I don't truly know what exactly happened on "Death Night" in Stammheim Prison. And I'll never know. But I have tended to support Aust's thesis; and Aust certainly has studied the issue more closely than any other journalist.
I think Aust basically looked at the totality of evidence and came to the conclusion that it is much more likely than not that they did it.
It's interesting to note how the alternate theory (that they were murdered by the state) has evolved. In the days and weeks after the deaths it was almost impossible to believe that there could be another explanation BUT that they were murdered. Baader and Raspe each killed themselves by two separate guns that had been somehow smuggled in to what had been billed as the “most secure prison block in the world?” The members talked to each other through a secret electronic communication system? They learned about the failed Mogadishu hijacking from a smuggled radio? It all sounded insane and fantastical. Germans had spent the previous 3 years or so learning of the repressive conditions that the prisoners had been subjected to; smuggled guns, radios, etc… it just seemed crazy.
As the years wore on—and in large part because of the meticulous journalism of Aust and also Der Spiegel, with is the magazine he edited—it has become conventional accepted fact that there were smuggled guns, there was a secret after-hours communications system between the cells. So the focus has shifted away from “could they have entered into a suicide pact that night by communicating secretly, after learning of the failed hijacking, and kill themselves with smuggled weapons and other means” to “even though it is possible that they COULD have done it, is it likely that this is the case?”
That is not a minor transition; because once the facts about the guns and communication system have been accepted, I think the burden of proof for murder becomes larger.
One person who was there, as you mentioned, absolutely denies the suicides and has never stopped claiming that the deaths were murder and her severe attack was attempted murder. So how do we address Irmgard Moeller’s claims? There seems to be only two alternative. She is either lying or telling the truth. But why would she lie? And why would she keep up the lie?
Those are questions only she can answer. But since the terrorists had prepared their followers previously to be wary of “suicides”… essentially assume that a “suicide” of an imprisoned terrorist is actually murder—then it would seem that after Moeller’s surprising survival, that the story was worth sticking to. After all, an admission that they tried (and some succeeded) in committing suicide destroys single most potent impact of the deaths, which is the assumption in most supporters’ minds that they were murdered.
Why stick with these stories all these years? I don’t know. Maybe a just a classic case of Deny, Deny, Deny. I think of those little girls who took those pictures of “fairies” in their garden at the turn of the last century. Lots of people believed them (like Arthur Conan Doyle), but it as time wore on became clearer that they were simply faked photos. As the decades wore on, the photos began to look more and more ridiculous; a throwback to the fashions of Edwardian England (who imagines “fairies” in their gardens anymore?”. Yet those girls kept up the fiction until finally, I think, on her death bed one of them admitted the fiction. Why did she keep it up all these years? Mabye because so much of what she represented was tied up in that original lie.
But all this aside, I think one of the main reasons why those deaths in Stammheim continue to trouble us is due in large part to the lingering questions that the state has never effectively answered. My biggest question, which might have a perfect plausible answer, was how did THREE shots go off in two different cells, yet a guard did not hear them while being stationed perhaps 10 to 20 yards away?
And then there is the fact that the German govt. had been secretly bugging the cells in some fashion. They were forced to admit—well prior to the deaths—that they had bugged the prisoners. They claimed that it was only in the cell where they met their lawers and they only used the bugs a single time. Of course this is patently ridiculous, and the tapes of that session, and the tons of other sessions that they likely recorded have never turned up. Could they have known about the guns by listening on the bugs? Could they have known about the secret communications system using the electrical outlets in cells as a conduit? It would have been stunningly easy to therefore tap into this system; does that mean the police might have been listening in on that night?
Which of course would mean yet another possible scenario. The state knew of the suicide pact and let it happen anyway. Murder by failure to intervene.
It’s ALL conjecture, unless those tapes turn up.
I find it interesting that Aust, in the 1988 edition of his book takes great pains to outline ALL of the scenarios of that night, but never comes out and specifically says they committed suicide. 20 years later when the revised edition came out, he dropped all pretenses and simply called them suicides . Yet the movie based on his book took the more measured approach of his original version of his book; it showed that the suicides were possible and even likely, but never actually showed them happening.
I asked Aust about the change of tone in his book and I also ask Bernd Eichinger, the writer and producer of the film, on why he chose to be vague about the deaths. Interesting reads.
http://goo.gl/OaU4L
http://goo.gl/VUPMm
As a side note, one absolute awesome cultural relic derived from the tragic night is painter Odd Nerdrum’s "The Murder of Andreas Baader"http://goo.gl/NZ6Nf. This painting is so terrific in so many ways: using a classical technique and composition, yet staging a scene of cops bursting in and killing the Christ-like Baader as a Raymond Chandler-esque drama… incredible.
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Revisiting Stammheim: Was it Suicide?
