his Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla had decreed terrorism one possible weapon;57 now it moves away from that, avoiding the criminalizing impetus of the word. Notions of legitimacy inform the rhetorical self-justification of both the RAF and the state, but on this occasion, the RAF turns the discourse of criminality (normally controlled by the criminal justice system) back on the state, with the accusation that the government and its secret service are now the terrorists — that they, and not the RAF, are the criminals. The state was equally keen to criminalize the RAF. The standard designation in government circles was not in fact RAF, but Baader-Meinhof-Bande (Baader-Meinhof Gang). Governments are not generally naïve users of language, and the West German government in the 1970s was no exception; the personalization via the use of the two names implicitly denies there is a political project, and taking “gang” rather than “group” as the descriptor hints at outlaw or desperado status.58 In


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1972, a document called Der Baader-Meinhof-Report (The Baader-Meinhof Report) was published, in which government noted that mistakes had been made in dealing with the terrorists and the public. The primary problem or lack identified was a problem of language: “Point of error,” says the report: “what is lacking is a coherent, political language for a rapid response” (“Mangel also: Ein einheitlicher politischer, rasch reagierende Sprachgebrauch fehlt”).59 Two years later, in 1974, another lengthy publication — the Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande (Documentation of the Baader-Meinhof Gang) — was released by the ministry of the interior for Rheinland-Pfalz. Not only does the title (which has adopted the stigma word “gang”) show an already enhanced linguistic strategy; one of the first observations made is that the activities of the group are charged with an unusual or even unique kind of “criminal energy” (“mit einer einmaligen kriminellen Energie geladen”).60 The Dokumentation is a photocopied typescript not intended for commercial distribution, but the linguistic “rapid response” to terrorism that was deemed missing in 1972 is clearly in evidence. Its editors cite the RAF’s assertion in its Konzept Stadtguerilla that the organization of armed resistance fighters in Germany at this point in history is right, possible, and justified; the sense of anxiety this notion creates is augmented when the Dokumentation refers to a growing body of literature that supports the group’s claim.61 It analyzes a number of RAF texts with an eye to the threat of civil war and concludes (erroneously, but effectively) that the group’s next step will be sabotage of public utilities.62 There are striking similarities with fears around terrorism in the twenty-first century: the terrorists, it is claimed, aim to hit the nerve centers of industrialized society: electricity plants and water works, nuclear power stations and gas works, refineries, pipelines, harbor facilities, computers, railway stations, and airports.63 Accumulation is an established rhetorical tool: it describes the technique of listing points or ideas for effect. The Dokumentation BaaderMeinhof-Bande uses accumulation in a way that provokes maximum anxiety: after repeated warnings that there may be terrorist attacks on a whole list of state-run utilities, and that the RAF is widely supported by a whole list of other extreme left-wing groups, its editors conclude with a deliberately disturbing prognosis that again lists the dangers: Die Intelligenz ihrer Kader, deren Haß, ihr politischer Fanatismus und ihre kriminelle Energie stellen noch in der Haft eine nicht zu unterschätzende Kraft dar. Die fortbestehende Kommunikation zwischen den Gefangenen und mit der Außenwelt birgt die Gefahr in sich, daß jederzeit mit einer überraschenden Aktion der bereits geschilderten Art gerechnet werden muß.64 [The intelligence of the group’s leaders, the force of their hatred, their political fanaticism and their criminal energy mean that they


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represent, even in prison, a force we should not underestimate. Continuing communication between the prisoners and the outside world means there is a danger that we may be surprised at any time by an operation of the type described.]

Writing in early 1977, just a few months before the disastrous events of the German Autumn, social psychologist Peter Brückner, whose leftwing engagement meant that he repeatedly fell foul of the state himself,65 pointed out that both sides, the RAF and the state, had repeatedly harnessed language to legitimize their being and their actions — something that has taken both sides some distance away from honesty. With reference to two of the RAF’s favorite phrases, bewaffneter Widerstand (armed resistance) and bewaffneter Kampf (armed struggle), Brückner observes that terminology has been usurped: this is language borrowed from another historical or geographical context, and the situation it conjures is a pretence or fantasy. It only seems to reflect objective truths; in reality it reflects the contingent, subjective hopes and wishes of the RAF. The whole notion of the urban guerilla, with its implicit reference to Latin America, gives a tendentious, distorted picture of the situation in Germany.66 In Brückner’s analysis, the reactions of the government and press to the terrorists’ self-aggrandizement have only made things worse. The response of the state and media has been characterized by an impulse to dehumanize the terrorists, he argues, just as the RAF dehumanized the policemen they intended to shoot. Each side may feel that dividing lines are being drawn, but in fact the two sides are merely becoming like each other: the state and media response is beset by internal contradictions reminiscent of the writings of the RAF, and by a will to construct an insider group: to assert that “we” are “all” under threat.67 Instead of rationally deconstructing the RAF’s terminology in the sobering context of West German reality, the government is participating in it, and thereby exacerbating a rhetorically produced hysteria. This, in Brückner’s view, is not accidental: he calls it psychological or semantic warfare (“psychologische oder semantische Kriegsführung”).68 His argument is that the state, which feels under threat, is producing not a differentiated analysis (as it responsibly ought to), but counter-rhetoric. Brückner’s assertions can be explored in the language used by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, leader of West Germany’s Liberal Party (Freie Demokratische Partei or FDP) and home secretary from 1969–74 in the Social Democratic/Liberal coalition under Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD). Genscher engaged enthusiastically with the rhetoric produced by the RAF and the radical left, produced counter-rhetoric, and brought that to parliament (the Bundestag) and to his public speeches. In an address delivered in 1972, called “Regierungsverantwortung in der freiheitlichen Ordnung” (The Responsibility of the Government in a Free State),


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he responded to the famous call for a “long march through the institutions” made by student leader Rudi Dutschke in 1970.69 “It is now,” said Genscher, “a question of the democrats among us, by which I mean . . . those who say yes to this state and this society, finally beginning their march though the institutions” (“Es geht darum, daß die Demokraten, ich meine . . . diejenigen, die Ja sagen zu diesem Staat und dieser Gesellschaft, endlich den Marsch durch die Institutionen antreten”).70 A little earlier the same year he had cited passages from a letter written by Baader to the press, as well as quoting from Horst Mahler’s piece Der bewaffnete Kampf in Westeuropa (The Armed Struggle in Western Europe), from the RAF’s Konzept Stadtguerilla, and from its manifesto Die Rote Armee aufbauen. Genscher’s focus, in this speech on national security, is on the RAF’s declaration of war on the state; the Konzept Stadtguerilla in particular, with its concluding call to civil war, augments the sense of real and present danger.71 (The same inflammatory section of the Konzept was cited again by Genscher’s successor Werner Maihofer (FDP) during a debate on national security of 13 March 1975, a fortnight after the kidnap of CDU politician Peter Lorenz by the 2 July Movement.)72 It certainly looked as if the government had taken the terrorists’ bait, and was engaging in the discourse of war. The home secretary made no secret that his project in that conflict was to engage citizens on the side of the state — a competitive campaign for the “hearts and minds” of the German people was in progress. At the annual meeting of the civic associations (Jahresversammlung der deutschen Bürgervereine) in 1971 Genscher asked, in a conscious echo of John F. Kennedy, not what the state can do for the security of its citizens, but what citizens can do for the security of the state (“Bezogen auf den Problemkreis der inneren Sicherheit kann die Frage also nicht allein lauten: Was tut der Staat für die Sicherheit seiner Bürger? Es muß auch gefragt werden: Was tut der Bürger für die Sicherheit seines Staates?”).73 On 7 June 1972, the day Gudrun Ensslin was arrested and six days after Baader’s and Jan-Carl Raspe’s arrest after a tip-off from a member of the public, he repeated his message: namely, that the battle against violent criminality and political radicalism can only be won with the help of society at large.74 But the battle was not yet won, even though on 15 June Meinhof, too, was apprehended after a contact she believed safe chose to inform the police. In the autumn of 1972 a Lufthansa flight was hijacked, and the German government responded to the hijackers’ demands by releasing a number of Palestinian terrorists from the Black September group that had attacked the Munich Olympics. In a report to parliament on national security, Genscher returned to his point that the state cannot fight terrorism by itself (“Kriminalität und politischer Radikalismus können nicht von den staatlichen Organen allein bewältigt werden”); the battle has to take place through and in society, he insisted, and each citizen must be prepared to


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engage on behalf of his state and make clear his allegiance to it (“Die Auseinandersetzung muß durch und in der Gesellschaft geführt werden. Dazu gehört die Bereitschaft des Bürgers, sich für seinen Staat zu engagieren, sich zu ihm zu bekennen”).75 He makes a striking connection between “the citizen” via the possessive pronoun to “his state” — ideas like our constitution, our country, his state are, Peter Brückner would argue, rhetorical figures, used for propaganda purposes.76 Brückner is right that rhetoric is in play, but his own word “propaganda” puts a negative spin on the government’s effort to maintain its relationship with its citizens — one might equally well argue that Genscher was using the language of ownership in a way that is appropriate to the values of a democratic state. Genscher wonders how citizens might be motivated to regard the state as “theirs”; it surely has to begin with the relationship between the people and the police — and here, as elsewhere, language is crucial. Police officers, he emphasizes in a clear reference to the parlance of the radical left, are not “pigs.” He provides an alternative definition: they are “guarantors of constitutional democracy” (“Die Polizeibeamten sind keine ‘Bullen’ . . . sondern Garanten unserer Verfassungsordnung”).77 One intention of the radicals, he observes, is to undermine the relationship of trust between citizen and state; to “sow mistrust in order to reap their own gains” (“das ist das Ziel der Feinde unserer Ordnung, sie wollen Mißtrauen säen, um selbst ernten zu können”).78 Genscher is directly countering the RAF’s attempts to redefine the state as unconstitutional and undemocratic by defining the radicals as chaotic elements within a constitutional, democratic order, and as destructive of that order. Addressing a colloquium in the autumn of 1972 on “The Responsibilities of Government in a Free Democracy” (“Regierungsverantwortung in der freiheitlichen Ordnung”), he again engaged with the language use of the RAF and its defenders. “Opponents of our democratic order,” he told his listeners, “are trying to influence and corrupt the attitude of our citizens to the security services in a democratic state” (“Gegner unserer Ordnung unternehmen [es], die Einstellung der Bevölkerung zu den Sicherheitsorganen des demokratischen Staates zu beeinflussen und zu verfälschen”).79 Genscher was responding to Böll’s critique of the rhetoric that stamped Baader-Meinhof war enemies of the state. He is at pains to emphasize that the activities of the RAF are not the last desperate recourse of a group of idealists driven into a position of self-defense by a hysterical reaction from some elements of the public and an inappropriate police response (as Böll had argued); on the contrary, he insists, the current situation is the result of “ice-cold, carefully planned revolutionary action that is calculated to overthrow constitutional democracy in West Germany” (“die Konsequenz eines planvollen Handelns, eines eiskalten revolutionären Kalküls, das auf die gewaltsame Beseitigung unserer Verfassungsordnung zielt”).80 The overthrow of the West German state was indeed what


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the RAF intended. But adjectives like eiskalt (ice-cold) betray Genscher’s participation in an emotive language game. One can certainly accuse Genscher in this instance of (to use Brückner’s phrase) exacerbating a rhetorically produced hysteria, and of producing counter-rhetoric that shows a will to construct an insider group in contradistinction to the terrorists: the “we” that comprises citizen plus state. The latter, however, may be a reasonable tactical response to the RAF’s campaign to destabilize the relationship of citizens and state. There is no indication that he — as the government’s domestic representative — sought to dehumanize the terrorists; rather, he looks to counter the RAF’s will to dehumanize (and thereby legitimize the killing of) the police. An important part of Brückner’s argument is that the state is becoming like the terrorists it is fighting, and Genscher does reproduce the RAF’s anti-intellectualism when he insists that those intellectuals he calls “enemies of constitutional democracy” (such as Professor Peter Brückner) will be excluded from public service.81 That was July 1972, and the home secretary was asserting what in January of the same year the government and federal states had agreed: that a so-called Radikalenerlaß or radicals’ edict would, from now on, exclude those designated political extremists from civil service professions. That made left-wing intellectuals part of the problem that was terrorism — the numbers of those designated the outsiders of constitutional democracy thereby grew. Brückner complains that government rhetoric used an “aggregated symbol” (“aggregiertes Symbol”): that is, an undifferentiated, conglomerate notion of left-wing danger. That notion or symbol of danger is produced by amalgamating East Germany, the Soviet Union, the Red Army Faction, left-wing intellectuals and socialists, students, members of the German Communist Party (DKP), and other organizations, so that they all become one enormous “enemy of the state.”82 Anyone who shows any kind of understanding for the RAF — who does not reject it absolutely, or tries to articulate a more complex approach to the circumstances in which terrorism has arisen — risks being designated a sympathizer (Sympathisant) — another stigma word in 1970s West Germany. The designated person becomes, like the terrorists themselves, a public enemy — he or she is, in Brückner’s terms, aggregatable: “Almost everyone who does not speak up loudly for the status quo is ‘aggregatable,’” he explains; it is a practice that is “intended to corral citizens into a speech-free zone of obedience (comparable only with the way children are disciplined within the authoritarian family).”83 In authoritarian families, and in an authoritarian state, it is important who is allowed to speak. The right to speak is the right to define, and that has consequences (as Brückner, who lost his professorship when he was defined as a left-wing extremist, knew). In Genscher’s speeches there is no question that definitions and the authority to name are key: that is


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why the police cannot be allowed to be called “pigs” or Bullen, but must instead be known as the guarantors of democracy.

Political versus Criminal Another battle of definitions was in progress over the question whether the RAF might or might not be defined as a political organization. Were its members the struggling partisans they presented themselves as, or plain criminals? Horst Mahler, already in prison but still tolerated by the RAF at this time, had written a piece for Spiegel of 24 January 1972, called “Die revolutionäre Linke ist kriminell” (The Revolutionary Left is Criminal). Mahler argued that revolutionary politics are necessarily criminal; in a “criminal” state, breaking the law is the only way forward.84 His reasoning is strongly reminiscent of Meinhof ’s in her 1968 article on department store arson; it is not criminals, he insists, but criminal justice itself that ought to be on trial: the legal system that developed historically to protect and uphold the domination by a wealthy minority of the poor and exploited minority of the people (“Die Strafgewalt des Staates ist geschichtlich entstanden zum Schutze und zur Bewahrung der Herrschaft von besitzenden Minderheiten über die besitzlose und ausgebeutete Mehrheit des Volkes”). But he still insists on a difference between “normal” criminality and the acts of revolutionaries: while normal criminality directly pursues the interests of personal enrichment or satisfaction, says Mahler, revolutionary criminality is about realizing the needs of a society.85 The reiterated assertions of incarcerated group members that they were political prisoners or prisoners of war had a clear strategic value: the RAF activists did not want to be tried as common criminals.86 (When the court case against leaders of “first generation” finally opened in May 1975, the presiding judge, Theodor Prinzing, emphasized that this was not a political trial but normal criminal proceedings.)87 This issue of definitions is of interest to the (potentially aggregatable) left, which for practical and theoretical reasons was keen to define itself as unlike the RAF. In the konkret poll conducted after the May bombings of 1972, Karl Hauenschild, president of the trade union for the printing, paper, and ceramics trades (IG Druck-Papier-Keramik) had insisted there would be “no solidarity between the workers and pseudo-political criminals” (“Es wird keine Solidarität der Arbeitnehmer mit pseudo-politischen Verbrechern geben”).88 Home Secretary Genscher was working with similar definitions. No kind of political intention can justify an act of violence, Genscher declared categorically: a crime remains a crime, even when “the thin mantle of political conviction is subsequently cast over it” (“Kein politisches Anliegen rechtfertigt eine Gewalttat. Ein Verbrechen bleibt ein Verbrechen,


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auch wenn ihm nachträglich das dünne Mäntelchen einer politischen Überzeugung umgehangen wird”).89 He was formulating for a civilian audience the same thoughts he had put to a military gathering two months previously: namely, that it is crucial that the state maintain strict separation of the words political and violence, and instead link violence with crime.90 The home secretary is wanting it both ways, however. This is perhaps what Brückner means by “internal contradictions” in the government’s argument, and what Rudolf Augstein, editor of Spiegel, notes in his commentary article of October 1977 called ““Weltbürgerkrieg à la Bonn” (World Civil War, Bonn-style).91 There is a logical contradiction (which echoes the logical contradiction in the RAF’s own strategy of provocation and complaint) when terrorists are reduced to the status of “mere” criminals, but their struggle is given the status of impending civil war.

Nothing in Between: The Language of War It is worth remembering that the social ructions of 1968 and beyond began with war. The movement of 1968, in Germany and elsewhere, was kicked into being by the war in Vietnam, and the late sixties and early seventies are only two decades on from the trauma of the Second World War. In her konkret piece of 1967, “Vietnam und die Deutschen” (Vietnam and the Germans), Meinhof described the Vietnam situation as a new kind of world war, and in the same year the Frankfurt arsonists clearly understood themselves to be bringing that war home. Television images made conflicts across the globe suddenly tangible, and the paramilitary training received by members of the newly formed RAF at the hands of the Palestinian organization Al-Fatah is likely to have encouraged their view of themselves as armed fighters in a kind of global war. In 1971, the Konzept Stadtguerilla would close with a call to “victory in the people’s war!” (“Sieg im Volkskrieg!”).92 In the bombing statement of 16 May, the police who shot Weisbecker were designated an execution commando (Exekutionskommando), and the verb “liquidate” (liquidieren) used to describe the shooting. This is the language of wartime, and the RAF was implicitly reprising the war against German fascism. The police authorities are straightforwardly termed fascists (Faschisten): “Kampf der SS-Praxis der Polizei!” (Resist the SS-style practices of the police!), the statement exhorts its readers.93 A “language of war” is characterized not only by military vocabulary but by structures of conflict: oppositions. In 1977 Rolf Bachem, a linguist, illustrated the phenomenon with examples from the RAF texts: Feind (enemy) versus wir (us), Bulle (pig, for policeman) versus Fighter (the American term, used heroically in the spirit of the movies to designate the terrorist), Vernichtungshaft (annihilation custody — with echoes


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of the concentration camp — for prison) versus Befreiungskrieg (battle for freedom).94 Those verbal oppositions or binaries express what terrorism analyst Iring Fetscher would soon afterwards call psychological dualism: the notion that the world divides into black and white. “In the morally dualized world,” Fetscher elaborates, “there are only good and bad actions, friend or foe. Treason lurks in the spaces in-between.”95 Psychological dualism characterizes terrorist thinking (and all war ideology). In the crisis situations of terrorism and war, absolute certainty is of the essence. That makes the in-between a “no-go” zone: there is no space for flexibility, no space in which thinking that is not black-and-white is possible. It is a mode of structuring thought that risks growing more powerful than the thinkers themselves — it would later impel Meinhof to construct a situation for herself and the group in which there was no going back,96 and Holger Meins to write during the hunger strike that would kill him that the only way forward was to “victory or death” (“Sieg oder Tod”).97 The idea that most readily enabled the construction of a morally dualized world in Germany after the Second World War was fascism.98 The idea of fascism or Nazism was mobilized by the RAF to signify a need for absolute differentiation, and it was mobilized by the RAF’s opponents in precisely the same way. When konkret encouraged the left to voice its criticisms, responses drew on a bank of metaphors that discredited or demonized an opponent by historical association with the Hitler era, from “useful idiots” and agents provocateurs (which recalls not only the Nazi era, but the reactionary forces that sabotaged workers’ revolts in Germany in the early twenties, in the wake of the Russian revolution of 1917) to “fascist” — the last the most specific to recent German history, and understood to be the most damning. The government was doing the same when, in the Baader-Meinhof-Report, it constructed an analogy between Josef Goebbels and Horst Mahler,99 and when Genscher as Home Secretary evoked the Nazi era to stir up public feeling against the RAF. On the last occasion when citizens failed to take action against such a threat, he urged, the Nazi catastrophe resulted: “Our people plunged into the deepest catastrophe in our history because the democrats were not strong enough to prevent the horror that was brewing” (“Unser Volk ist in die tiefste Katastrophe seiner Existenz gestürzt, weil die Demokraten nicht stark genug waren, das heraufziehende Unheil abzuwehren”).100 The metaphor of natural disaster (“catastrophe”) here seems inappropriate, however — Genscher has joined the RAF in implying that the German people were the helpless victims of German political history. It is in the nature of democracies that the government not only regards itself as the center, but does so (because it has been elected) with a sense of justification. It is against this center that revolutionaries and terrorists react, positing themselves as different. That makes them, in the word


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of the law, criminal. The case of West Germany demonstrates how such a relatively straightforward assertion of difference — the establishment of two distinct sides — is inevitably followed by a process of negotiation regarding who is on the side of whom. In that “dance of difference,” who is different from (or the same as) whom seems crucial. While the left, generally speaking, responded to the RAF by asserting difference from the group and its methods, government-authored documents such as the Baader-Meinhof-Report swept aside differences between the RAF and other left-wing organizations, individuals, even countries (such as the GDR). In the process of shoring up its own identity and legitimacy, the West German state lumped together those elements perceived as threateningly different, producing what Brückner called an “aggregated symbol” of left-wing danger. Böll, writing for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in June 1972, similarly noted a disturbing tendency to criminalize any kind of dissidence.101 It is the black-and-white thinking of wartime, and out of it arises a situation in which anyone who will not damn the RAF is him- or herself damned a “sympathizer.” Both sides — the RAF and its supporters, and those who sought to protect the state — developed language that was tribalistic. Champions of either side could soon be identified by their choice of words. On the side of the state we find Sympathisant (sympathizer: a stigma word), BaaderMeinhof-Bande (Baader-Meinhof Gang), and Staatsnotwehr (democratic self-defense, to describe and justify the response of the state to the terrorists); on the side of the RAF we find Bullen, Faschistenstaat (fascist state), and later, in prison, Isolationsfolter (isolation torture, to describe the practice of keeping RAF prisoners in solitary confinement), and politische Gefangene (political prisoners, to describe the imprisoned terrorists). In the texts of the RAF and its supporters, insiders are referred to by their first names — Andreas, Ulrike — but opponents or outsiders by their surnames: Buback, Brandt, and later Mahler, after Horst Mahler had been excluded from what Meinhof calls “the family.”102 The Federal Republic of Germany had only come into being in 1949 — it was, in effect, celebrating its twenty-first birthday in the year the Red Army Faction invented itself. Tightening the laws in a way that curtailed left-wing activity, even though that felt to many like a sinister reminder of a shameful past, may well have seemed a necessary precaution in a present situation that included a communist German state just across the border to the East. It is not a justification of political opportunism to say that the RAF almost certainly provided various German governments between 1970 and 1977 with reasons or excuses to tighten national security. Was the West German government response to Baader-Meinhof — as a number of commentators have suggested — a cynical and opportunist way of tightening the laws, or was it motivated by genuine concern regarding the activities and potential of the RAF? The answer, probably,


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is: something of both. In the language used by government and the mainstream media, freiheitlich (free) and rechtsstaatlich (democratic) are key words. They are thrown back at the state by those who criticize it: in the notorious edition of the intellectual quarterly Kursbuch that dealt with the solitary confinement of RAF members after their arrests, called Folter in der BRD: Zur Situation der politischen Gefangenen (Torture in the FRG: the Situation of the Political Prisoners), editor Karl Michel called isolation “a dangerous instrument: the intention is to isolate those on the left who cannot be integrated, but the risk is that, on the contrary, the entire left wing will pull together in solidarity for a social order that is truly free and democratic.”103 By participating in the RAF’s own narrative of difference, and treating RAF prisoners differently, the state actually stimulated a wave of support for a group that had otherwise been largely rejected on the left. The RAF was rejected not only on the basis of its rhetoric. Language may create the preconditions for extremist violence but it was, in the end, the actions of the RAF — such as the May bombings — that led to its complete isolation. And language was only one part of the state’s response to the provocation it offered. One mammoth nonverbal response stands out: Stammheim. Twelve million German marks were spent on a building that Spiegel called the “Alcatraz of Justice.”104 The purpose-built, ultrahigh-security courthouse for the trial of the RAF at Stuttgart-Stammheim prison was a bombproof creation of concrete and iron with tiny bulletproof windows.105 Sometimes actions speak at least as loudly as words, and Spiegel asks the cogent question whether the Stammheim courthouse must not be understood as “a prejudgment set in concrete.”106 Drawing the dividing line between its enemies and itself seems to have left the RAF isolated, identified only with itself, and with the struggle: “your identity is struggle,” Meinhof would write to the RAF prisoners (“deine identität [ist] kampf”).107 Left-wing commentator Til Schulz had already noticed in early 1974 that the RAF seemed trapped in the circularity of its self-definition: “the struggle, become everyday, is sufficient to itself: it affects and changes nothing any longer. It confirms the eternal sameness of bourgeois domination.”108 Beyond Sisiphean struggle, it seemed, there was nowhere left for the group to go.

Notes The phrase quoted in the title of this chapter is from Mao Tse-Tung, “Drawing the Line Between the Enemy and Ourselves” (1952); cited in Kollektiv RAF, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, in Rote Armee Fraktion: Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF, ed. Martin Hoffmann (Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1997), 27–48; here 27; and the citation for the epigraph in this chapter is as follows: Letter from Holger Meins (1 November 1974), in HIS Me,H/006,006; reprinted in edited form


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in das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973–1977: Dokumente, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut (Hamburg: Neuer Malik, 1987), 183–86. 1

Letter from Baader (20 November 1974), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 201–3; here 201.

2

Meinhof, typewritten note, cited in Iring Fetscher, Herfried Münkler, and Hannelore Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Fetscher and Günter Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 1) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 16–273; here 75. 3

Andreas Musolff, Krieg gegen die Öffentlichkeit: Terrorismus und politischer Sprachgebrauch (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 299. 4

Letter from Meinhof (19 March 1976), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 263–65; here 264; also in Meinhof, letzte texte von ulrike, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa (Eigendruck im Selbstverlag, June 1976), 7; and texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa, Sektion BRD, Stuttgart (Lund: Bo Cavefors, 1977). 5

Letter from Meins (1 November 1974).

6

“Es kann kein Zweifel bestehen: Ulrike Meinhof hat dieser Gesellschaft den Krieg erklärt.” Böll, “Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade oder freies Geleit?” in Der Spiegel 3 (1972); reprinted in Die Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe, ed. Reinhard Rauball (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973), 212–21. Böll was responding to the Bild-Zeitung of 23 December 1971. 7

Andreas Musolff, “Bürgerkriegs-Szenarios und ihre Folgen: Die Terrorismusdebatte in der Bundesrepublik 1970–1993,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), 2:1171– 84; here 1183. 8

See Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 8. 9

Claus Fried, “Neubauers nützliche Idioten,” in konkret 12 (1970): 51. Kurt Neubauer had responsibility for police matters in West Berlin, as Innen- und Polizeisenator. 10

See Jutta Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof: Die Biographie (Berlin: Ullstein, 2007), 162. 11

“Die gewaltsame sogenannte Befreiung des Kaufhausbrandstifters Andreas Baader . . . lieferte der Polizei den willkommenen Vorwand, nun endlich mit jener Gründlichkeit und Schärfe aufzutreten, die ihrer Führung schon lange vorschwebt.” Fried, “Neubauers nützliche Idioten,” 51. 12

“Die Schüsse vom 14. Mai bekamen und bekommen immer mehr die Funktion eines Reichstagsbrandes.” Peter Hahn and Claus Fried, “Die Bombenleger von Berlin. . . . Wie es zu einer Situation kommen konnte, in der Terroristen der Polizei beim Kampf gegen die Linke Schützenhilfe leisten,” in konkret 12 (1970): 48–51; here 48 and 51. 13


Wallraff, “Ulrikes Rote Armee,” in konkret 14 (1970): 7.

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14

“Die Imitation südamerikanischer Praktiken in mitteleuropäischen Großstädten ist zweifellos das untauglichste Mittel zur sozialistischen Umgestaltung. . . . Sie kann nichts Positives bewirken, sondern schürt nur die Pogromstimmung gegen APO und Linke im allgemeinen und erzeugt einen Ruck nach rechts.” Werner Thönnessen, cited in “Wem nützt Anarchismus? KONKRET-Umfrage bei bundesdeutschen Linken zum Fall Baader,” in konkret 12 (1970): 52–54; here 52. 15

“Jede Aktion muß darauf angelegt sein, die Sympathien der Massen zu gewinnen und sie zu aktivieren. Wenn sie das nicht tut, sondern es dem Gegner leichtmacht, die Massen gegen fortschrittliche Ziele und ihre Verfechter zu mobilisieren, . . . dann hilft sie objektiv dem Feind, so lauter auch die Absichten der Akteure sein mögen.” Josef Schleifstein, cited in “Wem nützt Anarchismus?” 52. 16

Interview with Herbert Marcuse, in konkret 13 (1972): 15.

17

Gehrke, cited in “Wem nützt Anarchismus?” 53.

18

Eight Red Army Faction members were taken in by the GDR in 1980: Susanne Albrecht, Silke Maier-Witt, Werner Lotze, Christine Dümlein, Ralf Baptist Friedrich, Sigrid Sternebeck, Monika Helbing, and Ekkehard von Seckendorff-Gudent. Two more, Henning Beer and Inge Viett (previously of the 2 June Movement), joined them in 1981. See Butz Peters, “RAF und Staatsicherheit,” in Peters, Tödlicher Irrtum: Die Geschichte der RAF (Berlin: Argon, 2004), 539–92; here 539–67; Martin Jander, “Differenzen im antiimperialistischen Kampf: Zu den Verbindungen des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit mit der RAF und dem bundesdeutschen Linksterrorismus,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:696–713; here 711. 19

Jander, “Differenzen,” 705; Peters suggest there was competitive one-upmanship within the secret services. See Peters, Tödlicher Irrtum, 577. 20

Tobias Wunschik, “‘Abwehr’ und Unterstützung des internationalen Terrorismus — Die Hauptabteilung XXII,” in Westarbeit des MfS: Das Zusammenspiel von ‘Aufklärung’ und ‘Abwehr,’ ed. Hubertus Knabe (Berlin: Links, 1999), 263–64. 21

Horizont: Zeitschrift für Außenpolitik, cited in konkret 3 (1972): 14–15.

22

Report produced by the GDR’s antiterrorist Abteilung XXII of 4 July 1987, cited in Jander, “Differenzen,” 706. 23

Kaul, “Der kurze Weg der Ungeduld,” in Die Weltbühne 16 (1974).

24

Kommando Petra Schelm, “Anschlag auf das Hauptquartier der US-Army in Frankfurt/Main: Erklärung vom 14. Mai 1972,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 145. 25

Kommando Petra Schelm, “Erklärung vom 14. Mai 1972,” 145.

26

“Bei diesem ‘als interessiert unterstellten Dritten’ handelt es sich um eine national, ethnisch oder soziologisch bestimmte Bevölkerungsgruppe, in deren ‘objektiven Interesse,’ wie seitens der Terroristen behauptet wird, die Aktionen durchgeführt werden.” Herfried Münkler, “Guerillakrieg und Terrorismus: Begriffliche Unklarheit mit politischen Folgen,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:78– 102; here 94 The notion of third party with an assumed interest was previously discussed in Fetscher, Münkler, and Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen.” 27


Münkler, “Guerillakrieg,” 94.

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28

“entlastet durch Analogie.” Herbert Jäger, Gerhard Schmidtchen, and Lieselotte Süllwold, Lebenslauf-Analysen (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 2) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 167. 29

Kommando Thomas Weisbecker, “Anschläge in Augsburg und München: Erklärung vom 16. Mai 1972,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 145–46. 30

Kommando Manfred Grashof, “Anschlag auf den BGH-Richter Buddenberg in Karlsruhe: Erklärung vom 20. Mai 1972,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 146. 31

Kommando 2. Juni, “Sprengstoffanschlag auf das Springer-Hochhaus in Hamburg: Erklärung vom 20. Mai 1972,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 147. 32

Kommando 15. Juli, “Bombenanschlag auf das Hauptquartier der US-Army in Europa in Heidelberg: Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 147. 33

Kommando 15. Juli, “Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972,” 148.

34

Kommando 15. Juli, “Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972,” 148.

35

“Ausdrücke wie bewaffneter Kampf, Krieg, Bürgerkrieg sind nicht mehr Termini einer polemischen Metapher, sondern bilden den — als einzig wahre ‘Realität’ gesetzten — Rahmen.” Andreas Musolff, “Verwendung von Kriegsterminologie in der Terrorismus-Debatte,” in Begriffe besetzen: Strategien des Sprachgebrauchs in der Politik, ed. Frank Liedtke, Martin Wengeler, and Karin Böke (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1991), 186–204; here 191–92. 36

Der Spiegel 25 (1970). See chapter 3.

37

“Alle Arten von Ungeheuern werden vernichtet werden!” Kommando 15. Juli, “Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972,” 147. 38

“Das ist tatsächlich eine äußerst bedrohliche Situation für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” Böll, “Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade,” 216–17. 39

“1971 fanden in der BRD 6351 Schießereien statt — die RAF verursachte cirka [sic] ein Promille davon . . . Trotzdem schafft es die Presse mit Leichtigkeit, die Knallerbse RAF als Atombombe darzustellen.” konkret 5 (1972): 16. 40

“eine ersehnte Wahlhilfe für die CDU/CSU, 5 Minuten, bevor sie — vielleicht für Jahrzehnte — von der Macht ausgeschlossen werden könnte.” Rauter, “Die Rechte Armee-Fraktion,” in konkret 12 (1972): 15. 41

“Für wen bombt die RAF?” in konkret 13 (1972): 16–19; here 16–17.

42

konkret 5 (1972): 18.

43

Becker, Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang (London: Michael Joseph, 1977). A German translation appeared the following year. 44

Boehlich, “Schleyers Kinder,” in konkret 10 (1977), reprinted in 30 Jahre KONKRET, ed. Herbert L. Gremliza (Hamburg: konkret, 1987), 221.

45

Böll, “Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade.”

46

“das ist die dialektik der strategie des antiimperialistischen kampfes: daß durch die defensive, die reaktion des systems, die eskalation der konterrevolution, die umwandlung des politischen ausnahmezustandes in den militärischen ausnahmezustand der feind sich kenntlich macht, sichtbar — und so, durch seinen eigenen


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terror, die massen gegen sich aufbringt, die widersprüche verschärft, den revolutionären kampf zwingend macht.” Meinhof, “Rede im Baader-Befreiungsprozeß 13.9.1974,” in texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee, 72. 47

“Die ständige Konferenz der Innenminister der Länder — IMK — hat nach dem bisherigen Höhepunkt terroristischer Gewaltkriminalität im Jahre 1977 eine aus Vertretern des Bundes und der Länder zusammengesetzte Arbeitsgruppe beauftragt, ‘die Bevölkerung umfassend über Ziele, Methoden und Aktionen terroristischer Bestrebungen sowie über ihr Umfeld und ihren Hintergrund — den politischen Extremismus — wie auch über die von ihnen ausgehenden Gefahren aufzuklären.’” “Vorwort des Herausgebers,” in Fetscher and Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien, 5. 48

“Die wissenschaftliche Forschung sollte dazu beitragen, Vorurteile abzubauen und die öffentliche Diskussion zu versachlichen, um Fehler in der Einschätzung des Terrorismus und in der Reaktion auf ihn zu vermeiden.” Fetscher and Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien, 5. 49

“Wieviel Legitimität besitzt die Bundesrepublik Deutschland?” Gerhard Schmidtchen, “Jugend und Staat,” in Fetscher and Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien, 106–264; here 121. 50

“Radikalisierung der Bewegung durch Überreaktion des Staates?” Ulrich Matz, “Über gesellschaftliche und politische Bedingungen des deutschen Terrorismus,” in Matz and Gerhard Schmidtchen, Gewalt und Legitimität (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, 4.1) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1983), 16–105; here 51. 51

Matz and Schmidtchen, Gewalt und Legitimität, 51.

52

“Die Reaktion auf die Reaktionen des Systems wiederum macht erst deutlich, daß die Bewegung mit einem rigorosen Anspruch auf eigene Legitimität gegen das als illegitim angesehene bestehende System antritt.” Matz and Schmidtchen, Gewalt und Legitimität, 54. 53

Klaus Weinhauer, “‘Staat zeigen’: Die polizeiliche Bekämpfung des Terrorismus in der Bundesrepublik bis Anfang der 1980er Jahre,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 932–48; here 947. 54

Gefangene aus der RAF, “Erklärung zum Bombenanschlag im Hamburger Hauptbahnhof. Stammheim, 23. September 1975,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 196–98; here 196–97. 55

Musolff, Krieg, 11–12.

56

Gefangene aus der RAF, “Erklärung zum Bombenanschlag im Hamburger Hauptbahnhof,” 196–98. 57

See chapter 3.

58

For a polemical explication of this, which is also an attack on Böll, see Werner Betz, “‘Gruppe’ oder ‘Bande’? Politik und Semantik in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache,” in Holzfeuer im hölzernen Ofen: Aufsätze zur politischen Sprachkritik, ed. Hans Jürgen Heringer (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1982), 198–202. 59 Der Baader-Meinhof-Report. Dokumente — Analyse — Zusammenhänge. Aus den Akten des Bundeskriminalamts, der “Sonderkommission, Bonn” und dem Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Mainz: Hase & Koehler, 1972), 214.


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60

Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande, ed. Ministerium des Innern Rheinland-Pfalz (22 November 1974), 2. 61

“Diese Behauptung stützt sich auf eine an Umfang zunehmende Literatur, die den herkömmlichen Krieg internationaler Prägung oder den von Armeen geführten Bürgerkrieg für überholt hält und abgelöst durch Formen des kleinen Krieges, des Volkskrieges oder Partisanenkrieges oder Guerillakrieges.” Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande, 35. 62

“daß die von ihr entwickelte neue Strategie der RAF Sabotageanschläge auf die Versorgungseinrichtungen der BRD zum Inhalt hat.” Dokumentation BaaderMeinhof-Bande, 17. 63

“Diese Kampfformen richten sich vornehmlich gegen die Nerven- und Versorgungszentren des Industriestaates: Elektrizitäts- und Wasserwerke, Atomkraftwerke, Gaswerke, Ölraffinerien, Pipelines, Hafenanlagen, Fernseh- und Radiostationen, Computeranlagen, Flugplätze, Bahnhöfe.” Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande, 35. 64

Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande, 54.

65

Brückner was twice suspended from his university professorship under the terms of the Radikalenerlaß (the law forbidding political radicals from public service professions) of 1972. 66

“Solche Bezeichnungen sind jedoch zumindest in der BRD usurpierte . . . d. h. es wird objektiv betrachtet nur vorgegeben, hier seien bestimmte Positionen in historischen Auseinandersetzungen der Arbeiterbewegung (neu) besetzt worden. . . . Die von den bewaffneten Gruppen bevorzugte Bezeichnung ‘Stadtguerilla’ könnte, mit ihrer Anspielung auf Lateinamerika, eine verzerrte Perspektive der gegenwärtigen Lage andeuten.” Brückner, “Terrorismus und Legitimation — Psychologische Kriegsführung in der Bundesrepublik,” in Kritisches Tagebuch: Zeitschrift der Bürgerprotestbewegung und der Neuen Linken 2 (1977): 168–83; here 168–69. Emphasis in original. 67

“‘de-humanisierend’ und nebenbei widersprüchlich . . . nach dem Prinzip der Globalisierung der Gefahr — ’wir alle’ sind bedroht.” Brückner, “Terrorismus,” 169. 68

Brückner, “Terrorismus,” 169.

