Abstract
The idea of armed urban guerillas waging an underground war against the state has fascinated many of Germany’s leading contemporary writers. The original leadership trio of the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group) have consequently been depicted in more novels than any other Germans from the second half of the twentieth century. Why this should be so is at second glance puzzling. The outline history of German left-wing terrorism is undoubtedly exciting, but Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, and Gudrun Ensslin exerted no real influence on German politics. They left behind no great works. The RAF, which was their creation, enjoyed no mass support and never posed a great danger either to the state or to the public. The total number of fatalities in the 28 years of the RAF’s existence is little more than the number that can die on the roads in Germany in a bad week.1 Over roughly the same period more than 3500 people lost their lives in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In Italy between 1969 and 1983, five times as many are estimated to have died in unrest involving extreme right-wing and left-wing “terrorists.”2 The leading historian of the German Student Movement, Wolfgang Kraushaaar, has called the RAF “in their basic characteristics autistic and thus at their core unpolitical.”3 In the showdown with the West German state, which lasted for 44 anxious days in September and October 1977, the release of their own prisoners was the sole issue at stake.
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Notes
The figures vary according to who is counted. Pflieger counts 34 victims and 27 from their own side (making 61 in total), Augustin counts 41 and 35 (76 in total). Klaus Pflieger, Die Rote Armee Fraktion—RAF—14.5.1970 bis 20.4.1998 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), 66–67; Ron Augustin, Labourhistory.net/raf/other (accessed 16 June 2010).
Alan O’Leary, Ruth Glyn, and Giancarlo Lombardi give the figure of 374 fatalities, in the introduction to O’Leary, Glyn, and Lombardi (eds.), Terrorism, Italian Style: The Representation of Terrorism and Political Violence in Contemporary Italian Cinema (London: IGRS, 2011), 1–15, p. 2.
Wolfgang Kraushaar, 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2000), 166.
Klaus Theweleit, “Bermerkungen zum RAF-Gespenst. Abstrakter Realismus und Kunst,” in Ghosts. Drei leicht inkorrekte Vorträge (Frankfurt: Stroemfeld, 1998), 59.
One reason that she finds this gap so striking is because she leaves out a number of novels, for instance: The Happy Ones (Zahl, 1979); Safety Net (Böll, 1979); My Sister, My Antigone (Weil, 1980), and Dead Alive (Demski, 1984). See Luise Tremel, “Literrorisierung. Die RAF in der deutschen Belletristik zwischen 1970 und 2004,” in Wolfgang Kraushaar (ed.), Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006), vol. 2, 1117–54, 1130.
Wolfgang Kraushaar, Fischer in Frankfurt: Karriere eines Auβenseiters (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001).
Gillian Becker, Hitler’s Children. The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (New York: Lippincott, 2nd ed. 1978). On her semi “fictionalization,” see
Gerrit-Jan Berendse, Schreiben im Terrordrom. Gewaltcodierung, kulturelle Erinnerung und das Bedingungsverhältnis zwischen Literatur und RAF-Terrorismus (Munich: edition text & kritik, 2005). 174–84.
For a classic account, see Michael Schneider, “Väter und Söhne, posthum. Das beschädigte Verhältnis zweier Generationen,” in Der Kopf verkehrt aufgesetzt oder Die melancholische Linke (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1981), 8–64.
Dorothea Hauser, Baader und Herold — Beschreibung eines Kampfes (Berlin: Fest, 1997/2007), 230 and 231.
Gerd Koenen, Vesper, Ensslin, Baader: Urszenen des deutschen Terrorismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003).
Dea Loher, Leviathan, in Olgas Raum. Tätowierung, Leviathan. Drei Stücke (Frankfurt: Verlag der Autoren, 1994), 145–229.
Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home. The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2004), 20.
Colvin points out that “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.” Sarah Colvin, Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence and Identity (Rochester NY: Camden House, 2009), 80.
Quoted by Stefan Aust in Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, 2nd ed. (Munich: Goldmann, 1998), 646.
Gerd Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt. Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2001), 364.
Thomas Elsaesser, “Antigone Agonistes: Urban Guerillas or Guerilla Urbanism? The Red Army Faction, Germany in Autumn and Death Game,” in Giving Ground. The Politics of Propinquity, eds. Jean Copjec and Michael Sorkin (London / New York: Verso, 1999), 267–302, p. 268–69.
Norbert Elias, Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Schröter (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), 343.
The phrases “German Autumn” and “years of lead” are taken or adapted from Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Hölderlin, respectively. The films are Deutschland im Herbst [Germany in Autumn] (dir. Kluge et al, 1978) and Die bleierne Zeit [The Leaden Time] (dir. von Trotta, 1981), known in English as The German Sisters or Marianne and Juliane. Kraushaar calls the German Autumn a “Pseudopoem.” See Wolfgang Kraushaar, “Der nicht erklärte Ausnahmezustand. Staatliches Handeln während des sogenannten Deutschen Herbstes,” in Kraushaar (ed.), Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus (2006), vol. 2, 1011–25, p. 1012.
Whether the “selection” was undertaken by nationality (Israeli and non-Israeli) or ethnic origin (Jewish and non-Jewish) was always disputed by the Revolutionary Cells. See Oliver Tolmein, Vom deutschen Herbst zum 11. September. Die RAF, der Terrorismus und der Staat (Hamburg: Konkret, 2002), 254.
Hans-Joachim Klein, Rückkehr in die Menschlichkeit. Appell eines ausgestiegenen Terroristen (Reinbek: rororo, 1979). Foreword by Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Memoirs by former terrorists are generally marred by the authors’ priority of self-justification. Inge Viett was commercially the most successful, Margrit Schiller (after Klein) the most astute.
