The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (50 page)

Indeed, according to one leading British news magazine in 1975:

During the past year… there has been a discernible return of support—or at least sympathy—for imprisoned members of the group among politically uncommitted West Germans. It is founded upon growing concern at the apparent determination of the authorities not to put Meinhof and her comrades on trial until they have been softened up with long, arduous spells of solitary confinement.
¹

In some cities, the RAF support scene that had developed around the Committees Against Torture overlapped with the
sponti
left, though the two were never coterminous. It was far less close to the K-groups, for these remained overwhelmingly hostile to any guerilla politics. Even the KPD/ML, which had provided such unprecedented support during the third hunger strike, remained dead set against the guerilla’s politics; its activity on behalf of the prisoners had simply been a case of nonsectarian solidarity with victims of state repression. As for people on the undogmatic left other than the
spontis
, they generally remained uneasy with the level of violence employed and hostile to much of the RAF’s
politics, though this did not rule out their feeling outraged at how the prisoners were treated.

It was horror at the way its prisoners were treated that was the main factor drawing people into the RAF’s support scene in this period, and the prisoners themselves became potent symbols, both of the violence of the system they were fighting against and of the possibility of resistance. Despite the risks and the human toll, the strategic use of hunger strikes had proven a useful tactic capable of rallying these supporters, as well as important sections of the liberal left.

In some cases, concern with liberating or protecting the prisoners would serve as an impetus for further armed actions. From the very beginning, low-level attacks—smashed windows, slashed tires, even firebombings—were carried out by members of the support scene and others on the radical left without much fanfare and often on a one-off or ad hoc basis. Eventually, other guerilla groups also took action on behalf of the captured combatants.

As we have seen, in 1974, the 2nd of June Movement had killed Judge von Drenkmann in an attempted kidnapping meant to support the RAF prisoners’ hunger strike. Most people considered the RAF to be operationally finished, and many assumed that the 2JM—which had always kept a much lower profile than the RAF—might be a successor organization.

Then, much to the surprise of many, on February 2, 1975, a communiqué was released from the RAF outside of prison—the first such communiqué since the May Offensive almost three years previously. More surprisingly still, this “new” RAF was ordering the prisoners to call off their third hunger strike. It disparaged the “legal left”—a category which was clearly meant to include the
spontis
and other supporters who fell shy of carrying out guerilla-level actions—stating that this left,

as a result of their defensiveness and helplessness in the face of the new fascism, has not developed the capacity to organize solidarity as a weapon, and has failed to develop in a way that corresponds to the construction of the guerilla and the politics of the RAF.
²

Finally, the new reconstituted guerilla promised to carry out its own action on behalf of the prisoners, announcing that “the prisoners’ struggle… is now something that we must settle with our weapons.”

Barely three weeks later, on February 27, 1975, the 2nd of June Movement kidnapped prominent West Berlin Christian Democrat Peter Lorenz, a candidate for mayor in the upcoming West Berlin city elections. Given the timing, it is not surprising that some may have mistaken this for a RAF action, but in fact it was not.

The 2JM commando demanded the release of six prisoners being held in West Berlin’s Moabit prison: Ingrid Siepmann, Verena Becker, Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann, Rolf Pohle, Rolf Heissler, and Horst Mahler. They further demanded that each prisoner be given 20,000 DM
¹
and safe passage out of the country.

All six prisoners on the 2JM’s list had been active in the APO, and all except Mahler could trace their roots to the antiauthoritarian scene. The women were all members of the 2nd of June Movement, and the men were all accused of being members of the RAF (a charge which Pohle denied, all the while expressing his solidarity with the other prisoners). There was, nevertheless, some criticism of this action, as the kidnappers did not demand the release of Meinhof, Ensslin, Raspe, or Baader, whom RAF supporters considered to be not only the heart of the resistance, but also those most likely to be targeted by the state.

Horst Mahler let it be known that he would not go with the others and remained in prison. He used this opportunity to reaffirm his new anti-guerilla position, releasing a public statement to this effect:

The kidnapping of the enemy of the people Peter Lorenz as a means of freeing political prisoners is an expression of politics disconnected from the struggle of the working class, and can only lead to a dead-end. The strategy of individual terror is not the strategy of the working class. During the show trial of Bäcker, Meinhof, and myself in September of last year, in an open critique, which was simultaneously a self-criticism, I clearly stated that my place is at the side of the working class. I am of the firm conviction that the prison gates will be thrown open for all political prisoners through the struggle of the working class and that the terror verdicts passed against me will be wiped away—for that reason, I decline to have myself removed from the country in this way… Onward with the KPD.
²

“Peter Lorenz—Prisoner of the 2nd of June Movement”: of his ordeal he would later recall, “I could always wash, was well fed, they didn’t harass me. I was afraid primarily of what the police might do… The food was simple food like everyone eats. They were intelligent people, and I was well treated.” According to 2JM’s Ronald Fritzsch and Ralf Reinders, upon his release Lorenz shook hands with his captors and expressed the hope that they would meet again under better circumstances, perhaps at one of his garden parties.