69

See Wolfgang Kraushaar, “Rudi Dutschke und der bewaffnete Kampf,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:218–47; here 228. 70

Genscher, “Regierungsverantwortung in der freiheitlichen Ordnung: Rede von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher anläßlich des XII. Kolloquiums der Walter-Raymond-Stifung am 13.10.1972 in Bad Nauheim” (BMI Dokumentation .1/73) (Bonn: Bundesministerium des Innern, 1973), 11. 71

Genscher, “Erklärung der Bundesregierung zur Inneren Sicherheit: Rede von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher am 7. Juni 1972 vor dem Deutschen Bundestag” (BMI Dokumentation .19/72) (Bonn: Bundesministerium des Innern, 1972), 12. 72

Maihofer, “Innere Sicherheit im freiheitlichen Rechtsstaat. Leistungsbilanz: Erklärung von Bundesinnenminister Professor Dr. Werner Maihofer anläßlich der


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Debatte des Deutschen Bundestags über Innere Sicherheit am 13. März 1975” (Bonn: Bundesministerium des Innern, 1975), 13. 73

Genscher, “Sicherheit des Bürgers im freiheitlichen Rechtsstaat: Rede von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher auf der Jahreshauptversammlung des Verbandes Deutscher Bürgervereine am 8. Oktober 1971 in Bonn-Bad Godesberg” (BMI Dokumentation .38/71) (Bonn: Bundesminister des Innern, 1971), 2. 74

“Die Bekämpfung der Gewaltkriminalität und des politischen Radikalismus ist ohne Mithilfe der Gesellschaft nicht möglich.” Genscher, “Erklärung der Bundesregierung zur Inneren Sicherheit: Rede von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher am 7. Juni 1972 vor dem Deutschen Bundestag” (BMI Dokumentation .19/72) (Bonn: Bundesministerium des Innern 1972), 8. 75

Genscher, “Bericht zur Inneren Sicherheit: Rede von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher auf der Sitzung des Ständigen Ausschusses des Deutschen Bundestages am 30. Oktober 1972” (BMI Dokumentation .31/72) (Bonn: Bundesministerium des Innern 1972), 8. 76

“unsere Verfassung, unser Land, sein Staat; eine Propaganda-Figur, die selten ganz ohne Wirkung bleibt.” Brückner, “Terrorismus und Legitimation,” 173. Emphasis in original. 77

Genscher, “Erklärung der Bundesregierung zur Inneren Sicherheit,” 8.

78

Genscher, “Sicherheit des Bürgers im freiheitlichen Rechtsstaat,” 3.

79

Genscher, “Regierungsverantwortung in der freiheitlichen Ordnung,” 7.

80

Genscher, “Erklärung der Bundesregierung zur Inneren Sicherheit,” 11.

81

“daß Feinde unserer Verfassungsordnung vom öffentlichen Dienst ferngehalten werden.” Genscher, “Erklärung der Bundesregierung zur Inneren Sicherheit,” 9. 82

“DDR, UdSSR, ‘Rote Armee Fraktion,’ Linksintellektuelle, Teile der SPD, Studenten, DKP und verschiedene Bürger-Initiativen werden zu einem ‘Staatsfeind’ amalgamiert.” Brückner, “Terrorismus,” 169. 83

“Annähernd jeder, der sich nicht lautstark für den Status quo ausspricht, ist ‘aggregierbar,’ dank der inhaltlichen Unbestimmtheit des Oppositionssymbols und der Moralisierung von Konsens wie Opposition, die den Bürger gern auf eine sprachfreie Sphäre des Gehorsams hindrängen möchte (wie sonst nur die Erziehung des Kleinkinds in der autoritären Familie).” Brückner, “Terrorismus,” 172. Emphasis in original. 84

“Revolutionäre Politik ist notwendig kriminell.” Mahler, “Die revolutionäre Linke ist kriminell,” in Der Spiegel 5 (1972); reprinted in Die Baader-Meinhof Gruppe, ed. Rauball, 228–32; here 228. 85

“Während jedoch die übliche Kriminalität unmittelbar das Interesse privater Bereicherung bzw. Befriedigung verfolgt, hat die Kriminalität der Revolutionäre die Verwirklichung gesellschaftlicher Bedürfnisse zum Inhalt.” Mahler, “Die revolutionäre Linke,” 229. 86

Ditfurth gives an account of lawyer Axel Azzola’s campaign for the defence of Meinhof and the RAF using the notion that they were prisoners of war. See Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 426–27.


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87

Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2008 [1985]), 348. 88

konkret-Umfrage, “Für wen bombt die RAF?” 18.

89


90

“Wir dürfen nicht zulassen, daß Gewalt als Mittel der politischen Auseinandersetzung angewandt und hingenommen wird. . . . Ein Verbrechen bleibt ein Verbrechen, auch wenn ihm der Mantel einer politischen Überzeugung umgehängt wird.” Genscher, “Der Bundesgrenzschutz im demokratischen Rechtsstaat: Rede von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher anläßlich der Verabschiedung des Kommandeurs des Grenzschutzkommandos Mitte, Brigadegeneral i. BGS, Keidel, am 31. August 1971 in Fuldatal bei Kassel” (BMI Dokumentation .33/71) (Bonn: Bundesministerium des Innern 1973), 5. 91

Augstein, “Weltbürgerkrieg à la Bonn,” in Der Spiegel 41 (1977). Cited in Musolff, Krieg, 140–41.

92

Kollektiv RAF, Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, in Rote Armee Fraktion, 48. Volkskrieg in German means civil war but Volk means the people, and “people’s war” is probably a better translation here. 93

Kommando Thomas Weisbecker, “Erklärung vom 16. Mai 1972,” 145–46.

94

Bachem, “Sprache der Terroristen: Analyse eines offenen Briefes,” in Der Deutschunterricht 30.5 (1978): 61–79; here 72. 95

“in der moralisch dualisierten Welt gibt es nur gutes und schlechtes Handeln, Freund und Feind. Dazwischen lauert der Verrat.” Fetscher, Münkler, and Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen,” 180. 96

See chapter 5.

97


98

Compare Georg Stötzel, “Der Nazi-Komplex,” in Kontroverse Begriffe. Geschichte des öffentlichen Sprachgebrauchs in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Stötzel and Martin Wengeler (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994), 355–82. 99

“Provozieren, die Genossen aufhetzen und in den Kampf jagen, dieses Goebbels’sche Rezept ist auch das Mahler’sche.” Der Baader-Meinhof-Report, 73. 100


101

“jegliches Differenzieren regelrecht zu kriminalisieren.” Böll, “Das Wort Intellektuellenhetze ist berechtigt,” in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (21 June 1972): 7. 102

Bachem, “Sprache der Terroristen,” 69.

103

“ein gefährliches Instrument: es will die nichtintegrierbaren Linken isolieren und riskiert dabei, daß sich im Gegenteil die ganze Linke solidarisiert im Kampf für eine gesellschaftliche Ordnung, die wirklich freiheitlich und demokratisch ware.” Folter in der BRD: Zur Situation der politischen Gefangenen, ed. Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Karl Markus Michel (Kursbuch 32, August 1973): 10. Emphasis in original. 104

“Alkazar der Rechtsprechung.” See “BM: Der Materialschlacht,” in Der Spiegel 21 (1975): 32.


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105

Pieter Bakker Schut, Stammheim: Der Prozeß gegen die Rote Armee Fraktion: Die notwendige Korrektur der herrschenden Meinung (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1997 [1986]), 170–71. 106

“[ein] schon Beton gewordenes Vorurteil?” See “BM: Der Materialschlacht.”

107

Meinhof, letter from prison to RAF members in prison (11 October 1974), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 178–79; here 178. 108 “Der Kampf, zum Alltag geworden, ist sich selbst genug: er bewirkt und verändert nichts mehr. Er bestätigt das Immergleiche der bürgerlichen Herrschaft.” Schulz, “‘Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis’: Abenteuer des falschen Bewußtseins,” in Kursbuch 35 (1974): 135–52; here 151.


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5: Violence as Identity: Prison Writing, 1972–76 wenn deine identität kampf ist, . . . wir können nicht unterdrückt werden, wenn wir nicht aufhören zu denken und zu kämpfen. [if fighting is your identity . . . we can’t be oppressed, as long as we don’t stop thinking and fighting.] —Ulrike Meinhof, October 1974

T

HE IMPRISONED RAF still identified as a fighting unit, but the only means of doing battle and cohering as a group was, now, via language: “in solitary,” wrote Holger Meins, “the typewriter is THE means of production and communication (“in der iso ist die schreibmaschine DAS produktions- und kommunikationsmittel”).1 Solitary confinement characterized the prison experience of the RAF. Immediately after their arrests in June and early July 1972, core members were held carefully apart: Ulrike Meinhof in Cologne-Ossendorf, Andreas Baader in Schwalmstadt (between Frankfurt and Kassel), Holger Meins in Wittlich (north of Trier, in the Eifel), Jan Carl Raspe in Cologne, Gudrun Ensslin in Essen, and Irmgard Möller in Rastatt, near Baden-Baden. Isolating the revolutionaries from each other was an immediate move toward undermining a dangerously potent group identity. They were also isolated from other inmates in their respective institutions, for fear of the “politicization of prisons” and “uprisings behind bars,” as a court decision summarized it.2 That caution was not misguided: a note written by Baader in 1973 suggests the RAF sought to release its members from isolation precisely so that they could agitate politically and organize prison uprisings.3 After her arrest on 15 June, Meinhof was held in solitary confinement in an otherwise empty wing of Cologne-Ossendorf prison. The cell had previously housed Astrid Proll, who had spent eight weeks there from late November 1971 until mid January 1972, and a further two months from 12 April to 16 June 1972. Meinhof moved in the day Proll moved out, and remained for a total of 273 days — almost eight months — in isolation. Her description of her conditions, written down soon afterwards in a note entitled “daten/fakten” (dates/facts) runs:

einhafthaus, ziemlich am rand der anstalt, insgesamt nur 6 zellen, vom übrigen anstaltsbetrieb nach innen und außen geräuschisoliert,


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VIOLENCE AS IDENTITY: PRISON WRITING, 1972–76

als einziger gefangener dadrin. dazu: dauerbeleuchtung, außer oberlicht geschlossne [sic] fenster, fliegendraht, wände und mobiliar weiß — verbot, was dran zu hängen; alle 15 min. spionkontrolle.4 [one-man cells in a building pretty much on the edge of the compound, acoustically isolated internally and externally from the dayto-day life of the prison, the only prisoner held there. in addition: light on permanently, aside from ceiling light closed window with fly mesh, walls and furniture white — forbidden to put up pictures; someone checking at the peephole every 15 mins.]

In response to protests from her lawyers about the physical effects of solitary confinement (Proll had suffered such serious health problems that she had to be released from custody for good in 1974), Meinhof was moved on 9 February 1973 into an area of the prison where other (male) inmates were housed. She was returned to the cell on 31 December, in desperation at going back into what she experienced as a spatial and acoustic void.5 In January 1974 Ensslin was finally moved from Essen to join her in Cologne — a situation for which the RAF later coined the phrase Zweier-Iso (double solitary).6 It is normal for prisoners awaiting trial to occupy individual cells rather than sharing accommodation with those already convicted. Baader and Ensslin had already been sentenced (for arson), and that made them theoretically no different from normal prisoners, who shared cells. Like all the other RAF detainees, however, they were isolated, and permitted one family visit lasting 30 minutes once a fortnight. RAF prisoners were forbidden to take part in any communal activities in the prison, and spent their daily periods of exercise outdoors alone. In her deserted wing, Meinhof could not even hear the everyday comings and goings of other inmates. A letter written by her attorney, Ulrich Preuß, complains that she suffered sensory deprivation in her white cell,7 but she herself, writing in 1973, described the silence as the most unbearable thing: “my experience was/is that the whole raft of measures — light on constantly, fly-mesh on the windows, white walls, . . . were child’s play, nothing — by comparison with the terror of the silence” (“meine erfahrung war/ist, daß alle verschärfungen — dauerbeleuchtung, fliegendraht, weiß, im winter beim frauenhaus die fenster zu, stopp-mätzchen waren, nichts — gegen den terror der stille”).8 “Terror” is not a neutral choice of word: its German meaning is much closer to “terrorism” than “fear.” It quickly became the standard RAF position that the conditions in which they were held amounted to “state terrorism.” That kind of polemic led to a situation where many regarded and still regard claims that group members experienced serious suffering in solitary confinement as pure propaganda. Meinhof was keenly aware of the risks of crying wolf.


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“Committees against Isolation Torture” (Komitees gegen Isolationsfolter) had formed to support the imprisoned RAF, and when she spotted factual inaccuracies in their reports she immediately wrote to her lawyers to object: durch die komitee-publikationen ziehn sich drei sachl. fehler, was den trakt angeht — man muss das mal korrigieren . . . es wird gesagt, wir hätten “tag und nacht” licht, beides ist nicht der fall (nachts licht hatte ich — wie die typen damals auch, in den 8 monaten 72/73 hier drin — eben “dauerbeleuchtung” seitdem nicht mehr . . .) der fliegendraht nimmt kaum licht weg, wie angenommen/behauptet wird, er nimmt sicht weg, das heißt aus’m fenster sieht’s aus, als hinge draußen fast dichter nebel, ne nebelwand vorm fester. er ist ein ausgesprochener deprivationsmittel. die lichtverhältnisse dabei sind gut. wir haben kein bilderverbot. das hatte astrid und ich hatte es in den 8 monaten, heißt, es wurde einem alles von der wand bzw. vom schrank gerissen und weggenommen. danach nicht mehr.9 [there are three factual errors in the committee publications on the isolation wing — we need to correct that . . . they claim the light is on “day and night,” but that’s not true (i had the light on at night — as the others did too, during the 8 months 72/73 in here — but “permanent lights-on” not since then . . .) the fly mesh on the window barely reduces the daylight, as they assume/assert, it reduces the view, so out of the window it looks like there’s thick fog, a wall of fog in front of the window. it’s a clear example of sensory deprivation, but the light situation is good. there’s no ban on putting up pictures. astrid had that and i had it during the eight months, i mean, they tore down and took away anything we put up on the wall or wardrobe. but not since then.]

The notion that RAF members suffered isolation has been rubbished on the grounds that they received family visits and visits from their lawyers and were allowed radios, newspapers, typewriters, and books in their cells.10 Nervousness about being deemed a “sympathizer” may be in play here (the discourse of terrorism, as I argued in the last chapter, is black-and-white, and there is little tolerance for those who seek a space in between). But to object to books and typewriters betrays a belief that “real” punishment would deny a prisoner reading and writing materials, and one should not overlook that half-hour visits once a fortnight still leave the prisoner alone for the remaining 335 and one half hours of those fourteen days. Listening to the radio cannot compensate for that (and Meinhof claimed that the crackly reception in her cell made listening


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to the radio practically impossible anyway). After Ensslin had been moved to join her in early 1974, she tried to describe the reality of “double solitary”: of the 148 [sic] hours that make up the week, she explained in a letter to her attorney, “we have exactly 10 hours of cell contact — plus 6 hours yard exercise — the rest of the time, deadly stillness” (“daß wir von den 148 stunden, die die woche hat, genau 10 stunden umschluß haben — 6 stunden hof — die übrige zeit totenstille”).11 The wing in which Meinhof was held — officially called Abteilung für die psychiatrische Untersuchung weiblicher Gefangener (Section for the Psychiatric Examination of Female Prisoners) — was known to the resident psychiatrist Dr. Bernd Götte as the stille Abteilung (silent section).12 The RAF called it the toter Trakt (dead wing): a designation that alludes to the feelings of hopelessness and misery experienced there, but also to an intention ascribed to the state to drive the prisoners to suicide,13 or at the very least to cause severe mental deterioration. Götte’s own term, “silent section,” describes (even if unintentionally) the loss of language experienced by isolated prisoners. There is no doubt that the RAF detainees were held in solitary to prevent verbal communication, with each other and with “normal” prisoners. Like the others, Meinhof was forbidden to contribute to external social or political debate (as she had once done as a journalist) via letters, interviews, or articles for magazines.14 But solitary confinement silences a prisoner in more than the immediate sense of lacking a conversation partner. Meinhof’s writings from this period document a more profound loss of language — the effect of isolation on her capacity for self-expression. In an account written from her isolation cell (at the request of her attorney Klaus Croissant), she tried to describe her physical and linguistic symptoms: das gefühl, es explodiert einem der kopf (das gefühl, die schädeldecke müßte eigentlich zerreißen, abplatzen) — das gefühl, es würde einem das rückenmark ins gehirn gepreßt — das gefühl, das gehirn schrumpelte einem allmählich zusammen, wie backobst zB — . . . das gefühl, man verstummt — man kann die bedeutung von worten nicht mehr identifizieren, nur noch raten — . . . satzbau, grammatik, syntax — nicht mehr zu kontrollieren — beim schreiben: zwei zeilen — man kann am ende der zweiten zeile den anfang der ersten nicht behalten — das gefühl, innerlich auszubrennen — . . . klares bewußtsein, daß man keine überlebenschance hat; völliges scheitern, das zu vermitteln; besuche hinterlassen nichts. eine halbe stunde danach kann man nur noch mechanisch rekonstruieren, ob der besuch heute oder vorige


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woche war — . . . das gefühl, es sei einem die haut abgezogen worden.15 [the feeling your head’s exploding (that the top of your skull is going to tear apart or burst off) — the feeling that spine marrow is being forced up into your brain, — the feeling that your brain’s slowly wrinkling, like dried fruit perhaps . . . the feeling you’re losing language — you can no longer identify the meaning of words, only guess — sentences, grammar, syntax — no longer controllable. when you’re writing: two lines — at the end of the second you can’t remember how the first one began — the feeling you’re burning up inside — . . . the clear awareness that you’ve no chance of survival; a complete inability to communicate that; visits leave no impression. half-an-hour later you can only reconstruct mechanically whether the visit happened today or last week — . . . the feeling that your skin has been flayed off you.]

Isolation and Identity The court case against Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, and Jan-Carl Raspe opened on 21 May 1975. On 11 June, Ensslin’s attorney Marieluise Becker requested a suspension of the proceedings on the basis of unfitness of the four accused. She asserted that the sensory deprivation they had suffered in solitary was a scientifically tested method of torture and part of the counterinsurgency programs of imperialist states (“eine wissenschaftlich erprobte Methode der Folter . . . , die Teil der Counter-Insurgency-Programme imperialistischer Staaten ist”).16 In her appeal to the court, she suggested that RAF prisoners were subjected to unprecedented conditions of custody that amounted to a conscious intention to destroy their identities; it was, she insisted, Vernichtungshaft (annihilation custody).17 The RAF demanded absolute allegiance from its legal representatives: Becker’s husband and legal partner, Eberhard Becker, had already shifted from being a attorney for the group to being a member — he had been arrested in Hamburg in February 1974. Like “imperialist states,” Vernichtungshaft is RAF parlance. It is clearly intended to recall Nazi practices in the death camps (Vernichtungslager), and it positions Marieluise Becker rhetorically as well as legally on the side of the RAF. The notion that there is an intention to annihilate the prisoners if not physically, then psychologically — to destroy their identity — belongs to a RAF discourse or belief system. Becker links the prisoners’ release from isolation with their


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psychological survival; “identity” here means political identity, which for the RAF is inseparable from group identity. Academic observers tend to agree that the prison system threatens or undermines prisoner identity.18 It is a tricky issue: all modern prison systems that seek to rehabilitate and (re)socialize prisoners (rather than simply punishing them) are thereby seeking, to some extent, to alter their identity, to turn delinquents into citizens. In his classic study of how prisons developed, Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault observed that within the modern, “gentle” system of punishment (which replaced public torture, maimings, and executions), the education or socialization of the prisoner is a primary aim; even if the notion of achieving socialization through isolation from society is an odd contradiction in terms.19 The pedagogical, rehabilitative system does indeed intend to change or alter the criminal in his or her person or identity — in that sense, Marieluise Becker and the RAF are right. The West German government has been accused of something more sinister, however: of seeking to “reprogram” the terrorists through isolation. This was practice in prisons in the GDR: the unfortunate left-wing activist Heinz Brandt, first imprisoned by the Nazis in a concentration camp for his political activity, later fell foul of the East German authorities and spent a year in solitary confinement in the GDR. Brandt’s case was cited in Bericht über Vernichtungshaft und Isolationsfolter in Gefängnissen der BRD und Westberlins (Report on Annihilation Custody and Isolation Torture in West German and West Berlin Prisons) of 1974, but the document, which originated on West Germany’s radical left, suggested mendaciously that he was isolated by the Nazis, and makes no mention of the practices of the neighboring socialist state.20 Dutch lawyer Pieter Bakker Schut, legal representive to the only Dutch member of the RAF’s first generation, Ronald Augustin (b. 1949), unearthed a psychiatric study of isolation and aggression in progress in Hamburg in the early 1970s, suggesting that there were direct links between experiments conducted by psychiatrist Jan Gross and the treatment of the RAF prisoners. Gross’s investigations used, among other things, a camera silens or silent chamber to observe the results of sensory deprivation: for example, that the hunger for human contact or words becomes so great that individuals can afterwards be disproportionately influenced by any kind of exposure to language. A “re-education” (Umerziehung) of criminals might, therefore, be achieved by starving them of contact; in Bakker Schut’s terminology, “brainwashing” (Gehirnwäsche) can be effected.21 He concludes, as Marieluise Becker did, that solitary confinement and sensory deprivation have a powerfully negative effect on an individual’s physical and psychological well-being, but he goes a step further than Becker in suggesting that this is a path to brainwashing. After some research of their own, her defense lawyers, Preuß and Heinrich Hannover, called the solitary conditions she was kept in Folter (torture);


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the term came to be used widely on the left.22 Less sympathetic commentators have argued that all this merely fits the imaginary context of a fascist state that the RAF itself had created; it is propaganda that intends to justify the continuation of the struggle.23 Even skeptics, however, admit that the treatment of RAF prisoners by the criminal justice system was problematic, and the conditions of isolation in Cologne-Ossendorf’s “silent section” both extreme and unusual.24 During her second spell in solitary, Meinhof complained of feeling not only alone in her cell, but alone in the universe: “part of the awfulness of it is the complete depersonalization. Nobody except you is in this utterly peculiar situation” (“zur heimtücke gehört die völlige entpersonalisierung. niemand, außer einem selbst, befindet sich in diesem völligen ausnahmezustand”).25 Without excusing the harshness of the conditions, it is possible to read the isolation of the prisoners, from the state’s perspective, as a logical continuation of the struggle that had existed between the RAF and the West German state since 1970. That was, after all, a battle fought largely through rhetoric and counter-rhetoric; it is the intention of rhetoric to persuade and manipulate, and Jan Gross’s study suggested that solitary confinement and sensory deprivation may be used to persuade and manipulate recalcitrant prisoners precisely because it heightens the effect of language. Human beings need to interact linguistically with other human beings, and that need can be used to control them when they are in conflict with the regime. The government had noted in 1972 that the primary problem in its dealings with Baader-Meinhof was a problem of language,26 but the ideological battle fought in language can become — with the internment of the prisoners — a battle fought via the linguistic needs of humans. Marieluise Becker asserted a hope on the part of the authorities that by breaking down the prisoners’ identity they would, at the very least, elicit statements and information regarding the structures and organizational forms of the RAF.27 Whether any of this reflects a real intention on the part of the West German authorities, or whether it is a fantasy developed by the RAF and its supporters (again, the truth may well be somewhere in between), the idea of a state-driven project to control their language and identities provided group members in prison with exactly the kind of project or “struggle” they needed to maintain their identity as fighters. RAF prisoners adhered to group rules that forbade communication with prison staff and state representatives. They conversed only with their lawyers and, via their lawyers, with each other. Not only did they continue to produce what we might call counter-language (language the state did not want to hear), they did so in the knowledge that anything they wrote from their cells could and probably would be read by the prison authorities, members of parliament, and the judiciary. The potential for provocation was immense.


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Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München Meinhof, for one, showed no signs of adjusting her language towards something more acceptable in the eyes of the state. While in solitary confinement she wrote a lengthy response to the kidnap of nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics entitled Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München: Zur Strategie des antiimperialistischen Kampfes (The Black September Operation in Munich: On Strategy in the Anti-Imperialist Struggle). The Palestinian terrorist group Black September had been named in memory of a bloody conflict between Palestinians and the Jordanian government in September 1970. Its kidnap operation in Munich’s Olympic village on 5 September 1972 was intended to secure the release of 236 prisoners; 234 of those were imprisoned Arab activists in Israel, the other two allegedly Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader.28 Nine athletes were taken hostage and two killed during the kidnap, and the operation ended in a massacre: all the hostages died as well as one policeman and five of the eight terrorists when a special police unit (the Grenzschutzgruppe or GSG 9, created by Hans-Dietrich Genscher) stormed the escape plane as it stood on the tarmac at Munich’s military airport, Fürstenfeldbruck. Like Dem Volk dienen (Serve the People), Meinhof ’s Schwarzer September may have been motivated in part by a sense of sorrow for lost comrades-in-arms: the Palestinian terrorists. But the essay — written, unlike the earlier RAF texts, in isolation from her own comrades — barely mentions the kidnap’s outcome: she refers on just one occasion to “das Massaker in Fürstenfeldbrück” (the massacre at Fürstenfeldbruck) and entirely fails to register the deaths of eleven Israeli athletes.29 Her argument ignores the troubling echo of other traumatic experiences suffered by Jews in Germany — experiences that had led to serious discussion in Israel prior to the Olympics over whether an Israeli team should even compete. Her focus, instead, is on the embarrassment caused to the West German government, which in the terms of an established RAF fantasy has been forced to show its fascist face. Black September, she asserts, has “torn off the masks that the left-liberal coalition and its propagandists have been wearing” (“Der Schwarze September hat die Charaktermasken der sozialliberalen Koalition und ihrer Propagandisten entlarvt”). In case we were wondering what those masks were hiding, she spells it out: West German politicians are in reality imperialist strategists of genocide (“imperialistische Ausrottungsstrategen”); West Germany is not a free democratic state but the country formerly known as Nazi Germany, now imperialism’s hub and stronghold (“Westdeutschland — früher Nazideutschland — jetzt imperialistisches Zentrum”; 175). Nazism is yet again equated with American-led capitalism, and the marker or sign of the global imperialist project is, yet again, Vietnam, the new example of imperialist genocide


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(Völkermord). Black September, her argument runs, has helpfully clarified the connection between Nazism and U.S. imperialism by taking the problem back to the country where it started. West Germany is where Israel acquired capital in the form of compensation and official deliveries of weapons; it is the launchpad from which “imperialism — if it cannot force the Arab freedom movements into submission any other way — will start its bombing missions against them” (“von wo aus der Imperialismus — wenn anders er die arabischen Befreiungsbewegungen nicht zur Unterwerfung erpressen kann — seine Bombengeschwader gegen sie starten wird”; 152–53). She ignores the difficulty that Black September has “taken the problem back” by killing and kidnapping Jews. Her essay takes no account of the death of the Israeli athletes, and it takes no account of the complexity of political tensions between Israel and Palestine; its analysis of the Middle East focuses on the politics of oil and gas, attacking multinational companies and their exploitation of the developing world. In all this, imperialism acquires an agency that is almost a monstrous personality, growing to become a kind of evil fantasy giant with no specific political location (not unlike, although it is an uncomfortable comparison, the Nazi fantasy of a global monster that was “the Jew”): er überläßt persische, türkische, palästinensische Genossen der Folter, die antiimperialistische Linke in Westdeutschland der Bundesanwaltschaft — er wird hier im November freie Wahlen abhalten, nachdem er im September palästinensische Freiheitskämpfer massakert hat und aufkommendes Entsetzen mit der Dampfwalze der Olympischen Spiele in Farbe niedergewalzt hat. (158)30 [he leaves Iranian, Turkish, Palestinian comrades to be tortured and the anti-imperialist left in West Germany to the mercy of the state prosecutors — here in Germany he will hold free elections in November, after massacring Palestinian freedom fighters in September and crushing the rising tide of horrified protest with the steamroller spectacle of the Olympic Games in color.]

Her words conceal that the “rising tide” is not one of protest against the deaths of five Palestinian terrorists, but protest at the deaths in Germany of eleven visiting Jewish athletes, many of whom only agreed to participate in the Munich Olympics in order to show that it is possible to conquer the horrors of history. Like some of the earlier RAF texts, Schwarzer September reads in parts like one of Meinhof’s journalistic articles. On the one hand, she has done her research, and cites facts and figures to support her account; on the other, familiar idées fixes and fictions dog the argument (such as the assumption that American-led capitalism “is” fascism; 158).31 In Meinhof’s account,


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the German-led project of 1933–45 to eradicate Europe’s Jews pales into insignificance behind the “new fascism” in which Israel is perceived to be a key player. Hitler’s National Socialism, she argues, was merely the political and military forerunner of the imperialist system of multinational companies (168).32 Her assumption that capitalism arises necessarily out of Nazism, and that fascism is now located in the U.S. and its allies, shortcircuits the need to address the specifically German element in recent history. Meinhof, after the Munich massacre, draws a parallel between mass murder under Hitler and Israeli foreign policy as if there were nothing to choose between them: “Israel,” she writes, “is weeping crocodile tears. It has sent its athletes to the ovens as the Nazis did the Jews, to fuel the flames of genocidal imperialist politics” (“Israel vergießt Krokodilstränen. Es hat seine Sportler verheizt wie die Nazis die Juden — Brennmaterial für die imperialistische Ausrottungspolitik”; 173). She suppresses any recognition that the unlucky Israeli athletes would have been alive and well if they had not been kidnapped, and that it was not capitalists but anticapitalist terrorists who kidnapped them. And to denounce Mosche Dayan as Israel’s Heinrich Himmler is (as Oliver Tolmein has observed) a remarkable feat of German denial.33 Historian Wolfgang Kraushaar has taken that notion further, characterizing the concealment of German antisemitism behind postwar anticapitalism as a tactic used by the radical left to encourage identification with an anti-Israeli (pro-Palestinian) position; it has the function of releasing Germans from the guilt associated with Germany’s historical treatment of Jews.34 If the Americans and Israelis are (in Meinhof’s terms) the true fascists, then the struggle against them is heroic, and a new generation of Germans can lead the way as antifascist resistance fighters. Some have argued in Meinhof ’s defense that Schwarzer September reflects a “linguistic collapse” under the conditions of social isolation in which she was being held.35 It makes sense to see the document in the context of her physical and psychological situation at the time of writing, but in fact some of its most problematic elements were already present both in her journalism and in the earlier RAF papers — the use and abuse of the fascism metaphor, for example, or the functionalization of Auschwitz and the Jewish experience to lend rhetorical weight to her analysis. We meet familiar vocabulary: German and Israeli government representatives are “swine” who “liquidate” their opponents, and Meinhof defines her terms using the familiar “means” and “is” formulae: “[imperialist] center means: the central offices of the multinationals who control the markets . . . the center is: the United States, Japan, Western Europe under the leadership of the FRG” (“[Imperialistisches] Zentrum heißt: Zentrale der multinationalen Konzerne, die die Märkte beherrschen . . . Zentrum sind: die USA, Japan, Westeuropa unter Führung der BRD”; 153, my emphasis). The hybrid register is very reminiscent of earlier RAF papers: we find high-register phrases


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such as circulus vitiosus alongside expressions like “ass-licking” (“in den Arsch kriechen”; 156, 160). If there is a “collapse,” it is less in the language than in the structure and the coherence of the ideas. In solitary, Meinhof had lighted on the metaphor of brainwashing to describe her experience, but in a letter to her attorney, Preuß, she insists that brainwashing is “not a metaphor at all, because the feeling when you suddenly hear something is really as if your brain were being rinsed through, like when clothes are washed — and spun around too of course” (“das wort ‘gehirnwäsche’ ist überhaupt keine metapher. denn das gefühl, wenn man plötzlich was hört . . . ist wirklich das, als würde das gehirn durchgespült, wie man wäsche wascht — hin und her geschleudert dabei natürlich”).36 Even though “brainwashing” clearly is a metaphor (there is no water or soap involved), she has persuaded herself — and is now trying to persuade Preuß — that her fantasy is identical with external reality. Something similar was in evidence in letters written by Ensslin from her isolation cell in Essen. On one occasion Ensslin leaps from describing some dried-out, blackened lemons the prison grocer is selling to remembering lampshades made from the dried-out skin of dead prisoners that she once saw in Buchenwald concentration camp. She cites her random memory as proof that the West German prison system is fascist: Mir fällt oder fiel sofort dazu ein Buchenwald, wo ich Lampenschirme aus Menschenhaut gesehen habe. . . . Die Assoziation ist klar, verschrumpelte harte Haut, da kann man nichts dagegen sagen, das muß erlaubt sein. Aber die Sache ist leider im Kern tatsächlich dasselbe. DASSELBE. . . . Das ist zwar inkommod und ungeheuerlich und jeder, der mit den Zitronen befaßt ist, wird subjektiv ehrlich entrüstet sein. So ist es aber. SO IST ES.37 [I immediately think or thought of Buchenwald, where I saw lampshades made of human skin. . . . The association is obvious: shriveled hard skin, you can’t argue with that, the comparison has to be admissable. But the thing is unfortunately in essence the same thing. THE SAME THING. . . . That is, admittedly, uncomfortable and awful and anyone dealing with the lemons will be subjectively genuinely horrified. But that’s how it is. THAT’S HOW IT IS.]

Like Ensslin with her lemons, Meinhof in Schwarzer September was again taking her own inner processes as proof of an external political reality. For Ensslin, the wrinkled skin of lemons was proof of state fascism; for Meinhof the fact that the RAF invented itself proves the time is ripe for an anti-imperialist offensive (“beweist, daß die Situation ‘reif’ ist . . . für die antiimperialistische Offensive”; 163).


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Schwarzer September is completely characteristic of the RAF texts in that it diverts about halfway through into a long and rambling attack on the West German left. On 3 June 1972 (two days after the arrests of Baader, Meins, and Raspe), left-wing activist Oskar Negt had declared that armed groups like the RAF had fallen prey to the romance of illegality and a false understanding of the political and social situation. He voiced the view of many on the left that it was fatally misguided to transfer urban guerilla practices on to a society that was not Latin America.38 “Negt — the swine” (“Negt — das Schwein”) is Meinhof’s response (160); having thus dehumanized him, she spends the next six pages demolishing him and those who applauded him as capitalist opportunists. She does not engage with his criticism; the RAF does not engage with criticism, because the RAF is right. It is possible that in a place of isolation in a prison cell, the need to be right is even more pressing. From there, in a chaotic thought shift, she moves on (or back) to the revolutionary subjects: the workers. She is talking about the conditions suffered by the “little people” in the capitalist economy; the workers whose numb acquiescence in the most mindless of tasks is the guarantee of productivity and profit. That is physical exploitation, she argues, but it is complemented by “the exploitation of their feelings and thoughts, wishes and utopias” (“die Ausbeutung ihrer Gefühle und Gedanken, Wünsche und Utopien”). Consumer culture has the workers firmly in its grasp, and the invention of purchasing power is “the system’s victory march over . . . all that is human in human beings” (“mit der Schaffung von Massenkaufkraft und ‘Einkommensspitze’ hat das System den Siegeszug über . . . den ganzen Menschen angetreten!”; 165–66). If evidence were needed (in the context of a twenty-seven-page text) that Meinhof has not given up on language, the sentence that follows this provides it. If only the RAF collective can find the right words to communicate the people’s situation to the people, she insists, then the masses will understand their exploitation and support the revolution: Nur indem es uns gelingt, den 24-Stundentag auf den imperialistischen-antiimperialistischen Begriff zu bringen, können wir dazu kommen, die tatsächlichen Probleme der Menschen in diesem so zu formulieren und darzustellen, daß wir von den Menschen verstanden werden, nicht nur unsere Aktionen verstanden werden . . . sondern auch unsere Propaganda, unsere Sprache, unsere Wörter. (166–67) [only if we can find the right imperialist-anti-imperialist words to grasp the reality of a 24-hour day can we start to formulate and describe the people’s real-life problems so that the people understand us; can we come to the point where not only our actions are understood . . . but our propaganda too, our language, our words.]


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The “revolutionary subject,” she announces, is anyone who has broken free of the pressures of consumer society and is refusing to cooperate with the system, anyone who refuses to be part of it (“jeder . . . , der sich aus diesen Zwängen befreit und seine Teilnahme an den Verbrechen des Systems verweigert . . . jeder, der nicht mehr mitmacht: [ist] revolutionäres Subjekt”; 166). The exclusive “we” of the RAF group is opened up, unusually, by the “anyone who” formula: “We are the revolutionary subject,” she concludes. “Anyone who joins the struggle and practices resistance is one of us” (“Revolutionäres Subjekt sind wir. Wer immer anfängt, zu kämpfen und Widerstand zu leisten, ist einer von uns”; 17).

