BRAVE NEW WORLD 2

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Ulrike Meinhof (October 7,1934 - May 9,1976) mother, writer, journalist, revolutionary, leader, woman


“Objection is when I say: this doesn't suit me. Resistance is when I make sure that what doesn't suit me never happens again.”* Ulrike Meinhof



Ulrike Meinhof ended her turbulent life after 41 years by committing suicide in her prison cell - this was her last act of rebellion. Her personality remains a mystery until today. Unexpectedly, she transformed from a gifted, beautiful woman and a committed peace activist into the co-founder of Germany’s top-terrorist organization, the RAF.
Ulrike Meinhof was a mother, a wife, and a woman suffering from pathological aggression as well as never-ending self-doubt.

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“We [RAF] believe that every human being, in every situation, subjected to every system, in every state, has the task to be a human being and help his fellow human beings to realize humanness.”** Ulrike Meinhof

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Family origin

Ulrike Meinhof was born on October 7th 1934 to Ingeborg and Werner Meinhof in Oldenburg, Northern Germany. Her family on her father’s side was known for producing Protestant theologians. However, Dr. Werner Meinhof himself became a curator of the Jena Municipal Museum. Ingeborg’s side of the family had its roots in Hesse. Ulrike’s maternal grandfather was a cobbler’s son working as a teacher and school inspector before the Nazis prohibited him from doing so in 1933 on the grounds of his Socialist convictions.
The Meinhofs’ were a typical German bourgeois family. The parents with their two daughters, Ulrike and the four-year older Weinke, lived in an ivy-covered house in a middle-class residential area in Jena.

Childhood influences

As the influence of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) and Hitler expanded in Germany, the family turned away from this domination and changed their affiliation from the Protestant Church, which had fallen in line with the ideologies of the time, to a small parish called the “Hessian Dissent.” It had its origins under Bismarck after the founding of the German Reich, objected to all state control over the church, and was a gathering point for church opposition to the Nazi regime.
Ulrike’s and Weinke’s childhood was overshadowed by the sudden death of their father in 1940. After the death of her husband, Ingeborg received a grant that allowed her to continue her studies in art history that she had discontinued because of her marriage.

Soon, Renate Riemeck – a nineteen year-old, clever, and dynamic history, German and art history student – moved in with the family. Hence, the girls had two mothers.
Both women opposed the Nazis, had loose contact with a resistance group in the Zeiss optical works in Jena, and listened to BBC news during the war, albeit it was strictly prohibited. Meanwhile, they passed their first state examinations.

After the war ended in 1945, Jena was occupied by the Americans who later withdrew in accordance with the Yalta agreement to then leave the area subjected to Soviet rule. As a result, the family immigrated west to Oldenburg where Ingeborg Meinhof and Renate Riemeck took their second state examinations and qualified as teachers. Both had also joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party) in 1945.
The city was overflowing with immigrants from the East and the only school that was willing to take Ulrike was the Roman Catholic School of Our Lady. The legacy of this school to Ulrike was a deep fascination with the Catholic belief during her childhood and youth.

A young woman searching for an identity

The same year Ingeborg Meinhof died of an infection that she had contracted after a cancer operation leaving Ulrike behind as an orphan at the age of 15. Renate Riemeck stayed with the two girls and seemed to have had an enormous influence on Ulrike who copied the only fourteen-year older foster mother. For example, Renate Riemeck wore trousers and had her hair cut short and so did Ulrike. Renate Riemeck published academic books and acquired the status of a professor at the Wilburg Institute of Education. At that time, Ulrike attended the Philippinium in Weiburg, a grammar school with the highest academic standards. She was known as a popular, very intelligent, and charismatic student. Her charm impressed teachers and classmates alike. In her free time, she read many books from classics to modern literature which deeply shaped her opinion and worldview.
On the one hand, Ulrike was a role model middle-class young woman and on the other hand, she cultivated rather atypical interests such as smoking the pipe as well as self-rolled cigarettes and danced boogie-woogie all night long. In contrast to what was expected of a well-behaved girl, she was not afraid to voice her opinion in school on issues concerning unjust treatments of students. She contradicted teachers publicly and passionately, which almost caused her to become expelled from school.
Expressing and living out her political interests was an essential part of her life. Ulrike was not only part of the student government and a member of the Europe movement but she also showed an interest in journalism and worked as a co-editor for her school’s magazine.

Political activism against nuclear armament

At the age of 20, following her graduation from grammar school after the successful completion of the Abitur examinations, Ulrike attended the University of Marburg on a grant from the Study Foundation of the German People (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). She started studying psychology and education and was involved in a movement of the young Protestants that worked towards incorporating more elements of the Catholic belief into the Protestant liturgy.
In 1957, Ulrike transferred to the University of Münster, where she was later elected spokeswoman of the Socialist German Student’s Union (SDS) that protested by forming an anti-atomic death committee. This topic was very delicate in Germany at the time. On April 12th, the Göttinger Declaration was published in which 18 West German atomic scientists expressed their disagreement with any nuclear armament of the Federal Republic of Germany. The scientist and Nobel Prize Winners were not the only ones that believed Germany could best protect itself and promote stability for the region and the world if it voluntarily abstained from the possession of nuclear arms. Albert Schweizer called for a halt on nuclear arm tests. These concerns sparked the activism of many young people. Trade unionists and intellectuals supported the student movement. Ulrike Meinhof became very active in the anti-nuclear armament movement: as a journalist, she published articles on the nuclear issue in a variety of student newspapers; as an activist, she helped to organize demonstrations, petitions, and a boycott of lectures.

In 1955, Renate Riemeck left the SPD because she did not agree with the rearmament of West Germany which she saw as a step towards the intensification of the Cold War. Renate Riemeck opposed Konrad Adenauer’s plans to obtain nuclear weapons and actively supported the German-Polish reconciliation through the recognition of the disputed Oder-Neisse boarder. Her attitudes conflicted with those of her employer, the Land North Rhine-Westphalia, and she consequently resigned her professorship when she was elected to the committee of the German Peace Union (Deutsche Friedensunion).
According to Stefan Aust, Ulrike Meinhof entered the political arena in May 1958 when she made a speech to 5000 neatly dressed students after a silent march through Münster. Ulrike Meinhof, with her Sophie Scholl style haircut, came across as a self-confident young peace activist and thus, caught the attention of the editorial office of the left-wing student newspaper Konkret that was devoted to the anti-nuclear movement.

