The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (28 page)

With the Flatters Street arrests, the 2JM was for all intents and purposes wiped out, Viett and Juliane Plambeck being the only known combatants still at large. The two soon came to the conclusion that the only way to continue the struggle would be to join the RAF.
⁴³
There had been discussions about this for years,
⁴⁴
and these had already been pursued in Paris prior to May 5, but, according to Viett, the RAF remained highly critical of what they considered the opportunism of the 2JM's traditional social revolutionary, “populist” approach. But the anti-imperialists had already rejected this orientation, and so, united by their condition of shared weakness, it was decided that the rump 2JM would publicly declare that it was dissolving itself into the RAF. The dowry in this marriage of last resort was to take the form of a public repudiation of much of the 2JM's history.
⁴⁵

Inge Viett (left) and Juliane Plambeck, the only 2JM members remaining at large following the 1980 Paris arrests.

The 2JM's dissolution statement is an unpleasant document, as self-criticisms tend to be, especially when they result from outside pressure. All the more so, given the disingenuous nature of what is written: as we now know, there was not much of a 2JM left to dissolve in 1980, just two survivors from the anti-imperialist faction stranded in Paris, looking for a way to continue. The historic 2JM was much better represented in the angry rejoinder the document provoked from Ralf Reinders, Klaus Viehmann, and Ronald Fritzsch, who were being held together at Moabit prison in West Berlin. During a trial statement delivered on June 10, Gabriele Rollnik, who had herself been sympathetic to the anti-imperialists, went straight to the point: “The 2nd of June Movement cannot be dissolved by someone reading a leaflet.”
⁴⁶

Nonetheless, with Viett and Plambeck's rallying to the RAF, the 2JM was no more. Although there were some isolated low-level actions by a “Friends of the 2nd of June Movement,” including the bombing of the Berlin-Kreuzberg municipal offices,
⁴⁷
these soon petered out. While important elements of the politics it represented did persist, resonating in the actions of the Revolutionary Cells and even the
Autonomen,
these lacked the proletarian and class-oriented perspective the early 2JM had tried so hard to embody. It was, in that sense, a tradition that had failed to find fertile ground in the new Model Germany.

There is a sad postscript to this unpleasant document.

Life underground implies constant illegality, as one's fugitive status makes legal means of acquiring certain things more risky than simple theft. Automobiles in particular were required by the guerilla, and new ones were always being sought in order to keep one step ahead of the authorities. In the village of Flein, in Baden-Württemberg, on July 25, 1980, Heidi Schulz, Juliane Plambeck, and the two Beer brothers had just stolen a BMW—Schulz and Henning Beer took off in the stolen car while Plambeck and Wolfgang Beer followed in another vehicle. Tragedy struck as they rounded a corner just outside of the town of Unterriexingen: Plambeck lost control of her car, crossing over the median into oncoming traffic and colliding head-on with a dump truck. The two guerillas were dead before police arrived on the scene.
⁴⁸

Juliane Plambeck had been active in the Munich Red Aid, a prisoner support group,
⁴⁹
before joining the 2JM. She was arrested in 1975 and charged in connection with the Lorenz kidnapping. After she and the other women prisoners escaped in 1976,
⁵⁰
she continued her work with the guerilla, being one of those involved in the Palmers kidnapping in 1977. She had turned twenty-eight less than two weeks before her death.

Wolfgang Beer had only recently been released from prison following the stint that had resulted from the dpa occupation. Choosing to return underground to the RAF, it was on his recommendation that his younger brother Henning—who had repeatedly tried to join the RAF, only to be refused each time—had been brought into the guerilla.
⁵¹
Witnessing his brother's death, Henning Beer now fell into a deep depression.

Wolfgang Beer

When police realized who the dead occupants of the car were, the
Zielfahndung
descended on the scene, bagging and tagging over two thousand items for computer analysis. Eager to exploit the situation to their full propaganda advantage, the police noted that Lothar Späth, the president of Baden-Württemberg, lived only a
few hundred meters from the crash site, which had also occurred on a route that Rebmann regularly used
⁵²
—it was soon being trumpeted that the guerilla had been working on a new “terrorist spectacular.”
⁵³
Thousands of police scoured the surrounding countryside and nearby towns in the days following.
⁵⁴

There was now only one 2JM member left from the “historic” liquidation of the 2JM “to continue the anti-imperialist struggle within the RAF—as the RAF.” Viett would later claim that she never felt personally close to the guerillas she now found herself with, that there was not the same sense of affinity or trust that she had shared with the 2JM women she had lived and worked with for years.
⁵⁵
Nevertheless, she would soon prove pivotal in resolving the key issue facing the RAF, namely, what to do with those members who either wanted out or whom the core group no longer felt they could work with.