In a stunning victory for the guerillas, the state chose to acquiesce. There was just one sticking point: one radical regime after another refused to accept the prisoners.
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Finally, it was decided that the FRG itself would try and entice the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen to offer them sanctuary.

The only self-described Marxist-Leninist country in the Arab world at the time, the PDRY (or South Yemen) was a staunch opponent of western imperialism, and had earned the admiration of many progressive people for its far-reaching social and economic reforms.
⁴
(Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, on the other hand, described it as a “satanic citadel of subversion,”
⁵
while to the Associated Press it was “a radical Arab backwater regarded as the Cuba of the Red Sea.”)
⁶
Nevertheless, in the real political world, the Cold War notwithstanding, even anti-American states would rather not be associated with guerilla actions in the First World—there was simply too much to lose and too little to gain.

Yet, the West German establishment was adamant that it wanted this exchange to work, and so Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher promised that if South Yemen accepted the prisoners, the FRG would provide 10 million DM in development aid. The deal was sealed, and the PDRY agreed to accept the six prisoners.
¹

On March 3, a Lufthansa plane left Frankfurt airport for Aden. On board were the five newly freed revolutionaries (Mahler having opted to remain behind), along with former West Berlin Mayor Albertz, whom the 2JM had stipulated must accompany the prisoners to confirm that all went as planned.

On March 4, Peter Lorenz was released unharmed. Within minutes, the police sealed off sections of West Berlin, raiding left-wing hangouts and homes which had been identified as possible targets beforehand. Two hundred people were caught up in the police sweeps, but none of the guerillas could be found, and all those detained had to be released with no charges laid.
²

The Lorenz kidnapping was a perfectly planned and executed action. While the 2nd of June Movement would be criticized for not demanding freedom for leading RAF cadre, most observers agreed that the exchange only worked because none of the prisoners requested had a particularly notorious profile. The 2JM timed its action well, abducting the mayoral candidate just seventy-two hours before the city elections.

The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, or South Yemen. Note that in 1990, at a time of worldwide retreat for “real existing socialism,” the PDRY agreed to unification with North Yemen, creating the Republic of Yemen.

Finally, the group managed to take control of the media, insisting that the government respond to its demands on television. As one television editor put it:

For 72 hours we just lost control of the medium, it was theirs, not ours… We shifted shows in order to meet their timetable. Our cameras had to be in position to record each of the released prisoners as they boarded their plane to freedom, and our news coverage had to include prepared statements at their dictate… There is plenty of underworld crime on our screens but… now it was the real thing and it was the gangsters who wrote the script and programmed the mass media.
³

The successful liberation of political prisoners, with negotiations carried out through the media itself, constituted a serious blow to the government’s prestige. Going slightly over the top, the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
waxed poetic as to how, “The humiliation of the state was completed in the nation’s electronic Valhalla.”
⁴
CDU politician Alfred Dregger understood what was at stake:

Citizens have the impression that alongside the legitimate civil power there now also exists an illegitimate power, which, at least on occasion, can make the power of the state submit to it, an illegitimate power which has become a negotiating partner of the state power in the full glare of television publicity. This means we must expect further attempts at kidnapping and blackmail.
⁵

Nor was Dregger the only one to understand that the 2JM’s success would beckon to others. On March 7, Chancellor Schmidt acknowledged that the government was expecting there to be more abductions.
⁶
The CIA-funded
Encounter
magazine suggested that all it would take for the RAF to be free would be “if Lufthansa can find another open Arab air-strip on which to disembark them,”
⁷
while
Time
magazine entitled its article on the subject, “The Lorenz Kidnaping: A Rehearsal?”

This was a bitter pill for the state to swallow and contributed to future reticence to negotiate with “terrorists.”

The context in which the Lorenz kidnapping occurred only made it all the more impressive. In the early seventies, there had been a rash of hostage-takings around the world to secure the release of political prisoners, but these had mostly been the work of Palestinian groups, and by 1975 this tactic was proving ever less successful. The police intervention against Black September at the Munich Olympics in 1972, for example, did not bode well for guerillas taking hostages in the FRG.

In fact, it is possible that the state intended a double-cross: subsequent to Lorenz’s release pressure was put on South Yemen to detain the five freed prisoners and to send them back to the FRG. The Aden government refused, pointing out that it had never agreed to be party to such a ruse. Bonn cancelled the promised development aid package, but there was nothing else it could do apart from complaining loudly and hypocritically about how the PDRY was “harboring terrorists.”
¹

Whether the RAF’s February communiqué to the prisoners indicates that there were already plans for what came next, or whether the new guerillas were inspired by the 2JM’s success—or both—remains a matter of conjecture. It has been said that key RAF prisoners felt that the 1974 busts were due to people spending too much time on preparation when they should have been going into action.
²
Following the death of Holger Meins, there was intense pressure to act, and certain departures from the Committees Against Torture were certainly a sign that something was afoot. Indeed, as one such new recruit to the RAF later recalled, it was Baader himself who specified what should be done next.
³