In 1958, Ulrike Meinhof joined the banned Communist Party (KPD). However, she had not studied the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Luxemburg and was only familiar with the neo-Marxism of the student movement.

Ulrike Meinhof’s childhood experiences nourished her aspiration to become a politically active journalist concerned with achieving social justice.

Konkret

Konkret started off as a left-wing student journal in Hamburg called the Studentenkurier (Student Courier) in the early fifties. Originally funded by donations from publishers and independent politicians, this magazine wrote about culture and politics. It was founded by Klaus Hübotter who was an official of the Communist FDJ (Free German Youth), Klaus Rainer Röhl (later the editor), and Peter Rühmkorf. In 1957, the journal was renamed konkret (German website) to attract a broader readership. In 1958, Röhl met Ulrike Meinhof at a press conference and later traveled with her to East Berlin where they met members of the banned communist party.

In January 1959, Ulrike Meinhof participated in a large student congress against atomic weapons in West Berlin. The congress split the students into two factions, the konkret faction of the SDS, the student body of the SPD (Social Democratic Party) for whom Ulrike Meinhof spoke which believed in the reunification of West and East Germany, and the more moderate SPD faction. Ulrike Meinhof and the SDS finally appealed for negotiations with the DDR (German Democratic Republic) openly questioning the anti-Communist consensus of the time. The West German press strongly criticized the move to the left of the political spectrum and the SPD excluded all people that worked for konkret from the SDS.
Meinhof soon started working for konkret where she published her first column in the fall of 1959 “Peace Makes History” commenting on the end of the Cold War as well as the meeting of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and President Eisenhower at Camp David. Her language is full of hope that the desire for peace will guide political actions – that humanity and reason have finally won over the rivalry and arms race of the leading nations.

“…We have reached the turning point; peace is now the decisive factor in political negotiation. The forces of reason and humanity have prevailed in Camp David. Those who weaken them are fighting in a lost cause. Those who strengthen them have the mandate of history and are negotiating on behalf of the future” (Aust 1985, 1998).

In her early work for konkret, Meinhof mainly dealt with social aspects and wrote about discrimination against women, young offenders, and assembly line work. These themes were relatively new in post-war German journalism. During this time, she convincingly participated in TV discussions and played the role of a young female star journalist drifting between two worlds. On the one hand, she was part of the high society living in an old Jugendstil villa in Blankensee furnished with antiques and on the other hand, she sought contact with the people she wrote about spending an increasing amount of time in Berlin with the student movement.

Her diary red: “My relationship with Klaus, my acceptance by the Establishment, my work with the students – three aspects of my life that seem irreconcilable are pulling and tearing at me. Our house, the parties, Kampen, all that is only partly enjoyable, but among other things it’s the basis from which I can be a subversive element. TV appearances, contacts, the attention I get, they’re all part of my career as a journalist and a Socialist…I even find it pleasant, but it doesn’t satisfy my need for warmth, solidarity, belonging to a group. The part I play…corresponds only very partially to my real nature and needs, because it involves me in adopting the attitude of a puppet, forcing me to say things smilingly when to me, to all of us, they are deadly serious – so I say them with a grin, as if masked” (Aust 1985, 1998).

Only a few months later Ulrike Meinhof became editor-in-chief of konkret in January 1960. In 1961, she married Klaus Rainer Röhl, the publisher of konkret.

In 1961, she had published an article “Hitler in you” in which she wrote: “As we ask our parents about Hitler, we shall be asked about Herr Strauss one day” (Aust 1985, 1998).
This resulted in a case of Franz Josef Strauss against Meinhof that Meinhof’s defending counsel, Gustav Heinemann, Minister of the Interior under Adenauer and later President of the Federal Republic of Germany 1969–1974, won. This made her famous overnight.

In 1962, Ulrike Meinhof became pregnant and suffered from severe headaches. Doctors advised her to be operated immediately but she chose to give birth first. After seven months, her twin girls were born via Caesarian section and she had a brain operation. After the operation, she immediately plunged back into work. According to her foster mother, she needed the reassurance of others because she was not very self-confident, a stronger personality to support her, and she mirrored her environment. This description fits very well to Ulrike Meinhof, the terrorist, who followed Baader and subjected herself to his leadership in the group.

In response to President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22nd 1963, she writes: “The grief fades, the emptiness remains. The man the nations of the world believed would make peace is dead” (Aust 1985, 1998). Many people in Germany saw in Kennedy a young dynamic leader who would really change things for the better: the peaceful end of the Cold War, justice for the Third World, and the eradication of poverty and racial bigotry in America. He had won the hearts of the young Germans during his State visit to West Germany and his famous sentence “Ich bin ein Berliner” in his speech to the population of West Berlin on June 26th 1963 made a lasting impression on the Germans.

She continues by pointing out that Germany must find “alternative ways…it must be understood in Germany that our fate is better kept in our own hands than in the hands of any big brother who is himself the playing of the forces beyond his control. It is time for the Federal Republic of Germany to make sovereign use of the sovereignty she gained eight years ago” (Aust 1985, 1998).

At this stage in Meinhof’s career, she does not only hold peace as a key value but she also fully acknowledges the Western nation states and their politics. There is no indication of the Ulrike Meinhof she will become one day, no mention of the autonomous mechanisms of the repressive German society, the interchangeable puppets in an inhumane system, and the police state, full of capitalist pigs. This vocabulary is already prevalent among young, radical, left-wing students, foremost a group affiliated with the SDS that formed around Rudi Duschke.

From protest to resistance*

In 1968, her columns adopted a more extreme tone. Sentences such as, “If one throws a stone, it’s a crime. If thousand stones are thrown, that’s political. If you set fire to a car it’s a crime, if a hundred cars are set on fire that’s political” (Aust 1985, 1998) show her increasing radicalism, her new propensity to violence, and the very disconcerting assumption that a political statement uplifts a crime into something morally justified. To Ulrike Meinhof, a political crime under German law is no longer reprehensible because it is supposed to convey a message thus, a crime to her becomes a political action. However, a crime remains a crime, no matter on what scale and with which intention it is committed.