The info From the spring of 1973, the isolated RAF prisoners found a way of resuming contact with one another: they used the laws that guarded the privacy of their legal post to communicate via a secret system of letters. The notion is said to have been Baader’s; whether the idea originated with him or not, it was Baader who, in March 1973, demanded of the lawyers acting for the RAF that they develop an information system for their clients. At that time, collective representation was still possible (on 1 January 1975 the laws were changed to forbid it),39 and it was in the spirit of the collective that the RAF shared attorneys — something that enormously helped the development of its communication system. That system, known as the info, enabled written interaction between group members in prisons across Germany from 1973 until German Autumn of 1977. A selection of the letters written for the info was published in June 1987, in a volume nominally edited by Pieter Bakker Schut, but in fact (as the editorial notes make perfectly clear) by representatives of the RAF.40 The book was banned and withdrawn from sale in Germany in October and then re-released in December of the same year. As a source text, it is problematic: its unnamed editors shortened and rephrased many of the letters they selected prior to publication.41 It is also a selection of letters made by editors who can only be seen as partisan. Unedited copies of original letters for the info are cited below wherever they were traceable. An “info center” was established in Hamburg, where letters, notes, and other materials (such as newspaper cuttings) were photocopied, collated, and then delivered in the guise of communications from a defending lawyer.42 The number of prisoners involved varied, as new arrests occurred and renegade members were excluded. In an early info communication of June 1973, Ensslin listed codenames for fourteen participants; they include “Ahab” for Baader (the captain from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, another fiction with which the RAF identified), “Schnauze” (roughly translated, “big mouth”) for herself, and “Theres” for Meinhof (probably a reference to the intellectual Saint Teresa of Avila).43 Around


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forty prisoners participated in the system over the period of its existence. Recipients included RAF members, but also members of sister groups such as the 2 June Movement and the Socialist Patients’ Collective (Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, or SPK: a Heidelberg-based group founded in 1970 that later provided the RAF with new members such as Hanna Krabbe, Klaus Jünschke, Margrit Schiller, and Siegfried Hausner.) The intention, Ensslin explained in her letter, was to use the system to produce a new RAF document — codename “bassa” — about the urban guerilla. Her rationale is that the years 1970–72, before they were arrested, “taught us a lot of stuff that has never been written down. and people listen to us, for one thing” (“die zwei jahre haben uns eine menge beigebracht, was nirgends steht. und man hört uns zu, erstens”); “for another,” she continues, turning back to the old enemy, “the marxist-leninists blocked us, of course, and are still blocking us, whichever of their ugly faces you imagine, from negt to the communists; they’ve tripped us up once and that’s enough. combating that makes bassa right and necessary” (“zweitens ist es nat. so, dass die ml blockierte und noch blockiert, egal welche ihrer fressen, von negt bis kpdml, einmal haben sie uns ein bein gestellt — das genügt. und dagegen ist bassa richtig und nötig”). There is another reason for the undertaking, however — Ensslin recognizes that the RAF needs a project of this kind if it is to maintain its political and group identity in prison: “thirdly, . . . as long as we can’t do anything else — we can write bassa. there’s something missing otherwise; we’re stuck for any kind of political activity” (“drittens . . . solange man nichts weiter machen kann — bassa kann man schreiben, es fehlt sonst, und nat. in bezug auf jede politische arbeit”). Meinhof, as ever, will take care of the group’s documentation: “the collection point for bassa is theres” (“bassa sammelpunkt ist theres”), Ensslin concludes her directive.44 The letter was discovered by the authorities and confiscated. The project to produce a new RAF paper continued, however, and a structural overview of “bassa” was created by Meinhof with the working title Stadtguerilla und Metropole BRD (The Urban Guerilla and the West German Metropolis), although no final document ever emerged.45 Behind Ensslin’s instruction to the group to continue its political activity in prison is an awareness that her own and other members’ psychological survival depends on it. The group’s sense of itself is rooted in and depends on struggle. In prison, the guns and bombs that defined the RAF have been taken away, but the guerilla still exists because it is fighting; without that it ceases to be. It would be overstatement to call the info a secret system of communication: the authorities were aware of it practically from the start, as indeed were the media and through them the public. On 23 July 1973, just months after the idea had been floated among the group and its lawyers, Spiegel reported on a letter that had found its way into the hands of


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the police (and from there to Spiegel). It had been written by RAF attorney Christian Ströbele to his clients, and described what the article calls “distance learning for anarchists.” Ströbele is quoted on “major plans for an info center.”46 A similar report appeared the following day in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The RAF’s other lawyers rallied around Ströbele, and responded to the accusations that he was abetting the criminal activity of his clients with the claim that the information center was intended for them, the attorneys, not for the prisoners; it was to help them prepare their materials for the case. The government authorities were not convinced. In a communication to the Federal Attorney General on 29 August 1973, the investigating judge of the Federal Court reported that an item of legal post (which would normally have been treated as private) had been opened and inspected as suspicious. Ensslin’s directive to the group was inside, along with a short letter from Ströbele about the info. On 31 August the attorney general responded, giving his opinion that a comprehensive exchange of information and instructions for the continuation of the armed struggle and the maintenance of the RAF as a criminal organization was going on, and that the gang was being actively and deliberately supported in this by its attorneys.47 Just knowing about the info did not make it easy to stop it happening. Prisoners’ legal communications were protected by Federal statute, and the state could not be seen to break its own laws. Action to stymy the info had to take the shape of new legislation, known as the Lex RAF: amendments that forbade collective legal representation (making collection and delivery of the letters much more difficult), and gave the state the right to ban lawyers from acting in certain cases. As is the nature of such things in a democracy, however, the laws took time to pass and implement, and during that time, as long as the letters were passing back and forth as legal communications, there was little the government or prison authorities could do except search their prisoners’ cells at intervals and confiscate whatever they found. The prisoners learned to get around that by sending batches of important documents to their lawyers for safekeeping, and burning others in the toilet bowls in their cells.48 One prison guard recalls that they also tied sardine cans full of rancid fish oil to objects on high shelves, so that the contents would spill over those detailed to ransack the cell.49 In 1976, the info center moved from Hamburg to attorney Klaus Croissant’s office in Stuttgart in an attempt to protect it, but when a warrant for Croissant’s arrest was issued in July 1977 he fled to Paris. His offices were destroyed by an explosion on 15 August (it is still not clear who was responsible), and in the autumn the arrest of his two legal assistants led to the final collapse of the communication system.50 Croissant himself applied for political asylum in France, but was handed over to the German authorities; in February 1979 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting a criminal organization.


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During its four-year existence, decisions regarding who received the info were not left to the RAF’s legal advisers. They were taken by dominant members of the group — according to Stefan Aust, primarily by Ensslin51 — who used exclusion or demotion as a sanction against those seen as renegade. Being demoted involved receiving less material; only those regarded as core members were entitled to receive the top-level version, info I, which included personal communications as well as the general information (printed material from newspapers, political reading lists compiled by Meinhof, and the like) that made up info II. (There was also, later, an info III that seems to have replicated or taken over the function of info II).52 In her directive to the group, Ensslin clarifies: dass alles zu “II” an alle gefangenen geht dass bestimmte sachen zu “I” nur an raf und spk dass bei best. themen aber auch da noch mal unterschieden werden muss, je nach absicht, also notwendigkeit/kanal.53 [that everything in “II” goes to all the prisoners certain things from “I” only to raf and spk [the Socialist Patients’ Collective] and that for some topics there will have to be more differentiation even than that, depending on the intention, meaning the necessity/ channel.]

Those excluded from the core group would only be granted reinclusion if appropriate group-oriented behavior was displayed; if it was not, complete exclusion from the info would follow and from there from the RAF altogether (that fate befell Horst Mahler in 1974 and Eberhard Becker in 1975). It was a powerful lever, because it determined the scope of socially isolated prisoners to feel part of a group project rather than alone and without a purpose: to experience themselves not as failed revolutionaries but as active fighters (in this sense the West German authorities might have done better to promote interaction with normal prisoners, thus offering RAF prisoners the option of other social contacts). In the event, imprisoned RAF members retained their allegiance to the collective, exchanging ideas, hopes, frustrations, criticisms, and self-criticisms in a radically limited social sphere. Style is a striking feature of the info. Part of the RAF’s antiauthoritarian linguistic practice is a deliberately colloquial writing style that signals difference from the formal language taught by “the system.” Correspondents followed the antiauthoritarian practice of using lower case only (the concrete poets of the 1960s and ’70s had adopted the practice as part of their critique of language and in the belief that it is possible, in poet Chris Bezzel’s words, “to revolutionize language itself in the medium of language, as a human sign-system for human beings”).54 There is a group


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practice of using abbreviations (such as ba for Bundesanwaltschaft — the state attorney’s office — iso for isolation, or ne for eine) and contractions (ists instead of ist es, “it is,” or the colloquial ham for haben, “have”). RAF writers use the plus sign + in place of the word “and.” All this has been called “reductive” style, the ultra-concise mode of the telegram; it is echoed in the way sentences in the letters are put together, often with missing words, so that they make sense largely by implication and the reader is left to fill the gaps.55 More interesting, perhaps, than the orthographical detail is the question why the RAF creates this distinctive style. The ellipses certainly reinforce the sense of the group — no one who was not thoroughly upto-date on RAF matters would be able to make sense of the gaps. It is the style of the Kassiber, the secret note, as sent (for example) by Ensslin after her arrest to Meinhof, in which she gave a coded explanation of how she was apprehended and urgent instructions for further action in language that is extraordinarily abbreviated.56 In the context that made perfect sense: the message had to be written in a hurry and on the hoof, and tiny enough for smuggling out of prison. The info letters, by contrast, were written by prisoners who had typewriters, paper, and too much time on their hands. They were sent in normal envelopes as legal post, so did not need to be condensed. They nonetheless imitate the style of hurried, secret notes. The fantasy that the writer has no time to consider grammatical rules (for fear of being caught in the forbidden act of writing) seems to support the RAF correspondents’ self-identification; communications for the info imitate texts written by prisoners held in the kind of undemocratic, dictatorial system the RAF imagined itself captive of.

Fighting Language In the spirit of the collective, in which individual identity is subsumed under the identity of the group, most letters sent via the info were not written in the style of one-to-one communication. Even when one group member explicitly addressed another (for example when Holger Meins famously wrote to Manfred Grashof to encourage him to continue the hunger strike of 1974 just before he, Meins, died of malnutrition),57 the communication was public and would be read by all members of the collective. The system was, in RAF member Klaus Jünschke’s words, envisaged as “a tool, a weapon for the battle” (“Werkzeug, Rustzeug für den Kampf”),58 and it is quickly apparent that the battle is (still) against everything, more or less, that is non-RAF. Kampf (battle, struggle, or fighting) is a basic element in the group’s sense of itself. Meinhof summed that up in a letter to her friend Irene Goergens (codename Peggy), encouraging her to maintain the hunger strike:


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wenn deine identität kampf ist, wenn du begriffen hast, daß es nur einen ausweg, aus der äußersten defensive, in der wir sind gibt, nur einen weg zum sieg — nämlich jetzt dieser hs, auch nur einen für dich — wieso “kannst” du dann nicht? was ist das denn — “können,” wenn nicht: die notwendigkeit einsehn und danach handeln und du hast immer mehr kräfte, als du denkst. wir können auch nicht unterdrückt werden, wenn wir nicht nicht [sic] aufhören zu denken und zu kämpfen.59 [if fighting is your identity; if you’ve grasped that there’s just one way out of the extreme defensive position that we are in, just one way to victory — namely, this hunger strike, now, for you too — why “can’t” you? what does “can” mean, if not: recognizing the necessity and acting accordingly, and you’re always stronger than you think. and we can’t be oppressed as long as we don’t stop thinking and fighting.]

Three weeks later, Meins would similarly exhort Grashof to remember that the only thing that counts is fighting: “now, today, tomorrow, whether you’ve eaten or not . . . THE FIGHT GOES ON” (“das einzige was zählt ist der kampf — jetzt, heute, morgen, gefressen oder nicht . . . DER KAMPF GEHT WEITER”), he insists: jeder neue fight, jede aktion, jedes gefecht bringt neue unbekannte erfahrungen und das ist die entwicklung des kampfes. . . . kämpfen, unterliegen, nochmals kämpfen, wieder unterliegen, erneut kämpfen und so weiter bis zum endgültigen sieg . . . kampf bis zum tod . . . die sache ist ja ganz klar: kämpfend GEGEN DIE SCHWEINE als MENSCH FÜR DIE BEFREIUNG DES MENSCHEN: revolutionär, im kampf — bei aller liebe zum leben: den tod verachtend. das ist für mich: dem volk dienen — raf.60 [every new battle, every operation, every skirmish brings with it new unfamiliar experiences and that is how the battle develops . . . fight, get beaten, fight again, get beaten again, fight anew and so on until the final victory . . . fight to the death . . . the thing is perfectly clear: fighting THE SWINE as a HUMAN BEING FOR THE LIBERATION OF HUMAN BEINGS: a revolutionary, fighting — for all we love life: despising death. that’s what it means for me: serving the people — raf.]

The hunger strikes, coordinated with the help of the lawyers (you cannot strike collectively unless everyone in the collective knows it is happening) had begun even before the info was properly up and running. The first took place in January and February 1973, the second in May and June of the same year.61 A third seems to have been planned for early


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1974;62 the plans may have been abandoned or suspended because Meinhof and Ensslin were taken to Stuttgart-Stammheim prison on 28 April, in a move on the side of the state toward housing the core members of the group collectively (as they and their lawyers had demanded). Baader and Raspe were moved to Stammheim six months later; Meins should have joined them, but was too weakened by fasting to make the journey — he died soon afterward in Wittlich prison. The first strike conducted in the context of a properly working info was the one that began in the autumn of 1974, on 13 September, which continued until 15 February 1975 — five months of fasting for the participating prisoners, and a radical functionalization of their starving bodies: “die Waffe Mensch” (the human weapon), in Meinhof’s words.63 It was designed to heighten public awareness of the conditions in which they were being held, as well as to raise the RAF’s revolutionary profile and articulate its demands to be allowed more contact both within the group and with the outside world. Meinhof, as ever the “voice” of the group,64 was responsible for producing statements on behalf of the collective. Her announcement of the second strike had been emotive: “it’s isolation for us now, but soon it will be a concentration camp . . . a death camp . . . the ‘final solution.’ that’s the perspective” (“Unsere Isolation jetzt und das Konzentrationslager demnächst . . . Vernichtungslager . . . die ‘Endlösung.’ So siehts aus”).65 The metaphor is familiar. But in the statement of autumn 1974 she described prison conditions in a more factual tone, albeit in the tendentious language of political prisoners (politische Gefangene), annihilation custody (Vernichtungshaft), and brainwashing (Gehirnwäsche). Internally, in the info, the prisoners were writing of a functionalization of their bodies as weapons, but for the outside world it is portrayed as an instrumentalization of their rational minds: “in isolation it is our only way of instrumentalizing our physical and intellectual powers; our identity as human beings” (“isoliert ist er unsere einzige Möglichkeit, unsere physischen und geistigen Kräfte, unsere Identität als Menschen einzusetzen”).66 Certainly only a human being would hit upon the notion of starving him- or herself possibly to death for a political cause, and only those who have invested their identity so completely in the group would risk death to be part of it. Not only the RAF’s supporters, but the West German government and prison authorities would, of course, read the statements it released. The battle in language was still being waged, and the strategy depended, as it always had, not least on provocation. “People who refuse to stop fighting can’t be suppressed — they either win or they die” (“Menschen, die sich weigern, den Kampf zu beenden, können nicht unterdrückt werden — sie gewinnen entweder oder sie sterben”) declared Meinhof on behalf of the RAF, in the familiar “either-or” terms of absolute conflict. She went on to describe the very thing the state was keenest to avoid:


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Die Abschaffung der Isolation ist die Bedingung, die wir uns erkämpfen müssen, wenn Selbstorganisation der Gefangenen, wenn revolutionäre Politik, wenn Befreiungskampf im Gefängnis überhaupt eine realistische Möglichkeit von proletarischer Gegengewalt werden soll.67 [We have to fight for an end to our isolation if there is to be a realistic possibility of organizing proletarian counter-violence in prisons through coordinated prisoner activity, revolutionary politics, and the struggle for liberation.]

The RAF was thereby presenting the government authorities with a frying-pan-or-fire situation: if the state relents it is practically agreeing to allow the RAF to incite violence in its prisons — if it does not, RAF members will cause uproar by starving themselves to death in custody. The provocative tone of the hunger strike statement may signal confidence, but the personal letters Meinhof was simultaneously writing for the info describe a battle with language that was shaking her sense of self. In early September 1974 she sent the core collective a draft version of a group statement, admitting that the writing process was causing her problems. “damn it — i’m sending you something” (“verdammt — ich schick hier mal was mit”), she opens: ich glaub, das ist gar nicht mal schlecht. damit zufrieden und sicher bin ich allerdings überhaupt nicht. aber daran wird klar, wie ich’s mir vorstelle. noch ergänzen usw kann ich ja soundso. klar ist irgendwie, daß die alte schreibe überhaupt nicht mehr geht und die neue ist noch nicht da. naja — die drückebergerei vor einfach [sic] wissenschaftlicher arbeit, die ich bis jetzt kultiviert habe. die sau.68 [i think it’s not all that bad. but that’s not to say i’m happy with it or certain of it at all. but you can see from it how i’m thinking. i can expand it etc. anyway. it’s clear somehow that the old way of writing doesn’t work any more and the new one isn’t there yet. because of the way i’ve cultivated an avoidance of simple academic work up until now. sow that i am.]

“Noch nicht” (not yet) points towards a future when a “new way of writing” will have been found. But what is that “new way of writing” — a new language for the RAF, for collectivity, for the revolution? She seems at a loss for words to describe it. She knows what it is not: “damn it,” she continues in a sentence deleted from Bakker Schut’s edition of the info, “of course i want to produce a proper self-criticism. but as long as the words keep turning into money in my hands, over and over — until i’ve got rid


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of a couple of my swine habits, i won’t do it” (“verdammt. ich will nat. noch ne richtige selbstkritik bringen. aber solange mir die begriffe zu geld entarten, immer mal wieder — ich mir noch n paar schweinegewohnheiten abgewöhnt habe, mach ich das nicht”). Ex-star columnist Meinhof was uncomfortably aware of her attachment to the words she produced, and to the recognition accorded her for writing them. She accuses herself of dealing, literally, in facts, of “selling” ideas; in that mode words become the “property” of the writer, and are bartered — if not for money, then for status and recognition. It is a capitalist-consumerist approach to writing; in capitalism words are owned and traded like everything else: “in this system,” she complains, “even language is a consumer good” (“auch die sprache ist eben in diesem system ware”).69 Truly revolutionary language would express identity untouched by ego: the ideal of pure collectivity (in a handwritten note of 1975 she crosses out the words “the revolutionary is anything but selfless”).70 The “swine habits” Meinhof lacerates herself for betray that her identity is still not vested purely in the struggle, purely in the RAF, but is, at least in part, the identity of an (individualistic) writer. But pure ego-free collectivity is not a normal human state of being. With the “new way of writing” Meinhof was struggling to describe an approach that was — in the spirit of the RAF — a counter-approach. If, in capitalism, the function of language is (for example) to enable lucrative contracts, and to maintain class distinctions and the dominance of the elite — to get and keep money and power — then a revolutionary way of writing must turn that on its head. Rather than becoming property and ossifying (becoming rigid, like the banal language of authority parodied in Bambule), words must be dynamic: weapons or stepping stones in a revolutionary process. As such, they may have no material value in themselves, and reflect no value or status in their producer — they are tools that must be cast aside and new ones found when the revolution has outgrown them. In a later note Meinhof explains: der kampf, zu begreifen, geht eben nicht darum, recht zu haben — nie — sondern darum, das, was man macht, machen will, machen muss, richtig zu machen, also bewegung zu erzeugen und nicht wirrwarr, oder stillstand oder besitz oder herrschaft.71 [the battle to understand [begreifen] is precisely not about being right — never — but about doing what one does, wants to do, has to do, in the right way — so as to create movement rather than confusion or stasis or ownership or dominance.]

She seems to be envisaging an ideal language that dispenses not only with individual profit but individual identity, working only in the interest of the collective.


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Her letter describing the new way of writing explains that “with this kind of writing it’s not about communicating all kinds of individual details or individual thoughts. this kind of writing is about expressing identity” (“es kommt bei dieser sorte schreibe nicht darauf an, alle möglichen einzelheiten, einzelgedanken an den mann zu bringen. es kommt bei ihr dadrauf an, identität zum ausdruck zu bringen”) — but that is group or collective, not individual identity, and Meinhof, an isolated prisoner, anticipates finding liberty in that ideal discourse: “liberation is the word,” she insists, “not freedom. what that is: freedom — we can only guess at, anyway. i mean: it’s what’s starting to happen in our relationships — and you can’t talk about that” (“befreiung ist der begriff — nicht freiheit. was das ist: freiheit — können wir doch sowieso nur ahnen. bzw: es ist das, was in unseren beziehungen anfängt zu sein — und darüber kann man nicht reden”).72 When Ensslin responds she advises curtly: “analyze what you’re saying using the simple criteria that we — I for example — have got to through suffering, through experience” (“analysier die rede mit den einfachen kriterien, die wir — also ich zb erlitten, erfahren”). She does not seem to comprehend the chasm that has opened up for Meinhof between a sense of self that is powerfully invested in writing, and the longing and need to “belong” in the collective. Ensslin is briskly optimistic that a new kind of language is as learnable for a revolutionary as breaking into cars once was for the RAF: “in a couple more years we’ll all be able to do it,” she predicts; “it’s like with cars and stuff — doesn’t matter how you do it etc, the main thing is, it works. that’s kind of how i see it with the writing” (“noch n paar jährchen und jeder kann das: ist wie mit autos oder so — ganz egal wie usw. hauptsache: es stimmt. so etwa sehe ich das mit dem schreiben”).73 But looking for the right words was basic to Meinhof’s struggle. The Begriff or word is in its ideal form the result of a process of understanding (begreifen) acquired through the physical experience of struggle;74 political action is the crystallization, via language, of lived experience. Correct naming of one’s experience — finding the right word — enables the struggle, because the guerilla “fights in order to understand + understands in order to fight” (“kämpft um zu begreifen + begreift um zu kämpfen”). She is intolerant of comrades who are not prepared to engage in the battle with language. “People mean what they say,” she wrote briskly to the RAF prisoners in Hamburg (Christa Eckes, Werner Hoppe, Helmut Pohl, Eberhard Becker, Irmgard Möller, Wolfgang Beer, Ilse Stachowiak, Sigurd Debus, Wolfgang Stahl): “if they mean something else then they should say it, should engage in the struggle to be able to say it, find the words, sentences, facts, names for things — look for them” (“einer meint, was er sagt. wenn er was anderes meint, soll er es sagen, soll er es sich erkämpfen, es sagen zu können, die worte, sätze, tatsachen, begriffe fin-


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den, also suchen”). The business of translating ideas into language is both an individual responsibility and a necessary precondition for change: “how you write is something you have to find out for yourself,” she insists, “and you find it out by doing it, and that’s when you see what your problem is, where it is you’re headed, what you have to do — to do what you want to do; get what you want” (“wie du was schreibst, das musst du selbst rausfinden und du findest es raus, indem du es machst und dann auch, was dir fehlt, wo’s lang geht, was du musst — um das zu tun, was du willst: dich durchsetzen”). Naming in Meinhof’s conception is the basis for right cognition, and her ultimate argument for critical engagement with language, “that you hunt for the right term IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND” (“dass man den begriff jagt UM DURCHZUBLICKEN”).75 In that context, the info becomes a means of continuing the revolutionary process just because it uses words. In her Schwarzer September (Black September) essay, Meinhof had predicted that the revolution would become possible the moment the RAF found the right words for the proletarian experience. Naming reality accurately is the prerequisite for changing reality. Ingrid Schubert would later rationalize the self-criticism practiced by RAF members in the info by insisting that the activity may look self-flagellatory, but takes its practitioner “to the right words that enable everything to move forward” (“zu den begriffen, die das ganze weitertransportieren”).76 But naming reality depends on the subjective perception of the person experiencing it, and this is a problem that the RAF (because its selfjustification depends on the notion that its subjective perception is right) refuses to address. That leads to a situation where core group members frame what they believe or perceive to be real as objective certainty — as truth. “there can be no greater certainty than the certainty of our experience” (“es kann überhaupt keine grössere gewissheit geben als die unserer erfahrung”), asserts Ensslin.77 In the RAF’s world view, anything that has not been grasped through personal experience is not only inauthentic, but potentially untrue. “Here’s a TRUTH for you,” declared Meins, writing shortly before his death from malnutrition: “the things you haven’t yet experienced/lived/fought for — you don’t know those things personally — because you haven’t yet EXPERIENCED LIVED — FOUGHT FOR them — only thought, said, known them intellectually” (“daß [sic] ist ja ne WAHRHEIT: was man noch nicht erfahren/gelebt/sich erkämpft hat — das kennt man auch noch nicht — hat es eben noch nicht ERFAHREN GELEBT — SICH ERKÄMPFT — nur gedacht gesagt gewußt”).78 The opposite of experience is constraint: “constraint is blind,” argues Jan-Carl Raspe, “a necessity that hasn’t been grasped” (“zwang ist die blinde, nicht begriffene notwendigkeit”); for this reason, the word is not acceptable in the RAF universe: “the very word constraint antagonizes


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our situation, antagonizes the word guerilla” (“der begriff zwang selbst [ist] ein antagonismus . . . zu unserer situation, zum begriff guerilla”).79 That certain words and kinds of language are regarded as antagonistic, inimical to the RAF project, is clear to a reader of the info. The correspondents apply harsh critique to their own language use and to that of others. Wrong language is characterized as “dreck” (crap) and “quatsch” (rubbish), alongside “dummes zeug” (stupid nonsense), “gefummel” (muddle), “wortschwall” (blather), “geschleime” (sucking up), “gekrächze” (cawing), “scheisse” (shit), and “gewäsch” (drivel); verbs include “sabbern” (slobber), “schwatzen” (chatter), “anplärren” (whine), and “bejammern” (moan), while adjectives vary from the straightforward “falsch” (wrong), through “subjektivistisch” (subjectifying), to “tot” (dead), and “leer” (empty).80 Failing properly to engage with and via language has physical consequences for the imprisoned guerilla, Meinhof would tell fellow RAF member Hanna Krabbe, who was in custody after participating in the hostage operation in the German embassy in Stockholm of 1975: “if you’re in solitary and don’t make the effort, constantly and consistently, to clock reality by grasping and naming it,” Meinhof urges, “you’ll turn pale, lose touch, get sick, which means you’ll get into an unhealthy relationship with reality” (“wenn du in der isolation die anstrengung nicht bringst, andauernd und immer, die realität zu ticken, indem du sie auf den begriff bringst, . . . wirst du weiss, hebst ab, wirst krank, das heisst du bekommst ein krankes verhältnis zur wirklichkeit”).81 This is March 1976, just weeks before her own death, and correct naming is now the key not only to political success, but to personal survival.

Baader, the Guerilla Incarnate: letzte texte von ulrike Meinhof was found hanged at the window of her cell on the morning of 9 May 1976. Her fellow prisoners, including Ensslin (who seems to have been the last person to speak to her) as well as her lawyers and her sister, Wienke Zitzlaff, declared it impossible on the basis of their recent experience of her that she had committed suicide. A similar statement was made by Giovanni Capelli, attorney to the Italian Brigade Rosse, who had visited Meinhof on 7 May.82 Other sources, including Stammheim’s prison doctor Helmut Henck and state prosecutor Felix Kaul, suggested she had been driven to suicide by tensions in the group, particularly by a personality clash with Ensslin; it has since been alleged that fragments from undated letters were deliberately released to the press, to support the story of tension between them.83 The Ensslin-Meinhof rivalry is foregrounded by Stefan Aust in his influential Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (adapted as a movie in 2008).84 As the story of a girlfight it has a certain popular appeal, but its basis in fact has never been properly demonstrated,


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neither by Aust nor anyone else. In her recent biography of Meinhof, writer and ex-Green party politician Jutta Ditfurth argues that the conflict with Ensslin was resolved two months before Meinhof’s death, and points out that the documents that “proved” it to be the cause of her death are undated.85 Meinhof’s lawyer, Otto Schily, believed so little in the possibility of her suicide that he demanded the matter be investigated by an independent international commission; when the government did not agree to this, Schily took the matter forward anyway, and in 1979 a group of ten investigators from France, Denmark, Greece, West Germany, and the United Kingdom concluded their report and published it under the title La mort d’Ulrike Meinhof: rapport de la commission internationale d’enquête. The commission deems Meinhof’s suicide not proven. It admits that it cannot, given the limited access to information it was given by West German authorities, pronounce authoritatively on the circumstances of her death, but suggests there were indicators of third-party involvement, and that Meinhof may have been already dead when she was hanged.86 No conclusive evidence has ever been brought forward. On 20 January 1975, a group calling itself the International Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Western Europe (Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa) had announced its existence in a press release. The idea for the committee had been Jean-Paul Sartre’s, floated at a press conference after the visit he paid Baader in Stuttgart-Stammheim on 4 December 1974. It was made up of European and U.S. American lawyers, including RAF attorney Klaus Croissant, who was responsible for the press release and used it to lambast the new Lex RAF.87 After Meinhof’s death, the committee organized the publication of a collection of her last writings from prison, compiled with the help of the surviving Stammheimers, notably Gudrun Ensslin. Like Bakker Schut’s edition of das info, letzte texte von ulrike (ulrike’s last texts) is a problematic document. There is quite clearly a political project behind the publication (that is, to counter rumors of Meinhof’s suicide by demonstrating that she was strong, determined, and integrated into the group right up to the time of her death), and again, a careful selection process has clearly taken place. Not all the texts are dated. While most were written in the first half of 1976 and therefore can reasonably be described as “last texts,” the single longest entry is a speech made by Meinhof at the trial in Berlin-Moabit prison in 1974, when she was in court for her part in the operation to free Baader.88 Politically speaking, what we find in the letzte texte reprises familiar notions. The draft of a paper that Meinhof was preparing with Baader in late April 1976, shortly before her death (and included in the collection presumably with the intention of demonstrating their continuing working relationship) tells us that within Western Europe the major enemy is the


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United States; within the Federal Republic it is social democracy (“innerhalb westeuropas ist der hauptfeind usa, die bundesrepublik der sozialdemokratie” [sic]).89 Both the RAF’s demonization of the United States and its sense of absolute difference from mainstream socialist politics in West Germany have clearly remained intact, as has its will to equate global capitalism with fascism: “our project,” Meinhof and Baader continue, “is to show the dialectic that arises out of the internationalization of capital, out of the transformation of nation states within u.s. imperialism into a new and internationally organized fascism” (“uns kommt es darauf an, die dialektik aus der internationalisierung der kapitalsbewegung, der transformation der nationalstaaten im staatensystem des us-imperialismus in einen neuen, international organisierten faschismus, . . . zu zeigen”).90 It is difficult not to feel that the group never got beyond its one significant success: the founding operation to free Baader from jail. In the speech for the Moabit trial of 1974 that is included among her “last texts,” Meinhof idealized the events of May 1970: “our operation on 14 may 1970 was and still is the exemplary action of a metropolitan guerilla,” she insisted; “it contains or contained every element in the strategy of the armed antiimperialist struggle” (“unsere aktion am 14. mai 1970 ist und bleibt die exemplarische aktion des metropolenguerilla. in ihr sind/waren schon alle elemente der strategie des bewaffneten, antiimperialistischen kampfes enthalten”).91 The notion that armed action is a form of language is revisited in January 1976. In another piece selected for the letzte texte, Meinhof reminded herself and the collective that the RAF’s theoretical texts have the function of weapons, not words; they are, she insists “intended to provide information, and to convince individual readers that and why it is right to support the urban guerilla. we used them as weapons, because everything that supports the armed struggle from a position of illegality is a weapon” (“die theoretischen schriften der raf waren zeitungen, denen es darum ging, einzelne davon zu überzeugen, dass und warum es richtig ist, die stadtguerilla zu unterstützen. wir haben sie als waffen bestimmt, weil waffe alles ist, was dem bewaffneten kampf aus der illegalität nützt”).92 In an odd non sequitur, her next sentence reads: “von andreas sprechen heisst von uns sprechen” (to talk of andreas is to mean the whole group). But the thought shift from the guerilla to Baader as the epitome of the group is less peculiar if we take it in the context of the letzte texte as a whole. The collection opens with a statement delivered in court by JanCarl Raspe on 11 May, two days after Meinhof’s suicide was announced. Speaking in the voice of the collective, Raspe announced that the group believes she was executed (hingerichtet). He then waxes lyrical on the relationship between Meinhof and Baader: die ganze zeit, die ich die beziehung zwischen ulrike und andreas kenne, — und ich kenne sie seit sieben jahren — war ihr signal


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intensität und zärtlichkeit, sensibilität und genauigkeit. . . . es war eine beziehung, wie sie sich zwischen geschwistern entwickeln kann — orientiert an einem identischen ziel, als funktion dieser politik — und so war sie frei — weil freiheit nur möglich ist — im kampf um befreiung.93 [the whole time i’ve known the relationship between ulrike and andreas — and i’ve known it for seven years — its keynote has been intensity and tenderness, sensitivity and precision . . . it was the kind of relationship that can develop between brother and sister — oriented toward an identical aim, as the function of our politics. and so it was free — because freedom is only possible — in the struggle for freedom.]

Clearly, part of Raspe’s brief was to counter the accusations that Meinhof committed suicide on account of tensions within the RAF, and testifying to the unbrokenness of her relationship with Baader — who is the RAF — was therefore crucial: “in all these years there hasn’t been a crack in their relationship,” he concluded firmly (“es gab in diesen jahren in ihrem verhältnis keinen bruch”).94 That there were clear and documented tensions between Baader and Meinhof, particularly during the years the four core group members spent together in Stammheim (something Raspe, as one of the four, would have known very well), is not the issue here.95 The primary argument supporting the verdict of suicide was that Meinhof was at odds with the group, isolated and desperate. The intention of the letzte texte, therefore, is to demonstrate her oneness with the group, and this — it becomes perfectly clear — is equivalent to demonstrating her oneness with Baader. Raspe’s speech in court is followed by her own “fragment über struktur,” in Raspe’s account the last text she was working on before her death. In it, as in the other texts selected for the posthumous collection, Meinhof makes some remarkable observations regarding Andreas Baader. The “fragment” begins with observations on the meaning and function of the collective. Isolation, she argues, is the deliberate result of capitalist production methods; the isolation of the individual is a necessary precondition for the successful manipulation of that individual.96 The only path out of isolation and manipulation is in the collective, engaged in the project of attacking the system. This is what the RAF has recognized and is now a living example of. Meinhof defines the exact nature of the collective: “the collective is the group that thinks, feels, and acts as a group” (“das kollektiv ist die gruppe, die als gruppe denkt, fühlt und handelt”). It has a deictic as well as a current function because it represents the “kernel of a new society” (“keimform der neuen gesellschaft”). The collective, then, is a group that acts as one person, but in Meinhof’s account it is also a group incarnated in one person. Baader, she asserts, “is the guerilla of


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whom che [guevara] says that he is the group” (“so ist andreas der guerilla, von dem che sagt, dass er die gruppe ist”). He is both the group and its leader; in Meinhof’s words, Baader “represents leadership within the raf because right from the beginning he was everything the guerilla needs most: will, consciousness of the target, decisiveness, collectivity — ” (“er ist führung in der raf, weil er von anfang an das war, was die guerilla am meisten braucht: wille, bewusstsein des ziels, entschlossenheit, kollektivität — ”). Leadership would normally be at odds with collectivity, and she is moved to explain that leadership, in this instance “is a function the group needs for its process” (“so ist führung eine funktion, die sie für ihren prozess braucht”).97 Baader has this function “because he transports proletarian politics — and that means insurrection — in the raf” (“diese funktion hat in der raf andreas, weil er proletarische politik — und das ist die insurrektion — in der raf vermittelt”), she asserts in another document in this collection, echoing her Moabit speech of 1974, where she had explained that the function of leadership in the guerilla, and therefore the function of Baader in the RAF, was orientation (“eine funktion von führung in der guerilla, die funktion von andreas in der raf ist: orientierung”).98 In a draft version of that speech, not included in the letzte texte, she had constructed a striking rationale for Baader’s liberation from prison, based on his unique superiority: wir ham den typen rausgeholt, weil er ein revolutionär war, schon damals, weil er alles das, was die revolution braucht, schon verkörperte — weil bei ihm mehr war, als bei uns: nicht nur der wille, zu handeln, sondern auch schon die fähigkeit, sich selbst nur und ausschließlich von den zielen her zu bestimmen — und den sich daraus ergebenden notwendigkeiten, aufgaben, der sich daraus ergebenden arbeit. weil er damals noch als einziger von uns, schon nichts mehr in sich hatte, was staat, bulle, schwein, imperialismus ist — kein ausbeuter und in den beziehungen zu menschen nicht entfremdet. weil er als damals noch einziger von uns, die diskussion, den kollektiven prozeß, lernprozeß offen halten konnte, verhindern, nicht zulassen, daß diskussionen in machtkämpfe ausarten oder zuschnappen. und als er im juni 72 mit den zwei typen verhaftet wurde, war es für uns, als wenn der baum zu den blättern sagte: ich gehe jetzt.99 [we got the guy out because he was a revolutionary, even back then, because he already embodied everything the revolution needs — because there was more to him than to us: not only the will to act but the ability to posit himself only and exclusively in relation to our aims . . . because back then he was still the only one of us who had nothing of the state, the pig, the swine, imperialism about him — not an exploiter and not alienated in his relationships with people. because back then he was still the only one of us who could hold open the


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discussion, the collective process, the learning process, and prevent, stop discussions from developing or reducing into power struggles. and when in june 72 he got arrested . . . for us it was as if the tree said to the leaves: i’m going now.]

The letzte texte clearly has an agenda in its portrayal of the relationship between Baader and Meinhof, but this unincluded document suggests that Meinhof’s perception of Baader was indeed remarkable. Here she describes him as ego-free (he posits his identity “only and exclusively in relation to our aims”) and in the terms of ancient divinity (the tree of life), while the remainder of the group, including Meinhof, are mere leaves that have no access to nourishment and no center without him. Her insistence on Baader’s function makes it possible for her to argue that to protect him is the collective’s central duty. It is also an urgent necessity; in the trial speech of 1974 she had declared the threat to Baader immediate: “now, after everything they’ve cooked up in their psychological war against us — the swine are set to murder andreas,” she announced (“jetzt sind die schweine drauf, nach allem, was sie in ihrer psychologischen kriegsführung gegen uns vorbereitet haben — andreas zu ermorden”).100 The piece Raspe describes as her last piece of writing, the “fragment über struktur,” reiterates that: Baader is in constant danger, she insists, because he is perceived by the state as the RAF’s leader; the federal attorney’s office is building up his position as center and focus of the group in order first to eliminate him, then declare the entire RAF dead: das ziel der hetze der bundesanwaltschaft gegen andreas ist klar: sie bereitet damit die demobilisierung der öffentlichen meinung gegen seine ermordung vor — sie stellt die ganze sache so dar, als müsste man nur diesen einen typ: andreas ausknipsen und das problem, dass die stadtguerilla für diesen staat ist . . . wäre gelöst.101 [the intention of the campaign the federal attorney’s office is waging against andreas is obvious: it’s preparing to counter public feeling against his murder — it’s presenting the whole thing as if you only have to eliminate this one guy, and the problem the urban guerilla poses for this government . . . is solved.]

