Any Human Heart
A film written by William Boyd Directed by Michael Samuels 2010 – BBC / PBS Masterpiece Theater The television miniseries, Any Human Heart, offers a surprising shock for students of the Red Army Faction era; four hours into this excellent exploration of the life of a British novelist from the Depression era through the 1990s, [read all]
April 24, 1975 Stockholm
Six Red Army Faction terrorists, most of whom were former members of the Heidelberg Socialist Patients Collective (SPK), take over the West German Embassy in Stockholm, taking 11 hostages. The terrorists are: Siegfried Hauser, Hanne-Elise Krabbe, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Lutz Taufer, Bernhard-Maria Rössner, and Ullrich Wessel. Swedish police quickly occupy the lower portion of the embassy. [read all]
June 4, 1974 West Berlin
Ulrich Schmücker, a member of the June 2nd Movement, is shot by his fellow terrorists in the Grunewald, the large forested park on the Western edge of Berlin’s Dahlem neighborhood. Some believe Schmücker was executed because his fellow terrorists believed that he was an informant, others believe that he was accidentally shot during a “mock” execution [read all]
Socialist Patients Collective
Sozialististisches Patienten Kollektiv or Socialist Patients Collective The Socialist Patients Collective (SPK) was the strange product of a therapy-group at Heidelberg University. Dr. Wolfgang Huber, a psychiatrist at the university’s clinic, believed that his patients’ mental disorders stemmed from Capitalism, and the only cure was a Marxist society. When the university tried to fire Huber, his [read all]
Second Generation of the Red Army Faction
Die Dritte Generation Depending on the timeframe that you are studying, the members of the Red Army Faction are often described as “the first generation of the RAF,” or the “second generation of the RAF,” and so on. There are two different meanings for this talk of RAF “generations.” The first, and less prominent meaning, is articulated [read all]
June 9, 1972 West Berlin
Baader-Meinhof Gang member (and original member of the SPK) Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Movement 2 June member Bernhard Braun are captured in Berlin.
March 2, 1972 Hamburg and Augsberg
Hamburg police raid an apartment used by the Baader-Meinhof Gang for producing forged documents. In the evening, Manfred Grashof and Wolfgang Grundmann enter the apartment and are surprised by the police. Grundmann gives up immediately, but Grashof fires at the cops from behind Grundmann. Police Chief Superintendent Hans Eckhardt, who is in charge of Hamburg’s [read all]
June 24, 1971 Heidelberg
Though the SPK have progressively moved closer towards terrorism, the police are mostly unaware of it. This day police stop a couple of SPK members at a traffic checkpoint. The SPK members take off, and one of them fires a shot at the cops, hitting one in the arm. That night the police raid the [read all]
Mid-February, 1971 Heidelberg
Siegfried Hausner and Carmen Roll of the Socialists Patients Collective (SPK) attempt to bomb the train of the Federal Republic’s president. They arrive too late at the train station and their plan is thwarted. Through the coming months the SPK begins to align itself with the the Red Army Faction; soon they stop signing their [read all]
February 1970, Heidelberg
A young psychiatrist working at Heidelberg University gets fired. Dr. Wolfgang Huber has angered the university officials with his unorthodox therapy methods. In response to his firing, Huber’s patients, mostly students, occupy the offices of Huber’s hospital director, who ultimately agrees to keep Huber on. Huber’s radical psychiatric thesis is this: his patients are indeed [read all]
Podcast 25: How Heated Rhetoric Helped Give Birth to Baader-Meinhof
The deadly Arizona shooting offers interesting and tragic parallels to the heated environment and rhetoric that helped give birth to the era of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. [display_podcast]