After the attempt on Rudi Duschke’s life, the leader of the student movement, in April 1968 she wrote: “It is protest if I say this or that does not suit me. It is resistance if I ensure that what does not suit me no longer occurs” (Aust 1985, 1998). With these words, she maybe unconsciously formulates what is changing her life. Her focus slowly but surely drifts from the observant, passive role of the journalist influencing through information to an active role with the desire to directly influence the way things go.

Yet, she is still careful when it comes to violence as political means: “Counter-violence runs the risk of turning to violence where police brutality decides the rules of the game, where helpless rage takes over from cool rationality, where the paramilitary actions of the police encounter a paramilitary reply” (Aust 1985, 1998).

During this time, she increasingly made use of vocabulary that centered on struggle and violence in her column headlines: “Counter- violence”, “The struggle in the Big Cities”, “From Protest to Resistance,” and “Class struggle emergency” (Aust 1985, 1998).

Early 1968, Meinhof divorced Röhl and moved to Berlin where she continued to be active as a journalist and write columns for konkret. She received DM 1500,-- per comment. In April 1969, she quitted working for konkret and wrote an explanatory note to the Frankfurter Rundschau in which she explained, “I am giving up writing for the journal because it is in the process of becoming an instrument of counter-revolution…I am abandoning my fight for the journal in order to avert the danger of our polishing up its leftwing image by continuing to contribute to it, lending it new creditworthiness” (Aust 1985, 1998).

Ulrike Meinhof did not leave it at that. She initiated a meeting to discuss konkret. It was proposed that the editorial offices should be occupied and a group traveled from Berlin to Hamburg to carry out the plan. Röhl already knew about the activity beforehand and abandoned the office. After this failed attempt, Ulrike Meinhof became increasingly isolated.

In short, her increasingly radical ideas predisposed her to become associated with militant left-wing groups.

Ulrike Meinhof – a family of her own

On December 27th in 1961, Ulrike Meinhof married Klaus Rainer Röhl, a communist by conviction and the founder of konkret. She gave birth to twin girls, Regine and Bettina, on September 21, 1962.
In 1968, she divorced Klaus Rainer Röhl and claimed the girls. In 1970, she moved to Berlin. During this time, she became involved with more radical individuals. After she helped Andreas Baader escape from prison, she had to go underground. Her children disappeared the same day after school. The father searched for them via Interpol, but in vain. While Ulrike Meinhof was educated at a Palestinian terrorist camp in Jordan, the group developed the plan to ultimately bring the children to a Palestinian orphanage camp.

To prevent the father from contacting his children, Ulrike Meinhof organized their escape. The twins stayed with a friend in Berlin for a few days until two women drove them south and crossed the boarder into France illegally on foot. Another woman received the children in France and continued towards Italy where they crossed the boarder by driving over a still closed pass street. Sicily was the end of the journey. The women returned to Germany, leaving the children with a girl named Hanna for several weeks during which the children played on the beach, studied their school books, and played hide and seek games. After Hanna returned to Berlin, the girls stayed behind in huts close to Mount Etna where four German Hippies looked after them.
Stefan Aust, the author of the most comprehensive book about the RAF, flew down to Sicily to fly the children home safe before they could be claimed by another member of the group. Although the children had no papers with them, Stefan Aust managed to bring them back to Hamburg to reunite them with their father. The following night, he was warned by a friend that he would be killed by the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

At times, Ulrike Meinhof showed remorse and signs of weakness because she missed her children, but group pressure, a mixture of threats and accusations proved to be successful, and Ulrike Meinhof surrendered to the fact that she could not be a terrorist and a mother. She abandoned her children for what she believed to be a political fight against the imperialistic state seeking justice in the world. The greater plan demands personal sacrifices.

This decision is telling about Ulrike Meinhof’s personality. As much as she was the brain of the group and voice to the outside world, she was weak and submissive on a personal level to Baader and Ensslin. She was nervous and tended to engage in harsh self-criticism.

Nowadays, Regine lives in Berlin secluded from the public eye.
Bettina is a freelancing journalist who lives in Hamburg. She has published several articles on the Baader-Meinhof group and has written a long essay about Ulrike Meinhof and the debate about her brain. “The dignity of the dead Ulrike Meinhof. The madhouse republic? Is the German Terrorism imaginable without the media? Or: The story of Ulrike Meinhof’s medical brain diagnosis that was suppressed for 26 years”


The birth of the Baader-Meinhof Group

On May 14th 1970, Andreas Baader imprisoned for setting fire to two department stores, was allowed to meet the journalist, Ulrike Meinhof, at the German Central Institute for Social Questions (“Deutsches Zentralinstitut für Soziale Fragen”) to write a book together about young offenders. However, during this “meeting” Baader was forcefully liberated, which marks the birth of the Baader-Meinhof Group also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and later on as the Red Army Faction (RAF).

After the Baader liberation, Ulrike Meinhof was interviewed by Michèle Ray, a French journalist, whom she gave three reasons for her action:
” First, of course, because Andreas Baader is a cadre and because among those who have now grasped what must be done, and what is right, we can’t afford the luxury of assuming we can dispense with certain individuals. Second, we freed a prisoner as our first action because we believe that the people whom we want to show what politics is all about today are the kind who will have no difficulty in identifying with the freeing of a prisoner themselves…Third, another reason we began by freeing a prisoner was to make it quite clear that we mean business” (Aust 1985, 1998).
When asked about the police, she follows the argumentation “that they are naturally brutal because of their job, beating and shooting people is their job, repression is their job, but then again that is only the uniform, only the job and the man who wears the uniform and does the job may be a perfectly pleasant character at home… This is a problem, and of course we say the cops are swine, we say a man in uniform’s a pig, not a human being, so we must tackle him. I mean we mustn’t talk to him…of course there may be shooting” (Aust 1985, 1998). This Ulrike Meinhof sounds radically different from the young journalist and peace activist. It seems that Ulrike Meinhof has become disillusioned by the influence she had as a journalist and has turned to more radical means to change Germany. Many speculations exist for her unusual development from a prestigious journalist to a revolutionary embracing violence ranging from a fanatic disposition to the hypothesis that her brain had been damaged during an operation.

