by J. Smith
GERMAN AUTUMN
The failed Ponto kidnapping had been intended to be the first of a two-pronged action to put pressure on the West German ruling class to force the state to free the prisoners.48 Despite their failure to take Ponto alive, it was decided to follow through on the second part of this plan.
On September 5, the RAF’s “Siegfried Hausner Commando” kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, the most powerful businessman in West Germany at the time. Schleyer’s car and police escort were forced to a stop by a baby stroller that was left in the middle of the road, at which point they were ambushed by guerillas who killed his chauffeur and three police officers before making their getaway.
A note received soon after warned that, “The federal government must take steps to ensure that all aspects of the manhunt cease—or we will immediately shoot Schleyer without even engaging in negotiations for his freedom.”49
Like Ponto, Schleyer was a powerful representative of the ruling class. He was the president of both the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (Federal Association of German Industrialists) and the Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände (Federal Association of German Employers), and had earned a reputation for aggressively opposing workers’ demands when he had ordered a lock-out of striking metal workers in Baden-Württemberg in 1966. As a veteran of Hitler’s SS, he was a perfect symbol of the integration of former Nazis into the postwar power structure.
Hanns Martin Schleyer as a young man in uniform (left), and later on as a giant of industry, meeting with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1974.
Within a day of Schleyer’s kidnapping, the commando demanded the release of eleven prisoners, including Ensslin, Raspe, and Baader, and their safe passage to a country of their choosing.
Despite the fact that the prisoners offered assurances that they would not return to West Germany or participate in future armed actions if exiled, on September 6, the government declared that it would not release them under any circumstances.
On that same day, a total communication ban was instituted against all political prisoners. The so-called Contact Ban law, which had been rushed through parliament specifically to deal with this situation, deprived the prisoners of all contact with each other, as well as with the outside world. All visits, including those with lawyers and family members, were forbidden. The prisoners were also denied all access to mail, newspapers, magazines, television, and radio.
In short, those subjected to this law were placed in 100 percent individual isolation.
Over the next weeks, as the guerilla attempted to negotiate with the state through a series of ever-more-desperate communiqués, the hunt for Schleyer and his captors continued. During this time he was moved between a series of safehouses in West Germany, Holland, and Belgium.
On September 22, RAF member Knut Folkerts was arrested in Utrecht after a shoot-out which left one Dutch policeman dead and two more injured. Another RAF member managed to get away. The search for Schleyer was extended to Holland, but to no avail, as the state continued to stall for time, and the guerilla let one deadline after another pass.
In this situation, with negotiations deadlocked, a Palestinian commando intervened in solidarity with the RAF, moving the already intense confrontation to an entirely different level. On October 13, the four-person Commando Martyr Halimeh, led by Zohair Youssef Akache of the PFLP (EO),50 hijacked a Lufthansa airliner traveling from Majorca, Spain to Frankfurt in West Germany—ninety people on board were taken hostage.
The airliner was first diverted to Rome to refuel and to issue the commando’s demands: the release of the eleven RAF prisoners as well as two Palestinian guerillas being held in Turkey.
The plane then flew on to Cyprus, and from there to the Gulf, where it landed first in Bahrain and then in Dubai. The FRG’s Minister in Charge of Special Affairs, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, promised that there would be no military intervention. The plane departed the next day, the plan being to fly to the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen), where the PFLP (EO)’s training camp was located, and whose government had a history of tolerating guerilla fighters from the FRG and elsewhere in Western Europe.
Here, however, the hijackers’ plan went off the rails. Instead of providing refuge, as had been expected, the South Yemeni government tried to prevent the airliner from landing, going so far as to station tanks to block its access to a runway. When this did not work (the plane made an emergency landing), the hijackers were allowed to refuel, but then forced to depart. This represented a critical setback; with misgivings, they now charted a course to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
The hijacked airliner landed in Mogadishu on October 17. As negotiations continued, West Germany’s “antiterrorist” GSG-9 unit was secretly flown into the Somali capital. That night, sixty GSG-9 commandos attacked the airliner, killing the guerilla fighters Zohair Youssef Akache, Hind Alameh, and Nabil Harb, and seriously wounding Souhaila Andrawes. All hostages were rescued unharmed, though Flight Captain Jürgen Schumann had been executed the night before and his body left in South Yemen.51
At seven the next morning, October 18, a government spokesperson publicly announced the resolution of the hijacking.
One hour later, another spokesperson announced the “suicides” of Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader and the “attempted suicides” of Jan-Carl Raspe and Irmgard Möller in Stammheim prison. Raspe subsequently died of his injuries.
A plethora of bizarre “coincidences” and irregularities were put forth by the state to explain how this had been possible, that four individuals in the most high-security prison in Western Europe had allegedly not only acquired guns (Baader and Raspe were shot in the head), but also managed to coordinate a group suicide as a reaction to a military raid happening on a different continent, all while being subjected to a strict ban on communication with one another and the outside world (no radio, television, newspapers, etc.).
