Jeremy Varon (65 page)

74. Die Verteideger der Gefangenen aus der RAF,
Die Gefangenen aus der
RAF beenden den Hungerstreik
(flyer, February 5, 1975).

75.
Frankfurter Rundschau,
September 2, 1986, 10.

76. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
251–52.

77. Ibid., 281; “spiegelinterview,” in RAF,
texte,
241.

78. Sepp Binder,
Terrorismus: Herausforderung und Antwort
(Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft, 1978), 45–46.

79. Ibid., 45.

80. “spiegelinterview,” in RAF,
texte,
243.

81. One estimate placed the cumulative cost of the pursuit, incarceration, and prosecution of the RAF, as of 1978, at over 100 million marks. Althammer,
Gegen
den Terror,
131.

82. In 2000–2002, Turkish political prisoners developed methods, chiefly the ingestion of large amounts of water and sugar, for dramatically extending the ability to survive. Some hunger strikers lived for more than 200 days, long past what medical experts thought possible. “Turkish Hunger Strikers Risk Body and Mind,”
NYT,
December 18, 2001, A3.

83. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”
125, 153–54.

84. Horst Mahler, “Der Foltervorwurf—eine Propagadalüge,”
Spiegel,
no.

50 (1978): 62. Some inmates bitterly resented Mahler’s dismissive view of their efforts to improve prison conditions. Peter-Paul Zahl engaged in a heated exchange with Mahler, documented in Peter-Paul Zahl,
Die Stille und das Grelle:
Aufsatzsammlung
(Freie Gesellschaft, 1981).

85. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
261–62.

86. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”
183–84.

87. Spangenberg, 20–33. “Haftstatut von Holger Meins,” in
Ausgewählte
Dokumente.

88.
Zum Gedanken an die Opfer des Terrorismus,
46.

89. Such analyses did not cease altogether. In January 1976, RAF defendants read into the court record a 200-page statement arguing the imperialist nature Notes to Pages 224–34

347

of the West German state and outlining various anti-imperialist strategies. “Erklärung zur Sache—Auszüge dem Manuskript,” in
Ausgewählte Dokumente.

90. “spiegelinterview,” in RAF,
texte,
249.

91. Ibid., 241.

92. Della Porta,
Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State,
119. See also Wanda von Baeyer-Katte, “Die soziale Bedingungen terroristischen Handelns,” in id. et al.,
Gruppenprozesse,
Analysen zum Terrorismus, vol. 3 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1982), 318–91.

93. Della Porta,
Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State,
176.

94. Government officials in fact later conceded that they had no evidence—

and indeed did not even suspect—that the Stammheim inmates had in any way planned the Schleyer kidnapping. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”
190–91.

95. “rede von ulrike zu der brefreiung von andreas, moabit 13. september,”

in RAF,
texte,
74.

96. “spiegelinterview,” in RAF,
texte,
252–53.

97. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”
146. See also Bakker Shut,
Dokumente: Das Info.

98. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”
146.

99. Juergensmeyer,
Terror in the Mind of God,
167. The term “sacrifice,” Juergensmeyer points out, comes from the Latin
sacrificium,
which means “to make holy.” Martyrdom, as a form of sacrifice, shares this religious connotation.

100. Ibid., 161, 169.

101. Ibid., 165.

102. “der letzte brief von holger meins (am 31.10.1974),” in RAF,
texte,
14.

103. The controversy over the funeral itself is documented in the film
Deutschland im Herbst
(Germany in Autumn), by Alf Brustellin, Hans Peter Cloos, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, et al. (Filmverlag der Autoren, 1977/78).

104. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”
109–36. Schiller was, more precisely, part of a “bridge group” between the RAF’s “first” and “second” generations, which also contained another former RAF prisoner, Helmut Pohl.

Schiller’s cell was captured on February 2, 1974, earning it the name “Gruppe vom 4.2.”

105.
Frankfurter Rundschau,
September 2, 1986, 10.

106. Klein,
German Guerrilla,
19–21.

107. Volker Speital, “Wir wollten alles und gleichzeitig nichts,”
Spiegel,
no 31 (1980): 37.

108. Ibid., 41.

109. “‘Ich bitte um Vergebung’: Interview mit Baptist Ralf Friedrich,”

Spiegel,
no. 34 (August 20, 1990): 53.

110. Ibid.

111. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
266–67.