On the 21st of June 1970, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin (the two most influential members of the RAF fulfilling leadership roles), and Ulrike Meinhof traveled to Jordan along with other members of the RAF where they were educated in guerilla tactics including shooting with Kalaschnikovs, throwing of hand grenades, robbing of banks. The stay in the camp gave rise to many conflicts between the Germans and the Palestinian Fedayin regarding food, living quarters, and the training itself. Baader believed that the training the RAF received in Jordan was irrelevant for the task awaiting them in Germany. Another source of conflict was the conviction of the Germans that anti-imperialistic struggle and sexual liberation go hand in hand.
Ulrike Meinhof was judged by Baader as useless, a comment that she accepted without contradicting him. It was during their stay in Jordan that the RAF forged ties to Abu Hassan, a specialist in guerrilla tactics and a famous fighter for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, and member of the Fatha. He later became one of the top terrorists worldwide.


The struggle

Back in Berlin, the Baader-Meinhof Group prepared for a secret, underground struggle that would have to be conducted with great efficiency. Ulrike Meinhof contacted people she knew from her days as a journalist. Although not many appreciated the idea of an armed struggle central to the RAF doctrine, she was fairly successful because people empathized with her now that she was classified as a public enemy and searched for by the police.

In contrast to what the name Baader-Meinhof Gang implies, Ulrike Meinhof’s influence in the group was rather weak during this time because she was very insecure when it came to interpersonal relationships within the group even though she was assertive, strong, and convincing in her publications,.

Ulrike Meinhof started to adapt to life in illegality, planning attacks, and coordinating their survival. Numerous banks were robbed to secure the financial basis, cars were stolen (by the famous ‘doubles method’), and flats were rented. The justification for these actions was that they did not harm the little man, only the capitalist. Ulrike Meinhof learned how to break into cars and carried a pistol at all times. She did not prove to be very successful at practical things, she broke off a wheel of the car she tried to steel, she left most of the money in the bank after a robbery, and she wrote wrong addresses on parcels with blank passports and identity card forms, official stamps as well as official papers she had previously stolen.
The group was much smaller than people expected. About 25 people planned the revolutionary overthrow in the Federal Republic of Germany. The members of the RAF thought of themselves as the spark for a mass revolution led by the working class. The group itself was influenced by a new sense of the importance of the ‘primacy of praxis.’ The right to act is justified by its feasibility.

In November 1970, Ulrike Meinhof started to drive through Germany in a VW-bus with Karl-Heinz Ruhland. On the way they visited many friends of Ulrike all of whom later were charged with aiding and abetting a criminal association. The purpose of their journey besides networking and obtaining forged papers was to investigate how to break into an arms depot.

Ex-members of the Baader-Meinhof Group claim that Ulrike Meinhof was the most nervous person with the least stabile stimulus threshold. Apparently, she kept rubbing her fingers together and often made little paper balls, which the police later started looking for in suspicious flats. Moreover, she was the most politicized and was obsessed with overanalyzing every situation by imposing a political line of argumentation that involved the creation of an independent and politically conscious proletariat. Political discussions within the group decreased so that Ulrike Meinhof, who was in charge with finding apartments for the group to stay in, had to rely on discussions with her acquaintances that often offered refuge to the group.

On Christmas 1970, the remaining members of the RAF met in Stuttgart. However, after only living six months underground, more members had been arrested than met that day. On this day a fundamental argument between Baader and Meinhof about the way the group was organized permanently changed their relationship. Ulrike Meinhof argued that the RAF was too unorganized, not precarious enough, and not taking enough time to adequately prepare their actions. According to Baader, all mistakes made in the past had been solely the responsibility of an individual and not of the structure of the group. The rude use of language among group members led to increased social isolation.

The origin of the name Red Army Faction

The Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang had not expressed themselves in writing since the organized interview with the French journalist, Michèle Ray, after Baader’s liberation. In 1971, Horst Mahler wrote a “Statement of Position” while he was imprisoned that was unfavorably looked upon by the rest of the group. In response, Ulrike Meinhof was instructed to produce a manifesto that would present the group to the outside world. As a result, the Urban Guerrilla Concept originated in which the name Red Army Faction was used for the first time. In this document, the well-known logo of an H&K machine pistol with the abbreviation RAF above it and a red star in the background is depicted.

he Urban Guerrilla Concept begins with a Mao quote:
“ If the enemy fights us, that is good, not bad” and further “If the enemy opposes us vigorously, paints is in the blackest colors, and will allows us no good points, that is even better; it shows that not only have we drawn a clear dividing line between ourselves and the enemy, our work has also proved brilliantly successful” (Aust 1985, 1998).
Furthermore, Ulrike Meinhof states that “We do not ‘make reckless use of guns.’ The cop who finds himself in the contradictory situation of being a ‘little man’ and a capitalist lackey, a low wage-earner and a police officer of monopoly capitalism, is not under absolute compulsion to act. We shoot when we are shot. We spare the cop who spares us” (Aust 1985, 1998). This might have been true for the initial phase of the RAF but towards the end of the first generation when more and more members were captured, the others became increasingly tense, bearing arms at all times.
Ulrike Meinhof concludes that “People are right when they claim that all the resources expended on hunting us down are really intended for the whole socialist left in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. The small sums of money we are said to have stolen, the occasional thefts of cars and documents with which we are charged, the attempted murder they are trying to pin on us, are their justification for it all.
Our rulers are afraid to the marrow of their bones…” (Aust 1985, 1998).