In the year since Meinhof’s death, the Stammheim prisoners had repeatedly expressed their fear of being similarly “suicided.” They had belabored this point in conversations with prison chaplains and letters to their lawyers sent in the days before their deaths. Ensslin in particular had told two chaplains that there were letters in her cell containing important information that should be forwarded to the appropriate authorities if she were killed—needless to say, initially it was denied that any such letters had been found. Only later would the BAW admit they had been confiscated; to this day, they have not been released.52
“Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe murdered in Stammheim.”
Making the state’s suicide story even more unbelievable, the closed circuit cameras that were supposed to film everything occurring on the prisoners’ floor had mysteriously malfunctioned that evening. And the inconsistencies just kept coming.53 For many, the clincher was the fact that one of the prisoners did not die from her injuries: Irmgard Möller, who survived several stab wounds to the chest, has consistently and adamantly denied the state’s suicide story, insisting instead that a government commando must have killed her comrades, just as it tried to kill her on the night in question. From an interview with Spiegel magazine in 1992:
Spiegel: The authorities are of the opinion that you knew about the storming of the aircraft and the freeing of the hostages, and as a result attempted suicide with a kitchen knife.
Irmgard Möller: That’s a lie. I listened to the final news at 11:00 PM.54 I knew that something would happen, that a decision would have to be made. However, I didn’t know what decision. I found that unbearable. Then, I went to sleep.
Spiegel: And then?
Irmgard Möller: At some point during the night, I heard a dull noise that I couldn’t identify, a distinct noise. I didn’t think of a shot: it sounded like a locker falling over or something like that. The next thing I remember I was lying on the floor under neon lights with people all around me grabbing at me and trying to force my eyes open. Then I heard voices say, “Baader and Ensslin
are dead.” Then everything faded away.
Spiegel: What do you remember after that?
Irmgard Möller: I regained consciousness for the first time three days later and clearly remember everything that happened after that.
Spiegel: What was the nature of your injuries?
Irmgard Möller: Four stab wounds to my chest. My lungs were injured and filled with fluid from my pericardium, which had also been hit.
Spiegel: A number of medical experts, including some from outside of the country, came to the conclusion that the deaths of your companions were cases of suicide.
Irmgard Möller: I know that. Obviously, they weren’t objective. They were intentionally brought in. I’m aware of the details of the autopsy reports, and know, for instance, that one of Gudrun’s injuries was not seriously examined.
Spiegel: Who do you think inflicted the injuries?
Irmgard Möller: I don’t think it was the guards that were always around there. I think that it was a commando. There were a variety of entries into the prison wing.55
Despite this, the government’s suicide theory would eventually come to be accepted by many on the left, and even by a number of former RAF members as well. But in ‘77, the belief that the prisoners had been murdered was widespread. So far as the radical left was concerned, it was clear: as with Meinhof, the other Stammheim prisoners had now been killed by the state.
Confronted with defeat on all fronts, the RAF now issued a communiqué announcing that it had executed Schleyer.
After forty-three days, the most intense clash between the antiimperialist guerilla and the West German state had seemingly come to its bloody conclusion, and yet there would be one more death: on November 11, RAF prisoner Ingrid Schubert was found hanged in her cell, one hour after she had been moved into isolation in Munich-Stadelheim. On the Thursday before her death, she had assured her lawyer that she had no intention of committing suicide.
BAD DAYS
The RAF’s focus on freeing its prisoners was taken to the limit in 1977, yet its seven-month campaign of assassinations and kidnappings had come to naught. With the hijacking carried out by a Third World commando, the FRG was thrown into a state of emergency well beyond the capacity of the West German movement to navigate. The Stammheim deaths contributed an almost incomprehensible element to the equation, and the result was mass psychological trauma, especially pronounced among the ranks of the guerilla and its supporters.
As RAF member Monika Berberich would explain years later:
I see both nights, Ulrike’s death as much as those of the other three prisoners in Stammheim, as a complete defeat, not only for the armed groups, but for the entire radical left—and that regardless of what really happened on those nights in Stammheim. In the morning, comrades who were extremely important to the continuation of our struggle were dead. In 1977, with the storming of the airliner, the state triumphed. The death of the prisoners admittedly reduced the level of the triumph, but measured against the victory for the state’s position that wasn’t terribly relevant. I think at the time, we didn’t deal with this consciously enough, although we all sensed it. Instead, we argued endlessly about whether it was murder or suicide. Of course, this is an important question, but it doesn’t change the fact that the comrades were dead.56
The state responded to the ‘77 offensive with a wave of repression against the entire left. In West Berlin, thirty-eight apartments, bookstores, and print shops were raided and forty people taken into custody, prompting a protest outside of police headquarters, which was met by cops swinging rubber truncheons.57 The radical newspaper Info-BUG was targeted, with the paper banned and several of its printers sent to prison.
Lawyers who defended RAF prisoners and outside supporters found themselves under arrest and charged with supporting a terrorist organization.