It is thinkable that Meinhof was projecting her own view of Baader as the absolute incarnation of the guerilla on to the German state. The authorities are focused, in her argument, on eliminating Baader because they, like her, have recognized him as the real thing: “in the psychological war the pigs are waging on us, they have andreas in their sights because he is and always was a true revolutionary” (“andreas steht, weil er das ist und von anfang war: revolutionär — im fadenkreuz der psychologischen


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kriegsführung der bullen gegen uns”).102 She insists that the politics of the RAF derive not from her, an experienced and knowledgeable political writer and theorist, but from Baader’s mere presence in the organization. That is why the authorities are after him — “because he incorporates the oneness of analysis, collectivity, and action” (“dass die raf von anfang an durch andreas einen revolutionären politikbegriff hatte . . . andreas wird als inbegriff dieser politik verfolgt, weil er die einheit von analyse, kollektivität und aktion verkörpert”).103 Baader is the scapegoat of the ruling classes: “the bourgeoisie, the pig state has heaped everything they hate and fear about the people on to the head of . . . andreas — he is the epitome of the mob, the street, the enemy” (“die bourgeoisie, der bullenstaat [haben] alles, was sie am volk hassen und fürchten auf . . . andreas gehäuft — er ist der inbegriff des mob, der strasse, des feinds”).104 Baader, we understand by now, is the guerilla incarnate; the ideal and the example: “from the start andreas represented in the raf what every fighter wants to become and has to become” (“andreas war von anfang an in der raf das, was jeder kämpfer werden will und werden muss”). Meinhof chides the “stupid notion” expressed by the other side that he can hardly represent the workers given he himself has never done a day’s work in a factory: “that’s just wrong,” she objects; “andreas has learned things, grasped things in factories, on the street, and in prison” (“der satz ist falsch. andreas hat in der fabrik, auf der strasse, im gefängnis gelernt und begriffen”).105 And the RAF has learned from Baader: wir haben im prozess dieser fünf jahre von andreas gelernt — weil er das ist, was wir das beispiel nennen — nämlich einer, von dem man lernen kann — kämpfen, nochmal kämpfen, und wieder kämpfen. weil an dem, was er macht und so wir machen, nichts irrational, nichts erzwungen, nichts gequältes ist106 — [during this five-year process we’ve learned from andreas — because he is what we call an example — namely, someone you can learn from — to fight, fight again, and fight some more. because there is nothing of constraint in the things he does and we then do, nothing irrational, nothing painfully forced — ]

The rather odd arrangement of the lines leaves the reader with the feeling that Meinhof is — painfully — contrasting the effortlessness of Baader with her own, effortful, participation in the RAF. The written evidence, primarily in the info, suggests that the decision of the West German state to isolate the terrorists in prison — necessary though it


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seemed — actually led to an exacerbation of their group-focused introspection, further fueled by the info’s existence. The accepted, proper response of a democratic state is to look to resocialize its prisoners: to reform their identities in order to create democratic citizens. That imprisoned RAF members experienced and described the measures taken by the state as an attack on their ideological identities is understandable,107 because it is to some extent true; if the modern prison system seeks to reeducate the prisoner in the spirit of the state it represents, then it is inappropriate for the prisoner to retain a revolutionary identity that threatens the existence of that state. There were unfortunate, if not unusual, indicators of a war mentality when policemen dehumanized by the RAF as “pigs” and “swine” showed a will to dehumanize their prisoners in return: after his capture with Baader in 1970, Holger Meins was severely beaten by policemen who felt they “owed” him for the RAF’s murder of police officers (Baader, who had been shot in the thigh, was luckier in that he was taken straight to hospital).108 On the institutional level, RAF lawyer Klaus Croissant observed of the “visiting cage” (a glass barrier built specially to contain RAF prisoners during visits, allegedly to prevent the smuggling of letters) that “the glass box degrades the prisoner and makes a wild animal of him.”109 Dehumanizing prisoners is blatantly counterproductive in the process of resocialization. For the RAF and its supporters, the conditions of isolation and solitary confinement that they experienced as inhuman became yet another proof that the fascism they ascribed to the state was not a metaphor but reality; in Meinhof’s words, “that the rule of fascism here is real — not just something we are asserting but the exact right word to describe the character of repression that you will experience if you start down the path of revolutionary politics in this country” (“dass der faschismus hier tatsächlich herrscht, das also tatsächlich nicht nur eine behauptung von uns ist, sondern der exakte begriff für den charakter der repression, die dich trifft, wenn du in diesem staat anfängst, revolutionäre politik zu machen”).110 One of the many problems that the prison system and government faced in the RAF was the group’s stalwart belief that it was right, and in the right — it is difficult to reform a criminal who refuses to recognize the criminality of his or her actions. In prison, the focus shifted ever further inward. Maintaining the RAF was now, more than ever, the RAF’s primarily task — in the communications exchanged there is almost no interest in anything aside from that. Domestic and international politics barely feature: even Meinhof’s lengthy Schwarzer September essay is in essence another justification of and reflection on the existence of the RAF. Other political concerns (such as Meinhof’s once-active engagement with feminism, or the RAF’s with the left) recede, and personal concerns do the same: after Christmas 1973 Meinhof broke off contact with her twin daughters. Aust implies that Ensslin,


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the villain of his narrative, put Meinhof under pressure to break with her family; biographer Ditfurth blames the difficulties created by Meinhof’s ex-husband Röhl in respect of visits from the children.111 Certain is that Meinhof’s decision to cease contact with her family coincided with the info getting under way as a functioning system, and that Ensslin, too, stopped writing letters to her family almost as soon as the info was established.112 The reconnection with the collective or group coincides with a rejection of every other possible object of identification. Little or no attention has been paid to how Meinhof’s death must have shaken the group’s sense of itself. If the collective imagined itself as the group under which individual identities were subsumed, then the suicide of a central member of the collective — as an undeniably individualistic act — is a profound disturbance. The letzte texte, as well as providing “evidence” to an external audience of Meinhof’s continued integration into the RAF, may have played a role in supporting the RAF’s sense of itself as a functioning collective — its energetic rejection of the suicide verdict may have been as necessary to the group’s internal identity as it was to its public image.

Notes The citation for the epigraph in this chapter is as follows: Letter from Meinhof (11 October 1974), in “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76),” in Me,U/008,002, 43; reprinted in das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973–1977: Dokumente, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1987), 178–79; here 178. Emphasis in original. 1

Letter from Meins (29 September 1974), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 175–76; here 175. 2

“In Wahrheit war die Änderung der Haftbedingungen nur Mittel zum Zweck, um die politische Agitation in den Haftanstalten, die ‘Politisierung der Gefäng nisse,’ den ‘Kampf gegen das kriminelle imperiale System,’ die Herbeiführung von ‘Revolten im Knast’ zu ermöglichen.” Decision of the Stammheim court (30 September 1975), cited in “In der Strafsache gegen Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin wegen Mordes u.a.” Dokumente aus dem Prozeß, ed. Ulf G. Stuberger (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1977), 108. 3

“In meiner Einschätzung, die sich nicht geändert, hat dieser Streik nur einen Zweck: er soll die Typen aus der Isolation befreien, damit sie eine Möglichkeit zur Agitation, Organisation und Aktion im Knast haben.” Letter from Baader (9 March 1973); cited in In der Strafsache, ed. Stuberger, 108. 4

Meinhof, “haftbedingungen/isolation — daten/fakten,” in HIS Me,U/026,009. The note appears to have been written in mid or late 1973 (it does not mention her return to the isolation cell in December 1973).


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5

Pieter Bakker Schut, Stammheim: Der Prozeß gegen die Rote Armee Fraktion: Die notwendige Korrektur der herrschenden Meinung (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1997), 107. 6

See the anonymous document giving dates of Meinhof’s imprisonment to her death, in HIS Me,U/026,001. 7

Cited in Mario Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof: Ein Leben im Widerspruch (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988), 241. 8

Meinhof, letter regarding solitary confinement (26 February 1973), in Meinhof, “briefe ulrikes aus dem trakt, 73/74,” in HIS Me,U/008,002, 18. 9

Meinhof, letter regarding solitary confinement (26 February 1973), 7.

10

This is a common response; recent examples include Butz Peters, Tödlicher Irrtum: Die Geschichte der RAF (Berlin: Argon, 2004), 313, and Klaus Pflieger, Die Rote Armee Fraktion — RAF: 14.5.1970 bis 20.4.1998 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), 41. The report Pflieger cites as evidence that the prisoners were not held in isolation actually refers to conditions after the hunger-striking RAF members were finally moved into a wing together. 11


12


13

“der versuch, einen selbstmord zu erpressen.” Meinhof, letter regarding solitary confinement (26 February 1973), 14. 14

Jutta Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof: Die Biografie (Berlin: Ullstein, 2007), 353.

15

Meinhof, “aus der zeit: 16.6.72–8.2.73,” in HIS Me,U/009,002.

16

Becker to the regional appeals court, in In der Strafsache, ed. Stuberger, 73– 100; here 73. 17

“die Staatsschutzpolizei der BRD und der Generalbundesanwalt versuchen, die Identität der Gefangenen durch ein ausgeklügeltes Instrumentarium von Haftverschärfungen zu zerstören. Diese Vernichtungshaft besteht in der Institutionalisierung jahrelanger Isolation.” Becker to the regional appeals court, 75. 18

Sigrid Weigel describes prison writing as a form of self-preservation: “Selbstvergewisserung, . . . Identitätsbewahrung, Schreiben gegen den Mangel . . . die Absicht des schreibenden Gefangenen ist die Bewahrung seiner Identität.” Weigel: Und selbst im Kerker frei!” Schreiben im Gefängnis. Zur Theorie und Gattungsgeschichte der Gefängnisliteratur (1750–1933) (Marburg/Lahn: Guttandin & Hoppe, 1982), 7–8. See also Nicola Keßler, Schreiben, um zu überleben. Studien zur Gefangenenliteratur (Mönchengladbach: Forum Verlag Godesberg, 2001), 25. 19

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1991 [1975]), 150–57; see also Helmut H. Koch, “Schreiben im anachronistischen Strafvollzug,” in Keßler, Schreiben, um zu überleben, 13–21; here 19. 20

Bericht über Vernichtungshaft und Isolationsfolter in Gefängnissen der BRD und Westberlins (1970–74) (n.p., n.d. [1974]), 9.


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Bakker Schut, Stammheim, 111–13; here 113.

22

Martin Jander, “Isolation: zu den Haftbedingungen der RAF-Gefangenen,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), 2:973–93; here 980. See also Folter in der BRD: Zur Situation der politischen Gefangenen, ed. Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Karl Markus Michel (Kursbuch 9.32) (August 1973). 23

See, e.g., Jander, “Isolation,” 974; Gerd Koenen, “Camera Silens: Das Phantasma der ‘Vernichtungshaft,’” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 2:994–1010. 24

See, e.g., Jander, “Isolation,” 980.

25

Meinhof, “aus der zeit 16.6.72–8.2.73.”

26

See chapter 4.

27

“Daß die Geheimdienste im höchsten Maß an einer Zerstörung der Persönlichkeit und des Widerstandspotentials sozialistischer und antiimperialistischer Revolutionäre interessiert sind, ist aufgrund ihrer Funktion im staatlichen Herrschaftssystem offenkundig: allein durch diese Vernichtungsstrategie hoffen sie, zu Aussagen der Angeklagten und einen Einblick in Strukturen und Organisationsformen des revolutionären Kampfes zu gelangen.” Becker to the regional appeals court, 80. 28

See Thomas Skelton-Robinson, “Im Netz verheddert: Die Beziehungen des bundesdeutschen Linksterrorismus zur Volksfront für die Befreiung Palästinas (1969–1980),” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 2:828–904; here 859. 29

Meinhof, Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München: Zur Strategie des antiimperialistischen Kampfes, in Rote Armee Fraktion: Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF, ed. Martin Hoffmann (Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1997), 151–77; here 176. Further references appear in the text. 30

The German system of gendering nouns means that the pronoun “er” (which here stands in for “der Kapitalismus/ Imperialismus”) renders both “it” and “he.” 31

“Seiner historischen Tendenz nach ist er faschistisch: auf Ausbeutung aus und Unterwerfung, Vernichtung, Vergeudung, Entlaubung, Zerstörung von Menschen und Bodenschätzen.” 32

“Der Nationalsozialismus war nur die politische und militärische Vorwegnahme des imperialistischen Systems der multinationalen Konzerne.” 33

Oliver Tolmein, Stammheim vergessen: Deutschlands Aufbruch und die RAF, 2nd edn. (Hamburg: konkret, 1997), 23–29. 34

Kraushaar, “Antizionismus als Trojanisches Pferd: Zur antisemitischen Dimension in den Kooperationen von Tupamaros West-Berlin, RAF und RZ mit den Palästinensern,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:676–95; here 689–90. 35

“sprachlichen Verfall”; see Iring Fetscher, Herfried Münkler, and Hannelore Ludwig, “Ideologien der Terroristen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Fetscher and Günter Rohrmoser, Ideologien und Strategien (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 1) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 219. Mario Krebs calls it a “sprachliche und gedankliche Engführung”; see Krebs, Ulrike Meinhof: Ein Leben im Widerspruch (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988), 253.


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36

Letter from Meinhof to Preuß regarding isolation as brainwashing (21 April 1974). In HIS Me,U/009,005. 37

Ensslin, “Zieht den Trennungsstrich, jede Minute.” Briefe an ihre Schwester Christiane und ihren Bruder Gottfried aus dem Gefängnis 1972–1973, ed. Christiane Ensslin und Gottfried Ensslin (Hamburg: konkret, 2005), 79. 38

“ein Gemisch von Illegalitätsromantik, falscher Einschätzung der gesellschaftlichen Situation als offener Faschismus und illegitimer Übertragung von Stadtguerilla-Praktiken auf Verhältnisse, die nur aus einer Verzweiflungssituation heraus mit Lateinamerika verwechselt werden können.” Negt, cited in Jander, “Isolation,” 975. 39

Paragraph 146 of the German Strafprozessordnung (StPO). See Todesschüsse, Isolationshaft, Eingriffe ins Verteidigungsrecht, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut et al., 4th edn. (Berlin: Rote Säge, 1995 [1985]), 142–43. 40

das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 25 n. 2.

41

Olaf Gäthje, “Das ‘info’-System der RAF von 1973 bis 1977 in sprachwissenschaftlicher Perspektive,” in Die RAF, ed. Kraushaar, 1:714–35; here 716. The reader is denied access to certain debates and exchanges among the prisoners, presumably those deemed detrimental to the RAF’s public image. 42

Gäthje, “Das ‘info’-System,” 718–19.

43

See the Verfügung vom Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs (29 August 1973), and [Ensslin], letter regarding the info (27 June 1973), in HIS Me,U/004,004. 44

See the Verfügung vom Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs (29 August 1973), and [Ensslin], letter regarding the info (27 June 1973).

45

Meinhof, “skizze zu bassa (arbeitstitel: stadtguerilla und metropole brd),” in HIS Me,U/004,004. 46

“eine Art Fernschule für Anarchisten”; “große Pläne für eine Info-Zentrale.” “Signal im Schließfach,” in Der Spiegel (23 July 1973): 33–34; here 33; see also the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (24 July 1973). 47

“Die Postsendung enthält mehrere fotokopierte, maschinenschriftliche Papiere, die von verschiedenen Verfassern stammen dürfen, so z. B. von der Beschuldigten Ensslin (g); lediglich von zwei Seiten ist wahrscheinlich Rechtsanwalt Ströbele der Verfasser, der sich u.a. mit der Info-Zentrale befaßt”; “daß ein umfassender Austausch von Mitteilungen und Instruktionen zur Fortsetzung des gewaltsamen Kampfes und zur Aufrechterhaltung der RAF als einer kriminellen Vereinigung besteht und daß die Bande hierbei von einigen ihrer Verteidiger tatkräftig und planvoll unterstützt wird.” See the Verfügung vom Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs (29 August 1973), and the response of the Generalbundesanwalt (31 August 1973), in HIS Me,U/004,004. 48

This emerges from reports on the cell searches and from a report on the state of Meinhof’s cell after her death. See Landespolizeidirektion Stuttgart II, “Leichensache, Eilt sehr,” in HIS Me,U/016,001. 49

See Kurt Oesterle, Stammheim: Die Geschichte des Vollzugsbeamten Horst Bubeck (Tübingen: Klöpfer & Meyer 2003), 69. Oesterle’s colorful account should be


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enjoyed with caution — it is highly anecdotal and in places does not correspond to surviving prison records held in the Hamburg RAF archive. 50

Gätje, “Das ‘info’-System,” 720–22.

51

Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2008 [1985]), 395. 52 53

See Gätje, “Das ‘info’-System,” 723. [Ensslin], letter regarding the info (27 June 1973).

54

“[dichter . . . ist also der, der mit poetischen mitteln] im medium der sprache die sprache selbst als ein menschliches zeichensystem für menschen revolutioniert.” Bezzel, “dichtung und revolution,” in Text und Kritik 25 (1970): 34. 55

Gäthje notes: “Das zentrale Stilmerkmal des RAF-Gruppenstils ist das der Reduktion,” and identifies a “Telegrammstil” in the info that is expressed in ellipsis and the excessive use of parenthetical constructions. See Gäthje, “Das ‘info’System,” 730–31. 56

There is a facsimile of the note in Die Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe, ed. Reinhard Rauball (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973), 257. 57

Letter from Meins (1 November 1974), in HIS Me,H/006,006. Meins died of malnutrition eight days later, on 9 November 1974, and an edited version of his letter was subsequently published in Spiegel of 18 November 1974. Another edited version appears in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 183–85. 58

Letter from Jünschke (August 1974), cited in Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, 396. 59

Meinhof, “pe — ’schwein’ ist nicht die frage” (letter to Irene Goergens of 11 October 1974), in “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76),” in Me,U/008,002, 43. Also in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 178. Emphasis in original. 60


61

Gathje, “Das ‘info’-System,” 719.

62

See the draft hunger strike statement (26 January 1974), in HIS Me,U/012,001. 63

Meinhof, “Was redst du da” (handwritten letter, undated; presumably February 1975), in HIS En,G/010,004. 64

“die Stimme”; see, e.g., Ensslin, cited in Bakker Schut, Stammheim, 287; letter from Baader (25 April 1973), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 48–55; here 51. 65

Kollektiv RAF, “Hungerstreikerklärung vom 8. Mai 1973,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 187–89; here 189.

66

Kollektiv RAF, “Hungerstreikerklärung vom 13. September 1974,” in Rote Armee Fraktion, ed. Hoffmann, 190–92. 67

Kollektiv RAF, “Hungerstreikerklärung vom 13. September 1974,” 190–91.

68

Meinhof, “verdammt — ich schick hier was mit” (letter of early September 1974), in HIS Me,U/015,006. A bowdlerized version appears in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 159–60.


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69

Meinhof, “nenee — ahab” (undated letter, probably 1973), in HIS En,G/010,007, 9 v. 70

“der Revolutionär ist natürlich alles andere als selbstlos.” Meinhof, “was redst du da.” 71

Meinhof, “naja der votzenchauvinismus” (letter of January 1976), in HIS Ba,A/002,004. A handwritten note says “mitte März” on one version of the document, but an incomplete copy of the first page in Me,U/008,002 gives the typewritten date January 1976. 72

Meinhof, “verdammt — ich schick hier was mit.”

73

Letter from Ensslin (9 September 1974), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 161– 62; here 161. Emphasis in original. 74

See chapter 3.

75

Letter from Meinhof to the RAF prisoners in Hamburg (14 October 1975), in Meinhof, “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76)”; also (but dated 7 October 1975) in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 232–34; here 232–33. Emphasis in original. 76

Letter from Schubert (12 September 1974), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 168. 77

Letter from Ensslin (autumn 1975), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 227–29; here 228. Emphasis in original. 78

Letter from Meins (1 November 1974). There is a distinction in the German between the verbs “kennen” (to know personally) and “wissen” (to know intellectually). 79

Letter from Raspe (autumn 1975), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 229–31; here 230. 80

“dreck”: e.g., Baader in Bakker Schut, das info, 201 and Meinhof, 204 and 263; “quatsch”: e.g., Baader, 170 and Meins, 182; “dummes zeug,” Baader, 165; “gefummel,” Ensslin, 169; “wortschwall,” Meinhof, 173; “geschleime,” Schubert, 179; “gekrächze,” Meinhof, 204; “scheisse,” e.g. Meinhof, 263; “gewäsch,” Meinhof, 263; “sabbern,” Ensslin, 169; “schwatzen,” “anplärren,” “bejammern,” Meinhof, 263; “falsch,” e.g. Ensslin, 169; “subjektivistisch,” Baader, 201; “tot,” “leer,” Meinhof, 204. 81

Letter from Meinhof (19 March 1976), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 263–65; here 264; also in Meinhof, letzte texte texte von ulrike, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa (Eigendruck im Selbstverlag, June 1976), 7; and texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa, Sektion BRD, Stuttgart (Lund: Bo Cavefors, 1977). Emphasis in original. 82

Capelli is cited in Stern (20 May 1976); compare Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 431–32.

83

Bakker Schut, Stammheim, 396.

84

Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, dir. Bernd Eichinger (Germany, 2008).

85

Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 435–36.


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86

The report was published originally in French but translated into several languages, including into German as Der Tod Ulrike Meinhofs: Bericht der Internationalen Untersuchungskommission (Münster: Unrast, 1996 [1979]); here 5–6. 87

Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Europa, Presseerklärung, in HIS En,G/010,006. 88

Meinhof, “bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf und die defensive der konterrevolution in ihrer psychologischen kriegsführung gegen das volk,” in Meinhof, letzte texte, 48–59. The same text is published as “rede von ulrike zu der befreiung von andreas, moabit 13. september 1974,” in texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee, 62–74. 89

In context one must assume this ought to read “der bundesrepublik die sozialdemokratie.” RAF (Baader and Meinhof), “konzept a./u.: zu einem anderen prozess,” in Meinhof, letzte texte, 43–47; here 43. 90

RAF (Baader and Meinhof), “konzept a./u.: zu einem anderen prozess,” 47.

91

RAF (Meinhof), “bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf,” 51.

92

RAF (Meinhof), “teile zu der erklärung der gefangenen aus der raf vom januar 76,” in Meinhof, letzte texte, 18–30; here 26–27. 93

RAF (Raspe), “erklärung von jan-carl raspe im prozess in stuttgart-stammheim,” in Meinhof, letzte texte, 1–2. 94

RAF (Raspe), “erklärung von jan-carl raspe im prozess in stuttgart-stammheim,” 1–2. 95

For an account of those tensions, see chapter 6.

96

“die vereinzelung ist die bedingung für manipulation.” RAF (Meinhof), “fragment über struktur,” in Meinhof, letzte texte, 3–5; here 3. 97

RAF (Meinhof), “fragment über struktur,” 3–5.

98

RAF (Meinhof), “teile zu der erklärung der gefangenen aus der raf,” 25; RAF (Meinhof), “bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf,” 53. 99

Meinhof, “der dreck, mit dem die bullen” (“14. Mai Notizen”; notes for the trial regarding the liberation of Baader in 1970, August 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,006. 100


101

RAF (Meinhof), “fragment über struktur,” 4.

102


103

RAF (Meinhof), “teile zu der erklärung der gefangenen aus der raf,” 26.

104

RAF (Meinhof), “bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf,” 56–57.

105

RAF (Meinhof), “teile zu der erklärung der gefangenen aus der raf,” 23–24 and 28. 106

RAF (Meinhof), “fragment über struktur,” 4–5.

107

“das Ziel der Staatsschutzbehörden, die revolutionäre Identität der Angeklagten und aller Gefangener aus der RAF zu vernichten”; Becker to the regional appeals court, 75.


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VIOLENCE AS IDENTITY: PRISON WRITING, 1972–76 108

187

Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, 351.

109

“Der Gefangene wird in einem derartigen Besuchskäfig durch seine Verwahrung hinter Plexi- oder Panzerglas als eine unmenschliche Kreatur dargestellt.” Croissant on 30 April 1974, cited in Stuberger, In der Strafsache, 82. 110 Meinhof, “das ist scheisse” (letter of 23 March 76), in Meinhof, letzte texte, 9–10; here 9. 111

Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, 295; Ditfurth, Ulrike Meinhof, 386.

112

See Ensslin, “Zieht den Trennungsstrich, jede Minute.”


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6: Violence as a Woman’s Identity? Terrorism and Gender scheiß auf die gleichberechtigung der frau. wir wollen freiheit, wir wollen menschlichkeit. [fuck equal rights for women. we want freedom, we want humanity.] —Ulrike Meinhof, August 1974

T

Meinhof repeatedly negotiating her place in the group by identifying not herself but Andreas Baader as the guerilla incarnate. After her death, those texts may have helped the RAF reassure itself (and certainly informed its attempts to persuade the outside world) that perfect collectivity had existed to the very end. But taken in the context of other letters to the group, her self-positioning vis-à-vis Baader seems to reflect profound insecurity. “Not raf . . . but cunt” is how, on another occasion, she described herself, where “cunt” — I am going to argue — conflates the ideas “woman,” “capitalist,” and “traitor.”1 Women who joined the revolutionary groups have largely denied any feminist impetus. “None of us came from the feminist movement,” asserted Inge Viett in 1997, choosing to forget or overlook Meinhof’s journalistic engagement with women’s liberation. The decision of the revolutionary women, as Viett recalls it, was to ignore gender issues in the common cause of armed struggle: “we simply took the decision, and then we fought and did all the same things as the men. There was no male-female question for us. The old ideas about gender roles weren’t relevant to us in the underground groups.”2 Her memory of utopian simplicity — one simply cast off the fetters of gender and was free — coexists uncomfortably with reports and ample textual evidence that Baader designated the women he worked with Votzen (cunts) and Zofen (waiting-maids; in German, this has the added attraction of being an acoustic anagram of Votze), or indeed Bommi Baumann’s recollection that masculine competitiveness played a significant role in the revolutionary groups: “the guy who pulls the toughest stunts gets to lead the way,” he remembers in his autobiography (Baumann, like Viett, was a member of the 2 June Movement).3 For all their claims to separateness, even the terrorists could not quit the gendered discursive context of 1970s West Germany. The beginnings of West German terrorism coincided chronologically with the beginnings of second-wave feminism, and that has been


HE LETZTE TEXTE SHOW

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taken to indicate a meaningful connection between the two. The comment made in a prominent broadsheet in 1977, that contemporary terrorism showed “the unholy influence of a particular brand of feminism” (“der unheilvolle Einfluß einer gewissen Spielart des Feminismus”)4 was probably nonsense, but is a useful reminder of the ideological and linguistic framework in which the terrorists were operating. As late as the 1970s, there were authors prepared to argue that women who become involved in revolutionary activity are likely to be mentally ill;5 like feminists, women terrorists were under attack as unholy aberrations from an ideal of womanhood.6

Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain It emerged in 2002 that Meinhof’s body had been interred without a brain. It is not in fact unusual for bodies to be buried, after a postmortem, without certain of their organs; more remarkable is what happened to the brain. It was initially taken by neuropathologist Jürgen Peiffer to the University of Tübingen for testing; then, in 1997, without any formal or family permissions, it was passed to a psychiatrist at Magdeburg, Bernhard Bogerts, for further investigation.7 The reason the two scientists cited for their interest was an operation performed on Meinhof in 1962, when she underwent surgery for a suspected tumor (the problem was traced to an engorged blood vessel, which the surgeon clipped), but their motivation was clearly to establish a pathology that could be interpreted criminologically (despite a medical report prepared in 1968 that found a post-operative Meinhof “objectively free from pathological symptoms”).8 Peiffer and Bogerts claimed to have found similarities with the brain of a serial murderer from the early part of the twentienth century (Ernst Wagner).9 Their reliance on data that was three-quarters of a century old, and that derived from a time when criminology was in its infancy (having developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries out of pseudosciences such sexology and the racial “science” later used by the Nazis) is remarkable. It suggests a will to accept any kind of evidence in support of the theory that Meinhof became a terrorist because there was something wrong with her brain. Explaining something scientifically is a means of containing it; it asserts linguistic control of a phenomenon, and Peiffer and Bogerts were clearly keen to explain the phenomenon of Meinhof’s terrorism. Even during her lifetime there had been a lively interest in the state of her brain. When she was arrested in June 1972, her identity was ascertained not by fingerprints but via an X-ray that revealed the metal clip, and a year later, in the summer of 1973, the investigating judge Georg Knoblich ruled further scintigraphic investigation of her brain permissible — against her will if necessary and using forced anesthesia if she resisted — in order to


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establish how far she could be held responsible for her actions during the period 1970–72.10 Two competing narratives account for why this ethically doubtful procedure was never realized: one, that the project was abandoned in the face of left-wing protest (seventy doctors wrote to the federal judge responsible, accusing him of acting in the tradition of Nazi medical practice);11 the other, that the application was withdrawn when the operation was rendered unnecessary by the discovery, in an East German medical journal, of a full account of Meinhof’s case history, which already provided all the information required.12 The RAF and its supporters were convinced that the state was trying to demonstrate insanity in Meinhof, and thereby to discredit the group whose “voice” she had become. Cultural belief says women give life — they do not take it, and that immediately renders violence inseparable from biology. Criminologist Marlene Stein-Hilbers observed in 1978 that criminality in women had conventionally been assumed to originate in menstruation, menopause, or pregnancy, as particular “moments of crisis” in women’s lives.13 That has a long criminological history: late nineteenth-century theorists worked with ideas of normal and aberrant gender and sexuality in their attempts to understand and systematize crime: early studies, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia sexualis of 1886, drew on “sexological” theories regarding why it was biologically natural for women to stay home, raise children, and be monogamous (where men were “naturally” promiscuous) to justify laws that punished men and women differently for adultery.14 Dr. Paul Julius Möbius, the author of a now-notorious pamphlet with the title Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (On the Physiological Weakmindedness of Woman) that first appeared in 1900, only to go into ten editions over the next thirteen years, was disarmingly straightforward about the practical need for such beliefs in a functioning patriarchy: “if we want a woman who properly fulfills her calling to motherhood,” he explained, “we cannot afford to let her have a masculine brain.”15 In 1893, two Italian criminologists, Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero, published a then-influential and now (like Möbius’s) rather notorious work called Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman,16 coming to the only arguably brilliant conclusion that women are not (generally) criminally active because their ovaries are static, rather than showing movement as the male gamete does. Faced with cases that contradicted their theory, Lombroso and Ferrero asserted their right to define, or redefine: women who perpetrate acts of criminal violence, they claimed, display physical characteristics that are biologically male; they are not so much women as men.17 That rhetorical technique is one novelist and academic Joanna Russ has called “denial of agency.” Russ notes an unwillingness on the part of nineteenth-century scholars (contemporaries of Lombroso and Ferrero) to believe that literary talent could exist in a woman; to accept, when a remarkable book had been written, that she


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wrote it. “What to do when a woman has written something?” asks Russ. “Since It wrote itself looks pretty silly, . . . some critics have invented a subtler version, . . . that is: The man inside her wrote it.”18 Lombroso’s and Ferrero’s theory of female criminality is, in essence: the man inside her committed the crime. The theory proved resilient. Eighty years on, the authors of the Baader-Meinhof-Report, a book-length document produced in 1972 by West Germany’s Federal Criminal Bureau, in cooperation with a special commission on terrorism, found themselves facing a troubling paradox in the combination of women and violence — and revisited nineteenthcentury logic to assert that violent women are more like men than men themselves. The Report describes Meinhof and her associate Gudrun Ensslin as masculine and dominant (“männlich-herrisch”); more masculine, indeed, than their male comrades (“noch männlicher als die Männer”).19 Baader, by contrast, is “very feminine-looking” (“sehr weiblich wirkend”) and sports adolescent fluff (“milchbärtig”) rather than proper beard growth; it is further confided that his codename in the group — at that time, Hans — was actually Hänsel (little Hans): a reference to the fact that he is “sadly underequipped by nature” (“von der Natur kümmerlich bedacht”; 43, 47). That serves the old comic function: Baader is rendered harmless because his masculinity is undermined — a small penis and the lack of a beard are indicators of its absence. Like Peiffer and Bogerts, the Report’s authors were hunting for a scientific explanation: a physical or psychological pathology that would explain female terrorism. Childlessness suggests itself: could it be the fault of the newly developed oral contraceptive, the pill, they wonder. Without actually committing themselves, they muse on the possibilities: there are, after all, those who believe women’s emancipation in the form of the pill has meant that modern women, “because they no longer have serious fears about unwanted pregnancy, are on the look-out for new forms of danger to titillate them” (“daß lediglich die Pille Schuld daran sei, daß die Emanzipierung der Frau so eskaliert habe, daß sie, weil sie kaum noch Angst vor unerwünschter Empfängnis zu haben braucht, nun nach einem neuen Kitzel der Gefahr suche”; 14). Could terrorism be ersatz excitement for women missing the thrill of unprotected sex? No, the Report’s authors conclude disappointedly: not only Meinhof and Ensslin but a number of other women in the terrorist organizations are mothers. Since the children must be taken proof that oral contraceptives have not been used, their theory collapses. The thought processes are blatantly illogical. The women terrorists — even those with children — could of course have taken oral contraception at any time before or after their pregnancies. In the terms of the argument the Report has set up, the children prove nothing. What almost certainly does “prove” something, however, even if it is not


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clearly acknowledged, is the fact of motherhood. An argument that cites the availability of oral contraception as a motivating factor in women’s aberrant (violent) behavior makes sense only if we recognize the unspoken and possibly unconscious logic of hysteria. If the women terrorists had been childless (the implicit reasoning runs), then their unsatisfied wandering wombs (hystera, as described in ancient Greek medical theory)20 would provide a “scientific” explanation for their erratic behavior. Two years after the publication of the Baader-Meinhof-Report, and despite her children, Meinhof was explicitly diagnosed with hysteria by the authors of another collection of government documents: the Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande (Documentation of the Baader-Meinhof Band).21 Women who commit crimes of violence are perceived not only as more masculine than men, but often as more violent. One professor of criminology at the Christian Democrats’ Path to Violence (Der Weg in die Gewalt) conference of 1977 suggested that women, when they do resort to violence, are the crueler sex. He gives no evidence for the assertion; instead, a bon mot from Germany’s favorite poet proves his point: “as Goethe once said: ‘when the path leads to evil, woman walks a thousand paces ahead’” (“Goethe sagte einmal: ‘Denn geht es zu des Bösen Haus, das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus’”).22 Structurally we might compare all this with the commonplace that women talk too much. If what we expect of women is silence, then any level of talk is too much;23 if we expect gentleness and passivity, then any level of violent activity looks relatively more extreme than in a man. In 1978, psychotherapist Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen summed up contemporary responses to women’s involvement in terrorism in a report that critically collated — rather than defended — the current arguments. Her summary ran as follows: 1) because terrorism is irrational and women’s emotionality hinders rational or logical thought, women are suited to terrorism; like terrorists, women lack a conscience. 2) Women have weak characters: they are more easily influenced, less secure, more egocentric than men. Their lack of reason makes them more fanatical in their beliefs, and their inability to reflect on their actions makes them more likely to act brutally once they have broken out of the “safe haven” of home and family. 3) The feminist movement is exacerbating the problem. Emancipation leads women to identify and compete with men, reaching for weapons as phallic symbols.24 The phallic metaphor is ubiquitous. In 1977 Spiegel chose to cite psychoanalyst Friedrich Hacker, whose theories mixed feminism with Freudian phallic fantasies in a way the newsmagazine clearly found satisfying: the women in the terrorist groups, says Hacker, can only realize the fantasy of


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being “truly emancipated” when holding a gun — the classic symbol of masculinity — and when they are being “particularly hard” (“Nur mit der Waffe, dem klassischen Symbol der Männlichkeit, und nur mit besonderer Härte hätten die weiblichen Gruppenmitglieder die Vorstellung verwirklichen können, ‘gänzlich emanzipierte Frauen’ zu sein.”)25 Masculine dominance in women terrorists is often conflated with lesbianism. The Baader-Meinhof-Report declares the women of the RAF over-emancipated (“überemanzipiert”) and the majority of women terrorists “lesbian or bisexually inclined” (“lesbisch bzw. bi-sexuell veranlagt”); both Meinhof and Ensslin show “homosexual tendencies,” it asserts (“Ulrike Meinhof ist genau wie Gudrun Ensslin gleichgeschlechtlich veranlagt”; 13, 17, 33). Female homosexuality might have signified in-group solidarity for Meinhof in her television drama Bambule, but for the authors of the Baader-Meinhof-Report it stands for deviant masculinity. That makes women terrorists a threat to the order of the sexes. But the will to reveal a threat stands (as it often does) next to the will to offer reassurance: even masculine women have the potential to behave normally, the Report notes. When she married Klaus Rainer Röhl, says the Report, Meinhof was actually looking for an older man to dominate her; it was only after the disappointment of that marriage that she herself became dominant. And Ensslin, too, showed herself capable of proper feminine behavior after Baader’s arrest: her presence in the Hamburg boutique where she was apprehended by police was straightforward retail therapy: the reaction of a woman “so upset by the loss of her boyfriend that she — just like normal women when they are unhappy — desperately had to buy herself something new” (“so tief berührt, daß sie — wie auch normale Frauen, wenn sie Kummer haben — unbedingt etwas Neues kaufen mußte”; 34, 110). In her letters home from prison, Ensslin called the Baader-Meinhof-Report “stinking shoddiness” (“stinkendes Machwerk”).26 But in 1981, the authors of the government-sponsored Lebenslauf-Analysen (Biographical Analyses: a series of biographically based elucidations of the psychology of West Germany’s terrorists) were still taking its premises very seriously. By their reckoning, 7 percent of women terrorists were lesbian; they compare that with a statistic (for which they give no source) of 1–2 percent female homosexuality in the general population.27 Like the criminologist who cited Goethe, they betray a reliance on shared cultural beliefs when they assume that their readers already understand and accept the (absurd) implication that lesbian women are more likely to become violent because their desire for other women means that they are more like men. When women are emancipated, or desire other women, masculine activity in other areas of their lives is to be expected — so lesbianism, like feminism, “fits” metaphorically with terrorism.


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“Something Irrational”: Feminism and Terrorism On 30 July 1977 a young woman of the RAF, Susanne Albrecht, rang the doorbell of her godfather’s house. When the door was opened, she presented a bunch of roses and her godfather, Jürgen Ponto, chief executive of the Dresdner Bank, was shot dead by another group member in a failed attempt to effect a kidnap. Albrecht and the other RAF assassins escaped. The response of the West German media was near hysterical. Death now comes carrying red roses, Bild warned its readers.28 “Hier ist Susanne” (It’s Susanne), Stern headed its report, quoting the words that gave Ponto’s goddaughter access to his home.29 “Girls are now dominating the West German terrorist scene,” ran a Spiegel title story a week later: “criminologists are puzzling over the motives for feminine militance” (“Unter Westdeutschlands Terroristen . . . sind Mädchen mittlerweile in der Mehrheit. Kriminologen rätseln über die Motive femininer Militanz”).30 Young, nice-looking, middle-class Susanne Albrecht had thrown social expectations into disarray — or at least provided an opportunity for the expression of an ongoing unease. Girls are departing radically from their conventional roles, worries Spiegel: Albrecht’s actions do not fit “the traditional image of the sex which in English is called ‘the fair sex’ — the gender of beauty, of decency, of light” (“daß hier Mädchen tief aus ihrer angestammten Rolle gefallen waren. Ihre Tat fügt sich nicht ins herkömmliche Bild von jenem Geschlecht, das im Englischen ‘the fair sex’ genannt wird, das schöne, das anständige, das helle”). The flight into sentiment — beauty, decency, and light as the charm and duty of womanhood — betrays a certain helplessness, or cultural confusion: if beauty is not a sign of goodness, and young womanhood no longer something we can idealize as beautiful and pure, then what is the world coming to? In terrorist organizations, the article tells us, sharp-shooting girls command sharp-shooting men (“Häufig befehlen schießende Mädchen über schießende Männer”) — clearly the order of the sexes is out of kilter.31 The notion made much of in the media, that women terrorists outnumber men, is supported by some government statistics. Figures released by the Federal Criminal Bureau (Bundeskriminalamt) in the mid 1970s suggest that the ratio of women to men in West German terrorist groups was 3:2.32 In 1978 the younger population was just under 50 percent female33 but most women terrorists were university educated, and German universities had only 35 percent women students in the 1970s.34 Criminal statistics for the Federal Republic in 1981 cite only a 15 percent overall rate of female criminal convictions — 85 percent were men, and 96 percent of prison sentences went to men; until recently, women consistently made up only around 4 percent of the prison population in Western Europe and the United States.35 Ten times that percentage of imprisoned terrorists in West Germany were women: of the twenty-six


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terrorist prisoners listed for release during the hostage crisis in the German Embassy in Stockholm in 1975, eleven (that is, just over 42 percent) were female. Neither the government, nor the criminal justice system, nor the population at large was accustomed to the notion of women as perpetrators of criminal violence. But it is not just a numbers game. Hans Horchem, head of Hamburg’s local MI5- or CIA-equivalent (the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz) was struck by the division of labor in the RAF and other revolutionary organizations: the women, he observes with wonderment, were functioning “not only as helpers, informers, and information-gatherers, but as active fighters” (“Frauen wirken nicht nur als Helfer, Informanten, Kundschafter, sondern als aktive Kämpfer”).36 That, we infer, is peculiar enough, but, as the authors of the government-sponsored Lebenslauf-Analysen would note, women were not only fighters — they were group leaders: “Relative to their overall numbers in the terrorist groups, women are just as likely to achieve leadership positions as men” (“Frauen [gelangen] im Verhältnis zu ihrer Gesamtzahl in den terroristischen Gruppen mindestens ebenso häufig wie Männer in Führungspositionen”). Their italics signal the shock value of the statement.37 The Spiegel splash after Ponto’s assassination read: “Frauen im Untergrund: ‘Etwas Irrationales’” (Women in Underground Groups: “Something Irrational”). The magazine was (gratefully?) quoting Günter Nollau, formerly head of the federal Verfassungsschutz, who had availed himself of a popular cliché by straightforwardly equating the feminine with the irrational.38 West German women, Nollau observed, are now committing more than half of all acts of terrorist violence. He gives — and Spiegel is happy to reiterate — what will become a notorious diagnosis of the situation: it is, he says, “women’s emancipation run to excess” (“ein Exzeß der Befreiung der Frau”).39 The result is the ascendancy of the irrational: chaos and the collapse of reason loom when male dominance, justified by masculine rationality (men are in charge because they can think better) is usurped. It was not least to Nollau’s remark that Alice Schwarzer, a prominent representative of the women’s movement in Germany and editor of the feminist magazine Emma, was responding in October 1977 in a column called “Terroristinnen” (Women Terrorists). Certain commentators, says Schwarzer, are equating feminism with terrorism, and seeing in the latter a “first wave of fighters for a matriarchal society” (“Vorkämpferinnen einer mutterrechtlichen Gesellschaft”).40 The fear of women terrorists expressed in the popular press, Schwarzer argues, is actually veiling fear of feminism. The editor of the broadsheet Die Welt had confirmed her suspicions when, in another response to the assassination of Ponto in July 1977, he complained to his readers that women terrorists demonstrate emancipation’s malign potential:


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de[n] unheilvolle[n] Einfluß einer gewissen Spielart des Feminismus. Die in den revolutionären Zirkeln angesiedelten Frauen müssen den anderen und vor allem sich selbst dauernd beweisen, daß sie “emanzipiert” und daß sie “den Männern gleich” sind. Sie kämpfen nicht nur gegen den Klassenfeind, sondern auch gegen die Stimme ihrer inneren Natur. Das verleiht ihren Aktionen etwas zusätzlich Forciertes und Gewaltsames, das macht sie in einer grauenhaften Weise hart und unbarmherzig.41 [the unholy influence of a particular brand of feminism. Women in revolutionary circles are constantly under pressure to prove to others, but primarily to themselves, that they are “emancipated” and “as good as men.” They are at war not only with the class enemy, but with the voice of their own inner nature. That makes what they do even more desperate and violent; it makes them horrifyingly hardhearted and merciless.]