Give up, Ulrike

In November 1971, Renate Riemeck tried to reason with her foster daughter. She published a letter in konkret titled “Give up, Ulrike!” (Aust 1985, 1998: The full text is printed in Chapter 2, subsection 31). This letter was a mixture of criticism of the actions of RAF and praise for her past political engagement and benevolent character. Riemeck tried to change Meinhof’s point of view by charming her and reasoning with her. In this letter, she pointed out that she believed Ulrike was “too intelligent and reasonable to confuse anti-authoritarian rebelliousness with the beginning of a broad revolution.” She also wrote that “Germany is not a place for an urban guerrilla movement in the Latin American style” and asked “Who… still understands the political and moral impulse behind your actions? A spirit of sacrifice and the readiness to face death become ends in themselves if one cannot make them understood.” She continues by commenting on the recent deaths of three victims, demanding “You must correct yourselves.” She concludes with an appeal: “I do not know how far your own influence within the group extends how far your friends are amenable to rational considerations. But you should try to measure up the chances of an urban guerrilla movement in the Federal Republic against the social reality of this country. You can do that, Ulrike.”

Ulrike Meinhof’s answer was found in a garbage can three weeks later. It was titled: “A slave mother entreats her child” (Aust 1985, 1998: The full text is printed in Chapter 2, subsection 32). Ulrike Meinhof has rewritten the letter from the point of a slave mother, Renate Riemeck, asking her daughter to deny freedom, turn around and be content with being an obedient, exemplary slave who could become an overseer if she accepted the authorities and her life as a slave. With this sarcastic response, Ulrike Meinhof cut the last bond to her past and consciously decided to dedicate her life to terrorism, ironically believing to be acting on higher moral grounds, fighting for the right thing, even if nobody except the Baader-Meinhof-Group understood this reasoning.

Terrorism and the German response

Meanwhile, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) appointed a new Chief Commissioner, Horst Herold, who invented a computer program that was able to save data of tens of thousands of suspects. Horst Herold was a main character in fighting the inner-state war, the military and political conflict between the bourgeois and capitalist state, and its radical opponents.
Herold is quoted as saying: “The first question is to decide whether terrorism, in its manifestations in Germany or indeed all over the world, is a product of the brains of its perpetrators, …or whether terrorism is a reflection of certain social situations in the Western and indeed in the Eastern worlds, so that its superstructure only mirrors problems which have an objective existence. In so doing, we would have to consider who… should be primarily engaged in the struggle against terrorism: The police or the politicians…we are concerned with exerting influence on historical causes and effects.” (Aust 1985, 1998) Furthermore, he added that Germany was forced to increasingly think in terms of international law on top of traditional military terms because the RAF tried working together with terrorist groups worldwide to build up a counterweight to the state system. This was a complicated subject matter for Germany because the problem exceeded the national boundaries. It was revealed much later that the Stasi of the GDR was well-informed about the actions of the terrorists, had arrested and questioned many of them, and then helped them re-enter into the Federal Republic of Germany.
Germany reformed the BKA to transform it into German version of the American FBI which required of the Interior Ministers of the Länder to waive some of their power to a centralized institution, thus constructing a new system of communication between the Federal Criminal Investigation Office and the regional police authorities with special anti-terrorist commissions.
A so-called Radicals Edict aimed at preventing the bureaucracy from being invaded, allowed for the rejection of an applicant on the grounds of his political membership profile if it was doubtful whether a person would remain loyal to the principles of free democracy under all circumstances.

The game continues…

While the German state prepared its response to the terrorists, the RAF killed a police officer while robbing another bank in December 1971.

In March 1972, the press reported the alleged death of Ulrike Meinhof but in reality she was in Italy during this time and later returned to Hamburg where she recruited members. The year that followed was hectic: bombings of the US army in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, the police station in Augsburg, the Munich Regional Criminal Investigation Office, the car of the Federal Judge Budenberg, and the Axel Springer building in Hamburg.

Ulrike Meinhof seemed very depressed after the Springer bombings. Many friends told her to stop her terrorist activity but she replied that this was only the beginning of a long struggle.

On June 15th 1972, Meinhof was arrested in a flat where she had hidden. At first, the police officers failed to notice that they had arrested Ulrike Meinhof since she had changed dramatically in appearance – she was much thinner and looked sick. To verify the identity of the woman, she was forcibly anaesthetized and x-rays were taken of her head to look for the silver clamp put in ten years ago during her brain operation.

Imprisonment

From June 16th 1972 until February 9th 1973, Ulrike Meinhof was imprisoned in the ‘dead section’ of Köln-Ossendorf, completely isolated from normal life in prison and from the other RAF members who had been captured in the meantime. She was only allowed to see her family every two weeks for 30 minutes under supervision during her stay in the ‘quiet section’ for eight months.

She summarized her feelings during this time:
“ The feeling that your head is exploding. The feeling that the top of your skull must be going to split and come off. The feeling of your spinal cord being pressed into your brain…The feeling that the cell is moving. You wake up and open your eyes: the cell is moving; in the afternoon, when the sin shines in, it suddenly stops. You can’t shake off that sense of movement… Furious aggression for which there is no outlet. That’s the worst thing. A clear awareness that your chance of survival is nil. Utter failure to communicate that. Visits leave no trace behind them. Half an hour later, you can tell if the visit was today or last week only by mechanically reconstructing it. On the other hand, a bath once a week means a moment’s thawing out, recovery- and that feeling persists for a few hours.
The feeling that time and space interlock” (Aust 1985, 1998; Original Version in German).

It was incredibly hard for Ulrike Meinhof to be alone and acoustically as well as physically isolated. Sometimes she talked to the wardens although that was against RAF policy. It was also a maxim not to provoke, but to defend yourself with all methods.
Once after Ulrike Meinhof had disregarded these rules, she noted: “I hit one of the cop-nuts here over the head with a lavatory brush. The same old crap: I was only thinking of myself – wanted to let of steam in a fight – self criticism: I didn’t think of the consequences, how the cops could use that against the RAF.”

On September 5th 1972, the drama in the Olympic village in Munich resulting in 11 dead Israeli athletes, one German policeman, and five dead terrorists unfolded before the eyes of millions of spectators. This event led Ulrike Meinhof to write a manifesto entitled “The Action of Black September at Munich – Towards the Strategy of the Anti-imperialist Struggle” in which she reflects about the relationship of Germans, Palestinians, and Israelis as a result of World War II. She summarized the manifesto in a letter to Gudrun Ensslin stating that it contained a summary of the common aims of the RAF and Black September: “Material annihilation of imperialist rule. Destruction of the myth of the all-powerful system. The propaganda operation expressed in material attack: the act of liberation in the act of annihilation” (Aust 1985, 1998). She was also deeply impressed by Berthold Brecht’s didactic play The Measure (Die Massnahme) from which she took the line: “How low would you not stoop, to destroy the low?”