But the fallout went far beyond arrests: as the so-called German Autumn unfolded, the entire political culture seemed to lurch to the right. Anybody who dared speak out in favor of civil liberties, regardless of how critical they might be of armed tactics, became an instant suspect, a potential terrorist. Speaking at Schleyer’s state funeral, President Walter Scheel declared:
The fight against terrorism is the fight of civilization against a barbarism trying to destroy all order… They are the enemies of every civilization… The nations of the earth are beginning to realize this. They realize with horror that not this or that order is being attacked, but all order.
Specifically referring to anyone who dared protest following the Stammheim deaths, he remarked that, “They too share the guilt.”58 As described in New German Critique:
A virtual war atmosphere was created in the country in mid-October: hundreds of thousands of motorists were pulled off the road and searched; constant appeals to the population were issued to encourage their reporting any suspicious types of activities to the police—such as sudden change of address, of hair cut or any other cosmetic changes, unusual mailings or publications.59
Most people stood behind the government, not only in its hunt for the RAF, but also in its broader clampdown. In one poll, 62 percent of respondents stated that they were willing to accept restrictions on their personal freedoms through controls and house searches, while only 21 percent were opposed.60
At the same time, politicians and the press became ever more merciless. Following the Stammheim deaths, even allowing Ensslin, Raspe, and Baader to be buried in a common grave was enough to earn one the sobriquet of being “soft on terrorism.” Stuttgart’s moderate CDU mayor, Manfred Rommel—the son of the famed Field Marshal—refused to forbid such a burial, insisting that “Death must end all animosity.” As a result, he found himself marginalized within the Land party organization, and telephone calls poured in from angry citizens demanding that the RAF dead be cremated and their ashes poured into the city sewers.
Just as the RAF’s failure in 1977 spelled disaster for the guerilla and the prisoners, it similarly buttressed the power of the state. To this day, counterinsurgency experts point to Mogadishu as a model intervention, and it surprised no one that in its wake Chancellor Schmidt’s personal popularity began to rise. Upon their return home, the GSG-9 commandos who had raided the airliner were lionized as heroes, with the unit’s head Ulrich Wegener receiving the prestigious Cross of Merit. In response to the events of ‘77, the internal security budget was increased by $100 million, up to $650 million in 1978.
Carlos Marighella, whose Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla had influenced so many of the armed groups that emerged from the New Left, had suggested that by provoking a disproportionate response the guerilla could alienate the population from the state. In 1977, however, this tactic was turned on its head, the state’s abuse of the prisoners pushing the guerilla to overplay its hand, and in so doing to discredit its own struggle for years to come.
The RAF and its prisoners were isolated as never before.
The RAF and the GDR: Benign Neglect No More?
Throughout the 1970s, West German guerillas had benefited from a kind of benign neglect on the part of the pro-Soviet East Bloc. GDR security agents turned a blind eye to guerillas traveling between the FRG and the Middle East through East Berlin, and Belgrade was a frequent transit point. While guerillas were detained from time to time, this was simply for interrogation, as the Eastern spooks endeavored to keep track of developments in the West.
East Berlin’s Schönefeld airport, a safe transit point
From the point of view of the East, this attitude may have become formalized in 1975, when Department XXII of the Ministry for State Security (the MfS or Stasi—East Germany’s political police) was established, ostensibly devoted to preventing terrorism, but in actual fact also involved in trying to get a handle on it.1 This despite rampant opposition to “the East” throughout the New Left and the fact that many in the MfS felt that spectacular armed actions in the West got in the way of more mundane, but also more important, intelligence gathering. Indeed, the balance sheet was
not always easy to tally, as John C. Schmeidel has explained:
Occasionally the RAF’s attacks gave the east a chance to learn about how the Bundesrepublik mobilized in time of crisis, as a fighter plane will deliberately skirt the edges of hostile airspace to time how long it takes the opposition to scramble. The western services exposed their normally hidden clandestine assets. On the other hand, [MfS chief Markus] Wolf and the HVA2 were aware that constant police alerts and border controls from terror attacks made life hard for its bread and butter collection effort across the border.3
Given these considerations, there were reasons to believe that in ‘77, with the FRG practically in a state of martial law, the stakes had simply ceased to be acceptable. To this day, there are observers who suggest the GDR sabotaged the PFLP (EO)’s skyjacking of the Landshut airliner and passively supported the GSG-9’s intervention in Mogadishu. Stefan Wisniewski, for instance, has suggested the GDR may have pressured South Yemen to not provide the skyjackers with a safe base from which to negotiate the hostage exchange.4 Till Meyer (formerly of the 2nd of June Movement) has asserted that the Stasi had furnished the Palestinian commando with harmless dud weapons, and then relayed this fact to the FRG.5
PDRY tank prevents Landshut airliner from accessing runway
While such claims remain pure conjecture, it is true that as events unfolded there were reasons to believe that the guerilla’s bridges to the East had been burned, as had so many others.
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1 John C. Schmeidel, Stasi: Shield and Sword of the Party (New York: Routledge, 2008), 152, 154.
