Ulrike Marie Meinhof (; 7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing militant, journalist, author and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement"; condemns "reformism" as "a brake on the anti-capitalist struggle"; and invokes Mao Zedong to define "armed struggle" as "the highest form of Marxism-Leninism".
Meinhof, who took part in the RAF's "May Offensive" in 1972, was arrested that June and spent the rest of her life in custody, largely isolated from outside contact. In November 1974, she was sentenced to 8 years in prison for complicity in a near-fatal shooting in what had been her first RAF operation, the successful jailbreak of Andreas Baader in 1970.
From 1975, with Baader and two other RAF leaders, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, she stood trial on further charges of murder and attempted murder. Before the end of the trial, she was found hanged in her cell in the Stammheim Prison. The official finding of suicide sparked controversy, with her sister, Wienke Zitzlaff, stating that Meinhof had told her only days before her death: "You can stand up and fight only while you are alive. If they say I committed suicide, be sure that it was murder."
One year later, on , two members of the RAF assassinated the Federal Attorney-General Siegfried Buback as revenge.
Early life Meinhof was born in 1934 in Oldenburg. Her father Werner Meinhof, a curator of Jena Museum, died of cancer in 1940, causing her mother to take in a boarder, Renate Riemeck, to make money. In 1946, the family moved back to Oldenburg after Jena fell under Soviet occupation as a result of the Yalta agreement. Meinhof's mother, Ingeborg Meinhof, an art historian, began to work as a teacher and died from cancer in 1949. Riemeck took on the role of guardian of Meinhof and her elder sister, Wienke.
Student activist 1950s In 1952, Meinhof took her Abitur at a school in Weilburg. She then studied philosophy, sociology, education and German at Marburg, where she became involved with reform movements. In 1957, she transferred to the University of Münster, where she met the Spanish Marxist intellectual Manuel SacristánSerra, Xavier. Social History of Catalan Philosophy: logic, 1900–1980. p. 184 (who later translated and edited some of her writings), joined the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), the German Socialist Student Union. She participated in protests against the Bundeswehr and the proposal of Konrad Adenauer's government to deploy nuclear weapons. Despite her involvement, Meinhof was critical of the SDS leaders' subconscious misogyny and the organisation's marginalisation of female members. Meinhof eventually became the spokeswoman of the local Anti-Atomtod-Ausschuss (Anti Atomic-Death Committee). In 1958, she spent a short time on the AStA (German: Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss, or General Committee of Students) of the university and wrote articles for various student newspapers.
Konkret and protest in the 1960s In 1959, Meinhof joined the banned Communist Party of Germany (KPD)Moncourt, André. The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History. p. 1958 and later began working at the magazine konkret, a monthly which, until 1964, had clandestine financing from the East German government.Bettina Röhl, "My Mother, the Terrorist," Deutsche Welle (14 March 2006) Konkret was widely read by student activists and progressive intellectuals, and as its chief editor from 1962 to 1964, Meinhof was able to elicit contributions from established journalists and authors.
On 2 June 1967, Meinhof's exposure in konkret of German complicity in supporting the Pahlavi dynasty helped rally students to a demonstration in West Berlin against the visit of the Shah of Iran. When Iranian counter-demonstrators, including agents of the Shah's intelligence service, attacked the students, the police joined the affray beating the demonstrators into a side street where an officer shot and killed the student protester Benno Ohnesorg"Stasi Archive Surprise: East German Spy Shot West Berlin Martyr". Spiegel Online International. spiegel.de. 22 May 2009. Retrieved 9 February 2021. The leading Stern columnist, Sebastian Haffner whom Meinhof had befriended, took to konkret to suggest "with the [anti-] Student pogrom of 2 June 1967 fascism in West Berlin had thrown off its mask"."Mit den Studentenpogrom von 2. Juni 1967 hat der Faschismus in Westberlin seine maske bereits abgeworfen". Sebastian Haffner, Konkret, July 1967
In February 1968, Meinhof was a participant in the International Vietnam Conference in West Berlin, which the authorities had permitted only in the face of large-scale protests. She was co-signatory, along with intellectuals including Ernst Bloch, Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Mandel, and Jean Paul Sartre, of the final declaration. This defined the U.S. intervention in Vietnam as "the Spain of our generation" and called for mobilisation against the "extermination" (Vernichtung) of the Vietnamese people.
Marriage to Klaus Rainer Röhl In 1961, Meinhof married the co-founder and publisher of konkret, Klaus Rainer Röhl. Their marriage produced twins, Regine and Bettina, born on 21 September 1962. Meinhof and Röhl separated in 1967 and divorced a year later.
Benign brain tumor surgically removed In 1962, Meinhof had a benign brain tumor surgically removed; the 1976 autopsy showed that remnants of the tumor and surgical scar tissue impinged on her amygdala.