Because she had time on her hands and was inspired by Brecht, she rewrote the song “Praise of the Party” as “Song of the RAF” with a subtitle that reads “Praise of the Anti-imperialist Struggle”.

“The RAF is in the can of the masses,
It fights their battle
With classic methods
Strike the fascists where it hurts.”

(As quoted in Aust 1985, 1998)

During this time, she also kept up correspondence with her two daughters.

In September 1972, Ulrike Meinhof was flown to Zweibrücken where she was to take part in an identity parade.

In October 1972, the ten year-old twins came to visit her mother for the first time after they had not seen her in three years. They were allowed to visit once a month for two hours. In December 1973, Ulrike Meinhof suddenly broke off the contact with her children without any explanation. She refused to answer their letters and returned their presents.

Ulrike Meinhof participated in all four hunger strikes that were fought to improve the conditions of imprisonment for the RAF members. But Meinhof, as well as Ensslin and Baader, ate secretly in hierarchical order whereas other RAF members died of hunger.

In February 1974, she received company for a certain number of hours a day because Gudrun Ensslin was transferred into the cell next to Ulrike Meinhof. In April, both women were moved to Stuttgart-Stammheim where they were to reside in the high security wing.
Their rooms were to be double locked at all times, they were allowed to wear their own clothes, to exercise together in the yard for one and a half hours daily, and could be locked up together for a maximum of four hours a day. Baths were granted twice a week and they were barred from all community activities including church service.

On August 27th 1974, Ulrike Meinhof was transferred to Berlin due to her involvement in the liberation of Baader in 1970. Ulrike Meinhof appeared sick and barely perceived the presence of Mahler. She explained the struggle she fought with RAF at her trial as follows: “The anti-imperialistic struggle, if it is to be more than mere chatter, means annihilation, destruction, the shattering of the imperialist power system – political, economic and military” (Aust 1985, 1998). The reaction evoked by Meinhof among the people present at the trial is a feeling of pity more than anything else. Ulrike Meinhof is compared to Joan of Arc, a self-made martyr whose followers merely existed in her head. Meinhof is sentenced to eight years of imprisonment on November 29th 1974.

Back in Stammheim, she was due to begin her work on an essay about the history of the RAF, the preliminary title was to be “On the Anti-Imperialist Struggle.” Her notes show that she put the RAF into the time frame of ‘68 and portrayed the RAF as the rescuer of these ideals, ensuring the continuation of the struggle. Although Gudrun Ensslin reassured Ulrike Meinhof that she was the voice of the RAF, Meinhof was plagued by severe self-doubt that impeded her creativity. She accused herself of not having completely dissolved all bonds to her past in the establishment, of lacking revolutionary power, and of accepting the game of domination and submission, of fear and clinging to the rules.

The Stammheim trial

On October 2nd 1974, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Hoger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe were officially identified as the five most important members of the RAF and accused of five murders. During the Stammheim trial, 1,000 witnesses and 70 experts would be heard and the files on case ran to 170 amounting to nearly 100,000 pages. The files were internally named “Baader – Meinhof – Complex.”

In November 1974, Günter von Drenkmann, a judge who is not affiliated with the trial is killed by the 2. June Movement.

Whereas the first generation RAF was imprisoned, the second generation tried to liberate them. They stormed the German embassy in Stockholm killing several people. Several RAF groups existed that were ignorant of each other’s existence.

On May 21st 1975, the trial commenced in a building, which had been built next to the Stammheim prison on purpose.

The trial was nerve-racking and protracted over two years. The defendants had to be thrown out of the courtroom many times and some attorneys were expelled. It took weeks until the conditions were such that the personalities could be checked. The Bundestag had revised the Code of Criminal Procedure prior to this trial.

Several recurring themes of the trial included the question of the defending lawyers, the bugging of the Stammheim prison cells, the length of the hearing per day, and the issue of fitness of the defendants to stand trial.

During day 23 of the trial, on August 5th, Ulrike Meinhof commented on terrorism: “Terrorism is the destruction of utilities such as dykes, waterworks, hospitals, power stations. All the targets at which the American bomb attacks in the North Vietnam were systematically aimed from 1965 onwards. The city guerilla movement, on the other hand, carries fear into the machinery of the state…The actions of urban guerillas are never never directed against people. They are always directed against the imperialist machine. The urban guerilla fight the terrorism of the state” (Aust 1985, 1998). This statement expresses the feelings of the first RAF generation only.

On the 39th day of the trial, September 23rd 1975, the findings of three medical experts unanimously reported that the defendants were suffering from weakness, disorders of speech and vision, being underweight, and were able to concentrate only poorly. Ulrike Meinhof was unable to concentrate at all.

Ulrike Meinhof talked about the impossibility of defection in the 41st day of the trial, October 28th 1975. She asked the judge: “How can a prisoner kept in isolation show the authorities…that his conduct has changed?...The prisoner has only one possible way of showing that his conduct has changed and that is betrayal….That means that in a situation when you’re in isolation there are just two alternatives: either...you silence a prisoner…by which I mean he dies, or you get him to talk. And that means confession and betrayal. That is torture, that’s nothing less than torture by isolation, defined by the need to extort confessions, to intimidate the prisoner so as to penalize and confuse him” (Aust 1985, 1998). These remarks express an emotional distance to the group and most likely reflect her own thoughts of her situation. Doubt for the RAF was equal to betrayal.

On January 13th, the defendants claimed ‘political responsibility’ for the bomb attacks, but did not comment on the criminal aspect. To them the motivations for their actions were purely political and thus, they executed political acts.

After four years of imprisonment, the conflicts within the group intensified. The relationships particularly between Ensslin and Meinhof were at their lowest in the spring of 1976. They were brutal, cruel, underhand, and played tricks at each other. Ulrike Meinhof wrote that she could not stand that situation any longer.