He not only subscribes wholeheartedly to the equation of feminism and terrorism, but also to the notion that, when women turn to violence, they are worse than violent men. Four years on, the academic authors of the Lebenslauf-Analysen would present similar ideas in the manner of an anthropological study. Just as a zoologist might observe the behavior of gorillas in the jungle, they observe and report on the behavior of the terrorists in captivity; observations on the female of the species — the women terrorists — are one element in that. They begin with a gesture toward egalitarianism, challenging the (implicitly sexist) assumption that women and men turn to terrorism for different reasons: Die Grob-Daten lassen an der grundsätzlichen Annahme Zweifel aufkommen, daß es gerechtfertigt sein könnte, für Beteiligung [sic] von Frauen an terroristischen Aktionen andere Bedingungsfaktoren anzunehmen als für die männlichen Terroristen. . . . Frauen unterscheiden sich weder in den inneren Bedingungen, die sie in den Terrorismus führen, noch in den äußeren Lebensumständen von den Männern. (109) [The raw data leads us to doubt the basic assumption that it might be justified to posit different preconditions for women’s participation in terrorist operations than for men’s . . . The women differ from the men neither in the internal motivation that leads them into terrorism nor in their external circumstances.]

But they go on to build an argument by which, even if women do not differ from men before they become terrorists, they certainly show differences afterward. Among terrorist prisoners, they contest, the women


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are especially inhuman, especially domineering, and especially extreme; in captivity, the women in particular “seem stripped of their humanity and overidentified with the revolutionary cliché” (“So erscheinen die Frauen in der Extremsituation der Gefangenschaft in einem besonderen Maße ihrer Menschlichkeit beraubt, überangepaßt an ein Klischee des Revolutionärs”). The women terrorists display “a will to dominate, and a loss of sense of proportion”; they are “in a state of obsessive introspection, and intent on divesting themselves of the last remnants of their individuality” (“herrschsüchtig und ohne Maß, in ihrer zwanghaften Introspektion bemüht, ständig die letzten Reste ihrer individuellen Existenz zu tilgen”). There is a claim to scientific objectivity in the “raw data” metaphor with which this section of analysis begins, but it remains a metaphor: we are given no actual data, nor any hard evidence for the claims made. And when the authors of the Lebenslauf-Analysen move on to discuss language, they deem that texts written by women terrorists in captivity show high levels of redundancy (“hohe Redundanz”), a limited vocabulary, and striking levels of conformity (to RAF group-speak), but they do not illustrate their argument, nor tell us which texts they are referring to. I would not necessarily argue with their linguistic analysis (most of the RAF texts conform to group ideology, and use group-speak), but if we read the info letters, which are the only possible source for gender-comparative assertions, there are no obvious differences between those written by women in the group and those written by men. Both use a language that signals collective identity and an engagement with group ideology. Nonetheless, the Lebenslauf-Analysen insist that the writing style of the RAF women is “depersonalized” in a way they do not deem characteristic of texts written by the men.42 Around the same time that the Lebenslauf-Analysen were being written, Australian linguist Dale Spender was making an argument (in her essay “Defining Language” of 1984) that gender-oriented language analysis has a problematic premise: namely, “locating the source of women’s deficiency.”43 Linguists, she argued, analyze language with the intention of ascertaining what is wrong with women’s language (where men’s is always the standard). It seems likely that the authors of the Lebenslauf-Analysen are not giving us a neutral reading of the texts (whatever those mysterious texts are) so much as a record of their own expectations. A number of their assumptions are documented: the authors set out their expectations that female group members should have good communicative skills, that they should use them to provide support and encouragement to the group, and that their responses to events should be emotional and characterized by “sympathy and scruples or similar.”44 When those expectations are disappointed, that is read as evidence not that they were unrealistic, but that the women are deficient. When the women terrorists fail to display supportive, group-building qualities, they attract damning criticism


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that borders on aggression: words like domineering (“herrschsüchtig”) have long accompanied fierce rejection of women seen as unfeminine. (In contemporary society, observed Dr. Helga Einsele, the director of Frankfurt’s women’s prison in 1978, gentleness and modesty are still regarded as the highest virtues in women.)45 Supporters as well as opponents of the women’s movement engaged with the question how feminism and terrorism might correlate — even feminists mused or worried about possible overlaps. Marlies Dürkop, a sociologist, noted in an article of 1978 that the two movements did have certain things in common — they shared, for example, an active concern with emancipation, as well as a rejection of the established institutions of power: “the women’s movement and terrorism have in common that they situate themselves outwith the institutions of democracy” (“Frauenbewegung und Terrorismus haben gemeinsam, daß sie sich außerhalb der demokratischen Institutionen stellen”).46 Like Alice Schwarzer, she reads both feminism and terrorism as possible, if different, reactions by women to their outsider status in mainstream society,47 excluded as they largely were from society’s institutions: politics, the judiciary, the military. That, in some arguments, accelerated female identification with revolutionary groups.48 Women may well have a different sense of their relationship with parliamentary institutions, Dürkop suggests, and that might lead to “more radical modes of behavior, once the threshold of political abstinence has been crossed.”49 Schwarzer was characteristically forthright in her analysis of the Terroristinnen: first she reminded her readers that “the society against which the women ‘terrorists’ are raging is a man’s society and so, for them, even less their world than it is for their male comrades” (“Die Gesellschaft, gegen die die ‘Terroristinnen’ wüten, ist eine Männergesellschaft und darum für sie noch weniger ihre Welt als die ihrer Genossen”). That is rather vague polemic, but she goes on to make a more specific point about the discursive context in which the women terrorists find themselves. What makes the experience of women revolutionaries different from that of men, she argues, is that their exclusion is irreversible: “the way back from illegality is even more firmly closed to women than it is to men — a bank robber can still be seen as a kind of Robin Hood, but a bank robberess is a tragic figure who has her children taken away from her” (“Frauen ist der Weg zurück aus dem Untergrund noch stärker versperrt als Männern (ein Bankräuber kann noch ein Robin Hood sein, eine Bankräuberin ist eine tragische Figur, der man das Kind wegnimmt)”).50 She is describing a society that can find acceptable metaphors for an angry young man (because it is deemed “natural” for young men to want to compete with and overthrow a father figure), but cannot or will not rise to the challenge of finding a language in which one could forgive angry women. Where the male revolutionary can still be imagined within the


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existing order, women revolutionaries threaten to upset that order: as Spiegel coverage of the Ponto affair made abundantly clear, they threaten to turn the world upside-down. It is difficult not to feel that feminism’s proponents, like its opponents, are scrabbling for explanations for violent activity in women. And for all the sympathy that she clearly feels with the women terrorists, Schwarzer does not see them as feminists. “It is one of the aims of the women’s movement,” her article concludes drily, “that one day all women will be able to feel free without having to become outlaws first” (“Dabei ist es eines der Ziele gerade der Frauenbewegung, daß alle Frauen sich eines Tages auch in der Legalität frei fühlen können”).51 Like the West German left, West Germany’s feminists increasingly strove to differentiate themselves from the RAF. Even Susanne von Paczensky, who responded to the demonization of the women terrorists by producing Frauen und Terror (Women and Terrorism), a collection of essays dedicated to understanding them, found herself ultimately frustrated: not only do women terrorists in prison refuse to talk to interested feminists, she complains, but Meinhof’s texts for the RAF are of little or no help because they fail to engage in any way with gender.52 Where the left declared the actions of the RAF effectively counterrevolutionary, for feminists the terrorists are “objectively anti-emancipatory.”53

“Cunt Chauvinism” And again, the rejection is mutual. In a letter to her comrades in January 1976, Meinhof attacked bourgeois feminism as “cunt chauvinism” and a “terrible thing”: der votzenchauvinismus ist was fürchterliches. er — der votzenchauvinismus — stellt in der klasse eine konkurrenz zu den männern her, dh zu ihrer herrschaftsrolle, indem er die leistungszwänge internalisiert, also das frauenproblem rassistisch löst: “das kann ich auch” — das ist das eine. er übernimmt die frauenverachtung von den männern. . . . in der frauenverachtung steckt aber der ganze minderwertigkeitskomplex: ne frau zu sein drin — also: die konkurrenz zu den tanten, die den nicht haben — der neid. das ist eigentlich schon alles — aus dieser struktur . . . war ich neidisch auf g[udrun] — weil sie das votzenproblem so nicht hat — und kroch vor a[ndreas] rum, weil er n typ ist54 [it — cunt chauvinism — creates in the bourgeoisie a situation of competition with men, that is, with their dominant role, by internalizing the pressure to achieve; so it solves the woman problem in


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a racist way: “I can do that too” — that’s the one thing. it adopts men’s scorn of women. . . . but in that scorn of women is the whole inferiority complex about being a woman — and so there’s competition with the women who don’t have it — the envy. that’s really about all — it was that structure . . . that made me envious of g[udrun] — because she doesn’t have the cunt problem in the same way — and made me crawl about in front of a[ndreas], because he’s a guy]

Within the RAF, the argument runs, gender is, or ought to be, irrelevant. About to stand trial in 1974 for her part in the operation to liberate Baader, Meinhof was aggressively straightforward on that point: “fuck equal rights for women” (“scheiß auf die gleichberechtigung der frau”), she wrote in preparation for her court appearance, es waren tanten, die den typen da rausgeholt haben. nicht frauenbefreiung wie womens lib oder aktionsrat zur befreiung der frau, gegen die typen, sondern frauenbefreiung durch bewaffneten antiimperialistischen kampf, nicht gegen die schwänze sondern gegen die bullen. . . . wir wollen freiheit, wir wollen menschlichkeit.55 [it was girls got the guy out of jail, not the emancipation of women like in women’s lib or the council of action for women’s liberation — fighting against the guys — but the emancipation of women through armed anti-imperialist struggle. . . . we want freedom, we want humanity.]

The real-life issues of family and childcare that once concerned her appear to have lost their relevance. In prison she is relieved of the problem of taking care of her twin daughters, and as her personal experience of the domestic limitations on women recedes, so does her empathy with anyone affected by those limitations. Instead her concern is for “freedom” and “humanity”; abstract notions more relevant to the situation of the imprisoned RAF. Feminists of the 1970s disagree that the terrorist groups exemplified freedom from the constraints of gender; for feminist lawyer Margarete Fabricius-Brand, the women terrorists are practicing escapism, not emancipation: Das Leben im Untergrund und die dadurch strukturierten Beziehungen bewirken, daß die Terroristinnen Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Ehemann, Familie, den Arbeitskollegen, Vorgesetzen, den politischen, sozialen, kulturellen Bewegungen ausblenden; das heißt, alle privaten und nichtprivaten Beziehungen, in denen Frauen Konflikte durchstehen müssen, weil sie wegen ihres Frauseins von dieser


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Gesellschaft unterdrückt werden, sind für die Terroristinnen nicht existent . . . Mangels relevanter sonstiger Beziehungen braucht man auch auf nichts und niemanden Rücksicht zu nehmen. (62–64) [Life underground and the relationships structured by it let the women terrorists ignore conflicts with husbands, family, work colleagues, bosses, and with political, social, and cultural movements; for them, all the private and nonprivate relationships in which women have to negotiate conflict because as women they are oppressed by this society, simply don’t exist. . . . In the absence of other relevant relationships you need take account of nothing and no one.]

The RAF, in her view, is ignoring or denying real-life issues. “If one is trying to find out,” she exclaims in frustration, “whether and how the question of equal rights and woman’s emancipation finds expression inside the RAF, linguistically and theoretically, one is forced to recognize that the problem is never even mentioned”; that, she complains, is a radical denial of the difficulties rather than any progressive mode of dealing with them.56 It is indeed a rare thing for the RAF to mention the oppression of women. In January 1972 Horst Mahler — still a tolerated member of the group at that time — wrote from prison of “the oppression of women that makes its way into our consciousness” (“[die] ins Bewußtsein dringende Unterdrückung der Frauen”).57 The reference is made in passing and does not lead to further gender-oriented social or political analysis. On 21 September 1974 Ensslin responded in the info to a letter from Brigitte Mohnhaupt (codename Hilde) on the subject of women’s prisons. Mohnhaupt’s original letter is not traceable, but if we read between the lines then she must have suggested that a female “role” was being enforced in the prison system. Ensslin replies: zu kuchenbacken/frauenknast — hi[lde] — sagst du jetzt “ROLLE” — das läuft aber leer. im gefängnis, also proletarische lebensbedingungen, kommst du damit auf den hund58 [on the subject of cake-baking/women’s prisons — hi[lde] — you’re saying “ROLE” — but that has no substance. in prison, that is to say in proletarian life circumstances, you’ll get nowhere with it.]

Analysis of gender, based on the notion that socially enforced gender roles exist, is deemed irrelevant to the proletariat, with whom the shared experience of prison now (in Ensslin’s view) links the RAF. In capitalist society, she goes on, “there’s just the one role — ruling class — for the bourgeoisie, none for the proletariat; they’re all — young or old, man or woman — objects of exploitation and domination, material, work instruments” (“in der kapitalistischen gesellschaft gibts die eine


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rolle — herrschaft — nur für die bourgeoisie, fürs proletariat keine, sie sind alle — ob jung oder alt, mann oder frau — objekte der ausbeutung und herrschaft, material, arbeitsinstrumente”; 172). Gender is dismissed as irrelevant. The RAF existed in the discursive context of West German society, however, and there gender was decidedly relevant. Its own structural principle has been called “disguised masculinism” (“verdeckte Männlichkeit”);59 within the RAF, author Harald Uetz argues, rules were in operation that exactly mirrored the social hierarchy of gender. In some of Meinhof’s writing, even after she joined the RAF, it is possible to see disguised or (more likely) unconscious feminism. We can, for example, read her letter about the “new way of writing” (“neue schreibe”) as a reflection of the gender problem in language: “with this kind of writing it’s not about communicating all kinds of individual details or individual thoughts. this kind of writing is about expressing identity,” she explained (“es kommt bei dieser sorte schreibe nicht darauf an, alle möglichen einzelheiten, einzelgedanken an den mann zu bringen. es kommt bei ihr darauf an, identität zum ausdruck zu bringen”).60 The German expression for communicating details that she chooses is an den Mann bringen (literally, to deliver to the man), while the gender of “writing” (die schreibe) is, in German, feminine. She seems unconsciously to contrast a “masculine” (fact- and figure-based) mode of communication with her as yet undefined “new way of writing” that is, at least in its grammatical gender, feminine. In the early 1970s the women’s movement had not yet provided a language for feminist linguistic analysis, and (if we believe Wittgenstein) it is impossible to conceive of things we do not have language for. Meinhof never, at any time, declared any part of her project in the RAF feminist. But others of her letters for the info seem to confirm that she was struggling at least semiconsciously with problems of gender. In a letter of 1973 she emphatically rejected the maxim (coded masculine by Uetz)61 that the language of communication should not be charged with emotion: “i’m so furious, so livid in what i have to say that there’s no way i’m going to ‘stick to the facts’ or whatever else your communicative needs demand, no way i’m going to be as ‘unemotional’ as you (you TEACHER!) would like me to be” (“ich sag dir, ich bin so wütend, empört über das, was ich sagen will, dass ichs bestimmt nicht ‘sachlich’ und was deine kommunikationsbedürfnisse sonst noch beinhalten, hinkriege, so ‘emotionslos,’ wie du (LEHRER!) es gern hättest”).62 Horst Mahler seems to be the primary recipient of this outburst; he was by this point extremely unpopular in the group, and the others seem prepared to accept her critique. But her scorn for his implicit exhortation to “stick to the facts,” and her refusal to be “unemotional” also critique a conventionally masculine communicative mode.


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In one of the last communications sent before her death she again lambasted something we might read as masculine; this time, her concern is with the heroic pose. “seeing things from the class perspective does have something heroic about it,” she begins; “but that’s not what we’re about; we want real results. but enough of that. it’s like kicking a dead donkey, and that’s not the point of all this. the point is to get you off your pedestal — go on, get down. you’re shooting your mouth off” (“klassenstandpunkt . . . hat auch was heroisches. nur, sind wir nicht drauf, sondern auf wirkung aus. aber genug. kommt mir so vor, als wenn ich m lahmen gaul zurede, was nicht der sinn der sache ist. der ist, dich von deinem denkmasockel [sic] da runterzuholen — also steig mal ab. du bramarbasierst”).63 The heroic is devalued, and the choice of the final verb, to talk big or shoot one’s mouth off (bramarbasieren) is a clear criticism of a masculine mode: in German usage, bramarbasieren is historically as masculine in its connotations as tratschen (to gossip) is feminine. That should not lead us to assume that her fellow group members recognized, understood, or approved her fledgling project to critique language. Communication relies on both the willingness and ability of the recipients to understand or accept it. “No matter what women intend to mean by their new language, they can only convey that meaning if they can expect others to recognize the thoughts to which the language aims to direct attention” explains linguist Sally McConnell-Ginet: “we must get others to cooperate with us in giving our words the meaning we want. At the very least, our listeners must recognize our intention and help us by acknowledging that intention.”64 If she wants to communicate about the revolution, a revolutionary needs to be understood: “this is the oppressor’s language, yet I need to talk it to you,” Adrienne Rich would complain in a different revolutionary context.65 In the letter that described her hopes for a “neue schreibe” or new way of writing,66 Meinhof raised the problem of facts as commodities: “it’s a funny business with facts,” she mused; “they easily slip over into being consumer goods — i mean proofs, sources, examples, shit” (“mit tatsachen ist das auch so ne sache. sie werden unter der hand im nu zur ware — nämlich beweismittel, beleg, beispiel, shit”).67 The notion of consumer goods is negatively laden in the context of radical anticapitalism; this is, then, a political critique of the value of the factual, and of an evidence-based method of argumentation that is associated with authority (and therefore coded masculine). Written reactions from the group to Meinhof’s stance are not traceable, but her next contribution to the discussion just a few days later (on 10 September 1974) suggests that the response was either negative or uncomprehending, and that she may have touched the limits of the collective’s readiness to accept her critique of the “disguised masculine.” She adjusts her position accordingly: “my ramblings a couple of days ago, about facts easily slipping over into being


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money were crap. i was making a rule out of a problem i have right now,” she apologizes (“was ich da vorn paar tagen gebramscht hab, das tatsachen einem unter der hand zu geld werden, war dreck. erhob ich mein momentanes problem zur regel”). Then she shifts mode: “I mean, existentialism is a way to dialectical materialism for the petit-bourgeois — but then you have to get round to the facts pretty fast, otherwise the existential approach turns into a religion. that way round it makes sense” (“naja, der existentialismus ist für nen kleinbürger natürlich n weg zum dialektischen materialismus — aber dann muss man auch schnell zu den tatsachen kommen, sonst wird der existentielle ansatz zur religion. so rum wird ein schuh draus”).68 Suddenly Meinhof seems keen to prove again her capacity for the old way of writing, as she displays her knowledge of the Western philosophical tradition like a swordsman flourishing his rapier. She reaffirms the dominant status of the factual after her moment of heresy, when she (almost) suggested that masculinist discourse was counterrevolutionary. She never referred again to a new way of writing. In Uetz’s analysis, tough talk prevailed in the RAF, and both women and men adhered to language rules normally read as masculine.69 Three days later, on 13 September 1974, Meinhof’s court statement in Berlin would show her adopting the masculine language of war. The aim of the anti-imperialist struggle, she announced, was the annihilation or total destruction of the imperialist system of domination (“antiimperialistischer kampf . . . zielt darauf, das imperialistische herrschaftssystem zu vernichten, zu zerstören, zu zerschlagen — politisch, ökonomisch, militärisch”); within that struggle it is the function of the RAF to enable a “military-political offensive” (“die militärischpolitische offensive”) and the “unleashing of civil war” (“entfesselung des volkskriegs”).70 Taboo in the RAF was talk of fear and doubt; a rule later reflected in editions of its texts. Meinhof’s letter to Hanna Krabbe of March 1976 (just weeks before her own death) is an interesting case study. The letter has been regularly reprinted — it appears in letzte texte von ulrike (ulrike’s last texts), in texte: der raf (texts of the raf), as well as in Bakker Schut’s edition of das info. Its tone is firm and energetic — Meinhof is showcasing correct diction as understood by the RAF: “if you’re in solitary and don’t make the effort, constantly and consistently, to clock reality” (“wenn du in der isolation die anstrengung nicht bringst, andauernd und immer, die realität zu ticken”), she writes, wirst du weiss, hebst ab, wirst krank, das heisst du bekommst ein krankes verhältnis zur wirklichkeit — das ist der verrat über die kapitulation vor der realität der folter, der anstrengung, die widerstand verlangt — sonst ist er nur ein wort. es geht nicht — du kannst es dir in der isolation nicht leisten — zu allem auch noch dich selbst zu quälen.71


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[you’ll turn pale, lose touch, get sick, which means you’ll get into an unhealthy relationship with reality — and that’s a betrayal, because you’re capitulating in the face of the reality of torture, in the face of the effort that resistance requires — otherwise it’s just a word. it’s not an option — you can’t afford it when you’re in solitary — to torture yourself on top of everything else.]

The tough language that characterizes the letter, and so much of the info, will puzzle a reader who expects to find warmth and supportiveness within the collective. It is, in fact, not only the language of war but the language of wartime, when there is no space for doubts and fear; careless talk costs lives. One keeps one’s chin up because despair is infectious, and therefore traitorous (“a betrayal”). But others of Meinhof’s writings suggest that she, despite her stern words to Krabbe, did spend time torturing herself. One note, which seems to have been sent privately to Ensslin around the same time as the letter to Krabbe was written (the note is undated) describes tension, fear, and uncertainty. Unlike the Krabbe letter, it has not been reprinted in any RAF-edited documentation, possibly because it departs from the (masculine) ideal of “not talking about feelings”72 and reveals pressure cracks opening up in the imprisoned collective. Meinhof is worrying intensely about her relationship with Ensslin, whom she routinely sent texts written on behalf of the group for comment and correction. The taboo topics, fear and doubt, are very much on her mind: “angst ist reaktionär” (fear is reactionary), the note opens, in a spirit of self-criticism but nonetheless in words that do express fear. Meinhof describes angst regarding the challenge Ensslin’s criticisms pose to her identity as a writer, alongside fear of asking the group for a change of copyeditor: “the only thing that’s been stopping me for quite a long time from suggesting that jan instead of g[udrun] should check my stuff is fear” (“das einzige, was mich schon ziemlich lange hindert, vorzuschlagen, dass jan, statt g[udrun], mein zeug kontrolliert, ist angst”). Insecurity and anger are implicit: “i don’t believe she’s finding it any easier than me” (“ich glaube nicht, dass sie sie besser aushält als ich”), she continues: ich blick da nicht durch oder will da nicht durchblicken — es geht mich nichts an — aber ich halte es nicht aus. . . . es geht nicht. entweder du würgst mir wenn ich mal luft kriege, was rein, was tage- und wochenlang wirkt oder — so kommt es mir vor — du erstickst. das ist die struktur, in der wir hier nach wie [vor] zappeln und in der ich dauernd am rand bin, ihr provokateur zu sein, was ich bin, wenn ich einknicke . . . die folter hört nie auf, wenn die durch sie konditionierten reflexe


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nicht aufhörn und da wir uns beide — g und ich — anstrengen, ohne es im geringsten zu schaffen73 [i can’t tell or i don’t want to — it’s nothing to do with me — but i can’t stand it. . . . i can’t do this. any time i do manage to take a breath you [Ensslin] either choke me with some comment that affects me for days and weeks or — this is how it seems to me — you suffocate. that is the structure we’re caught in, like fish in a net, and it means i’m constantly on the edge of being a provocateur in her eyes, because that’s what i am when i collapse . . . the torture never stops if the reflexes it has conditioned don’t stop, and we’re both — g and i — making an effort without any kind of success.]

The muddled style and hopelessness of the tone contrast strikingly with the terse and bracing letter to Krabbe.

“not raf . . . but cunt” Meinhof was the accepted producer of manifestos and communiqués for the group — the “voice” of the RAF, as Ensslin put it.74 Baader used the same appellation when, in an info letter of 1973, he tried to explain why Meinhof in particular had been held in the isolation wing for so long: der trakt ist . . . eingesetzt worden . . . gegen ulrike, weil nachdem das ding zerschlagen schien WAS GEFÄHRLICH BLIEB — die stimme umgedreht, übernommen, gegen unsere politik eingesetzt werden sollte. was wir in ihr verteidigen, ist was in ihr exemplarisch angegriffen wird + zerstört werden soll: die identität der raf.75 [the dead wing was . . . used against ulrike because after they thought they’d crushed us THE THING THAT WAS WAS STILL DANGEROUS — the voice — was to be turned, taken over, used against our politics. what we’re defending in her is what’s being attacked in her as an example + what they are trying to destroy: the identity of the raf.]

In the early days of their imprisonment, Meinhof seemed to feel a certain status or confidence in her role as “voice.” In one fifteen-side letter to the group, which followed a nineteen-page exposé of ideas, her tone is decisive, excited, at times almost manically energetic. It opens with a


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confident response to what had clearly been dismissive criticism from Baader (codename Ahab): nenee — ahab — damit bin ich nicht einverstanden. nicht “ins kloh.” [sic] . . . ich glaube, ich hab da ganz schön was rausgekriegt . . . was will ich? ich will sagen: das papier bleibt auf’m tisch, unbedingt und zwar solange, bis ich meinen kram “freigekämpft” habe [nono — ahab — i don’t agree with that. not “down the toilet.” . . . i think i’m really on to something there . . . what do i want? i want to say: my paper’s staying on the table, definitely, and indefinitely, until i’ve “fought my way through” to what i’m looking for.]

Meinhof is breathless with her own ideas, and keen to get the others to engage. She punctuates her text with the cry “revolution!” and confidently, almost cockily, instructs Ensslin (codename Schnauze) to get to work in her function as secretary to the group: “on you go, schnauze — do some economics. analyze things, facts, numbers, statistics, balance of payments. it’s a totally wrong attitude to my 19 sides to say ‘down the toilet’” (“los schnauze — mach ökonomie. analysier tatsachen, fakten, zahlen, statistiken, zahlungsbilanzen. völlig falsches verhältnis zu den 19 seiten ‘ins kloh’”).76 The focus on facts and analyses suggests that this letter (which is undated) was written before any crisis of language or attempt to develop a “new way of writing”;77 it dates, then, from the period before September 1974. On 30 July 1974 Meinhof broke a toilet brush over the head of duty senior warder Renate Reisener. The wound needed two stitches, and a formal complaint was made.78 Four days later she sent a letter of selfcriticism to the group: “just recently, a couple of days ago, i smashed the toilet brush over the head of a pig cunt here” she explains, and critiques herself: “same old shit: was just thinking of myself — i wanted to get some space to breathe by fighting back — my self-criticism: i didn’t think about the consequences, what the pigs might use it to do to us, raf” (“zuletzt, vorn paar tagen, hab ich ner bullenvotze hier die klohbürste auf’m kopf zerhauen. die alte scheiße: nur an mich dabei gedacht — ich wollte mir luft verschaffen, in diesem fight — selbstkritik, hab die folgen nicht überlegt, was die bullen damit gegen uns, raf machen können”). The reasons for her failure, in her mind, are twofold: her past — ”my socialization as a fascist, through sadism and religion, caught up with me because i never really dissolved my relationship with it, that is, with the ruling class whose lapdog i once was” — and her inability to connect properly with the group: “the main thing is my disturbed relationship with you . . . i behaved toward the raf like i used to behave to the ruling class: a butt-licker, which means i treated you as if you were pigs” (“meine sozialisation zum faschist, durch sadismus und religion, die mich


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eingeholt hat, weil ich mein verhältnis dazu, dh zur herrschenden klasse, mal ihr schoßkind gewesen zu sein, nicht vollständig aufgelöst, restlos in mir abgetötet habe . . . das wesentliche, mein gestörtes verhältnis zu euch . . . sich zur raf verhalten, wie ich mich zu herrschenden klasse verhalten habe: arschkriecher; dh euch behandeln wie bullen”).79 She confesses that she has not even managed to accept that her role as “voice” is about work, not status: “i identified with my role in the raf: drone or worker bee — i saw that that’s what i am and yet — to say i despised it is maybe too strong, but i didn’t like it” (“ich habe mich mit meiner rolle in der raf: drohne — identifiziert, also gesehn, dass ich es bin und das allerdings — verachtet ist viell. zuviel, aber mißbilligt — ”).80 From April 1974, when she and Ensslin were moved to Stammheim together in response to their protests about isolation, Meinhof had clearly begun to reflect increasingly critically on herself and her relationship with the group. Language is still her function in the collective, but she is beginning to doubt its ability to effect change — specifically in her: “the problem with me,” she wrote to her comrades, “is that i can put all kinds of shit into words, but after that i keep losing the connection” (“das problem bei mir ist, daß ich die ganze scheiße auf’n begriff bringen kann, mir aber dann, immer wieder, der zusammenhang abreißt”); she may say one thing, but she still does another.81 She lacerates herself for the attachment she has to her past life and successes, and assesses the “mistakes” that led to her arrest in 1972: “the fact of the matter is, I had distanced myself from you terribly,” she writes to the info’s core recipients, and that was “a mistake, a betrayal” (“tatsache ist, ich hatte mich fürchterlich weit von euch entfernt — fehler, verrat”). She now sees her capture by police as a sign of the wrongness of her relationship with the group — wrong because she had not opened herself fully to it, not completely released her old identity or self: “because i’d been avoiding criticism i only knew myself superficially, and reacted to mistakes i’d made with the old psychological mechanisms of the marketplace” (“weil ich mich kritik entzogen hatte, kannte ich mich nur oberflächlich, reagierte auf fehler, die ich gemacht hatte mit den alten psychischen mechanismen des markts”). Capitalism, she believes, is still in her very bones: “my objectifying relationship with things and people, consumer thinking, competitive shit, arrogance . . . an elitist pig . . . not raf . . . but cunt” (“mein verdinglichtes verhältnis zu sachen und menschen, tauschwertdenken, konkurrenzscheiße, dünkel . . . elitäres schwein . . . nicht raf . . . sondern votze”).82 Votze (“cunt”) is standard terminology in the group, used notoriously and consistently by Baader as a synecdoche for “woman,” and adopted by both Meinhof and Ensslin. For Baader the context is not even always aggressive; the word is as often merely dismissive as it is negative. Meinhof and Ensslin are more likely to use it as a negative appellation: Bullenvotze (pig cunt, for a female police officer), for example. They prefer


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Tante (literally “aunt,” but a fairly harmless slang word for a woman) as the neutral term. Votze clearly signifies more than just a body part in the usage of the collective, but in group-speak it also means more than just woman. In her letter of 10 June, Meinhof had set up the opposition: “not raf . . . but cunt,” whereby cunt is the polar opposite of RAF. Later in the same letter, she equates Votze with Verrat (betrayal of the group), and with capitalism. She herself, she admits, once exchanged words with a prison officer (whom RAF members were supposed to ignore) while she was in solitary: “the external reason for that was the dead wing, the internal reason cunt, marketplace” (“[die] äußere[ ] ursache trakt, die innere ursache votze, markt”).83 In another communication regarding her behavior in solitary, she attacks her own inability to leave her past behind: she is and was, she insists, “just a sanctimonious hypocritical cunt,” who cannot seem to overcome her bourgeois socialization (“nur ne scheinheilige votze . . . meine sozialisation zur scheinheiligen votze”).84 Cunt is capitalist; cunt is bourgeois; cunt is lack of solidarity; cunt is betrayal of the group. In the group definition, it is far more than not-man: cunt is not-RAF. Given the conflation woman/cunt/capitalist/traitor, it is not surprising that Meinhof would come to idealize Baader as the incarnation of all that is RAF.85 Only a man like Baader could incorporate the true meaning and identity of the collective. In her least positive moments Meinhof seems to see herself left on the sidelines, fighting over scraps with her fellow “cunt,” Ensslin: “the truth about me that i didn’t want to know,” she confessed in another self-criticism, “was competitiveness towards a[ndreas] and so towards g[udrun] in this whole confusion of cunt chauvinism” (“die wahrheit über mich, die ich nicht wissen wollte: konkurrenz zu a[ndreas] und so zu g[udrun] aber in diesem wirrwarr des votzenchauvinismus”).86 The notion of a bitter rivalry between the two central women of the RAF — a catfight, in the cultural cliché — has proved enormously popular, from Stefan Aust’s influential Baader-Meinhof-Komplex to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Elfriede Jelinek’s Ulrike Maria Stuart.87 It has become so dominant that great caution is called for in any analysis of Meinhof’s interaction with Ensslin. That Meinhof was found hanged in her cell, and that rumors were in circulation that it was not a suicide, caused the West German government and the prison authorities severe embarrassment. Investigating officials took the opportunity to search her personal effects, collecting materials that supported the verdict of suicide. Among the hundreds of papers (on top of the post they received, it was normal practice among the RAF prisoners to keep carbon copies of the numerous letters they themselves typed and sent), police and prison officers collected notes and letters that were later used to document severe tension in the group, as supporting evidence for


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Meinhof’s suicide. An official Auswertungsbericht (evaluation report) was compiled: it brought together the documents that indicated disharmony, particularly between Meinhof and Ensslin, and highlighted those sections of text that could be taken as evidence of severe ructions.88 The report conceded that these communications did not actually have the status of evidence, since none bears a date, but its impetus is quite clearly to throw responsibility for Meinhof’s death back on her imprisoned comrades. The letters collected for the evaluation document a discussion between Meinhof and Ensslin that revolves around Meinhof’s protectiveness of her function as the “voice”; that is, around her status and identity as a writer. Meinhof may have been the voice of the RAF, but from the time they moved to Stammheim at the latest Ensslin was her copyeditor. In a letter that seems to be addressed to Baader and Raspe, Ensslin describes what she calls “the standard pattern between u. and me” (“der regelkreis zwischen u. und mir”). Her example is an incident when Meinhof wrote to their lawyer, Hans-Christian Ströbele, and gave the letter, as usual, to Ensslin for checking: weil das ding von u. optisch nen kaputten eindruck macht, tippe ich es bevor ich es raus — weitergebe nochmal ab und lasse dabei eine schlußfloskel weg, . . . und streiche auch zwei oder drei dieser knieweichen — ihrer funktion nach zeitraubenden füllwörter weg — , ohne das abgetippte u. gezeigt zu haben gebe ich es raus und sage hinterher zu u., daß ich es abgetippt und was weggelassen habe und warum [because u.’s thing makes a poor impression optically i type it again before i hand it out — over, and leave out a closing formulation, . . . and delete one or two of those ultrasoft filler words — whose function is timewasting — , and without showing u. what i’ve done i hand it over and tell her afterwards that i typed it up and left some stuff out and why.]

The adjective “ultrasoft” may well betray Ensslin’s participation in a group valorization of “masculine” language, but the integrity of her texts is clearly Meinhof’s sensitive point, and Ensslin has gone for the jugular: “the point of telling her was: to torture u., by giving back some of the torture she hands out — ‘an eye for an eye,’” she admits (“der zweck meines erzählens [war]: u. zu quälen, indem ich ihr quälerei zurückgebe — ‘auge um auge’”).89 In another note to the men she complained “that u. doesn’t want to be criticized by me, and whether she can take it from any human being other than andreas — we’ll have to see” (“dass u. von mir nicht kritisiert werden will und ob von überhaupt von irgendeinem menschen ausser andreas — mal sehn”). Only Baader, it seems, was allowed the privilege


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of criticizing Meinhof’s writing. And he clearly made full use of the privilege: Ensslin describes a “mechanism” (“mechanismus”) whereby u. auf mich wütend und mehr wird, wenn sie scheisse geschrieben hat und ich das vorher gelesen habe — wie es meistens is: kurz davor — und es zu den typen rüberkommt . . . ihre wut — aggressivität gegen mich, wenn ich ihr zeug vorher gelesen hatte und es kam zurück mit “dreck,” von drüben.90 [u. gets livid and worse with me whenever she’s written something shit and i’ve read it first — usually just barely before it gets sent to the guys . . . her fury — aggression against me, when i read her stuff first and it came back from there with “crap” written on it.]

Meinhof, it seems, is in her own mind not allowed to be angry with Baader when he writes “crap” on her texts; instead she is angry with Ensslin. Ensslin, who, for all her energy, was merely the copyeditor and secretary of the RAF rather than its “voice,” conceivably derived some satisfaction from Baader’s criticisms, and from Meinhof’s discomfort. The “fear is reactionary” note, included in the evaluation report, documents another spat sparked by the question of Meinhof’s role. Her own characterization of her function in the RAF at this point is not “voice” but “drone”: her task, it seems, was primarily to record the words of Baader. Recalling a disagreement over this with Ensslin, she complains: “you didn’t just say, ‘why didn’t you write down what andreas said?’” — something Meinhof seems to feel would have been a justified or at least normal complaint — ”when i answered you said i wanted money and i wanted to topple you and i left the room” (“du sagtest ja nicht nur ‘warum hast du nicht geschrieben, was andreas gesagt hat?’ als ich antwortete sagtest du, ich wollte geld und ich wollte dich kippen und ich bin rausgegangen”).91 In the RAF, “money” is code for the negatively understood capitalist will to hierarchy and power; the notion that Meinhof wants to “topple” Ensslin echoes her self-criticisms in the info that she has a competitive relationship with her fellow prisoner. Ensslin certainly seems to believe that, or at least is throwing it back at her in a moment of anger. Words have again become reality, and when Meinhof tries to take them back it is already too late: “it’s not true,” she tries to explain, “i never wanted to punish you, break you, topple you, humiliate you, or any of that” (“es ist falsch. ich wollte dich nie bestrafen, knicken, kippen, demütigen usw”).92 In this instance it seems the situation was fueled, if not created, by the imagination (and possibly the will to control) of Andreas Baader. When Meinhof retracted her earlier confession that she wanted to topple Ensslin, she also explained why she had made it in the first place. Baader, it seems, had convinced her it was true: “andreas said that once, and the way i was behaving — like a machine — it was objectively the case” (“andreas hat


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das mal gesagt und wie ich mich verhielt — als maschine — war es objektiv so”). Now Meinhof is trying to mend fences, in an appeal to her fellow prisoner that is both personal and political: wenn du mir das jetzt vorhälst [sic], hat das nur die funktion, mich zu bestrafen, für das, was war . . . so — kommen wir nie zusammen weil es nicht darum geht, den andern als kämpfer anzuerkennen sondern darum, zusammen zu kämpfen eben nicht um nen status, sondern darum, dass die sachen gemacht werden.93 [if you [Ensslin] reproach me with that now then that only has the function of punishing me for what was . . . this way — we’ll never come together because it’s not about recognition for the other as a fighter it’s about fighting together i mean not about status, but about getting the things done.]

