October 2007

“We Wanted to Push the Revolutionary Process Forward” junge Welt interview with Helmut Pohl and Rolf Clemens Wagner

The interview was conducted by Rüdiger Göbel, Peter Rau, Wera Tichter, and Gerd Schumann. junge Welt: The media has squeezed everything possible out of the 2007 anniversary of the “German Autumn.” The events of 1977 came to a bitter end. The way it is being depicted on TV, on the radio, and in the print media constitutes a sort of hysterical coming to terms with the Red Army Faction (RAF): The Stammheim Night (Spiegel), a series; The Terror Years (Die Zeit), a special issue; The Bourgeois Children’s War, a primetime ARD documentary.……… Read the rest

4. The Stammheim “Suicides”

The Stammheim “Suicides” (1) In previous installments we have seen how the Red Army Faction survived the arrest of its leading members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Holger Meins, and Jan Carl Raspe in 1972. Over the next years these individuals and other RAF political prisoners were subjected to isolation and sensory deprivation torture, and yet through the strategic use of hunger strikes managed to inspire a new generation of guerilla fighters on the outside.……… Read the rest

3. German Autumn, Bitter Defeat

As we saw in our previous installments, by late summer 1977 the Red Army Faction was poised to carry out its most ambitious gambit to free its members being held captive in West German prisons. Dozens of guerillas had spent years in isolation, at times subjected to sensory deprivation torture, and yet they continued to fight for their political identity, and indeed their own sanity, through hunger strikes which mobilized support on the outside.……… Read the rest

2. The Summer of 77: The Prisoners’ Struggle Heats Up

As we saw in yesterday’s installment, by 1977 the Red Army Faction had shown that it had survived the arrests of its founding members five years earlier. Successfully countering isolation, psychological conditioning and sensory deprivation torture, the prisoners had in fact inspired their own successors, and through the strategic use of hunger strikes had come to symbolize resistance to the West German state and U.S.……… Read the rest

1. Seven Years of Struggle Against the State

The first in a series of installments about the Red Army Faction, specifically their 1977 campaign which led to the “German Autumn”… Seven Years of Struggle Against the State The Red Army Faction had, by this time, engaged in a campaign of armed struggle for seven years, beginning with the action that freed Andreas Baader from custody in 1970 – he had been serving a three-year sentence for setting fire to a department store to protest the war in Vietnam.……… Read the rest