112. J2M,
Zum Attentat auf Berlins höchsten Richter: Terror oder Gegen-wehr?!
(flyer, November 1974).

113. J2M,
Zur Hinrichtung eines Richters
(flyer, November 1974).

114. “erklärung von jan-karl raspe im prozess in stuttgart-stamheim am 11.5.76,” in RAF,
texte,
21. In her memoir, Schiller repeats the charge that Meinhof was murdered, buttressed by the extraordinary allegation that she had been 348

Notes to Pages 234–39

threatened with murder while in prison by her fellow inmate Gerhard Müller. In 1976, Müller became a witness against the RAF, exchanging information for the withdrawal of the charge that he had murdered a policeman, Norbert Schmid, in 1971. Schiller, who claims to have seen the killing, says she planned to expose Müller’s guilt after she learned of his cooperation with prosecutors. A note he allegedly sent her with the knowledge of prison officials warned that she would meet the same fate as Meinhof if she did so. Schiller,
“Es war ein harter Kampf,”

173–74.

115. “Chronologie,” in
Der blinde Fleck,
241.

116. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
541.

117. See, e.g., “erklärung des KOMMANDO HOLGER MEINS v. 24.4.75,”

in RAF,
texte,
334–36. In its many statements, the RAF cell that kidnapped Schleyer offered no political justification for doing so.

118. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
408.

119. During the Schleyer crisis, Baader told a government official that the Stammheim prisoners disapproved of the recent killing of civilians. He remarked also that those in prison had little capacity to dissuade members of the underground from committing such acts and that, should he be released, he would desist from further violence. Though strategically self-serving, these comments would seem plausibly to reflect the views at the time of Baader and the RAF’s other founders.
Dokumentation zu den Ereignissen und Entscheidung im Zusammenhang mit der Entführung von Hanns Martin Schleyer und der Lufthansa-Machine “Landshut”
(Bonn: Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 1977), 111.

120. Reiche, “Zur Kritik der RAF,” 22.

121. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
321.

122. This portrait of the J2M is drawn from Baumann and from Bewegung 2. Juni,
Der Blues: Gesammelte Texte der Bewegung 2. Juni,
vols. 1 and 2 (n.p.: n.d.).

123. A firsthand account of the Lorenz kidnapping is provided by Ralf Reinders and Ronald Fritzsch in
Die Bewegung 2. Juni
(Berlin: ID-Archiv, 1995).

124. “Die Enführung aus unserer Sicht” in Bewegung 2. Juni,
Der Blues, I,
178.

125. J2M, “Zum Attentat.”

126. “Hungerstreik, Gewalt und Sozialismus,”
Tagespiegel,
November 17, 1974, 17.

127.
Berliner Extra-Dienst,
92/VIII (November 5, 1972).

128. “Flugblatt der ‘Bewegung 2. Juni,’” in Peter Brückner and Barbara Sichermann,
Solidarität und Gewalt
(Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1974), 84.

129. Herbert Marcuse, “Mord darf keine Waffe sein,”
Zeit,
October 1977.

130. Herbert Marcuse, “So sieht in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft der Fortschritt aus . . . ,” in
Gespräche mit Herbert Marcuse
(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978), 146.

131. Marcuse, “Mord darf keine Waffe sein.”

132. Marcuse, “So sieht in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft der Fortschritt aus . . . ,” 147.

133. Marcuse, “Mord darf keine Waffe sein.”

Notes to Pages 239–45

349

134.
Spiegel,
August 20, 1990, 57.

135. Fetscher,
Terrorismus und Reaktion,
41.

136. Once in custody, Ruhland turned against the RAF and provided prosecutors with extensive information about the group. On Brückner see “Professor schwer belastet,”
Frankfurter Rundschau,
January 20, 1972, 4, and Komitee “Solidarität mit Peter Brückner,”
INFO: Zur kriminalisierung Opposition in
der BRD
(Hannover, 1972).