The indication is that her original self-criticism — namely, that she was intent on toppling or competing with Ensslin — was less the personal recognition of a failing than a choice to accept and parrot Baader’s reading of the situation (if the RAF is to make sense, Baader must be right). But her attempt to backtrack and reestablish a bond with Ensslin failed, at least on this occasion: the note bears Ensslin’s indignant response in the margins: “where + when have I done that . . . ?” (“wo + wann mache ich das . . . ?”).94 This is followed in the posthumous evaluation report by the note most often cited as evidence of Meinhof’s suicide. Again, however, the communication is undated. It appears, again, to describe her relationship with Ensslin. “i’m not being mystical when i say i can’t stand it any longer” (“das ist nicht mystisch, wenn ich sage, ich halte das nicht mehr aus”), it begins: was ich nicht aushalte, ist, dass ich mich nicht wehren kann. also es laufen einfach n haufen sachen durch, ich sage nichts, aber ich knalle an die decke, über ihre gemeinheit und hinterhältigkeit und es kommt mir so vor, als wäre das längst ein deal, den ich aber nicht mitmache g. weiss, dass ich nichts sage, wenn sie lügt [a handwritten note in the margin by Ensslin here reads “wo, wann?”] es bleibt auch dabei aber — ich halte es nicht aus wie soll ich ja zu mir kommen, wenn ich gleichzeitig gezwungen bin mit dem schweinebild, das sie von mir im kopf hat, zu koexistieren.95


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[what i can’t stand is that i can’t defend myself. a whole bunch of things are happening and i say nothing, but it makes me explode, her meanness and slyness and it seems to me a deal’s been done here, but i’m not going to go along with it g. knows i won’t say anything when she lies [a handwritten note by Ensslin in the margin here reads: “where, when?”] i’ll stick with that but — i can’t stand it how am i ever going to get myself together if i’m always forced to coexist with the swinish image of me she has in her head.]

Ensslin’s own letter to the men on the subject of her relationship with Meinhof explains that the accusation of lying referred to an occasion when she claimed not to know the whereabouts of a file Meinhof was looking for, and Meinhof disbelieved her.96 The triviality of the incident suggests that isolation was putting the group under severe pressure. In the margin of Meinhof’s note, Ensslin had written “projection — paranoia swine” (“projektion — paranoia schwein”). Not included in the posthumous evaluation report (presumably because it was not found in Meinhof’s cell) is Baader’s response to the accounts he was receiving of the interaction between Meinhof and Ensslin. He did respond, however: an undated later contains what is clearly a reaction to Ensslin’s reports on the situation. Baader begins with a critique of Meinhof’s latest text: “this analysis — if that’s what it’s supposed to be — this sketch of the student movement is much too superficial” (“diese analyse — wenn es das sein soll — dieser umriss der studentenbewegung ist viel zu flach”), the letter opens, but “on the subject of the thing from g” (“zu dm [sic] ding von g”), he goes on: ihr seid wirklich die pest, die zofen. . . . ist ganz natürlich das schwein (das muss einfach nicht mehr erklärt werden: es ist in jedem schritt jedem versuch von ulrike drin + verrat ist dafür nur ein wort. ich bin längst drauf zu sagen es ist eine struktur die personen nicht mehr auflösen können + der auflösung in situationen in denen gekämpft wird entzieht sie sich ja in die krankheit, den hass u.s.w. da fallen ihr die waffen dann eben einfach aus der hand: wie hier der bleistift als es sache war) . . . es gibt eine grenze, an der ich oft sehr nahe bin — also einfach für mich festzustellen, dass diese ganze conection [sic] sinnlos ist, dreck, albern nicht meine + ganz sicher schon lange nicht mehr die der politik die mal gemeint war + von der die rede ist, wenn ihrs mal schafft nicht nur


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über euch zu quatschen. . . . das problem ist, dass du/ihr als die fürchterlichen desorientierten schweine die ihr seid (und bei dir der mechanismus — sog also hass — mach dir doch nichts vor: du hasst uns — dafür gibt es einen sack signale, der dann naturlich einfach so lässig in den bestimmenden momenten passivität, sich entziehen, ne kaputte grammatik, kaputte inhalte, zerstörung missverständnisse produziert. u.s.w.) inzwischen eine belastung geworden seid (wie was ihr selbstkritik nennt) mit der ich nichts mehr zu tun haben will + dass ich es muss glaub lieber nicht. ihr seid es die uns fertig machen — was die justiz nie könnte . . . was aber soll das ganze noch? wie es jetzt ist habe ich dir nichts mitzuteilen. also halt die fresse, bis du was verändert hast oder geh endlich zum teufel97 [you’re really the plague, you females . . . of course it’s the swine inside you (that really doesn’t need explaining any more: it’s in every step every attempt of ulrike’s + treason is just one word for it. i’ve been saying for ages that it’s a structure no human being can resolve any more + she removes herself from any resolution in situations of fighting in her illness and hate etc., and the weapons just fall out of her hand: like the pencil did that time over here when she should have been writing) . . . there’s a borderline i’m often very close to — where i just establish for myself that this whole connection is senseless, crap, stupid, nothing to do with me + certainly not the politics we once intended + that we talk about when you two manage not to jabber about yourselves for once. . . . the problem is that you/ you two like the dreadfully disoriented swine you are (and inside you the mechanism: black hole, hatred — don’t kid yourself, you hate us — there’s a load of indicators of that: at crucial moments passivity, absence, crap grammar, crap content, destructiveness just seem to happen and cause misunderstandings etc.) you’ve now become a burden (along with what you call self-criticism) that i want nothing more to do with and don’t you ever believe that i have to. it’s you who’s getting to us — something the criminal justice system never managed to do . . . what’s the point of all this? the way things are now i have nothing to


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say to you. so shut your mouth until you’ve finally changed something, or just go to the devil]

A letter from Ensslin to Meinhof, also not included in the official documentation (but cited by Aust as further evidence of ructions leading to suicide), reads: “you open the door for the pigs — you are the knife in the back of the raf. because you don’t learn” (“du machst den bullen die tür auf — das messer im rücken der raf: bist du. weil du nicht lernst”).98 This letter, however, is archived in a folder of documents dated 1974–75, which means that it does not coincide with the last months or weeks of Meinhof ’s life and cannot reasonably be read as material to a possible suicide. The RAF’s interpretation of the collation of letters by the state authorities is programmatic: it is read as a conspiracy.99 The claim from the RAF side is that all of the letters cited in the evaluation report were out of date, and that disagreements in the group had been resolved by the spring of 1976, when Meinhof died. Because the notes are undated, the truth is hard to establish: tensions certainly existed and are documented, but so are moments of solidarity and apparent harmony: in March 1976, shortly before her death, Meinhof wrote a supportive response to accusations of immorality or amorality made against Ensslin at the Stammheim trial, in which she defended Ensslin energetically, attacking her accusers as fascist.100

A Woman’s Place Is in the RAF? Both feminists and feminism’s opponents floated the notion that the RAF might in some sense be a woman’s place. Depending on the writer, the argument ran either that this is because both terrorists and women are deviant or insane, or because terrorism met women in a space of exclusion from bourgeois social and political institutions. Within the RAF there was far less interest in discussing the gender of its members. The focus on group identity transcended or avoided the problem of engaging with gender of individual members. It is nonetheless worth bearing in mind, when looking at Meinhof’s life through the language she wrote, that rhetorical expertise — with all its associations with politics, public speaking, and power — has historically been read as an uncomfortable thing in a woman (and avoided, where possible, via gender-specific education)101 and that language has not developed in the cultural-historical context as a vehicle for the communication of women’s specific experience of the world: if we believe Virginia Woolf, when a woman presents her version of experience, “she will find that she is perpetually wishing to alter the established values — to make serious what appears insignificant to a man, and trivial what is to him important.”102


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Meinhof had begun her adult life as a journalist and essayist. Her success derived from her ability as a political commentator, and from her expert use of language. But neither the political sphere nor the sphere of public language have historically been easy places for women to move around in — not least because language creates such a profound link between political activity and maleness. In 1923, Oswald Spengler mused in his essay “Der Staatsmann” (The Statesman) that “part of being politically ‘on form’ is absolute mastery of the most modern means available. . . . A man . . . must master them” (“Zum politischen ‘in Form sein’ gehört . . . die unbedingte Beherrschung der modernsten Mittel. . . . Man . . . muß sie beherrschen”).103 The German verb for “master” (beherrschen) is as clearly gendered as the English. Some forty years later, when Meinhof was in her heyday as a political journalist, another political commentator, Karl Jaspers, was still lamenting a lack of Spenglerian masculinity: real men were scarcely to be found among contemporary politicians, he complained, and expanded: “By man I mean a person who dares to be open, who speaks in such a way as to inspire confidence . . . His speech is clear and simple, and in it he is himself” (“Man findet unter ihnen nicht viele eigentliche ‘Männer.’ Ein Mann, damit meine ich einen Menschen, der es wagen kann, offen zu sein, der glaubwürdig spricht, . . . Seine Rede ist klar und einfach, und in ihr ist er selbst”).104 Real language is presented here as the domain of real men. The suggestion has been made that the (political) essay that was Meinhof’s métier was indeed no place for a woman. Arlene Teraoka argues that by glorifying things traditionally part of a man’s world (“contemplation freed from the burdens of material or social life, sovereign reason over the claims of sensation, emotion, and the body, and the sphere of public and political activity over the (rarely discussed) domestic sphere of home and family”), Germany’s most famous philosophical essayists projected the idea that an essay-writer ought really to be a man.105 Teraoka makes the drastic suggestion that we might understand Meinhof’s turn to terrorism as the “logical continuation” of the project of her political essays because, as a deliberate rejection of the world of the (male) essayist, it enacts “a woman’s rebellion against a male order.”106 But we should not forget that Meinhof, too, did her best to escape the burdens of material, social, and family life: as West German feminists observed, the women who joined terrorist organizations thereby removed themselves from the practical daily grind of work and family, and found their way into a world of verbal abstractions closer to the “higher planes” of traditional philosophy: Die Aktionen der Terroristen entfalten sich immer weniger in konkreten Lebenssituationen wie Arbeitsplatz, Familie, Nachbarschaft und im Zusammenwirken mit anderen Menschen, . . . Demzufolge kann sich auch die Sprache zunehmend in immer höhere Abstraktionsebenen verflüchtigen.107


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[The actions of the terrorists are developed less and less in concrete life situations such as the workplace, family, neighborhood, or in cooperation with other people, which means that no positive or negative experiences occur in those relationships. . . . That means that language, too, can take flight into ever-higher planes of abstraction.]

That is not to deny the gendered discursive context in which women terrorists like Meinhof lived and used language. Commentators assessing female violence in the 1970s clearly still believed that the place to look for explanations of criminal activity in women was their sexuality. In January 1972, not quite two years after the RAF was formed, Böll suggested that a particular kind of linguistic reception awaited Meinhof if she gave herself up — because she was a woman. He tries to put himself in her position, to imagine her situation: “who could tell her what she should do now? Should she really give herself up, in the expectation of landing in some seething demagogical cauldron as the classic Red witch?”108 That would be a dangerous place to land, in the light of what history teaches about what happens to witches. Given men’s ownership of public language (as described, for example, by Karl Jaspers), it might seem remarkable that Meinhof, a woman, was accepted without question as the “voice” of the RAF. She herself, however, came to see her task as that of a drone or worker bee, and it is not unusual for certain kinds of language to be designated women’s work, the equivalent of communicative housework: what linguist Dale Spender has called the “shit work” of language.109 Meinhof’s function within the RAF was not so much to create the group’s theory herself — Schwarzer September was the only piece she wrote in isolation — as to render halfway coherent the views of dominant members of the group. In Stammheim, at least, her brief, enforced by Ensslin, seems to have been to write down whatever Baader said. Even so, it was not the straightforward situation of oppression that some historians of the RAF have made of it. Initially at least, her role within the group clearly went beyond linguistic “shit work” — up until 1974 she showed signs of being engaged in a search for an alternative linguistic utopia that might transcend gendered communicative conventions, coded by her as a “new way of writing,” in which an unspecified new kind of freedom might be found.

Notes The citation for the epigraph in this chapter is as follows: Meinhof, “der dreck, mit dem die bullen” (“14. Mai Notizen”; notes for the trial regarding the liberation of Baader in 1970, August 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,006, 1. 1

The formulation is “nicht raf . . . sondern votze.” See below and Meinhof, “hier meine selbstkritik” (letter from Meinhof, June 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,005, 1.


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2

“Wir sind alle nicht aus der feministischen Bewegung gekommen. Wir haben uns einfach entschieden, und wir haben dann gekämpft und dieselben Dinge getan wie die Männer. Es war für uns keine Frage Mann-Frau. Das alte Rollenverständnis hat für uns in der Illegalität keine Rolle gespielt.” Viett, “Die Mädchen fielen aus ihrer Rolle,” in Die Tageszeitung (25–26 October 1997); cited in Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann, “Bewaffnete Frauen im Untergrund: Zum Anteil von Frauen in der RAF und der Bewegung 2. Juni,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), 1:657–75; here 674. 3

“Wer die knallhärtesten Taten bringt, der gibt die Richtung an.” Bommi Baumann, Wie alles anfing (Munich: Trikont, 1980), 30. 4

Günter Zehm in Die Welt (2 August 1977); cited in Frauen und Terror: Versuche, die Beteiligung von Frauen an Gewalttaten zu erklären, ed. Susanne von Paczensky (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978), 7. 5

See Werner Jubelius, “Frauen und Terror: Erklärungen, Scheinerklärungen, Diffamierungen,” in Kriminalistik 35 (1981): 247–55; here 249. 6

On this, see also Clare Bielby, “Print Media Representation of Violent Women in 1960s and 1970s West Germany,” PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2008. 7

See, e.g., http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/low/world/europe/2596013.stm (5 August 2005) (accessed 15 August 2008). 8

“objektiv ohne pathologische Störungen.” H. Finkemeyer and R. Kautzky, “Das Kavernom des Sinus cavernosus,” in Zentralblatt für Neurochirurgie 29.1 (1968). 9

See http://www.bettinaroehl.de/Ulrike_Meinhof/Meinhof-Gehirn/meinhofgehirn.html (accessed 6 January 2006). 10

“Baader-Meinhof: Klar oder krank,” in Der Spiegel 35 (1973): 54–55.

11

Pieter Bakker Schut, Stammheim: Der Prozeß gegen die Rote Armee Fraktion: Die notwendige Korrektur der herrschenden Meinung (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1997), 116. 12

Kristin Wesemann, Ulrike Meinhof: Kommunistin, Journalistin, Terroristin: Eine politische Biografie (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2007), 396. 13

“biologische Erklärungen [standen] im Vordergrund, wobei eine Sexualisierung der weiblichen Kriminalität unverkennbar ist. . . . Wenn Frauen dennoch kriminell werden, so sei dies auf Menstruation, Klimakterium und Schwangerschaft als besondere ‘Krisenmomente’ im Leben von Frauen zurückzuführen.” SteinHilbers, “Emanzipation durch Kriminalität?” in Psychologie heute 5.8 (1978): 14– 21; here 15–16. 14

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis (Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1997 [1886]), 13–14. 15

“Wollen wir ein Weib, das ganz seinen Mutterberuf erfüllt, so kann es nicht ein männliches Gehirn haben.” P. J. Möbius, Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes, 7th edn. (Halle: Marhold, 1905), 32. 16

C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, La donna delinquente: La prostituta e la donna normale, 2nd edn. (Turin: Roux, 1894).


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17

See Alfred Springer, “Kriminalanthropologie und Kriminalitätspsychopathologie des weiblichen Geschlechts: Eine ideologiekritische Studie,” in Kriminalsoziologische Bibliografie 6 (1979): 67–82; here 68–69. 18

Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing (London: The Women’s Press, 1994 [1984]), 20–22. 19

Der Baader-Meinhof-Report: Dokumente — Analysen — Zusammenhänge. Aus den Akten des Bundeskriminalamtes, der “Sonderkommission, Bonn” und dem Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Mainz: Hase & Koehler 1972). 55. Further references appear in the text. 20

See, e.g., the University of Virginia Health Science Library at http://www. healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/library/historical/artifacts/antiqua/gynecology.cfm+greek+word+womb&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&ie=UTF-8 (accessed 14 November 2007). 21

Dokumentation Baader-Meinhof-Bande, ed. Ministerium des Innern Rheinland-Pfalz (1974), 33. 22

“Erkenntnisse der allgemeinen Kriminologie stimmen darin überein, daß weibliche Kriminelle oft grausamer und in ihrem Sinne konsequenter handelten als Männer.” Wolf Middendorf (29 November 1977); cited in Frauen und Terror, ed. Paczensky, 8; papers from the conference were published in Der Weg in die Gewalt: Geistige und gesellschaftliche Ursachen des Terrorismus und seine Folgen, ed. Heiner Geißler (Munich: Olzog, 1978). Middendorf was citing Goethe’s Faust, but in fact it is not Goethe, but Mephistopheles who is speaking. In the same year Iring Fetscher would notice the gender clichés in the discussion around terrorism: “noch immer die traditionellen Klischees, auf Grund derer es für einen Mann weit weniger schlimm und verwerflich ist, wenn er zu Pistole und Gewehr greift, als für eine Frau.” Fetscher, Terrorismus und Reaktion (Cologne: EVA, 1977), 23. 23

See Dale Spender, Man Made Language. 2nd edn. (London: Pandora, 1985), 42. 24

Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, “Hexen oder Märtyrer?” in Frauen und Terror, ed. Paczensky, 13–23; here 18. 25

Hacker, cited in “Frauen im Untergrund: ‘Etwas Irrationales,’” in Der Spiegel 33 (8 August 1977): 22–28; here 25. 26

Gudrun Ensslin, “Zieht den Trennungsstrich, jede Minute.” Briefe an ihre Schwester Christiane und ihren Bruder Gottfried aus dem Gefängnis 1972–1973, ed. Christiane Ensslin und Gottfried Ensslin (Hamburg: konkret, 2005), 40. 27

Herbert Jäger, Gerhard Schmidtchen, and Lieselotte Süllwold, LebenslaufAnalysen (Analysen zum Terrorismus, ed. Bundesministerium des Innern, vol. 2) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 107. 28

“Ponto: Seine Mörder kamen mit roten Rosen.” Bild (1 August 1977): 1.

29

Stern (4 August 1977): 374–77; here 374.

30

“Frauen im Untergrund,” 22.

31

“Frauen im Untergrund,” 22–23.

32

Sixty percent women is the figure provided by the Bundeskriminalamt; see Marlis Dürkop, “Frauen als Terroristinnen: Zur Besinnung auf das soziologische


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Paradigma,” in Kriminologisches Journal 10 (1978): 264–80; here 264; Ilse KortePucklitsch, “Warum werden Frauen zu Terroristen? Versuch einer Analyse,” in Vorgänge: Zeitschrift für Gesellschaftspolitik 4–5 (September 1979): 121–28; here 121. The Lebenslauf-Analysen, however, give a figure of 33 percent; see Jäger, Schmidtchen, and Süllwold, Lebenslauf-Analysen, 23. 33

The figure (48.82 percent) is based on West Germans between 20 and 35 years of age in 1978. See Jubelius, “Frauen und Terror,” 254 n. 9. 34

Korte-Pucklitsch, “Warum werden Frauen zu Terroristen?” 121.

35

Jubelius, “Frauen und Terror,” 247. For an account of how the figures have shifted in the last ten years, see Lorraine Gelsthorpe and Allison Morris, “Women’s Imprisonment in England and Wales: A Penal Paradox,” in Criminal Justice 2 (2002): 277–301. 36

Hans Joseph Horchem, “Stadt-Guerilla in Deutschland — Wurzeln und Chancen,” in Josef Augstein et al., Terrorismus contra Rechtsstaat, ed. Rudolf Wassermann (Darmstadt/Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1976), 93. 37

Jäger, Schmidtchen, and Süllwold, Lebenslauf-Analysen, 106. Emphasis in original. 38

“Für den ehemaligen Verfassungsschutz-Chef Günther Nollau ist ‘irgendetwas Irrationales in dieser ganzen Sache.’” “Frauen im Untergrund,” 23. 39

Nollau, cited in “Frauen im Untergrund,” 23.

40

Peter Hofstätter, cited in Alice Schwarzer, “Terroristinnen,” in Emma (October 1977): 5. 41

Günter Zehm in Die Welt (2 August 1977); cited in Frauen und Terror, ed. Paczensky, 7. 42

Jäger, Schmidtchen, and Süllwold, Lebenslauf-Analysen, 109–10.

43

Dale Spender, “Defining Reality: A Powerful Tool,” in Language and Power, ed. Cheris Kramarae, Muriel Schulz, and William M. O’Barr (Beverly Hills: Sage,1984), 196–205; here 200. 44

“Es läge nahe, daß weibliche Gruppenmitglieder . . . durch kommunikative Fähigkeiten, wie sie (nach traditionellem Verständnis) eher Frauen zugeschrieben werden, für die Aufrechterhaltung der Solidarität sorgen, also leidende oder schwankende Mitglieder stützen und ermutigen; emotionale Reaktionen wie Mitleid, Skrupel o.ä. äußern und verarbeiten.” Jäger, Schmidtchen, and Süllwold, Lebenslauf-Analysen, 110. 45

“noch immer sind Sanftheit und Keuschheit die höchsten weiblichen Tugenden.” Helga Einsele and Nele Löw-Beer, “Politische Sozialisation und Haftbedingungen,” in Frauen und Terror, ed. Paczensky, 24–36; here 32. 46

Dürkop, “Frauen als Terroristinnen,” 277.

47

“Gemeinsam ist . . . die Orientierung des Handelns am gewaltsam unterdrückten Subjekt. Allerdings ist Emanzipation nicht Ursache terroristischen Verhaltens, sondern beides sind Formen von Problemlösungsverhalten, die aus den Problemen gesellschaftlicher Ausgrenzung von Frauen bei gleichzeitiger besserer Ausbildung resultieren könnten.” Dürkop, “Frauen als Terroristinnen,” 276–77.


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48

See Margarete Fabricius-Brand, “Frauen in der Isolation,” in Frauen und Terror, ed. Paczensky, 55–68; Jubelius, “Frauen und Terror.” 49

“Frauen sind immer stärker aus politisch-institutionellen Zusammenhängen ausgegrenzt worden und dürften deshalb auch ein anderes Verhältnis zum Umgang mit parliamentarischen Institutionen haben, das ihnen — mangels Einbindung — radikalere Verhaltensweisen erlauben könnte, wenn einmal die Schwelle politischer Abstinenz durchbrochen wurde.” Dürkop, “Frauen als Terroristinnen,” 275–76. 50

Schwarzer, “Terroristinnen,” 5.

51

Schwarzer, “Terroristinnen,” 5.

52

“Die inhaftierten Frauen verweigern bekanntlich jede Auskunft über ihre persönlichen Lebensbedingungen und Motive; die illegalen Schriften der RAF sind verboten und zudem wenig aufschlußreich, denn sie verleugnen die menschlichen Eigenschaften ihrer Mitgleider.” Paczensky, Frauen und Terror, 12. 53

“objektiv anti-emanzipatorisch.” Stein-Hilbers, “Emanzipation durch Kriminalität?” 21. 54

Meinhof, “naja der votzenchauvinismus” (letter of January 1976), in HIS Ba,A/002,004; see also the incomplete copy “er — der votzenchauvinismus” (dated January 1976), in HIS Me,U/008,002. 55

Meinhof, “der dreck, mit dem die bullen” (“14. Mai Notizen”), 1.

56

“Will man herausfinden, ob und wie die Frage der Gleichberechtigung und Emanzipation der Frau innerhalb der RAF sprachlich und theoretisch ihren Ausdruck findet, so muß man feststellen, daß dieses Problem überhaupt nicht erwähnt wird. . . . Dies bedeutet radikalste Leugnung von Schwierigkeiten und nicht deren fortschrittliche Bewältigung.” Fabricius-Brand, “Frauen in der Isolation,” 62–65. 57

Mahler, “Die revolutionäre Linke ist kriminell,” in Der Spiegel 5 (24 January 1972), reprinted in Die Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe, ed. Reinhard Rauball (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973), 228–32; here 228. 58

Letter from Ensslin (21 September 1974), in das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973–1977: Dokumente, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut (Kiel: Neuer Malik, 1987), 172. 59

Harald Uetz, Schwein oder Mensch: Die Männer der RAF aus Sicht einer “kritischen Männerforschung” (Marburg: Tectum, 1999), 37. I have translated “masculinity” as “masculinism” because an ideological position is clearly implied. 60

Meinhof, “verdammt — ich schick hier was mit” (letter of early September 1974), in HIS Me,U/015,006; also reprinted in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 158– 60. My emphasis. 61

Uetz, Schwein oder Mensch, 52.

62

Letter from Meinhof (20 May 1973), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 20.

63

Letter from Meinhof to the RAF members imprisoned in Hamburg (13 April 1976), in Meinhof, letzte texte von ulrike, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa (Eigendruck im Selbstverlag, June 1976), 13.


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64

SallyMcConnell-Ginet, “The Sexual (Re)Production of Meaning: A DiscourseBased Theory,” in The Feminist Critique of Language, ed. Deborah Cameron, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1998), 198–210; here 207–9. 65

Cited in McConnell-Ginet, “The Sexual (Re)Production of Meaning,” 208.

66

See chapter 5.

67

Meinhof, “verdammt — ich schick hier was mit.”

68

Letter from Meinhof (September 1974), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 163.

69

Uetz, Schwein oder Mensch, 50–53.

70

Meinhof, bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf und die defensive der konterrevolution in ihrer psychologischen kriegsführung gegen das volk, in Meinhof, letzte texte, 48–59; here 48–51. The same text is published under the title rede von ulrike zu der befreiung von andreas, moabit 13. september 1974, in texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa, Sektion BRD, Stuttgart (Lund: Bo Cavefors, 1977), 62–74. 71 Letter from Meinhof (19 March 1976), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 263–65; here 264; see also Meinhof, letzte texte, 7; and texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee (here dated 23 March). Emphasis in original. 72

Uetz, Schwein oder Mensch, 52, 89. “Stummheit” is Uetz’s word — he explains this meaning. 73

Meinhof, “angst ist reaktionär” (undated document), in HIS Me,U/016,001 (nb. reprinted in Frauen und Terror, ed. Paczensky, 68). 74

“jeder weiß, daß du die stimme warst, bist, sein wirst.” Letter from Ensslin, cited in Bakker Schut, Stammheim, 287. 75

Letter from Baader (25 April 1973), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 51.

76

Meinhof, “nenee — ahab” (undated letter), in En,G/010,007.

77

See chapter 5.

78

Vollzugsanstalt Stuttgart, Letter regarding Meinhof’s attack on senior warder Renate Reisener (31 July 1974), in HIS Me/U,007,004. 79

Meinhof, “das problem bei mir ist” (letter of 3 August 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,005, 1. 80

Meinhof, “naja der votzenchauvinismus,” 1.

81

Meinhof, “das problem bei mir ist.”

82

Meinhof, “hier meine selbstkritik.”

83

Meinhof, “hier meine selbstkritik.”

84

Meinhof, “das problem bei mir ist.”

85

See chapter 5.

86

Meinhof, “naja der votzenchauvinismus,” 1.

87

Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2008 [1985]); Jelinek’s Ulrike Maria Stuart premièred at the Thalia Theater, Hamburg, autumn 2006.


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88

Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, “Auswertungsbericht” (12 May 1976), in HIS Me,U/016,001. 89

Ensslin, “an einem ausschnitt” (undated letter), in Landeskriminalamt BadenWürttemberg, “Auswertungsbericht”; see also “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973– 6,” in HIS Me,U/008,002, 75. 90

Ensslin, “ich sehe das so” (undated letter, presumably to Raspe and Baader, in Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, “Auswertungsbericht”; see also “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973–6,” 77. 91

Meinhof, “angst ist reaktionär.”

92

Meinhof, “es ist falsch” (undated letter), in Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, “Auswertungsbericht”; see also “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973–6,” 74. 93

Meinhof, “es ist falsch.” Emphasis in original.

94

Ensslin, handwritten marginal note, in Meinhof, “es ist falsch.”

95

Meinhof, “das ist nicht mystisch” (undated note), in Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, “Auswertungsbericht”; see also “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973–6,” 73. 96

See Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg, “Auswertungsbericht,” 2.

97

“naja diese analyse” (unsigned and undated letter, presumably from Baader), in HIS En,G/010,005, 75. 98

Ensslin, “U: was willst du mit ner friedlichen demonstration?” (letter dated 12. [sic; 1974 or 1975]), in HIS En,G/010,004. See Aust, Der Baader-MeinhofKomplex, 521. 99

“Das sind Briefe, die der Staatsschutz aus den Briefen, Notizen und Diskussionsprotokollen der praktisch permanenten Korrespondenz Ulrikes und Gudruns — ca 1 200 Briefe allein in Ulrikes Nachlass — herausgefiltert hat, um ‘Spannungen innerhalb der Gruppe’ zu behaupten. Es sind nach unserer Kenntnis die einzigen Briefe, die dazu missbraucht werden können.” Typed note accompanying the undated letters from Meinhof and Ensslin, in “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973–6,” 70. 100 Meinhof, “antwort von u. zu der behauptung der bundesanwaltschaft, g. sei ‘von allen sittlichen bindungen frei etc.,’” in “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973– 6,” 37–38. 101 See Sarah Colvin, “‘Die Zung’ ist dieses Schwert’: Classical Tongues and Gendered Curricula in German Schooling to 1908,” in Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning, ed. Niall Livingstone and Yun Lee Too (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 47–66. 102

The Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, ed. Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth, 1966), 166. 103 Spengler, “Der Staatsmann,” in Politisches Denken im 20. Jahrhundert. Ein Lesebuch, ed. Herfried Münkler (Munich: Piper, 1994), 57–61; here 60. 104


Jaspers, “Politiker,” in Politisches Denken, ed. Münkler, 62–64; here 63.

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105

Arlene A Teraoka, “Terrorism and the Essay: The Case of Ulrike Meinhof,” in The Politics of the Essay: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres and Elizabeth Mittman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1993), 209–24; here 217. 106

Teraoka, “Terrorism and the Essay,” 211.

107

Fabricius-Brand, “Frauen in der Isolation,” 64–65.

108

“wer könnte ihr sagen, was sie jetzt tun sollte? Soll sie sich wirklich stellen, mit der Aussicht, als die klassiche rote Hexe in den Siedetopf der Demagogie zu geraten?” Böll, “Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade oder Freies Geleit?” in Der Spiegel (10 January 1972): 54–56. 109


Spender is citing Pamela Fishman. See Spender, Man Made Language, 48–49.

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Conclusion: From Warrior Revolutionaries to Logical Fallacies: Language, Violence, and Identity Ulrike M. Meinhof selbst empfand sich nach 1970 als die “ganz andere”; war der Auffassung, daß das Bedingungsgefüge und die Basis ihres Lebens: ihres Denkens, Fühlens, Handelns, kurz — ihrer Subjektivität das Kollektiv der RAF geworden war. [After 1970, Ulrike Meinhof experienced herself as someone “completely different”; she believed that the conditions and basis of her life: of her thoughts, feelings, actions, in short — her subjectivity had become collectivity in the RAF.] — Peter Brückner, 1976

I

BRÜCKNER, an old friend and “sympathizer,” had at least some contact with Meinhof in the years after she went underground, so his reading of her situation may be based on things she said to him herself. He did not visit her in prison, however (having been, by then, rejected along with other non-RAF elements), and he could not have seen the prison documents that suggest she did not or could no longer believe her subjectivity had become collectivity in the RAF — even if she wished desperately that it had. In her later and last writings we hear two voices: the brisk, determined voice of the core group member who will never let her side down by despairing, and the voice of someone who has lost the ground beneath her feet and is angry, not least with herself, because she has not managed to get the better of her ego and make her subjectivity identical with that of the collective. The first writing voice — which we might call the ideal voice — tells us how things ought to be, but in the indicative, as if they already were: “the guerilla,” she asserted in her Berlin court statement of 1974, “permits each of us to determine where he stands — it’s our first and only way of working out where it is that we stand, working out and then determining for ourselves where we are in the class-based society, in imperialism” (“an der guerilla kann jeder für sich bestimmen, wo er steht — kann überhaupt erstmal rausfinden, wo er überhaupt steht, seinen platz in der klassengesellschaft, im imperialismus rausfinden, für sich bestimmen”).1 The RAF collective, in this argument, already is the solid rock on which an identity is built. That rhetorical strategy — the


T IS LIKELY THAT

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formulation of wish-situations as if they were already reality — is her standard practice as the “voice” of the RAF: in a statement for the Stammheim trial of September 1975 she described the hope behind the group’s tactic of provocation as if it were already an outcome: “the strategy of the anti-imperialist struggle is that when the system goes on the defensive . . . the enemy is showing his true face, becoming visible — and so through his own acts of terrorism he provokes the masses to rise against him” (“das ist die dialektik der strategie des antiimperialistischen kampfes: dass durch die defensive, die reaktion des systems, . . . der feind sich kenntlich macht, sichtbar — und so, durch seinen eigenen terror, die massen gegen sich aufbringt”).2 In 1975 the West German masses were showing no sign of rising up against the state, but that is the voice of Meinhof that the RAF-sympathetic publications of her writings have chosen to reproduce. Over and again we find the court statements and the letter to Hanna Krabbe reprinted, which show Meinhof as the powerful, unflinching voice of the first generation, hardline (as hardline so often is) to a point somewhere between wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty. And yet her other voice — the voice of existential insecurity, bitterness, and selfdoubt — was clearly well-known to other core members of the group. Her note describing fear and the dynamic of her relationship with Ensslin was commented on in writing (and with reciprocal bitterness) by Ensslin,3 as was the letter in which she alluded to helplessness: “a whole bunch of things are happening and i say nothing, . . . how am i ever going to get myself together if i’m always forced to coexist with the swinish image of me she has in her head” (“es laufen einfach n haufen sachen durch, ich sage nichts, . . . wie soll ich ja zu mir kommen, wenn ich gleichzeitig gezwungen bin mit dem schweinebild, das sie von mir im kopf hat, zu koexistieren”).4 To the entire core group in prison she wrote regularly in self-flagellatory mode, describing a “disturbed relationship” with the collective: “i behaved toward the raf like i used to behave to the ruling class: a butt-licker, which means i treated you as if you were pigs” (“mein gestörtes verhältnis zu euch . . . sich zur raf verhalten, wie ich mich zur herrschenden klasse verhalten habe: arschkriecher; dh euch behandeln wie bullen”); she is, she concluded on this occasion, “a sanctimonious, hypocritical sow from the ruling classes” (“eine scheinheilige sau aus der herrschenden klasse”). On another she is “an elitist pig . . . not raf . . . but cunt” (“elitäres schwein . . . nicht raf . . . sondern votze”).5 Those kinds of outbursts, which go beyond the RAF practice of self-criticism to become something closer to self-pity or even despair, provoke Baader’s response that Meinhof is now no longer the “voice” of the RAF, but its black hole.6 That is a long way from the perfect identification with the collective ascribed to her by Brückner. What Brückner rightly identifies, however, is the central importance the idea of identification with the collective had for Meinhof. Bettina Röhl


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cites a letter from her mother written in 1967, in which she complained that her career as a journalist “doesn’t satisfy my need for warmth, for solidarity, for the feeling of being part of a group.”7 Close-knit relationships characterize extremist organizations; rejection of the mainstream enables — because it necessitates — a powerful group identity that supersedes even the bonds of family (as the info gets established and the RAF collective can “talk” again, both Meinhof and Ensslin cut still-existing family ties in favor of intensive in-group communication). Far from accepting its outsiderdom, the RAF collective asserted for itself the exclusive right to insider status. It set about drawing a circle of empathy that initially included those it claimed to be fighting for — the third party with an assumed interest — but quickly shrank to encircle the group and only the group; eventually, only the most hardline members of the group. The threat of exclusion hung permanently over those who did not show themselves sufficiently exclusive — who failed to participate in the core group activity of maintaining group identity. A group that is working full time (as the RAF was) to preserve its identity as the seed corn for the “real” future of the world — that is, as temporary outsiders who would lead the future mainstream — cannot afford to let the beliefs of an outside world, which probably run contrary to that, find a way into its collective consciousness. Porousness or openness to the outside world would not only, in a real sense, risk undermining the convictions that enable extremist action (including the conviction that the victims of its violence are in some sense not really human), it would risk collapsing group identity. The promise of that identity for the individuals involved was such that they had already given up every other point of identity in their lives (family or professional identity, other interests or talents) for its sake, and that made them extraordinarily dependent. For the RAF, the practice of struggle would come to stand in place of identity: “fighting is your identity,” Meinhof told her comrades categorically.8 Choosing the life of Sisyphus clearly obviates the need to deal with some of life’s more painfully banal concerns. That is one objection voiced by feminist critics — Margarete Fabricius-Brand is worth recapitulating, who vented her frustration that the terrorists’ activities were not developed “in concrete life situations,” so that “no positive or negative experiences occur . . . the women terrorists ignore conflicts with husbands, family, work colleagues, bosses, . . . In the absence of other relevant relationships you need take account of nothing and no one.”9 Dr. Helga Einsele (1910–2005), an academic criminologist as well as the remarkable postwar director of Frankfurt’s women’s prison, gave an interview to Spiegel magazine during the uproar following Jürgen Ponto’s assassination in 1977. She had at this point been head of the prison for twenty-eight years, and had experienced Ensslin as a prisoner there for a period following the Frankfurt arson attacks of 1968. The Spiegel


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interviewer’s rather obvious intention is to draw her into providing sound bites on crime and gender — she resists steadfastly, and instead chooses to comment on the social isolation that affected all the RAF members, male and female. To understand West German terrorism, insisted Einsele, we have to understand that all the terrorists (not just the women) “live in totally incestuous circumstances. They talk to each other continually and dig themselves deeper and deeper into what they are doing and what they want, ideologically, to believe is right. In that process they relinquish contact with reality almost completely.”10 By this time the first generation of the RAF was in prison, and Meinhof was already dead. What Einsele did not remark on, although it fits with her comments, is that the RAF was now fighting entirely for the continued existence of the RAF. Ponto’s murder was intended to be a kidnap, and that (like every operation of the RAF’s so-called second generation until 1977, including the violent occupation of the German embassy in Stockholm in 1975) was intended to effect the release of its first generation from custody. Any “third party with an assumed interest” (to use Münkler’s phrase) had disappeared; info exchanges of the imprisoned first generation revolve around the RAF, its needs and intentions, and how the members of the guerilla group might liberate themselves, rather than anyone else, from oppression.