Ulrike Meinhof had been officially excluded from the trial for a month from March 19th to April 10th and voluntarily stayed away from then onwards.
Four days after Gudrun Ensslin disassociated herself from the attack on the Axel Springer publishing house, which was a public notice that the solidarity between the group had come to an end, Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her cell

Ulrike Meinhof commits suicide:

politicization of a private decision

During the night of Saturday, May 8th 1976, the anniversary of the war, Ulrike Meinhof hung herself in her prison cell. She was found the next morning. The post-mortem examination was carried out that afternoon by Professor Rauschke and Professor Mallach at the Stuttgart Citizens’ Hospital. The brain and parts of organs were removed from the body for detailed examination of the tissue at a later stage. The definite conclusion reached that day was suicide by strangulation with no extraneous factors. Another autopsy requested by her sister led to the same conclusion.

The press sparked an intense debate: Was it murder or suicide? Did the German government or justice system kill Ulrike Meinhof? Certainly, the isolation of the prisoners led to this outcome.

In hindsight, it almost seems as if the death of Ulrike Meinhof was used by the extra-parliamentary left to further politicize the German population as well as increase the influence of their ideology and doctrines. According to the RAF theory, Meinhof did not commit suicide but was murdered. Even if she hanged herself, the RAF argued it was the entirety of the hated German state – the judicial system, the police “Bullenschweine,” and the capitalist ruling class – that murdered Ulrike Meinhof. She was the victim of a political show trial that deprived her of other alternatives so that she had to kill herself by default in order to be heard. Months before her death, she had noted on the margin of a paper on strategy “Suicide is the last act of rebellion”(Aust 1985, 1998).

Among others, Otto Schilly, who later became the Federal Minister of the Interior, called for an ‘International Investigatory Commission’ that subjected the official results to another critical evaluation. The commission looked into the findings of the chemical examinations carried out by the Stuttgart Police which at first suggested rape, but plausibly explained that the protein traces could not result from spermatic filaments. Moreover, the length and texture of the toweling rope used by Ulrike Meinhof to hang herself was cause for doubt according to the Commission. In addition, the absence of a farewell note stroke the commission as highly untypical.

Among the extra-parliamentary left, everybody was suspicious: from SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to the wardens. They all were partly to blame for the death because they were moral accomplices and belonged to the corrupt system. Rumors of special agents of the secret service that intruded the cell and murdered her disguising their act as a suicide made the rounds. Many such theories circulated and provoked a heated political debate.

Why did Ulrike Meinhof commit suicide?

The next Sunday would have been mother’s day. Was it Meinhof’s guilty consciousness that plagued her? At this point, she had broken off all contact to her daughters whose letters she returned unopened.
Did Ulrike Meinhof commit suicide as an act of last resistance, the ultimate expression of free will and rebellion? Or was it the last refuge of a completely exhausted, desperate woman who could not bear the isolation in prison anymore and was simply worn out by the many arguments with Ensslin and Baader as well as torn apart by the cruel group pressure. Instead of fighting united against a defined goal, the RAF leadership spent more time fighting against each other in a psychological warfare that was not only cruel and pointless but also self-destructive and counterproductive. It was partly a consequence of living under the strict prison conditions, but also an expression of the emergence of subliminal conflicts that had influenced the group latently since its foundation. They were foremost a result of the interactions of incompatible human beings that were overcoming difficult interpersonal relations. Peter Jürgen Boock who had to decode secret messages between the RAF prisoners remembered having read that the best that Ulrike Meinhof could have done with her miserable life was to kill herself. Group internally nobody doubted her suicide and the extent of the disagreements within the group became clear. The sorrow seemed to be a mere mask to support the murder thesis.

As a result of her suicide, the proceedings against her were at end, however, the trial continued against the defendants Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe.

On May 16th 1976, Ulrike Meinhof was buried on the cemetery of the protestant Holy Trinity church in Mariendorf, West Berlin. Over 4000 supporters followed her coffin, but her daughters had to stay home for security reasons. On the graveside, people remembered Meinhof’s commitment to the anti-atomic bomb campaign, the Vietnam War, her journalistic work that she ultimately regarded as ineffective, and her fate-determining decision to go underground to fight the system. The Berliner publisher, Klaus Wagenbach, attributed her going underground partly due to the external conditions which labeled people as extremists who questioned the status quo.
The theologian, Helmut Grollwitzer, posed the question whether Ulrike Meinhof might have made a different decision if she had had a larger group of supporters to work with towards a more humane society.
One year later on April 7th 1977 when the so-called command Ulrike Meinhof shot down the Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback, the revenge for the supposed murder was completed. A letter claiming responsibility for the deed read: “History will always find a way for such protagonists of the system as Buback. On 7.4.77 the Ulrike Meinhof Commando executed Federal prosecutor General Siegfried Buback…” (Aust 1985, 1998).

Terrorism: a willful act or a mere brain damage?

The morbid fascination of scientists with Ulrike Meinhof’s brain is one of the lesser known details in relation to the RAF. The obscure metamorphosis of the intelligent, gifted, bourgeois girl into a cold-minded killer appalled many people.

Did a brain damage influence Ulrike Meinhof’s development into a terrorist?
The 26-year old Ulrike Meinhof had to undergo surgery because a tumor was suspected in her brain, which turned out to be a benign tumor. Scientists hypothesized that this operation might have affected Ulrike Meinhof’s emotional control center. Was she of sound mind? In retrospective, what effect does this debate have on the history of the RAF? Does brain research dismantle the “I”?

Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide in her prison cell on May 9th 1976, which can be interpreted as the ultimate act of free will or the ultimate act of resistance executed by an extraordinarily woman who strongly believed in a vision and that the means justified the ends.