137. Brückner and Sichermann,
Solidarität und Gewalt,
16.

138. Ibid.

139. Ibid., 16, 20.

140. Ibid., 25.

141. Ibid., 26.

142. Reiche, “Zur Kritik der RAF,” 19.

143. RAF, “Concept of the Urban Guerrilla,” 55.

144. Reiche, “Zur Kritik der RAF,” 20.

145. Ibid., 19–20.

146. Horst Mahler and Gerhart Baum, “‘Wir müssen raus aus den Schützengraben,’”
Spiegel,
no. 52 (1979): 37.

147. Reiche, “Zur Kritik der RAF,” 21.

148. Wolfgang Kraushaar, “44 Tage ohne Opposition,” in
Der blinde
Fleck,
11.

149. Eric Fried, “So kam ich unter die Deutschen,” in Binder,
Terrorismus,
49.

150. Fetscher,
Terrorismus und Reaktion,
42.

151. Reiche, “Zur Kritik der RAF,” 22.

152. Kraushaar, “44 Tage,” 22.

153. Bäcker and Mahler, “Zehn Thesen zur RAF,” 13.

154. Baumann,
Terror or Love?
120.

155.
Frankfurter Rundschau,
September 2, 1986, 10.

156. “‘Ich bitte um Vergebung’: Interview mit Baptist Ralf Friedrich,” 57. In 1992, Friedrich was sentenced to prison for his activities in the 1970s.

157. “Ehemalige RAF-Mitglieder schwören dem Terrorismus ab,”
dpa,
October 22, 1986.

158. On violence in England, see Tom Vague,
Anarchy in the UK: The Angry
Brigade
(London: AK Press, 1997). On violence elsewhere, see
Arm the Spirit
(ATS),
the irregular publication of a self-described “autonomist/anti-imperialist information collective based in Toronto Canada.” Formed in the late 1980s as a support group for “political prisoners” in the United States,
ATS
published the communiqués of “guerrilla” groups from the Basque territories, Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, West Germany, and elsewhere throughout the 1990s.

159. See Dagmar Herzog, “‘Pleasure, Sex, and Politics Belong Together’: Post-Holocaust Memory and the Sexual Revolution in West Germany,”
Critical Inquiry,
no. 24 (Winter 1998): 393–444.

160. RAF communiqué, “Erklärung vom 16. Mai 1972, Kommando Thomas Weisbecker.”

161. RAF communiqué, “Erklärung vom 25. Mai 1972, Kommando Juli 15.”

350

Notes to Pages 245–47

162. RAF communiqué, “Erklärung vom 29. Mai 1972.”

163. RAF, “Den Antiimperialistischen Kampf führen! Die rote Armee Aufbauen! Die Aktion des Schwarzen September in München,” in RAF,
texte,
434–35.

164. Aust,
Baader-Meinhof Group,
253.

165. Ibid., 317.

166. Von Dirke, “
All Power to the Imagination,
” 13–14.

167. The evasion or denial of the past was not as total as this common portrait implies. Jeffrey Herf shows that at key points from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, conservative and liberal politicians in the West publicly raised the difficult issue of German guilt, often in the context of discussions of restitution for the victims or punishment of the perpetrators. In so doing, they displayed considerable political, intellectual, and moral leadership and managed to shape to some degree public discourse about the past. Leaders in West Germany certainly were more honest in self-reflection than their counterparts in the East. The latter obscured the issue of guilt by claiming that East Germany, as a communist country, was aligned with historic antifascism and that East Germans therefore had a vastly lesser share of responsibility for the horrors of Nazism. Yet, as Herf concedes, plans for a comprehensive denazification of West German society were halted for reasons of political expediency and lack of will. Some politicians, notably Chancellor Adenauer, often broached the question of German guilt only to minimize the extent of popular complicity with Nazism and pursued policies that allowed former members of the Nazi elite positions of prominence in the Federal Republic. Herf concludes: “Even in the classic era of silence and of democratization [the late 1940s and 1950s], the crimes of the Nazis found a place in early West German political narratives, though not a prominent or ubiquitous one.” Jeffrey Herf,
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 268. The public, Herf also shows, consistently favored amnesty over punishment for war criminals and objected to efforts to attribute guilt to anyone other than a small core of ardent Nazis. Little, it seems, ultimately contradicts the view that no
sustained
self-critical engagement with the German past, either from above or below, took place in West Germany in the first decades after the war. More recently, Robert Moeller has argued in
War Studies: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) that West Germans indeed confronted the Nazi era in the postwar years but did so in essentially self-serving ways that enhanced their sense of being victims.

168. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich,
The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior,
trans. Beverley R. Placzek (1967; New York: Grove Press, 1975), 20.

169. Ibid., 66.

170. Eric Santner,
Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory and Film in Postwar Germany
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 34.