Inge Viett, Nie war ich furchtloser. Autobiographie (Nautilus: Hamburg, 1996);
Margrit Schiller, Es war ein harter Kampf um meine Erinnerung. Ein Lebensbericht aus der RAF (Hamburg: Konkret, 1999).
The affair generated 900 newspaper articles between July and November 2003. See Heinz-Peter Preusser, “Warum Mythos Terrorismus? Versuch einer Begriffserklärung,” in Matteo Galli and Preusser (eds.), Mythos Terrorismus. Vom Deutschen Herbst zum 11. September—Fakten, Fakes und Fiktionen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2006), 69–83, esp. 70–73.
Anne Siemens, Für die RAF war er das System, für mich der Vater: Die andere Geschichte des deutschen Terrorismus (Munich: Piper, 2007).
Ulrich Woelk, Die letzte Vorstellung (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 2002), 49.
Inge Stephan and Alexandra Tacke (eds.), NachBilder der RAF (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008).
Wolfgang Schorlau, Die blaue Liste. Denglers erster Fall (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003), 77 and 78.
Peter-Paul Zahl, Die Glücklichen. Schelmenroman (Munich: dtv, 2001), 462–63. First published in 1979 and frequently reprinted.
For an amusing demolition of this section, see Colvin, Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism (2009), 191–92.
Hans Kundnani, Utopia or Auschwitz. German’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (London: Hurst, 2009), 161.
See Bianca Dombrowa et al, GeRAFtes. Analysen zur Darstellung der RAF und des Linksterrorismus in der deutschen Literatur (Bamberg: Lehrstuhl für Neuere deutsche Literatur, 1994), 13.
Thomas Hoeps, Arbeit am Widerspruch. Terrorismus in deutschen Romanen und Erzählungen (1837–1992) (Dresden: Thelem, 2001).
Vesper is portrayed most notably in The German Sisters (dir. von Trotta, 1981), Dea Loher’s play Leviathan (1993), the novelette by Alban Lefranc, Attaques sur le chemin, le soir, dans la neige [Attacks on the road, in the evening, in the snow] (2005), and Who IfNot Us (dir. Veiel, 2011), as well as in the film version of his “novel-essay,” The Trip (dir. Imhof, 1985).
See Michael Kappeln, Doppelt Leben: Bernward Vesper und Gudrun Ensslin. Die Tübinger Jahre (Tübingen: Klöpfer & Meyer, 2005).
Gillian Becker, Hitler’s Children, 3rd ed. (London: Pickwick, 1989), 94.
Quoted by Gerd Conradt in Starbuck Holger Meins. Ein Porträt als Zeitbild (Berlin: Espresso, 2001), 155.
Christoph Hein, In seiner frühen Kindheit ein Garten (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2005), 41–42.
See Margaret Scanlan, Plotting Terror: Novelists and Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2001). Her Baader-Meinhof novel is the French Lisbonne dernière marge [Lisbon Last Margin] (Volodine, 1990) and her only German-language novel is Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Assignment (1985).
Steven Crashaw, Easier Fatherland (London: Continuum, 2004);
Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Vintage, 2010), 470–72.
Quoted by Stephen Schindler, “Bombige Bücher: Literatur und Terrorismus,” in Wendezeiten Zeitenwenden. Positionsbestimmungen zur deutschsprachigen Literatur 1945–1995, eds. Robert Weninger and Brigitte Rossbacher (Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 1997), 55–78, p. 55.
See Rachel Palfreymen, “The Fourth Generation: Legacies of Violence as Quest for Identity in Post-unification Terrorism Films,” in David Clarke (ed.), German Cinema since Unification (London / New York: Continuum, 2006), 11–42.
Gretchen Dutschke, Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben. Rudi Dutschke: Eine Biographie (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1996), 78.
Klaus Rainer Röhl, Fünf Finger sind keine Faust. Eine Abrechnung (Munich: Universitas, 1998), 3rd ed., 186. Becker’s Hitler’s Children begins with a reference to the film.
Klaus Stern and Jörg Hermann, Andreas Baader. Das Leben eines Staatsfeindes (Munich: dtv, 2007), 90, 106, and 111.
See Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt (2001), 15.
Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (1998), 223–24.
Günter Grass, “Politisches Tagebuch. Wiederholter Versuch,” Essays und Reden II 1970–1979, Werkausgabe (Göttingen: Steidl, 1997), edited by Volker Neuhaus and Daniela Hermes, vol. 15, 210–213, p. 211.
Stern and Hermann, Andreas Baader (2007), 35–42.
Marianne Herzog, Von der Hand in den Mund. Frauen im Akkord (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1976); From Hand to Mouth. Women and Piecework, tr. Stanley Mitchell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980); Nicht den Hunger verlieren (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1980); and Suche (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1988).
See the reconstruction of Katharina de Fries’s story in the ghost-written memoirs by Ulrike Edschmid, Frau mit Waffe. Zwei Geschichten aus terroristischen Zeiten (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), 69.
Kurt Held (pseudonym of Kurt Kläber), Die rote Zora und ihre Bande (Aarau: Sauerländer, 1941).
Bernhard Schlink, Das Wochenende (Zurich: Diogenes, 2008), 103.
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© 2012 Julian Preece
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Preece, J. (2012). Introduction: The Baader-Meinhof Myth Machine. In: Baader-Meinhof and the Novel. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137070272_1
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