Various solutions had already been discussed, including the possibility of the eight relocating to one of the new national states in Africa. Viett was asked to use her contact with Colonel Harry Dahl of the
Stasi
to see if he could help them broker such a deal. However, when he heard of the plan he pointed out that, as white people, the former guerillas were liable to stand out like a sore thumb. He had a better idea, suggesting that the eight relocate to East Germany. The RAF had never considered that, but when Viett presented them with the offer, it seemed to solve all their problems. She was sent back to the GDR, where she spent ten days as a guest of the state, making the necessary arrangements.
⁵⁶

Ralf Friedrich and Sigrid Sternebeck were the first to go. They were given instructions to travel from Paris to Italy, then to Austria, where they were provided with new passports. From there they flew out to Czechoslovakia, and then to East Berlin. At Schönefeld airport, they were picked up and driven to Pankow, where they were interviewed about their personal histories.
⁵⁷

Everything having proceeded smoothly, these first two were followed by Susanne Albrecht, Silke Maier-Witt, Werner Lotze, Christine Dümlein, Monika Helbing, and Ekkehard von Seckendorff-Gudent. They became citizens of the German Democratic Republic at a
champagne dinner in the town of Briesen in September 1980. They were provided with false identities, and once they had mastered their cover stories they were dispersed across the country.
⁵⁸

As Helmut Pohl would recall, years later:

People wanted to leave, but to where? Through contacts to the GDR it was possible to provide them with good conditions—otherwise they would have ended up in prison. Given the existing reality, the comrades in the GDR really did offer them the best possible conditions…. The defectors weren't sent off to some secluded area. They received professional training and were able to study. The GDR really went all out.
⁵⁹

There was, however, one dropout who would not be making the trip East: Peter-Jürgen Boock. Boock would later claim that he had wanted to break with the RAF ever since the Zurich bank robbery, but that during this period he was essentially the RAF's prisoner, disarmed and kept under constant watch. Intent on avoiding exile, a short while before the transfers East began, he claims to have sabotaged a gas boiler in the safehouse where they were staying, so that a repairman would have to be called. In this situation, where the others couldn't use their weapons, he apparently jumped out a window and made his way back to West Germany.
⁶⁰

(According to a public statement made in 1988 by several RAF prisoners, Boock's resistance to exile was due to the fact that the kind of drug scene he was dependent on did not exist outside of the metropole.)
⁶¹

Despite this hiccup in the plan, the overall problem seemed to be solved. Buoyed by this resolution, the RAF began to make arrangements to test the waters for a more active partnership with the
Stasi.
Already for years, the guerilla had benefited from transit through East Berlin and tolerance from the GDR's security apparatus. The
Stasi
was also able to inform West Germans when the names they were using on phony ID had been detected and entered into police computers, and when their depots were under surveillance.
⁶²
Within a couple of years, the East Germans would be providing the RAF with weapons training, as well as a safe place to meet and make plans. It was a far cozier relationship than any of the guerilla's supporters could have imagined, and
one that flew in the face of the radical left's hostility to the “real existing socialist” regime.

(Ironically, while their supporters may not have had an inkling of the GDR's assistance to the RAF at this time, with the help of its mole Chalid Dschihad the BND quickly found out about the exiles' new where-abouts.
⁶³
Hoping to capitalize on the exodus, the
Verfassungsschutz
visited relatives, friends, and former colleagues of suspected guerillas, promising that any future defectors would be relocated with new names, passports, and anywhere up to 250,000
DM
. There were no takers.)
⁶⁴

The presence of so many guerillas with misgivings about the armed struggle had been an obstacle blocking the RAF's path forward and a serious drain on its resources. With this obstacle now removed, and with help now being provided by the East, the guerilla was ready to forge ahead, with hopes of finally putting the setbacks of recent years behind them.

_____________

1
. See “Attack on Alexander Haig,”
page 116
.

2
. Bill Vann, “Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Jimmy Carter—the ‘Friendly' Face of U.S. Imperialism,” World Socialist Website, October 12, 2002.

3
. Edward Jay Epstein, “Secrets of the Tehran Archive,”
The People's Voice,
August 3, 2009.

4
. Associated Press, “Iranian Assets under U.S. Control Set at $8 billion,”
The Lethbridge Herald,
November 20, 1979.

5
. Erik Jan Zürcher,
Turkey: A Modern History
(New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 267.

6
. Bill Vann, “Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Jimmy Carter—the ‘Friendly' Face of U.S. Imperialism.”

7
. Scott Erb,
German Foreign Policy: Navigating a New Era
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 56.

8
. Mushaben, 99.

9
. Michael A. Genovese,
Encyclopedia of the American Presidency
(New York: Facts on File, 2009), 76.

10
. Carl Christoph Schweitzer,
Politics and Government in Germany 1944-1994
(Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995), 197.

11
. Geronimo, 111.

12
. Marianne Strauch, “Krawall gegen Massengelöbnis vor 30 Jahren,”
buten un binnen Magazin,
RB TV, May 5, 2010.

13
. Schweitzer, 197-198.

14
. Strauch, “Krawall gegen Massengelöbnis vor 30 Jahren.”

15
. Despite a possible reading of their name in English, readers should keep in mind that “Autonomen” is a gender-neutral German word, roughly meaning “autonomists.” In many cities, women formed the backbone of the movement. Somewhat confusingly, many radical women (some of whom were part of the
Autonomen,
some of whom were not) often referred to their movement as the “autonomous women's movement”; in the interests of clarity, we will use the term “militant women's movement” in their regard.