Identity When Meinhof joined the RAF, the language that had always been her medium, and was bound up with her identity as a writer, seemed to her to have lost its power to signify. Because words were not having a tangible effect (the bombings in Vietnam continued, the emergency laws were passed in Bonn), they no longer seemed to mean anything. Meinhof is not the only member of her generation to have found herself searching for meaning: those who joined the experimental communes of the 1960s looked for it in sex: “What does the Vietnam war have to with me as long as I have problems with my orgasm?” was Dieter Kunzelmann’s famous question as a member of Berlin’s Kommune I.11 For the RAF and other militant groups, meaning seemed achievable in acts of violence. In both cases “meaning” is, like language, interactive: where peaceful political protest seemed to have no effect and get no response (and therefore seemed to equate to keeping silent), provocative sexual experiment and armed violence got a reaction, had an effect, and therefore seemed to mean something. And if West Germany was a nation that had lost its identity after the Second World War, offering its young people little they felt they could securely identify with, sex and/or violence (as the factors in human life


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that most effectively override our abstract existential concerns) could, for a time at least, compensate that. Successful professionals like Mahler and Meinhof might conceivably have done more for the revolution if they had kept their status as lawabiding citizens; their decision to become terrorists was not a tactically intelligent decision, observed left-wing commentator Til Schulz in 1974, but “an existential one; based on the notion of the total responsibility of the individual.”12 Meinhof, Mahler, and the others, he argued, were actually choosing an identity mode rather than performing an act of altruism. The guerilla, after all, offered a powerful point of identification: “annihilating a mighty opponent and asserting one’s self are, in the experience of the guerilla fighter, the same thing,” argues Schulz; the survival of the individual is barely any longer a consideration because “the assertion of self . . . is achieved in self-sacrifice.”13

Violence Meinhof’s notes for a trial statement of August 1974 (Meinhof, Mahler, and Hans-Jürgen Bäcker were on trial in Berlin for their part in the operation to free Baader in 1970) are perhaps the clearest indication of how introspective her and the group’s identity had become. Because it was intended to be read out in court, the statement was also, of course, provocation, but provocation that derived from the collective’s solipsistic assessment of reality. Rightness, always the sine qua non of the RAF, had now become its absolute property. Rather than bothering to argue that the RAF is right, Meinhof simply asserts that rightness can be measured by what the RAF does: wenn wir — raf — verbrecher sind, dann ist es gut, verbrecher zu sein. wenn wir, raf — anarchistische gewaltverbrecher sind — obwohl das analytisch, historisch, politisch, ökonomisch falsch ist, in uns anarchisten zu sehen — dann ist es gut, ein anarchistischer gewaltverbrecher zu sein. wenn wir, weil in heidelberg und frankfurt ein paar amerikanische gi-schweine verreckt sind und weil wir das gewesen sein sollen, die die bomebn [sic] gelegt haben, mörder sein sollen — dann ist es gut, ein mörder zu sein.14 [if we — the raf — are criminal, then it’s good to be criminal. if we — the raf — are violent anarchist criminals — even though it is analytically, politically, and economically wrong to see us as anarchists — then it is good to be a violent anarchist criminal. if we are deemed murderers because a couple of american gi-pigs turned up their toes in heidelberg and frankfurt and because we are meant to be the ones who planted the bombs — then it’s good to be a murderer.]


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Writing of the liberation of Baader in 1970, she retracted (in a section of text that was subsequently crossed out) the claim made in the Konzept Stadtguerilla that there was no intention to shoot: wir haben damals gesagt, wir hätten die aktion — so — nicht gemacht, wenn wir gewust hätten, daß ein linke dabei angeschossen wird. das war aus taktischen gründen notwendig, das zu sagen. natürlich war’n wir entschlossen, zu schießen — auf jeden, der sich uns in den weg stellt, sind wir entschlossen, zu schießen, wie der schwarze september, der in münchen sofort durch die tür geschossen hat, als die israelische mannschaft sie nicht aufmachte. (3) [back then we said that we wouldn’t have carried out the operation — not in that way — if we had known that a linke [the German permits a pun on Georg Linke’s name and the word for a left-winger] would get shot. it was necessary to say that for tactical reasons. of course we were prepared to shoot — we’re prepared to shoot at anyone who gets in our way, like black september in munich, who immediately fired shots through the door when the israeli team wouldn’t open it.]

If there were any doubts about the level of the RAF’s empathy for anyone outside the RAF group, Meinhof’s statement puts them to rest. “Mao’s dictum: ‘we have to avoid unnecessary sacrifices’ means us, it doesn’t mean the pigs,” she continued: “after the liberation of andreas we said: the police pigs are swine, not human — of course we can shoot, and we’re saying that again now: the aim is — to annihilate the enemy military power” (“maos satz: ‘wir müssen unnötige opfer vermeiden’ meint uns, meint nicht die bullen. . . . und wenn wir nach der befreiung von andreas gesagt haben: bullen sind schweine, sind keine menschen — natürlich kann geschossen werden, so sagen wir das jetzt nochmal: das ziel ist — die feindliche militärmacht zu vernichten”). Armed counter-violence is no longer merely the duty of the warrior-revolutionary, it is his or her pleasure: “we delight in the death of every cop who gets killed,” Meinhof declares, “or has ever been killed, and anyone in prison who has tricked and killed the pigs is our brother, sister, comrade, friend — one of us” (“wir freuen uns, über jeden bullen, der umgelegt wird, umgelegt worden ist und jeder im knast, der bullen reingelegt und umgelegt hat, ist unser bruder, schwester, genosse, freund, einer von uns”; 3). The group has drawn between self (the RAF) and other (everything non-RAF) a dividing line that affects even the right to life. The RAF still claims altruism: “our battle is the battle against the insane suffering and death of hundreds, thousands, millions, because of the crimes of imperialism,” Meinhof insists; “millions in the countries of the third world, thousands of revolutionaries tortured from brazil to south vietnam, the


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philippines, and here — the crippling and destruction of human beings by imperialism’s workings” (“unser kampf ist der kampf gegen das wahsninnige [sic] leiden und sterben von hunderten, tausenden, millionen durch die verbrechen des imperialismus; milliarden in den ländern der dritten welt, tausenden revolutionären unter der folter von brasilien bis südvietnam, die phillipinen [sic], hier — die verkrüppelung, zerstörung des menschen durch den imperialismus überhaupt”). But these “parties with an assumed interest” are entirely abstract, and nothing the RAF has ever done has made the slightest difference to their lives; the RAF has, in fact, had no contact with any of the groups it names as a focus for its empathy. Other human beings at home in West Germany, on the other hand, are clearly and violently excluded from the RAF circle: “those who join the side of the pigs and imperialists in this battle should not be surprised when we treat them like the pigs: when they are shot at or shot dead,” announces Meinhof; “we couldn’t care less. the pigs’ worries are not our worries” (“die, die sich in diesem kampf auf die seite der bullen, auf die seite des imperialismus schlagen, dürfen sich nicht wundern, wenn es ihnen ergeht wie bullen: sie angeschossen oder auch erschossen werden. uns — läßt das kalt. die sorgen von bullen sind nicht unsere sorgen”; 5). Whether that is bravado or a genuine reflection of Meinhof’s feelings, it is a reminder that we should never underestimate, from the terrorist perspective, the otherness of the other side.

Language Meinhof’s journey from socially aware journalism to isolation in an extremist group seems a remarkably short one. Between 1967 (when the student movement began to radicalize) and her death less than ten years later in 1976 her life circumstances would change out of all recognition. In the early days of her career as a journalist, her activity as a writer-activist seemed to promise the ability not only to track but to influence the development of the constitutional democracy that had succeeded Hitler’s Germany. But her and others’ belief in verbal protest seems to have been undermined by brutal police responses to student demonstrations, and by the failure of the campaign against the emergency laws. Understanding the Federal Republic as the home of “new fascism” was enabled for Meinhof not least by the loss of professorial status of her foster mother, Renate Riemeck; from this point onward she would build on already existing language habits in postwar Germany (particularly the use and abuse of the idea of fascism) to create a metaphorical universe in which the Federal Republic was a fascist state and antinuclear protesters its victims or “new Jews.” In that universe the United States was a fascist-imperialist world power, the bombed North Vietnamese its “Jews.” The notion that her analogies were inappropriate and disrespectful to those who really suffered


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under the Nazis does not appear to have crossed Meinhof’s mind; on the contrary, in her fictional universe she and those who think like her now formed the ranks of a new antifascist “resistance.” They were the warriorrevolutionaries who would demonstrate the courage and political awareness their parents’ generation had failed to muster. In the mid to late 1960s Meinhof explored the notion that society disempowers women, but by the end of the decade she had decided that women’s oppression was at best irrelevant, at worst a counterrevolutionary red herring. The gender war is trumped by the class war. But the language of educated journalism — “her” language, until then — is not the proper language for that war; her television drama Bambule, written largely in Berlin dialect, seeks to demonstrate that class solidarity and the potential for change inheres in the language of the proletariat and the “marginal groups” or underclass. Their language is personal (rather than institutionalized) and therefore political; it builds class solidarity, which is the only way to escape the repressive bourgeois structures (such as instruction in formal language) designed to hold the underclass down. The notion that the personal is political seems to mutate in Meinhof’s understanding until she reaches a definition of all political action that accepts only personally felt, hands-on engagement (rather than abstract, “objective” theory) as authentic: a definition that would be absorbed and perpetuated in the radical subjectivity of the Red Army Faction. One of the dangers of a radically subjective view of the world is that it entails a belief that I, the subject, am right. That means my perception of the world, in whatever metaphorical language I choose to describe it, is literally — rather than just figuratively — true. The risk attached to my “useful fictions” (namely, that they will be mistaken, at least by me, for facts) is thereby exacerbated. From Frantz Fanon’s account of the struggle in Algeria, Meinhof and her Berlin collective, and later the RAF, borrow the idea that murderous violence — the act of killing another human being — liberates the oppressed individual and makes him or her fully human again, but they never question whether the brutal colonial situation in Algeria is an appropriate analogy for postwar West Germany. If the German government takes harsh measures to control anti–Vietnam War demonstrators, while the U.S. government is taking harsh measures in Vietnam, then (the argument runs) the protesters in Germany are not only the “new Jews” but the “other Vietnamese.” That means imperialist oppression is being practiced in Germany as it is in Vietnam and countries such as Algeria, and it is therefore appropriate that the response in Germany is like the response in the postcolonial third world — armed and violent. It is a process of analogy that is in denial of its own constructedness, and it ends in a declaration of intent to kill. It is also a process dogged by fallacies. Postwar peace protesters were not Jews in the Shoah; the Federal Republic was not Nazi Germany; Berlin


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students were not in a situation anywhere close to that of the North Vietnamese; and the political and social conditions in West Germany were not remotely like those in Algeria, China, or revolutionary South America. But the RAF’s most basic principle is that the RAF is always right. Its introspective dogmatism prohibits the recognition of mistakes, even of mistakes that were clearly visible to its contemporaries: the editors of the radical left-wing paper Prokla (an abbreviation of Probleme des Klassenkampfes; “The Problems of Class Warfare”), for example, reacted to the RAF’s claim to be an antifascist resistance organization by acknowledging that “the necessity and the historical task of resisting a violent fascist regime would justify the use of weapons. But the Federal Republic is not a fascist regime,” they continue, “and the strategy of armed struggle is therefore not only a senseless political mistake, but also lacks the moral justification of the right to resistance. Hence the political and moral disaster of the RAF and its successors.”15 When she argued that certain things “are” (West Germany “is” Nazi Germany, German students “are” the oppressed Vietnamese), Meinhof was substituting the verb “to be” (sein) for the more honest but less rhetorically effective “to be somewhat like, in my opinion.” That creates the potential for a “masked man” fallacy (whereby X and Y are erroneously held to be identical if what is true of X is also true of Y — but in fact X and Y are only identical if they share all of the same properties),16 and the rhetoric returns like a boomerang to its originator — the person most persuaded seems to be Meinhof herself. Instead of becoming a warriorrevolutionary, she becomes the victim of her own logical fallacies. Under the stress of imprisonment her impulse to defend her own fictions grew. A letter sent to Mahler and the group of May 1973, about the isolation wing where she had been held, insists that “the political term for the dead wing, and I say this quite clearly, is the gas chamber. I can only say that my Auschwitz fantasies when I was in there were realistic” (“der politische begriff für toten trakt, sage ich ganz klar ist das gas. meine auschwitzphantasien dadrin waren, kann ich nur sagen, realistisch”).17 That is both rhetorical and delusional: because her perception feels realistic, that means it is real. The RAF’s privileging of the subjective has become radical solipsism, and Meinhof’s personal experience sufficient proof that the proper term (Begriff) for her solitary confinement is “the gas chamber.” Once again she is a Nazi victim as well as hero of the resistance, and her identity seems to depend on defending that blatantly ahistorical fiction as “real.” The most common psychological explanation given for West German terrorism was reiterated in 2002 by psychoanalyst Hans-Jürgen Wirth: a need on the part of the younger generation to compensate for what their parents failed to do, or failed to do sufficiently — to actively resist fascism.18 Another, more complex impetus was the wish of those stamped


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by their national history and the outside world as oppressors to perceive themselves as the oppressed: “that characteristic wish of German leftwing intellectuals, virulent until very recently, to feel like victims,” Reinhard Mohr has called it.19 Both things are manifest when Meinhof portrays herself and her allies, repeatedly, as both Nazi victims and resistance fighters. The RAF would continue to insist on its rightness to the very end. Its final statement in 1998 declared that “the RAF entered into battle with a state that, after its liberation from Nazi fascism, had still not broken with its national socialist past” (“Die RAF nahm den Kampf gegen einen Staat auf, der nach der Befreiung vom Nazi-Faschismus mit seiner nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit nicht gebrochen hatte”).20 That is a last reiteration of the notion, developed in the writings of Ulrike Meinhof, that terrorists in postwar Germany were actually the missing heroes of the German resistance.

Notes The citation for the epigraph in this chapter is as follows: Brückner, Ulrike Marie Meinhof und die deutschen Verhältnisse (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 [1976]), 9. Emphasis in original. 1

Meinhof, “bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf und die defensive der konterrevolution in ihrer psychologischen kriegsführung gegen das volk,” in Meinhof, letzte texte von ulrike, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa (Eigendruck im Selbstverlag, June 1976), 48–59; here 56. The same text is published under the title “rede von ulrike zu der befreiung von andreas, moabit 13. september 1974,” in texte: der raf, ed. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa, Sektion BRD, Stuttgart (Lund: Bo Cavefors, 1977), 62–74. 2

Meinhof, “die dialektik von revolution und konterrevolution” (court statement of 13 September 1975), in Meinhof, letzte texte, 57. 3

Meinhof, “angst ist reaktionär,” in HIS Me,U/016,001.

4

Meinhof, “das ist nicht mystisch,” in “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973–6,” in HIS Me,U/008,002, 73. 5

Meinhof, “das problem bei mir ist” (letter of 3 August 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,005, 1; Meinhof, “hier meine selbstkritik” (letter of June 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,005, 1. 6

“naja diese analyse” (unsigned, undated letter, presumably from Baader), in HIS En,G/010,005, 75. See chapter 6. 7

“Menschlich ist es sogar erfreulich, deckt aber nicht mein Bedürfnis nach Wärme, nach Solidarität, nach Gruppenzugehörigkeit.” Meinhof, cited in Bettina Röhl, So macht Kommunismus Spaß! Ulrike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl und die Akte konkret (Hamburg: EVA, 2006), 572.


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8

“wenn deine identität kampf ist . . .” Letter from Meinhof (11 October 1974), in Meinhof, “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76),” in Me,U/008,002, 43; reprinted in das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973– 1977: Dokumente, ed. Pieter Bakker Schut (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1987), 178–79; here 178. 9

“Die Aktionen der Terroristen entfalten sich immer weniger in konkreten Lebenssituationen . . . so daß . . . keine positiven oder negativen Erfahrungen gemacht werden können. . . . die Terroristinnen [blenden] Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Ehemann, Familie, den Arbeitskollegen, Vorgesetzten [aus], . . . Mangels relevanter sonstiger Beziehungen braucht man auch auf nichts und niemanden Rücksicht zu nehmen.” Fabricius-Brand, “Frauen in der Isolation,” in Frauen und Terror: Versuche, die Beteiligung von Frauen an Gewalttaten zu erklären, ed. Susanne von Paczensky (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978), 55–68; here 62–64. 10

“Ganz wichtig für die Beurteilung dieser Tätergruppen ist die Tatsache, daß sie in absoluter Inzucht leben, ununterbrochen miteinander sprechen und sich weiter in das hineinsteigern, was sie tun und ideologisch für richtig halten wollen. Dabei geben sie den Kontakt zur Realität fast vollständig auf.” “Die Täter leben in absoluter Inzucht,” Spiegel interview with Helga Einsele, in Der Spiegel 33 (1977): 28–29; here 28. 11

“Was geht mich der Vietnamkrieg an, wenn ich Orgasmusschwierigkeiten habe?” Kunzelmann, cited e.g. in http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/1/0, 3672,4297825,00.html (accessed 1 August 2008). 12

“Die Entscheidung so bedeutender Figuren wie Horst Mahler und Ulrike Meinhof, in den Untergrund zu gehen, ist keine taktische; als Apologeten und Propagandisten der RAF hätten sie dieser in der Legalität sehr viel nützlicher sein können. Ihre Entscheidung ist eine existentielle, sie gründet auf der Idee der totalen Verantwortlichkeit des Individuums.” Til Schulz, “‘Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis’: Abenteuer des falschen Bewußtseins,” in Kursbuch 35 (April 1974): 135–52; here 141. 13

“einziges taktisches Kalkül ist die Existenz des Guerilla selbst . . . : den übermächtigen Gegner zu vernichten und sich selbst zu behaupten, sind in der Erfahrung der Kämpfenden eins . . . Die Selbstbehauptung . . . erfüllt sich im Selbstopfer.” Schulz, “‘Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis’: Abenteuer des falschen Bewußtseins,” in Kursbuch 35 (1974): 135–52; here 143. 14

Meinhof, document titled “14. Mai Notizen” (August 1974), in HIS Me,U/025,006. Further references appear in the text. 15

“Die Notwendigkeit und die historische Aufgabe des Widerstands gegen ein faschistisches Gewaltregime wurde auch den “Griff zur Waffe” rechtfertigen. Aber die Bundesrepublik ist kein faschistisches Regime und daher ist eine solche Strategie des bewaffneten Kampfes nicht nur unsinnig, politisch verfehlt, sondern ihr geht auch die aus dem Widerstandsrecht abgeleitete moralische Rechtfertigung ab. Daher gerade ruhrt die politische und moralische Misere der RAF und ihrer Nachfolgegruppen.” Prokla 30 (January 1978). See http://partisan.net/ archive/1977/7712.html (accessed 6 September 2006). My emphasis. 16


See the introduction.

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17

Letter from Meinhof (20 May 1973), in das info, ed. Bakker Schut, 19–25; here 21. 18

Hans-Jürgen Wirth, Narzissmus und Macht: Zur Psychoanalyse seelischer Störungen in der Politik (Giessen: Psychosozial, 2002), 272 ff.; cited in Jörg Herrmann, “Ulrike Meinhof und Gudrun Ensslin — Vom Protestantismus zum Terrorismus,” in Zur Vorstellung des Terrors: Die RAF, ed. Klaus Biesenbach, 2 vols. (Berlin: Steidl/KW, 2005), 2:112–14; here 113. 19

“jenes Charakteristikum der deutschen Linksintellektuellen . . . , das bis in die jüngste Vergangenheit virulent ist: der Wunsch, sich als Opfer zu spüren.” Reinhard Mohr, “Revolutionäres Gewäsch,” in Der Spiegel 33 (1996): 136. 20

“Selbstauflösungserklärung der RAF,” cited in Martin Jander, “Isolation: Zu den Haftbedingungen der RAF-Gefangenen,” in Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, ed. Wolfgang Kraushaar, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition 2006), 2:973–94; here 979.


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Works Cited I. Texts and Collections of Texts by Ulrike Meinhof and the RAF Collective Bakker Schut, Pieter, ed. das info: briefe von gefangenen aus der raf aus der diskussion 1973–1977: Dokumente. Kiel: Neuer Malik, 1987. Hoffmann, Martin, ed. Rote Armee Fraktion: Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF. Berlin: ID-Verlag, 1997. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa, Sektion BRD, Stuttgart, ed. texte: der raf. Lund: Bo Cavefors, 1977. Kollektiv RAF (Meinhof). Die Rote Armee aufbauen: Erklärung zur Befreiung Andreas Baaders vom 5. Juni 1970. In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 24–26. ———. Das Konzept Stadtguerilla. In Hoffmann Rote Armee Fraktion, 27–48. ———. Dem Volk dienen. In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 112–44. ———. (Kommando Petra Schelm). “Anschlag auf das Hauptquartier der US-Army in Frankfurt/Main: Erklärung vom 14. Mai 1972.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 145. ———. (Kommando Thomas Weisbecker). “Anschläge in Augsburg und München: Erklärung vom 16. Mai 1972.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 145–46. ———. (Kommando Manfred Grashof). “Anschlag auf den BGH-Richter Buddenberg in Karlsruhe: Erklärung vom 20. Mai 1972.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 146. ———. (Kommando 2. Juni). “Sprengstoffanschlag auf das Springer-Hochhaus in Hamburg: Erklärung vom 20. Mai 1972.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 147. ———. (Kommando 15. Juli). “Bombenanschlag auf das Hauptquartier der US-Army in Europa in Heidelberg: Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 148. ———. Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München: Zur Strategie des antiimperialistischen Kampfes (November 1972). In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 151–77. ———. “Hungerstreikerklärung vom 8. Mai 1973.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 187–89. ———. “Hungerstreikerklärung vom 13. September 1974.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 190–92. ———. (Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof). “konzept a./u.: zu einem anderen prozess.” In Meinhof, letzte texte von ulrike, 43–47.


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———. (Horst Mahler). Über den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa (Rotbuch 29). Berlin: Wagenbach, 1971. ———. “Tonbandprotokoll von dem Teach-In der Roten Hilfe Frankfurt/ M: Erklärung vom 25.5.1972.” In Hoffmann, Rote Armee Fraktion, 148–51. ———. “Erklärung der Gefangenen aus der RAF zum Ausschluß von Horst Mahler aus der RAF—Monika Berberich für die Gefangenen der RAF im Prozeß Baader-Befreiung am 27. September 1974.” In Der Kampf gegen die Vernichtungshaft, edited by Komitee gegen Folter an politischen Gefangenen in der BRD (n.p., n.d.), 24–29. ———. (Ulrike Meinhof). “bewaffnete antiimperialistische kampf und die defensive der konterrevolution in ihrer psychologischen kriegsführung gegen das volk.” In Meinhof, letzte texte, 48–59. ———. (Ulrike Meinhof). “teile zu der erklärung der gefangenen aus der raf vom januar 76.” In Meinhof, letzte texte, 18–30. ———. (Ulrike Meinhof). “fragment über struktur.” In Meinhof, letzte texte, 3–5. ———. (Jan-Carl Raspe). “erklärung von jan-carl raspe im prozess in stuttgart-stammheim.” In Meinhof, letzte texte, 1–2. Meinhof, Ulrike Marie. “Flucht aus dem Mädchenheim.” konkret 9 (1966): 18–23. ———. “Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik: aufgehoben oder abgeschoben?” Frankfurter Hefte: Zeitschrift für Kultur und Politik 21.9 (1966): 616–26. ———. (Berliner Redaktionskollektiv). “Gewalt.” konkret 6 (1968): 24–28 and 35. ———. “Guxhagen—Mädchen in Fürsorgeerziehung: Ein Heim in Hessen.” Hessischer Rundfunk, typescript, [November 1969]. ———. “Revolutionsgerede.” In Revolution gegen den Staat? Die außerparlamentarische Opposition—die neue Linke, edited by Hans Dollinger. Berne: Rütten + Loening, 1968, 208–9. ———. “Falsches Bewußtsein.” In Emanzipation und Ehe, edited by Christa Rotzoll. Munich: Delp, 1968, 33–50; reprinted in Meinhof, Die Würde, 117–33. ———. Bambule: Fürsorge—Sorge für wen? Berlin: Wagenbach, 1971. ———. Ulrike Meinhof: Dokumente einer Rebellion. 10 Jahre “konkret”Kolumnen. Ed. Klaus Rainer Röhl. Hamburg: konkret, 1972. ———. letzte texte von ulrike, edited by Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa (Eigendruck im Selbstverlag). Desktop publication, June 1976. ———. “das ist scheisse.” (letter of 23 March 1976). In Meinhof, letzte texte, 9–10. ———. Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar: Aufsätze und Polemiken. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 (1980). ———. Deutschland Deutschland unter anderm: Aufsätze und Polemiken. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995.


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———. Everybody Talks About the Weather . . . We Don’t: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof, edited with an introduction by Karin Bauer. New York: Seven Stories, 2008. Röhl, Klaus Rainer, ed. Ulrike Meinhof: Dokumente einer Rebellion. 10 Jahre “konkret”-Kolumnen. Hamburg: konkret, 1972.

II. Documents held in the RAF Archive of the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS) Anon. Document giving dates of Meinhof’s imprisonment to her death. In HIS, Me,U/026,001. [Baader, Andreas]. “naja diese analyse.” In HIS En,G/010,005. Croissant, Klaus. “An die Buchhandlung Wendelin Niedlich” (book order for Meinhof of 16 May 1974). In HIS En,G/008,001. Ensslin, Gudrun. “U: was willst du mit ner friedlichen demonstration?” (letter dated 12. [sic; 1974 or 1975]). In HIS En,G/010,004. [Ensslin, Gudrun]. Letter regarding the info (27 June 1973). In HIS Me,U/004,004. Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs. “Beschluss: Baader, Ensslin, Meins, Raspe (27. September 1972).” In HIS En,G/002,002. ———. “Verfügung from Ermittlungsrichter des Bundesgerichtshofs” (29 August 1973). In HIS Me,U/004,004. Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Europa, “Presseerklärung.” In HIS En,G/010,006. [Kollektiv RAF]. “Schulungsliste.” In HIS Ba,A/025,004. Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg. “Auswertungsbericht” (12 May 1976). In HIS Me,U/016,001. ———. “Verzeichnis” (list of books found in Baader’s cell after his death). In HIS Te/006,005. ———. “Verzeichnis” (list of books found in Raspe’s cell after his death). In HIS Te/006,005. Landespolizeidirektion Stuttgart II, “Leichensache, Eilt sehr” (report on the death of Meinhof). In HIS Me,U/016,001. Meinhof, Ulrike. “aus der zeit: 16.6.72–8.2.73” (her description of solitary confinement). In HIS Me,U/009,002. ———. “haftbedingungen/isolation—daten/fakten.” In HIS Me,U/ 026,009. ———. “Vietnamisierung” (undated document; presumably 1973). In HIS Me,U/008,010. ———. “briefe ulrikes aus dem trakt, 73/74.” In HIS Me,U/008,002. ———. Letter regarding solitary confinement (26 February 1973). In Meinhof, “briefe ulrikes aus dem trakt, 73/74.” ———. “Briefe von Ulrike Meinhof 1973–6.” In HIS Me,U/008,002. ———. “antwort von u. zu der behauptung der bundesanwaltschaft, g. sei ‘von allen sittlichen bindungen frei etc.’” In Me,U/008,002.


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———. Draft hunger strike statement (26 January 1974). In HIS Me,U/012,001. ———. Letter to Ulrich Preuss regarding isolation as brainwashing (21 April 1974). In HIS Me,U/009,005. ———. “Der Hauptwiderspruch in den Metropolen des Imperialismus ist der Widerspruch zwischen Produktivkräften und Produktionsverhältnissen” (speech delivered by Astrid Proll, 1974). In HIS, Me,U/013,002. ———. “naja—ich würde sagen” (letter to Wienke Zitzlaff of 4 June 1974). In HIS Me,U/012,006. ———. “skizze zu bassa (arbeitstitel: stadtguerilla und metropole brd).” In HIS Me,U/004,004. ———. “pe—’schwein’ ist nicht die frage” (letter to Irene Goergens of 11 October 1974). In “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76).” In HIS Me,U/008,002. ———. Request for publisher catalogues. In HIS Me,U/013,002. ———. “hier meine selbstkritik” (letter of June 1974). In HIS Me,U/025,005. ———. “der dreck, mit dem die bullen” (“14. Mai Notizen”; notes for the trial regarding the liberation of Baader in 1970, August 1974). In HIS Me,U/025,006. ———. “das problem bei mir ist” (letter of August 1974). In HIS Me,U/025,005. ———. “verdammt—ich schick hier was mit” (letter of early September 1974). In HIS Me,U/015,006. ———. Meinhof, “Was redst du da” (handwritten letter, undated; presumably February 1975). In HIS En,G/010,004. ———. Letter to the RAF prisoners in Hamburg (14 October 1975). In “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76).” In Me,U/008,002. ———. “naja der votzenchauvinismus” (undated letter). In HIS Ba,A/002,004. ———. “er—der votzenchauvinismus” (letter of January 1976). In HIS Me,U/008,002. ———. “nenee—ahab” (undated letter). In HIS En,G/010,007. ———. “angst ist reaktionär” (undated note). In HIS Me,U/016,001. Meins, Holger. “du blöder idiot” (letter of 1 November 1974). In HIS Me,H/006,006. Vollzugsanstalt Stuttgart. Letter regarding Meinhof’s attack on senior warder Renate Reisener (31 July 1974). In HIS Me/U,007,004. Westdeutscher Rundfunk. List of Meinhof’s radio programs broadcast by them (13 December 1976). In HIS Me,U/028,005.

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Index accumulation, rhetorical, 131 Adorno, Theodor W., 10, 18 aggregated symbol, 135, 139 Agit 883 (journal), 80, 82 Aktenzeichen XY—ungelöst (German television show), 85, 113 Aktion, as item of left-wing vocabulary, xi, xv, 3, 13, 19, 24, 103, 112, 122, 130, 156, 160, 166, 174, 178, 180, 182 Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frau. See Council of Action for Women’s Liberation Albrecht, Susanne, 142, 194 Al-Fatah, 119, 137 Algeria, 10, 28, 38, 40–41, 44, 73, 86, 92, 232–33 Aliança Libertadora Nacional (ALN), 92 altruism, as justification for acts of violence, 62, 83, 122, 229–30 Analysen zum Terrorismus, 20, 47, 77, 114–15, 129, 141, 143–44, 182, 193, 195–97, 219–20 anarchist, 31, 87, 99, 163, 183, 229 anarchy, 142 annihilation custody (Vernichtungshaft), 114, 137, 153–54, 167, 181–82 Anti-Atom-Bewegung. See antinuclear movement antiauthoritarianism, 10, 21, 81, 164 anticapitalism, xii, 11, 96, 158, 203 anti-imperialism, 91, 128, 142–43, 156–57, 159–60, 174, 182, 186, 200, 204, 222, 226, 234 anti-intellectualism, 90, 135 antinuclear movement (Anti-AtomBewegung), 21–22, 29, 72, 231


antisemitism, 10–11, 28–29, 47, 158 Arbeitsgemeinschaft Nationalsozialistischer Studentinnen. See Association of National Socialist Women Students ARD (German television channel), 29 Argument, Das (student pamphlet), 72 armed resistance, 85, 89, 94–95, 131, 132 armed struggle (bewaffneter Kampf), 4, 19, 85, 88–89, 95, 97–99, 109, 114, 125, 132–33, 143, 145, 163, 174, 186, 188, 200, 222, 233–35 arms article, the (Wehrartikel), 27 arson, in Frankfurt department stores, xi, 42–44, 49, 62–64, 69–70, 79, 136–37, 227 Asdonk, Brigitte, 65, 99 Association of National Socialist Women Students (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Nationalsozialistischer Studentinnen), 24 Augstein, Josef, 220 Augstein, Rudolf, 46, 137, 147 Augustin, Ronald, 154 Auschwitz, 5, 9–10, 14, 18, 26–27, 44, 111, 124–25, 158, 233 Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO). See Extraparliamentary Opposition Aust, Stefan, 5, 6, 8, 100, 114, 164, 172–73, 179, 215 Aust, Stefan, works by: The BaaderMeinhof Complex (Der BaaderMeinhof-Komplex), 5, 8, 16–18, 49, 75–76, 78, 114, 147, 164, 172, 179, 184–85, 187, 209, 215, 222–23 Austin, J. L., 106, 115

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252

INDEX

avant-garde, revolutionary, the, xi, 84, 91, 105–6 Ayatollah Khomeini, 101 Azzola, Axel, 146 Baader, Andreas: arrest of, 133, 149, 160, 193; as arsonist, 42, 150; death of, xi, 127; as feminine, 191; as the guerilla incarnate, 172–78, 188; as RAF member, xi–xv, 5, 13, 15, 51, 79–88, 98–100, 106–7, 110, 116–18, 149–53, 156, 161, 167, 172–78; relationship with Meinhof, 172–78, 206–15, 217, 226; as Staffelberg Project leader, 62–66, 74 Baaderbefreiung. See liberation of Baader Baader-Meinhof Complex, The (Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex). See Aust, Stefan, works by Baader-Meinhof Group or Gang (Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe or -Bande), as designation for the Red Army Faction, xi, xv, 19, 117–20, 126, 130–31, 134, 138–39, 141, 143–47, 155, 184, 191–93, 218–19, 221 Baader-Meinhof-Report, 131, 138–39, 144, 147, 191–93, 219 Bachem, Rolf, 112, 137, 147 Bachmann, Josef, 10, 33 Bäcker, Hans-Jürgen, 79–80, 229 Backes, Uwe, 12, 19 Baggini, Julian, 20, 46 Bakker Schut, Pieter, 7, 17, 20, 77–78, 112, 141, 148, 154, 161, 168, 173, 180–85, 204, 218, 221–22, 235–36 Bambule (Riot) (film). See Meinhof, Ulrike, works by Bartsch, Jürgen, 52–53, 58, 75–76 “bassa,” planned RAF document. See Red Army Faction collective, works by: Stadtguerilla und Metropole BRD Bauer, Karin, 17, 45, 75, 114, 141 Baumann, Michael (“Bommi”), 10–11, 18–19, 188, 218


Becker, Eberhard, 153, 164, 170 Becker, Jillian, works by: Hitler’s Children, 143 Becker, Marieluise, 153–55, 181–82, 186 Beer, Henning, 142 Beer, Wolfgang, 170 Begriff, as RAF terminology, 13, 90, 142, 160, 169–72, 178–79, 208, 233 Berberich, Monika, 4, 16, 99, 114 Bericht über Vernichtungshaft und Isolationsfolter in Gefängnissen der BRD und Westberlins (Report on Annihilation Custody and Isolation Torture in West German and West Berlin Prisons), 154, 181 Berlin, East, 112, 119 Berlin, West, xi, xv, 6–9, 11, 17, 19, 21, 33–34, 40–44, 47, 49, 54, 71, 79, 81, 84–86, 89–92, 99–100, 103, 118, 141, 154, 181–82, 204, 225, 228–29, 232 Berlin Editors’ Collective (Berliner Redaktionskollektiv), 21, 36–45, 48–49 Berliner Redaktionskollektiv. See Berlin Editors’ Collective Berlin-Moabit prison, 173 Betz, Werner, 144 Bewegung 2. Juni. See 2 June Movement Bezzel, Chris, 164, 184 Bielby, Clare, xiii, 16, 218 Biesenbach, Klaus, 236 Bild-Zeitung (newspaper), 33, 97, 141, 194, 219 Bismarck, Otto von, 118 Black Panthers, the, 93 Black Power movement, the, 41, 45, 90 Black September (terrorist organization), 11, 133, 156–60, 171, 179, 182, 230 Boehlich, Walter, 127–28, 143 Bogerts, Bernhard, 189–91 Böke, Karin, 143 Bolivia, xi, 86

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INDEX Böll, Heinrich, 51, 62, 117, 125, 128–29, 134, 139, 141, 143–44, 147, 217 Böll, Heinrich, works by: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, 129; “Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade oder freies Geleit?” 51, 62, 75, 117, 125, 141, 217, 224; “Das Wort Intellektuellenhetze ist berechtigt,” 139, 147 Boock, Peter-Jürgen, 63 Böse, Wilfried, 11 brain, of Ulrike Meinhof, 153, 159, 189–90 brainwashing, 40, 154, 159, 167, 183 Brandt, Heinz, 154 Brandt, Willy, 8, 93, 132, 139 Braunmühl, Carlchristian von, 18 Brigade Rossi, 172 Brosch, Peter, 61–66, 74, 77 Brückner, Peter, 5, 16, 49, 132–39, 145–46, 225–26, 234 Bruhn, Joachim, 11, 19 Buback, Siegfried, 127, 139 Buddenberg, Wolfgang, 107, 122–25, 143 Bulle (abusive term for a policeman), 1, 87, 93, 99, 109, 125, 134, 136– 37, 139, 176, 186, 200, 207–8, 215, 217, 221, 226, 230–31; Bullenstaat (police state), 178; Bullenvotze (police cunt), 207–8 Bundeskriminalamt (BKA; German Federal Criminal Bureau), 119, 144, 194, 219 Bundestag. See parliament, German Bundeswehr (German Federal Army), 22, 24, 27–28, 46 Butler, Judith, 15, 141 cadre, in RAF usage, 87–88 camera silens, 154, 182 Capelli, Giovanni, 172, 185 capitalism, xi, 11, 13, 35–42, 49–50, 53–54, 57, 62, 66–68, 70, 81, 89–90, 100–103, 111, 117, 119, 122–24, 128, 156–60, 169, 174– 75, 182, 188, 201, 203, 208–11


253

care homes, for juvenile offenders, xi, 6, 51–77, 79, 81–83, 111 Carmichael, Stokely, 41, 90 Castro, Fidel, 92 Central Intelligence Agency, the (CIA), 126, 130, 195 chatterer, 83, 86, 92 China, 13, 86, 92, 99, 233 Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union or CDU), 24, 133 Christian Socialist Union, the (Christlich Soziale Union or CSU), 22, 126 Cienfuegos, Camilo, 92 circle of empathy (Jaron Lanier’s term), 1–2, 79, 110–11, 115, 227 civil war. See war, civil class enemy (Klassenfeind), 57, 196 class war. See war, class Cleaver, Eldridge, 87 collective, the (as political organizational form), 7, 36–37, 63–65, 75, 83–84, 87, 112–13, 116, 161–70, 174–80, 188, 197, 203, 205, 208– 9, 225–27, 229, 232 Cologne-Ossendorf prison, 149, 155 colonialism, 6, 10, 28, 38–41, 70–73, 86, 111, 232 Colvin, Sarah, 15, 223 Committees against Isolation Torture (Komitees gegen Isolationsfolter), 151 communism, 3, 5, 22, 24–25, 31, 46, 91–92, 118, 135, 139, 162; Chinese, 91; East German, 24–25, 139; West German communist party (DKP), 118, 135; West German communist party (KPD), 118–19 concentration camp, 26, 28, 30, 40, 97–98, 102, 138, 154, 159, 167 concrete poets, 164 constitutive outside, Judith Butler’s term, 1, 117 consumerism, 169 contact block law (Kontaktsperrgesetz), 127