Establishment of the Red Army Faction The attempted assassination of SDS leader Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968 provoked Meinhof to write an article in konkret demonstrating her increasingly militant attitude and containing perhaps her best-known quote:
Later that year, her writings on arson attacks in Frankfurt as protests against the Vietnam War resulted in her developing an acquaintance with the perpetrators, most significantly Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. She stopped writing for konkret which had in her opinion evolved into a completely commercial magazine in the early part of 1969, and many other authors followed her. She stated that neither she nor her collaborators wanted to give a left-wing alibi to the magazine that sooner or later "would become part of the counter-revolution, a thing that I cannot gloss over with my co-operation, especially now that it is impossible to change its course".Ulrike Meinhof: "", 26 April 1969 (Frankfurter Rundschau) Later, they organised an occupation at konkrets office (along with several members of the ), to distribute proclamations to the employees, something that failed since Röhl learned about it, and moved the employees to their homes to continue their work from there. Finally, Röhl's house was vandalized by some of the protesters. Meinhof arrived in Röhl's villa at 11:30, after police and journalists had already arrived. She was accused by Röhl (and subsequently described by the media) as the organizer of the vandalism. It was difficult to prove, as she was not there when it happened. Page numbering follows the Greek translation
Perhaps her last work as an individual was the writing and production of the film in 1970, which focused on a group of West Berlin girls in juvenile detention; by the time it was scheduled to be aired, she was wanted for her part in the violent escape from police custody of Baader, and its broadcast was delayed until 1994.
Release of Baader In May 1970, Meinhof had been approached to help in Baader's escape by his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin. Meinhof persuaded the left-wing publisher Klaus Wagenbach to assist in the release of what he saw as a political prisoner. He issued her with a book contract, on the basis of which she petitioned authorities to allow Baader to travel from Moabit Prison for an interview at an institute for social research in the Dahlem district of Berlin. The plan was for armed comrades to enter the building, overpower the guards, and escape with Baader. No shooting was to take place, and Meinhof was to stay behind and deny any complicity in the action.
Baader arrived with two guards and set to work with Meinhof in the institute's library. Two women in Ensslin's group, along with a man with a criminal record (hired because of his supposed experience with armed encounters) broke into the institute. The man shot the elderly librarian Georg Linke, severely wounding him in his liver. It was later claimed that the man was holding two weapons, a pistol and a gas canister gun, and accidentally fired the wrong weapon in the confusion. Following the unanticipated shooting, Meinhof joined the others in jumping out of the institute's window. She then called a friend to pick up her children from school. Within days wanted posters appeared throughout Berlin offered a 10,000 DM reward for her capture for attempted murder.
Action in the Red Army Faction and arrest
In the next two years, Meinhof participated in the various bank robberies and bombings perpetrated by the group. She and other RAF members attempted to kidnap her children so that they could be sent to a camp for Palestinian orphans and educated there according to her wishes, but the twins were intercepted in Sicily and returned to their father, in part due to the intervention of Stefan Aust. Neal Ascherson "A terror campaign of love and hate", The Observer, 28 September 2008.
During this period, Meinhof wrote or recorded many of the manifestos and tracts for the RAF. The most significant of these is probably The Concept of the Urban Guerrilla, a response to an essay by Horst Mahler, that attempts to set out more correctly their prevailing ideology. It also included the first use of the name Rote Armee Fraktion and, in the publications of it, the first use of the RAF insignia.Full text in German of Das Konzept Stadtguerilla from Baader-Meinhof.com. Retrieved 2 January 2007. Full Text English Translation by Anthony Murphy from GermanGuerilla.com. Retrieved 2 January 2007Information on copy held by the Bonn Museum of History (site refers to an exhibit by the DHM) Her practical importance in the group, however, was often overstated by the media, the most obvious example being the common name Baader-Meinhof gang for the RAF. (Gudrun Ensslin is often considered to have been the effective female co-leader of the group rather than Meinhof.)
Meinhof wrote an essay defending the Munich massacre as part of a Palestinian strategy of resistance against Israeli land theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
On 14 June 1972, in Langenhagen, Fritz Rodewald, a teacher who had been providing accommodation to deserters from the U.S. Armed Forces, was approached by a stranger asking for an overnighting house the next day for herself and a friend. He agreed but later became suspicious that the woman might be involved with the RAF and called the police. The next day the pair arrived at Rodewald's dwelling while the police watched. The man was followed to a nearby telephone box and was found to be Gerhard Müller, who was armed. After arresting Müller, the police then arrested the woman – Meinhof.
Imprisonment and trial
"Letter from a prisoner" 1972–73 During her solitary confinement at Köln-Ossendorf Prison from June 1972 to February 1973, Meinhof wrote what was later published as "A Letter from a Prisoner in Isolation" (Brief einer Gefangenen aus dem Toten Trakt).Ulrike Meinhof, "Brief einer Gefangenen aus dem Toten Trakt", in Diese Alltage überleben : Lesebuch 1945–1984, ed. Monika Walther. Münster, Tende Verlag, 1982. It conveys what may be references to the effects of lengthy solitary confinement, having a brain tumour, (removed earlier in her life), and a sense of disorientation and despair:The feeling that one's head is exploding…