In November 2002, Bettina Röhl, Meinhof’s daughter, discovered that her mother’s brain was stored in a cardboard box at the University of Tübingen without the family’s permission. The autopsy after Meinhof’s suicide was carried out by the neurologist, Professor Jürgen Pfeiffer, who noticed unusual deformations of Meinhof’s brain. He stated that a causality between the brain operation and a loss of a sense for the reality was more than likely, concluding that Ulrike Meinhof’s brain showed pathological abnormalities which should have led to reduced culpability or acquittal at the trial. In 1974, Ulrike Meinhof was sentenced to eight years in prison assuming that she was fully mentally fit and responsible for her actions.
Pfeiffer corresponded with Renate Riemeck who confirmed that Ulrike Meinhof underwent a profound personality change after the operation resulting in a partial self-estrangement. Bettina Röhl claims that Pfeiffer wrote a report on his findings that was published in 1976 and included the above mentioned thesis with photographic evidence. This report circulated among RAF sympathizers but never reached the mass media. Even the tribunal under Otto Schilly refused to inform the public about the report. Arguably, it would have destroyed not only the legitimatization of the RAF but also the credibility of the entire movement of the extra-parliamentary left if it had become known that a pathologically sick woman was the voice of their movement, the author of many central pieces that laid out the RAF ideological framework, and one of the founding members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
Ulrike Meinhof’s ex-husband, Klaus Rainer Röhl, had hypothesized independently from the findings mentioned above that his ex-wife suffered from the late consequences of her brain operation. As he states in his book “Fünf Finger sind keine Faust” (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1974), his wife had undergone changes, she had become cooler, more distanced and sexually unfeeling. During their divorce process, Ulrike Meinhof had devastated their mutual house. According to Klaus R. Röhl, the change in personality is connected with Ulrike Meinhof’s becoming a terrorist.
The medical history of Ulrike Meinhof was published by Dr. Kautsky in 1968, anonymous under the acronym U.R. as story of a successful operation and healing process.
In 1997, Pfeiffer gave the psychiatrist, Bernhard Bogerts, Ulrike Meinhof’s brain and he conducted research on her brain for five years at the University of Magdeburg. He claims that Meinhof had a brain operation in 1962 that may have contributed to her becoming one of Europe’s most feared urban guerillas and terrorists. Her right brain-half, which deals with emotional response, had been injured by the clamping off of a tumor in a brain operation in 1962. The operation led to pathological modifications of her brain possibly resulting in an increased aggression of Meinhof as well as behavioral changes that turned her from an aspiring journalist to becoming the co-founder of the far-leftist RAF terrorist group.
The Spiegel published before long an article on Ulrike Meinhof and her brain diagnosis. The Spiegel editor-in-chief, Stefan Aust, was an important figurehead in deciphering the Baader-Meinhof complex since he had undergone journalism training under Ulrike Meinhof, was present at the violent demonstration against the Axel-Springer publishing house, and was involved in returning her twins to their father.
Bettina Röhl has filed a lawsuit on charges of disturbing the peace of the dead for secretly removing Meinhof’s brain after her death and is seeking to have her brain buried with the rest of her remains in Berlin. Röhl claims that a dead terrorist has a right to be treated fairly and the right to a decent burial. In 2002, the brain of Ulrike Meinhof was buried in Berlin.

While the brain operation might have had a profound influence on Ulrike Meinhof’s behavior, it will always remain an unanswered question in how far external circumstances such as friends and society as well as a longing for adventure and a meaningful life have been decisive factors that influenced her transformation from an aspiring journalist admired by the high society, celebrated as highly sensible and gifted, and valued for her opinions into a woman devoted to the armed urban guerrilla struggle against the capitalist and imperialist German state.

In 2002, just after the daughters of Ulrike Meinhof had finally obtained the permission to burry her brain BBC reported missing the brains of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe who committed suicide in jail in 1977. The director of the Neurological Research Institute of the University of Tübingen, Richard Meyermann, has no explanation concerning the whereabouts of the brain.


The Janus Face of Ulrike Meinhof

Ulrike Meinhof is much more than a terrorist for the Germans; she is a myth that cannot be forgotten. Audacious journalists referred to her as Joan of Arc, a courageous fighter against injustice, fantasized about a Meinhof-Medea who had abandoned her children, portrayed Ulrike Meinhof as the victim of a promiscuous husband, and glorified her acts of terrorism.


In 1976, just after Meinhof had committed suicide the former Chancellor Gustav Heineman said:
“Whatever she did, however incomprehensible it might have been, she did it for us.”
Up to this day, Ulrike Meinhof remains a much debatable figure. By some, she is referred to as “Ulrike,” she is admired, mocked, and loathed by others. Nevertheless, many people identify with her consciously or subconsciously. Somehow the imagination of a strong Ulrike Meinhof with a machine pistol is fascinating, even more so because many share a mistrust against the state desiring change.

Ulrike Meinhof is seen as the intellectual force of the RAF and the woman that shaped the ideology by utilizing her journalistic experience to present the RAF to society. It has been stressed over and over again that she was a talented student, a young journalist with extraordinary rhetorical skills, and a passion for politics. She is depicted as a political peace activist, a convinced socialist who tirelessly worked towards poverty alleviation and social justice within Germany as well as worldwide. 1968 was the watershed in Meinhof’s life in which she abandoned her life as a star journalist and began to slide into a life illegality. As co-founder of an urban guerilla movement that embraced militant struggle against the imperialist state, she is seen as a heroine who did not hesitate to risk her life to spark the revolution. However, she proved to be much less influential than the name Baader-Meinhof Gang suggests. After nearly four years in prison, she took her life at the age of 41.


Although the RAF had separated itself from the student movement since it embraced the principle of violence as a means to force social change, the members were still children of the time. Hatred against the establishment, admiration for socialist theory were underlying factors of both movements, and so was the importance of fantasy, the belief than can change your behavior.


So why did women, including Meinhof, become terrorists?
Some women, for example Ulrike Meinhof, take part in terrorism when there are few perceived outlets for gender equality. Frustrated with a lack of outlets for their public activism, women turn to the kinds of strategies that many alienated groups have adopted: to fight against mainstream political institutions/states using extreme tactics including terrorism. Ulrike Meinhof became a terrorist because she saw few alternatives for pursuing political justice and had little trust in the German government or other institutions. However, the RAF did not specifically encourage women to become terrorists. Rather, it was the fear of the outbreak of a global atomic war, the desire for long-term peace, and the confrontation with the National Socialist past, the rebellion against the Neo-Nazis, and the hate for the “system/state” that united these young female and male intellectuals causing them to establish the left-wing terrorist group – the RAF. It should be noted, that women in the group were stronger or equally represented as the men.