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254

INDEX

Cornils, Ingo, xiii Council of Action for Women’s Liberation (Aktionsrat zur Befreiung der Frau), 54, 200 counterrevolution, 37, 42–43, 49, 76, 105, 117–18, 126–28, 143, 186, 199, 204, 222, 232, 234 counter-violence (Gegen-Gewalt), 31–44, 47–48, 86, 111, 121, 123, 168, 230 criminality, 12–13, 28, 43, 53, 64, 70, 80, 83, 93, 101, 121, 130–31, 133, 136–39, 154, 163, 179, 229; in women, 190–91, 194, 217 criminology, 189, 192 Croissant, Klaus, 7, 15, 75, 152, 163, 173, 179, 187 Cuba, 86, 92 cunt (Votze), as RAF term, 5, 185, 188–89, 199–200, 206–9, 217, 221–22, 226 Dayan, Mosche, 158 Deber, Roland, 80 Debray, Régis, 96 Debus, Sigurd, 170 Demes, Ute, 18 democracy, 5, 16, 19–20, 23, 27–28, 30, 35, 40, 47, 49, 94, 97–98, 114, 128–29, 134–36, 163, 198, 231 demonstration, as political protest, 9, 33, 35, 37, 39, 83, 93, 108, 223, 231 denazification, 28 destabilization, as terrorist strategy, 12, 89, 128–30, 135 Deutscher Herbst. See German Autumn of 1977 Deutschunterricht, Der (journal), 112, 147 diction, elevated. See language, highregister Diewald-Kerkmann, Gisela, 218 difference, construction of by terrorist groups, 13, 34, 81, 89, 136, 139–40, 174 disguised masculinism (verdeckte Männlichkeit), Harald Uetz’s term, 202, 221


Ditfurth, Jutta, 5, 16, 18–19, 43, 45– 49, 114, 141, 146, 173, 180–81, 185, 187 dividing lines, ideological, 116, 132, 140, 230 Dokumentation Baader-MeinhofBande, 131, 145, 192, 219 Dollinger, Hans, 78, 115 du Gay, Paul, 15 Dümlein, Christine, 142 Dürkop, Marlis, 198, 219–21 Dutschke, Rudi, 9–10, 16, 31, 33, 36–39, 44, 48, 83, 133, 145 East Berlin. See Berlin, East East Germany. See German Democratic Republic Eckes, Christa, 170 Eckhardt, Hans, 99, 122 economy, the, European, 102–3; capitalist, 62, 160 Eichenhof care home, the, 54, 65, 71, 79, 81, 83 Eichinger, Bernd, 8, 16, 185 Eichmann, Adolf, 22, 29 Einsele, Helga, 198, 220, 227–28, 235 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 22 emancipation, 10, 40, 53, 198, 200; of women, 53, 57, 76, 191–92, 195, 198, 200–201, 218, 220–21 emergency laws (Notstandsgesetze), 26–27, 29–31, 35–36, 44, 46–48, 83, 112, 120, 128, 228, 231 Emma (journal), 195, 220 empathy, 1, 59–61, 66–68, 111, 115, 200, 227, 230–31; circle of (see circle of empathy) Ensslin, Christiane, 183, 219 Ensslin, Gottfried, 183, 219 Ensslin, Gudrun: arrest of, 133, 149; as arsonist, 42, 150, 227; death of, xi, 127; as RAF member, xi–xv, 3, 5, 6–7, 13, 79–83, 149–53, 159– 67, 201; relationship with Meinhof, 6–7, 152, 170, 172–73, 179–80, 205–17, 226; as Staffelberg Project leader, 62–65, 69, 73–74; as woman terrorist, 191, 193

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INDEX Entebbe, Uganda, 111 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, 36, 46, 147, 182 ethos, 72, 87, 106, 128 Evans, Jessica, 15 experience, primacy of, 54–56, 74–75, 89–90, 105, 150, 159, 170–72, 201, 233 Extraparliamentary Opposition (APO), 8, 23, 31, 48, 142 Fabricius-Brand, Margarete, 200, 221, 224, 227, 235 Fahrholz, Bernd, 19 Faller, Herbert, 63 Fanon, Frantz, works by: The Wretched of the Earth, 10, 18, 38–39, 48–49, 70, 73, 78, 86, 113 Farah Diba, Empress of Iran, 101, 114 Farrington, Constance, 18, 48, 113 Fascism, 7, 11, 26–27, 30–31, 34, 44–45, 86, 102, 118, 122–23, 126, 137, 157–59, 174, 179, 231, 233–34; antifascism, 3; left-wing, 10, 118. See also “new fascism” Federal Republic of Germany. See Germany, Federal Republic of feminism, 5, 50, 55, 57, 74, 179, 188–89, 192–202, 215–16, 218, 222, 224, 227 Ferrero, Guiglielmo, 190–91, 218 Fest, Joachim, 29, 47 Fetscher, Iring, 20, 47, 77, 115, 138, 141–42, 144, 147, 182, 219 Finkemeyer, H., 218 Fischer, Thomas, 113 Fishman, Pamela, 224 Fleischhauer, Daniela, 18 focus theory, xi, 91 Folter. See solitary confinement, as torture Fosl, Peter S., 20, 46 Foucault, Michel, works by: Discipline and Punish, 154, 181 Frankfurt School (Frankfurter Schule), 19 Frankfurt “Teach-in,” 108–10, 115


255

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper), 139, 147, 163, 183 Frankfurter Hefte (journal), 51, 75 Frankfurter Rundschau, newspaper, 17, 43, 124 Free Democratic [Liberal] Party (Freie Demokratische Partei or FDP), 132–33, 156 Free University (Freie Universität) Berlin, 112 Fremdwörter, 98, 114 French Revolution, 31 Fried, Claus, 117–18, 141 Fried, Erich, 4 Friedmann, Anneliese, 23 Friedrich, Ralf Baptist, 142 Fromkin, David, 20 Fürstenfeldbrück airport, Munich, 156 Gastarbeiter, 102, 114 Gäthje, Olaf, 17, 183–84 Gegen-Gewalt. See counter-violence Gehrke, Wolfgang, 119, 142 Geißler, Heiner, 219 Gelsthorpe, Lorraine, 220 genocide, 124, 156–58 Genscher, Hans Dietrich, 120, 128, 132–38, 145–47, 156 German Autumn of 1977 (Deutscher Herbst), 10–11, 16, 19, 129, 132, 161 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 5, 9, 21–25, 28, 36, 46, 112, 119– 20, 135, 139, 142, 146, 154, 190 Germany, Federal Republic of: and the GDR, 9, 21, 24–25, 112, 128, 135, 139; and the Nazi past, 23– 24, 26–31, 33–34, 37, 44–45, 97, 138–39, 156, 231–32; and 1968, 33–45, 93; and re-armament, 24–25, 27; social conditions in, 9–11, 51–75, 86, 90, 101–5, 188, 198–99, 216–17, 226, 228, 233; and terrorism, 2, 8–11, 13–15, 31, 117–19, 125–40, 153–63, 173, 188, 191–99, 233–34 Geschwätz. See language as chatter Gierds, Bernhard, 47

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256

INDEX

Gleichschaltung, Nazi term, 29, 47 globalization, 106, 145 Globke, Hans, 28, 47 Glücksmann, André, 47 Goebbels, Josef, 125, 138, 147 Goergens, Irene, 65, 71, 79, 81, 99, 165, 184 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 192– 93, 219 Götte, Bernd, 152 Grashof, Manfred, 77, 107, 116, 122– 23, 143, 165–66 Grässle-Münscher, Josef, 13, 20 Gremliza, Hermann L., 47, 76, 143 Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9), 156 Groenewold, Kurt, 33 Gross, Jan, 154–55 Großherr, Dieter, 28, 47 guerilla: as designation, 12–13, 62, 79, 92, 116, 130, 142, 225, 228; definition of, 12–13, 19–20, 162, 170, 172, 176–77, 225; incarnation of in Andreas Baader, 172–78, 188; as point of identity, 229, 235; urban (Stadtguerilla), 13, 16, 19, 47, 87–106, 112–13, 130–33, 137, 140, 142, 145, 147, 160, 162, 170, 172, 174, 177, 183, 220 Guevara, Che, 13, 90, 92, 121, 176 Guxhagen, care home, 58, 63, 76 Habermas, Jürgen, 10, 18 Hacker, Friedrich, 192, 219 Hannover, Heinrich, 154 Hauenschild, Karl, 136 Hausner, Siegfried, 162 Hehn, Klausjürgen, 17 Heinemann, Gustav, 22 Helbing, Monika, 142 Heldmann, Hans Heinz, 23, 46 Henck, Helmut, 172 Heringer, Hans Jürgen, 144 Herrmann, Jörg, 77, 112, 236 Hess, Henner, 12, 19 Himmler, Heinrich, 158 Hitler, Adolf, 22–23, 26–31, 45, 47, 86, 111, 127, 138, 158 Hödel, Max, 118


Hoffmann, Martin, 77, 112, 114–15, 140, 142–44, 182, 184 Hofstätter, Peter, 220 Hogefeld, Birgit, 9, 18 holocaust, the. See Shoah, the Homann, Peter, 100–101 homosexuality, 53, 61, 193; female (see lesbianism) Hoppe, Werner, 170 Horchem, Hans Joseph, 195, 220 Horizont, GDR journal, 119–20, 142 Horkheimer, Max, 10, 18 Horlemann, Jürgen, 48 Hübotter, Klaus, 21, 45 hunger strikes, xi, 116, 138, 165–68, 184 hysteria, 132, 135; in women terrorists, 192 identity: and language, 169–72; of the RAF as group, 4, 140, 149, 161– 67, 175–76, 179–80, 198, 226, 229, 235; in solitary confinement, 116, 152–55, 165, 172, 179, 181, 206, 213, 231; and victimhood, 10, 31, 38–41, 44–45, 57, 82, 86, 111, 124, 138, 231, 233–34; and violence, 188–91 ideology, 11, 56, 77, 90, 96, 138, 197 IG Druck-Papier-Keramik, trade union, 136 IG-Farben building, the, 107 IG-Metall, trade union, 118 illegality, 1, 80, 93–95, 119, 160, 174, 183, 198, 218, 221 IMK (Innenministerkonferenz), 129, 144 imperialism, 6, 9, 13, 24, 32, 39–40, 49, 81, 86, 89–91, 94, 105, 110– 11, 113, 124, 128, 142–43, 153, 156–60, 174–76, 182, 186, 200, 204, 222, 225–26, 230–34 implied reasoning, 30, 39 industrialization, 101–2, 131 info, das, 7, 17, 20, 77–78, 141, 148, 161–68, 171–73, 178–80, 183–85, 197, 201–6, 211, 221–22, 227–28, 236

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INDEX innere Sicherheit. See national security intelligensia, 80–81, 90–91, 99, 146– 47, 236 International Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Western Europe (Internationales Komitee zur Verteidigung politischer Gefangener in Westeuropa), 7, 17, 141, 144, 173, 185–86, 221–22, 234 International Vietnam Congress, 9, 33 internationalism, 9, 11, 19, 33, 86–87, 90, 96, 101–3, 111, 113–14, 179; of capital, 174 Iran, 9, 36, 50, 55, 101–2, 109, 157 isolation: of the RAF as an insular group, 105, 165, 228; in solitary confinement (see solitary confinement) Israel, 5, 11, 14, 156–58, 230 Itzenplitz, Eberhard, 14, 20, 51, 65–67, 77 Jäger, Herbert, 114, 143, 219, 220 Jander, Martin, 15, 20, 142, 182–83, 236 Janssen, Hubertus, 18 Jaspers, Karl, 216–17, 223 Jelinek, Elfriede, works by: Ulrike Maria Stuart, 209, 222 Jewishness, 5, 11, 27–31, 40, 44, 86, 111, 125, 156–58, 231–32. See also “new Jews” Jochimsen, Luc, 114 John, Helmut, xiii Jubelius, Werner, 218, 220–21 2 June Movement (Bewegung 2. Juni), 5, 10, 142, 162, 188, 218 Jünschke, Klaus, 162, 165, 184 JUSOs. See Social Democrats, Young justification of violence, 34, 42, 44, 75, 88, 108, 110, 111, 122–24, 138, 179, 233. See also self-justification, terrorist Kailitz, Susanne, 18 Kampits, Peter, 15 Kätzel, Ute, 76


257

Kaul, Felix, 172 Kaul, Friedrich Karl, 120, 142 Kautzky, R., 218 Kedzierski, Caesar Martin, 18 Kellerhof, Sven Felix, 18, 112 Kennedy, John F., 133 Keßler, Nicola, 181 Klassenfeind. See class enemy Klassenkampf. See war, class Knabe, Hubertus, 142 Knoblich, Georg, 189 Koch, Helmut H., 181 Koenen, Gerd, 19, 62, 77, 108–9, 112, 115, 182 Komitees gegen Isolationsfolter. See Committees against Isolation Torture Kommune 1, 42, 228 konkret (journal), 2, 5–7, 21–23, 28–29, 33, 36–37, 41–54, 64, 70, 74–80, 83, 86, 94–104, 111; critique of RAF, 117–19, 125–26, 136–38; origins, 21 Kontaktsperrgesetz. See contact block law Korte-Pucklitsch, Ilse, 220 Krabbe, Hanne, 117, 162, 172, 204–6, 226 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, works by: Psychopathia sexualis, 190, 218 Kramarae, Cheris, 220 Kraushaar, Wolfgang, 16–20, 46–49, 113, 141–42, 144–45, 158, 182– 83, 218, 236 Krebs, Mario, 5, 16, 48, 77–78, 112, 181–82 Kristallnacht, the, 11 Krushchev, Nikita, 22 Kuhlmann, Brigitte, 11 Kunzelmann, Dieter, 228, 235 Kurras, Karl Heinz, 9 Kursbuch (journal), 113, 140, 147–48, 182, 235 language: and action, 44, 72–74, 84, 90, 106, 132, 174; and brainwashing, 154–55; as chatter (Geschwätz), 80–86, 92, 96, 103, 106, 172;

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258

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language:—(cont’d) critique of, 59, 70–72, 83–84, 106, 172, 202–3; and gender, 197–98, 202–10, 215–19, 224; high-register (formal, of “the system”), 59, 68–72, 83–84, 93, 164, 169, 232; and identity, 1, 116–17, 149; in the info, 164–65, 168–72, 202–7; loss of, 152–53; low-register (informal or colloquial), 70, 83, 232; polemical, 43, 84, 104, 126, 128, 150, 198; proletarian, 83, 232; as resistance, 36, 83; and revolution, 50, 69, 72–73, 80, 83, 90, 107, 110, 155, 160, 164, 168–71, 174, 197, 202–7; rhetorical, 5–6, 12–14, 24, 27–33, 39, 42, 44, 49, 53, 55, 72, 84–85, 94–96, 104–5, 109–111, 117, 121, 124–27, 130–40, 153, 155, 158, 190, 210, 215, 217, 223, 225, 233; and struggle, 35–36, 130–40, 149, 155, 165–68, 204; and terrorism, 11–14; and violence, 36–44, 74, 82, 106–7, 111, 140; of war, 117, 137–39, 165–67, 174, 204–5, 225, 232; and Wittgenstein, 2–4, 90 Lanier, Jaron, 1, 15, 115 Latin America, 39, 79, 92, 102–3, 132, 160 left wing, West German, 4, 8, 11, 22, 24, 28, 30, 36–38, 43–45, 61, 64, 68, 72–74, 80–93, 97–98, 101, 104–11, 116–19, 124–28, 132–40, 154–55, 157–60, 179, 190, 199, 229–30, 233–34 legitimacy, political, 12, 128–30, 139; of violence, 21, 37 Lenin, 4, 9–10, 64, 90, 95–96, 116– 20, 162 lesbianism, 60, 193 Lex RAF, 163, 173 liberalism, 5, 8, 10, 33, 39, 61–62, 66, 68, 77, 132, 156 liberation of Baader (Baaderbefreiung), 51, 80–83, 87–88, 98–100, 106–7, 112–14, 117–18, 128, 141, 144, 174, 176, 200, 229–30, 234


Liedtke, Frank, 143 Linke, Georg, 80, 84, 88, 230 logical fallacy, 14, 94, 233 Lombroso, Cesare, 190–91, 218 long march through the institutions, the, 133 Lorenz, Peter, 133 Lotze, Werner, 142 Löw-Beer, Nele, 220 Lübke, Heinrich, 28–30, 97–98 Ludwig, Hannelore, 20, 47, 77, 115, 141–42, 147, 182 Luxemburg, Rosa, 4, 16 Mach, Ernst, 4 Mahler, Horst, xi, xii, 19, 47, 65, 79–82, 99, 114, 136, 138–39, 164, 201–2, 229, 233, 235 Mahler, Horst, works by: “Die revolutionäre Linke ist kriminell,” 136, 146, 221; “Über den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa,” 114 Maier-Witt, Silke, 142 Maihofer, Werner, 133, 145 maleness. See masculinity Manthey, Jürgen, 45 Mao Tse-Tung, 13, 91, 99–100, 113, 125, 140 Marcuse, Herbert, 10, 18, 62, 64–65, 77, 142 Marenssin, Emile, 19 marginalized groups, 60, 62, 64–67, 80, 82, 86 Marighella, Carlos, 92, 130 Marighella, Carlos, works by: Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, 13, 92, 130 Marx, Karl, 9–10, 25, 35, 62, 64, 90, 96, 113, 118–20, 162 Marx, Karl, works by: Das Kapital,96 masculinity, 191, 216, 190, 195, 198; in women, 190–193; in the RAF, 191, 202, 221 maternal role. See motherhood Matz, Ulrich, 129, 144 May bombings, 79, 102, 107–8, 111, 120–26, 136, 140 McConnell-Ginet, Sally, 203, 222

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INDEX Meinhof, Ulrike Marie: and feminism, 50–51, 55–58, 74–75, 188–89, 199–206, 215–17; idealization of, 4–5, 15–16, 43; as a journalist, 2, 6–8, 14, 21–78, 84–85, 89, 94–95, 97–98, 106, 111, 117, 231–33; as prison writer, 2, 7, 11, 116–17, 149–87, 199–215, 217, 225–27; relationship with Baader, 172–80, 188, 206, 208–15, 230; relationship with Ensslin, 207–15, 227; as a terrorist, xi–xii, 2, 79–115, 118– 48, 225, 228–31, 234; as a violent woman, 188–99; as “voice” of the RAF, 2, 6–7, 11, 79–115 (esp. 83), 167, 190, 206, 217, 225–26, 233–34; and Wittgenstein, 2–4 Meinhof, Ulrike Marie, works by: Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München, 156, 182; “Aktenzeichen XY—aufgelöst,” 85, 113; “Alle reden vom Wetter,” 50, 75; “Ausweisung von Nirumand verhindern!” 75; Bambule: Fürsorge—Sorge für wen?, 6, 14, 16, 20, 45, 51–80, 83, 106, 111, 169, 193, 232; “briefe von u. an die gefangenen (aug. 74–76),” 180, 184–85, 235; “Demokratie spielen,” 30, 47, 114; Deutschland Deutschland unter anderm: Aufsätze und Polemiken, 7, 17, 45–47, 114; “Doof—weil arm,” 70, 78; Everybody Talks about the Weather—We Don’t: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof, 7, 17, 45–50, 114; “Falsches Bewußtsein,” 56–57, 76, 114; “Flucht aus dem Mädchenheim,” 51, 75; “Fortsetzung des Nazismus in der globalen Politik,” 46; “Franz Strauß,” 23, 46; “Die Frauen im SDS oder In eigener Sache,” 54, 76; “Der Friede macht Geschichte,” 22, 45; “GegenGewalt,” 31, 47–48; “Geschichten von Herrn Schütz,” 24, 46; “Glatt glätter Globke,” 28, 47; Guxhagen—Mädchen in Fürsorgeerziehung:


259

Ein Heim in Hessen (radio feature), 58, 76; Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik (radio feature), 75; “Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik: Aufgehoben oder ausgeschoben?” 51, 75; “Hitler in euch,” 22, 45, 47; “Joachim Fest oder die Gleichschaltung,” 29, 47; “Jürgen Bartsch und die Gesellschaft,” 52–53, 58, 75–76; “Der Kampf in den Metropolen,” 49; “Koalitionskrise,” 46; “Kolumnismus,” 43–45, 49, 78, 95, 112–13; Kommentar zum ShahBesuch in Berlin, 47; “Kuli oder Kollege? Gastarbeiter in Deutschland,” 114; letzte texte von ulrike, 7, 17, 141, 172–80, 185–87, 188, 204, 221–22, 234; “Neue deutsche Ghetto-Schau,” 28–29, 47; “Notstand—Klassenkampf,” 35, 48, 112; “Notstand? Notstand!” 26, 46–47; “Offener Brief an Farah Diba,” 101, 114; “Rede im BaaderBefreiungsprozeß 13.9.1974,” 144; “Revolutionsgerede,” 72–73, 78, 106, 115; “stadtguerilla und metropole brd: skizze zu bassa,” 162, 183; Ulrike Meinhof: Dokumente einer Revolution, 17, 75; “Vietnam und die Deutschen,” 94, 113, 137; “Vietnamisierung,” 77; “Vom Protest zum Widerstand,” 34, 48, 95, 112, 114; “Warenhausbrandstiftung,” 42, 49, 69, 78; Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar: Aufsätze und Polemiken, 7, 17, 42, 45–49, 75–76, 78, 112–14 Meinhof, Werner, 74 Meinhof, Wienke. See Zitzlaff, Wienke Meins, Holger, xi, 15, 34, 77, 116–17, 138, 140–41, 147, 149, 160, 165– 67, 171, 179–80, 184–85 Melville, Herman, works by: Moby Dick, 161 metaphor, 14, 29, 30, 34, 44, 60, 95, 116–17, 120, 124, 126, 138, 158–59, 167, 179, 192, 197 Michel, Karl Markus, 140, 147, 182

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260

INDEX

Middendorf, Wolf, 219 Middle East, the, 157 Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS or Stasi), 119–20, 142 Mitscherlich-Nielsen, Margarete, 192, 219 Möbius, Paul Julius, 190, 218 Mohnhaupt, Brigitte, 201 Mohr, Reinhard, 16, 77, 234, 236 Möller, Irmgard, xi, 149, 170 molotov cocktail, 33–34, 79 Moore, Barrington, Jr., 18 Morris, Allison, 220 motherhood, 5, 55–56, 190, 192 Münkler, Herfried, 12, 19–20, 47, 77, 115, 121, 141–42, 147, 182, 223, 228 Musolff, Andreas, 12, 19, 47–49, 141, 143–44, 147 National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands or NPD), 118 national security, 119, 133, 139, 145–46 Nationalzeitung, newspaper, 33 Nazism, 5, 8–10, 14, 22–24, 27–31, 34, 44, 46, 74, 86–87, 94–97, 118, 124–28, 138, 147, 153–58, 189–90, 232–34 Negt, Oskar, 160, 162, 183 neo-Marxism, 10 Neubauer, Kurt, 141 “new fascism,” 27, 30, 44, 86, 158, 231 “new Jews,” 27, 29, 31, 40, 86, 231–32 Nirumand, Bahman, 36, 50–51, 75, 101 Nollau, Günter, 195, 220 Notstandsgesetze. See emergency laws Notwehr. See self-defense NPD. See National Democratic Party Nuremberg Laws of 1933, the, 28 O’Barr, William M., 220 Oesterle, Kurt, 183 Ohnesorg, Benno, 9, 11, 31, 38–39, 44, 107, 123


Olympics, Munich, of 1972, 5, 11, 133, 156–57 Opitz, Reinhard, 21–22 orientalism, 40 outcasts. See marginalized groups Oy, Gottfried, 17 Paczensky, Susanne von, 199, 218–22, 235 Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza, Shah of Iran, 9, 55, 101 Palestine, xi, 5, 11, 92, 103, 109, 133, 137, 156–58 Panorama (German television show), 29 Parker, Cary, xiii, 15, 20 parliament, German (Bundestag), 8, 28, 44, 93, 132–33, 155, 198, 221 peace movement, the, 21–24, 29, 43, 45, 86, 232. See also antinuclear movement Peiffer, Jürgen, 189, 191 Peters, Butz, 77, 142, 181 Pflieger, Klaus, 19, 115, 181 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), 100, 119 Pohl, Helmut, 170 polemic. See language, polemical police state, 31, 44, 93–94, 128, 178 Ponto, Jürgen, xi, 127, 194–95, 199, 219 Preuß, Ulrich, 150, 154, 159, 183 primacy of praxis (Primat der Praxis), 74, 84, 90–91, 103, 110, 116–17 Prinz, Alois, 4–5, 8, 16, 18, 49 Prinzing, Theodor, 136 prisoner: as metaphor, 80, 85; political, 7, 17, 93, 123, 136, 139–40, 147, 167, 173, 182, 185–86, 221– 22, 234; of war, 136, 146 Prokla (Probleme des Klassenkampfes) (journal), 233, 235 proletariat. See working classes, the Proll, Astrid, 149–50 Proll, Thorwald, 42, 62 propaganda, 19, 82, 97, 113, 119–20, 125, 134, 146, 150, 155, 160

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INDEX protest: nonviolent, 9, 18, 24, 27, 31– 48, 50, 54–55, 59, 83, 86, 93–97, 104–8, 157, 190, 228, 231–32; violent, 18, 34, 37–48, 83, 95–99 provocateur, 126, 138, 206 provocation, as terrorist strategy, 13, 129, 137, 140, 167, 226, 229 psychological dualism, 61, 138 public enemy (Staatsfeind), 77, 104, 112, 135, 146 radicals decree (Radikalenerlaß), 26, 127, 135, 145 RAF. See Red Army Faction Randgruppen. See marginalized groups Raspe, Jan Carl, xi, 3, 15, 127, 133, 149, 153, 160, 167, 171, 174–75, 177, 180, 185–86, 210, 223 Rauball, Reinhard, 75, 141, 146, 184, 221 Rauch, Georg von, 99–100 Rauter, Ernst Alexander, 125–26, 143 Ray, Michèle, 87, 113, 125 Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF), as designation for the group, xv, 106; “second generation,” xi, 63, 228 Red Army Faction collective, works by: “Anschlag auf das Hauptquartier der US-Army in Frankfurt/Main: Erklärung vom 14. Mai 1972,” 142; “Anschlag auf den BGHRichter Buddenberg in Karlsruhe: Erklärung vom 20. Mai 1972,” 143; “Anschläge in Augsburg und München: Erklärung vom 16. Mai 1972,” 143; “Bombenanschlag auf das Hauptquartier der US-Army in Europa in Heidelberg: Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972,” 143; Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, 47, 87–98, 101, 104, 106, 112–13, 131, 133, 137, 140, 147, 230; Dem Volk dienen: Stadtguerilla und Klassenkampf, 61, 67, 77, 99, 101–4, 114, 156; Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München, 156, 182; Die Rote Armee aufbauen, 79–93, 104,


261

106–7, 112, 133; “Erklärung zum Bombenanschlag im Hamburger Hauptbahnhof,” 144; “Sprengstoffanschlag auf das SpringerHochhaus in Hamburg: Erklärung vom 20. Mai 1972,” 143; Stadtguerilla und Metropole BRD (“bassa”), 162, 183; texte: der raf, 7, 17, 141, 144, 185, 222, 234; Tonbandprotokoll von dem Teach-In der Roten Hilfe in Frankfurt, 108–10, 115; (Horst Mahler), Über den bewaffneten Kampf in Westeuropa, 19, 98, 114 Red Cells (Rote Zellen), 11 Redman, Peter, 15 Reisener, Renate, 207, 222 resistance: as an idea, 2, 31–40, 43– 44, 48, 61, 64, 67, 74, 83, 85–89, 94–95, 101, 109–11, 121, 123, 131–32, 161, 205, 232–34; resistance fighter, 7, 33–34, 44, 158, 225, 230, 232 revolution, 11, 33, 43, 68, 78, 107, 115, 117, 126–27, 176, 184; cultural, 62; French (see French Revolution); global, 86; in Iran, 101; Russian, 120, 138; and language, 50, 69–72, 80, 83, 90, 107, 110, 155, 160, 164, 168–71, 174, 197, 202–7; potential for, 54, 58, 60, 62, 65, 67, 71–72, 79, 86, 92, 105–6, 160, 171, 229; and the students, 90 rhetoric. See language, rhetorical Rich, Adrienne, 203 Richter, Horst-Eberhard, 18 Riemeck, Renate, 4–5, 16, 21, 23–30, 44, 109, 231 right wing, the, 11, 22, 29, 33, 81, 119, 125–26, 142–43 Röhl, Bettina, 17, 23, 45–47, 112, 226, 234 Röhl, Klaus Rainer, 4–6, 16–17, 21–22, 33, 36, 43, 45, 48–49, 72, 75, 78, 100, 112, 117–18, 180, 193, 234 Röhl, Regine, 33

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262

INDEX

Röhl, Ulrike. See Meinhof, Ulrike Marie Rohrmoser, Günter, 20, 47, 77, 115, 141, 144, 182 Roll, Carmen, 100 Rosenkranz, Gerd, 18 Rote Armee Fraktion. See Red Army Faction Rote Hilfe, 19, 108 Rote Zellen. See Red Cells Roth, Jürgen, 114 Roth, Wolfgang, 126 Ruhland, Karl-Heinz, 100–101 Rühmkorf, Peter, 33, 48 Russ, Joanna, 190–91, 219 Russia, 86, 92, 120, 138 Salvatore, Gaston, 36 Sander, Helke, 54, 76 Sanders-Brahms, Helma, 55–56, 75 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 3, 10, 18, 48, 70– 73, 78, 173 Schelm, Petra, 84, 99–100, 107–8, 121, 124, 142 Schiller, Margrit, 162 Schily, Otto, 19, 173 Schleifstein, Josef, 142 Schleyer, Hanns-Martin, xi–xii, 127– 28, 143 Schmid, Norbert, 99 Schmidtchen, Gerhard, 114, 143–44, 219–20 Schneider, Christian, 18–19 Schneider, Michael, 48 Schneider, Peter, 36 Schoner, Herbert, 99 Schubert, Alex, 113 Schubert, Ingrid, xi–xii, 65, 79, 99, 171, 185 Schulz, Muriel, 220 Schulz, Til, 113, 140, 148, 229, 235 Schütz, Werner, 23–27, 31, 46 Schwarzer, Alice, 195, 198–99, 220–21 Schwarzer Kanal (GDR television show), 28 Schwarzer September. See Black September


Schwätzer. See chatterer Searle, John R., 115 Seckendorff-Gudent, Ekkehard von, 142 Seifert, Jürgen, 16, 24, 46, 72, 78 self-defense (Notwehr), as legal and rhetorical category, 31, 34, 39, 134, 139 self-justification, terrorist, 13, 38, 42, 75, 86, 130, 171, 179, 233 self-sacrifice, 120, 229 sensory deprivation. See solitary confinement sexology, 189 Shakespeare, works by: Julius Caesar, 25–26 Shoah, the, 27, 29, 44, 232 Siepmann, Eckhard, 48 Sisyphus, struggle of, 227 Skelton-Robinson, Thomas, 182 Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD), 93, 126, 132, 146 Social Democrats, Young (Junge Sozialdemokraten or JUSOs), 126 socialism: in East Germany, 5, 23, 119–120, 154; international, 11, 88; and Meinhof, 45, 79, 91, 97, 174; and the students, 9, 32, 54 Socialist German Worker Youth (Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterjugend or SDAJ), 119 socialist law (Sozialistengesetz), 118 Socialist Patients’ Collective (Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv), 162, 164 Socialist Workers’ Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei or SAP), 118 Söhnlein, Horst, 42 solidarity, as political idea, 11, 19, 45, 50, 54, 57–78, 79–83, 108, 111, 118–19, 136, 140, 193, 209, 215, 220, 227, 232, 234 solipsism, 233 solitary confinement: as brainwashing, 167, 175, 183; in care homes for juvenile offenders, 54, 63; and identity, 116, 152–55, 165, 172, 179, 181, 206, 213, 231; of RAF

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INDEX members in custody, 149–56, 158, 165, 167–68, 172, 204–6, 213, 233; as torture, 139, 140, 151, 154, 167, 175, 181 South Africa, 102 Soviet Union, the, 135, 146 Sozialistengesetz. See socialist law Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (SPK). See Socialist Patients’ Collective speech act, 106, 115 Spender, Dale, 197, 217, 219–20, 224 Spengler, Oswald, 216, 223 Spiegel (journal), 16–17, 28, 47, 51, 75, 77, 87, 100–101, 113, 118, 136–37, 140–41, 143, 146–47, 162–63, 183–84, 192–95, 199, 218–19, 221, 224, 227, 235–36 Spiegel affair, the, 22–23 Springer, Alfred, 219 Springer, Axel, 33–34, 37–40, 48, 79, 107, 123, 143 Staatsfeind. See public enemy Stachowiak, Ilse, 170 Stadelheim prison, xii Stadtguerilla. See guerilla, urban Staffelberg project, the, 62–67, 74, 79 Stahl, Wolfgang, 170 Stammheim prison. See StuttgartStammheim prison Stasi, the. See Ministerium für Staatssicherheit state terrorism, 130, 150 Steffen, Jochen, 126 Stein-Hilbers, Marlene, 190, 218, 221 Stephenson, Hugh, 114 Stern (journal), 23, 185, 219 Stern, Klaus, 77, 112 Sternebeck, Sigrid, 142 Stockholm embassy hostage crisis of 1975, 172, 195, 228 Stötzel, Georg, 46, 147 Strauß, Franz Josef, 22–23, 29, 45–46, 94 Ströbele, Hans-Christian, 19, 163, 183, 210 Stuberger, Ulf G., 18, 180–81, 187


263

student movement, the, 9–10, 16, 19, 21–22, 31–41, 44, 49, 54, 62–63, 72, 77, 86, 133, 135, 146, 231, 233; and the RAF, 89–90, 93, 96, 107, 213 Sturm, Beate, 100–1 Stuttgart-Stammheim prison, xi, 2, 17, 23, 112, 127, 130, 140, 144, 148, 167, 172–75, 180–86, 208, 210, 215, 217–18, 222, 226 suicide, 100–101; of Baader, Ensslin, Raspe, xi, 46; of Meinhof, 172–75, 180, 209–12, 215; as the state’s intention for RAF members, 152, 181 Süllwold, Lieselotte, 114, 143, 219–20 sympathizer, political, 135, 139, 151, 225 Technische Universität, Berlin, 34 Tegel prison, Berlin, 79–80 Teraoka, Arlene, 216, 224 terrorism: definitions of, 11–14, 121– 22, 138, 142, 227–28; and East Germany, 119–20; and gender, 188–224; as identity mode, 2, 229, 235; as stigma word, 31, 130; West German responses to (see Germany, Federal Republic of, and terrorism) terroristische Vereinigung, legal designation, 13, 20 Teufel, Fritz, 42, 49 Third Reich, the, 40, 128 third world, the, 6, 32, 39–41, 44, 45, 111, 157, 230, 232 Thönnessen, Werner, 142 Tolmein, Oliver, 158, 182 Tomatenrede (Helke Sanders’ “tomato speech”), 54, 76 Townshend, Charles, 11, 19 Travis, Alan, 20 tribalism, 139 Tupamaros Munich, 92 Tupamaros, Uruguan guerilla movement, 92, 113 Tupamaros West Berlin, 17, 49, 92, 182

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264

INDEX

Uetz, Harald, 202, 204, 221–22 Uganda, 11 unions, trade, 24, 26, 32, 57, 95, 101, 103, 118, 136 United States of America, the: and Cuba, 92; as target of RAF critique and violence, 102, 107–8, 111, 120–21, 124–25, 157–58, 174, 231–32; and terrorism, 5; and Vietnam, 9, 40, 94, 106, 232; and West Germany, 10, 22, 26, 41, 89, 157–58 Urbach, Peter, 48, 79 urban guerilla. See guerilla, urban Uruguay, 86, 92, 113 useful idiot, Leninist notion of, 117– 18, 126 USSR. See Soviet Union, the Varon, Jeremy, 6, 17, 48 verdeckte Männlichkeit. See disguised masculinism Vernichtungshaft. See annihilation custody Vesper, Bernward, 19, 43, 77, 112 victim: dehumanization of, 227; selfstylization as, 10, 31, 38–41, 44– 45, 57, 60, 82, 86, 111, 124, 138, 231, 233–34; Meinhof portrayed as, 5–6, 31, 45, 233 Vietnam, xi, 9, 14, 18, 33, 39–45, 49, 53, 77, 86, 92–94, 97, 106, 108, 111, 113, 121–24, 137, 156, 228, 230–35 Viett, Inge, 5, 142, 188, 218 violence, 6–17, 31–41, 229–30; against persons, 38–40, 43, 88, 111, 125, 232; against things, 38, 42–43; counter- (see counterviolence); criminal, 129, 136–40, 190, 195; emancipatory, 23, 38, 73; enlightening, 38; and gender, 188–224; as identity, 2, 149–87, 229–30; justification of, 21, 23, 31–44, 73, 83–86, 91, 106–8, 111, 121–24, 230; left-wing critique of, 117–20, 125–7; as resistance, 83, 86, 96, 110–11, 121; revolutionary,


82–84, 91, 96–97; as self-defense (Notwehr) (see self-defense) Völkermord. See genocide Volkskrieg. See war, civil Votze, as RAF term. See cunt Wagenbach, Klaus, 7, 16, 80, 99 Wagner, Ernst, 189 Waldmann, Dieter, 51, 68–69 Waldmann, Peter, 13, 20 Wallraff, Günter, 88, 113, 118, 126, 141 war: civil, 12, 131, 133, 137, 147, 204; class (Klassenkampf), 8, 35, 37, 48, 83, 99, 104, 112, 232–33; as conflict model of RAF, 117; language of (see language, of war); in Vietnam (see Vietnam) warfare, psychological or semantic, 132 warrior revolutionary, the, 33–34, 44, 225, 230–33 Wassermann, Rudolf, 220 Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen, xiii, 15 Weather Underground, the, 5, 17, 48 Wehrartikel. See arms article Weigel, Sigrid, 181 Weinhauer, Klaus, 144 Weisbecker, Thomas, 100, 107, 122, 137, 143, 147 Welt, Die (journal), 114, 195, 218, 220 Wengeler, Martin, 143, 147 Wesemann, Kristin, 5, 15–17, 23, 46, 78, 218 West Berlin. See Berlin, West West Germany. See Germany, Federal Republic of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 75 Widerstand. See resistance Winkler, Willi, 18 Wirth, Hans-Jürgen, 233, 236 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2–4, 80, 90, 113, 202 Wittlich prison, 149, 167 Wolff, Robert Paul, 18 woman question, the, 53. See also feminism

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INDEX women’s movement, the, 5, 51, 54, 56, 74–75, 89, 195, 198–99, 202. See also feminism women’s work, 54, 102, 217; tarifs for, 102 Woolf, Leonard, 223 Woolf, Virginia, 215, 223 working classes, the, 32, 45, 53–54, 57–58, 62, 64, 68–76, 89, 93–96, 100, 103, 105, 119, 126, 171, 176, 201–2; language of, 83;


265

potential for revolution in, 62, 65–66, 90, 74, 99, 168, 232 Wright, Joanne, 11, 19 Wunschik, Tobias, 142 young offenders, 51, 62 Zamory, Ebehardt, 15 ZDF (German television channel), 235 Zehm, Günter, 218, 220 Zitzlaff, Wienke, 23, 172

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8/24/2009 6:18:10 PM

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