The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Gudrun Ensslin.md

created	updated	title	aliases	tags	category	summary	born	died	location	relations
2026-05-15	2026-10-15	Gudrun Ensslin	Gudrun Ensslin Gudrun Enßlin	Person Germany Terrorism RedArmyFaction Stammheim 1960s 1970s	Extremism & Violent Networks	Gudrun Ensslin co-founded the Red Army Faction, was convicted at Stammheim for the 1972 bombings, and was found hanged in her cell in 1977, officially a suicide disputed by family and counsel.	1940-08-15	1977-10-18	Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison, West Germany	type with start role fn founded Red Army Faction 1970 co-founder 1 type with start end role fn partner_of Andreas Baader 1967 1977 romantic partner and fellow co-founder 3 type with start end role fn partner_of Bernward Vesper 1962 1968 partner and fiance 5 type with reverse start end role fn funded Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes true 1964 1968 doctoral study at the Freie Universitat Berlin 1 type with reverse start end role fn represented Otto Schily true 1975 1977 defence counsel 1 type with reverse start end role fn prosecuted Higher Regional Court Stuttgart true 1975 1977 defendant in the Stammheim trial (file 2 StE (OLG Stgt) 1/74) 19 type with reverse start end role fn subject_of Landtag of Baden-Württemberg true 1977 1978 death inquiry committee (Drucksache 7/3200) 29 type with role fn relative_of Helmut Ensslin father 1 type with start role fn relative_of Felix Ensslin 1967 son 1

Gudrun Ensslin (born August 15, 1940, in Bartholomä; died October 18, 1977, at Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison) was a West Germany student activist and co-founder of the Red Army Faction (RAF) with Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.¹² The daughter of a Protestant pastor, she left university without a degree and was drawn into the militant milieu by the student protests of 1967 and 1968. The Frankfurt court psychiatrist Reinhard Redhardt called her the "backbone of the group."³ She was convicted in 1977 as a co-perpetrator of the group's May 1972 bombings and was found hanged in her cell on the morning of October 18, 1977, hours after GSG 9 stormed the hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 at Mogadishu, Somalia.²⁴

Early life and education

Ensslin was born in Bartholomä, in the former district of Schwäbisch Gmünd in Württemberg, the fourth of seven children of the Protestant pastor Helmut Ensslin (1909 to 1984), who was born in Ulm.¹⁵ Her father was pastor in Bartholomä from 1936 to 1948, moved to Tuttlingen in 1948, and from 1958 worked in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.¹⁵ In June 1958 she went for a year to the Warren High School in Warren, Pennsylvania, as an exchange student of the International Christian Youth Exchange, and lived with a host family of the local Methodist congregation.¹⁵

She took the Abitur in March 1960 at the Königin-Katharina-Stift in Stuttgart and from 1960 to 1963 studied German, English and philosophy at the University of Tübingen, without a degree.¹⁵ At Tübingen she attended a colloquium on contemporary literature given by Walter Jens.⁵ Her application for a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes was at first unsuccessful. From 1963 to 1964 she trained at the Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd and passed the state examination for primary-school teachers in March 1964.¹⁵ From the summer of 1964 she studied at the Freie Universität Berlin and prepared a doctoral thesis on the writer Hans Henny Jahnn with a scholarship from the Studienstiftung. She did not complete the thesis.¹⁵

In 1963 she and Bernward Vesper (1938 to 1971), her partner and later fiance, founded the Verlag studio neue literatur in Tübingen, which published two books, and in 1964 she co-edited the anthology "Gegen den Tod. Stimmen gegen die Atombombe" as its first volume.¹⁵ Ensslin also handled distribution of the collected works of Will Vesper (1882 to 1962), Bernward's father, a National Socialist literary functionary.¹⁵ The poet Günter Maschke, who contributed to the press as a young author, later said that the two mostly sold the old Vesper's books, among other things through advertisements in the Deutsche National- und Soldatenzeitung.⁵ She translated English texts for Vesper's Voltaire Flugschriften pamphlet series.¹ The partnership is dated 1962 to 1968.¹

A son, Felix Ensslin, was born on May 13, 1967.¹² In a report to the Studienstiftung she wrote that he was born "a little early, so very small and delicate."⁵ Ensslin ended the engagement with Vesper two months before the birth and left their shared flat in January 1968. She refused to consent when Vesper wished to adopt the child. Vesper died on May 14, 1971, in Hamburg, eleven days after naming the boy his sole heir.⁵ Felix Ensslin, later a curator and professor, co-edited a volume of his mother's letters, published as "Zieht den Trennungsstrich, jede Minute" (2005).⁶

Berlin and the student movement

In 1965 the couple went to West Berlin. During the 1965 Bundestag campaign Ensslin worked through the Wahlkontor Deutscher Schriftsteller for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), compiling campaign material in an unused office of Egon Bahr while Vesper wrote speeches for the Berlin senator Karl Schiller.⁵ The formation of the Grand Coalition in 1966 was, in her father's description, "the great shock" for the campaign volunteers. Ensslin later said that the SPD leaders were "prisoners of the system," who had to take account of the economic and extra-parliamentary powers in the background.⁵ From 1967 she took part in the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO).¹ She increasingly characterized West German society as irredeemably fascist and conventional political opposition as futile.⁷ She and Baader first met in the autumn of 1967.³

The killing of Benno Ohnesorg at a demonstration in Berlin on June 2, 1967, against the visit of the Shah of Iran is the event the Neue Deutsche Biographie names as the start of her rapid radicalization.¹ The judgment identifies the shooter as the policeman Karl-Heinz Kurras, who shot Ohnesorg in a courtyard.⁸ Kurras was acquitted in November 1967 and again at a retrial in 1970. Reporting on the Stasi records in May 2009, Time said that Kurras had been "an active Stasi agent" who spied for the Stasi "under the cover name of Otto Bohl," and that the Stasi file described the shooting as an "unlucky accident."⁹ After Ohnesorg's death she reported to the Studienstiftung that apart from her child the months since June had been almost entirely taken up by events at the university and in West Berlin, and that she had taken part "actively in numerous actions."⁵

On the evening of June 2, 1967, according to the account Stefan Aust gave in his book on the RAF, a group of shocked demonstrators met at the SDS centre on the Kurfürstendamm and argued about the shooting. In the discussion, Ensslin said: "This is the generation of Auschwitz; one cannot argue with them."¹⁰¹¹ The 2008 article by Christian Schneider in Vorgänge repeats this version under Aust's name and notes that Ensslin's authorship of the statement is now disputed, while the fear that the argument expressed is not in dispute.¹⁰

The Frankfurt arsons

On April 2, 1968, Ensslin, Baader, Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein set fires in two Frankfurt department stores, the Kaufhof on the Zeil and the M. Schneider store.¹¹² The judgment records considerable property damage and no injuries, and records that the arsons were motivated by a campaign of Kommune 1, whose members used a 1967 fire in a Brussels department store, which killed more than 200 people, to criticize the Vietnam War.¹² The trial at the Frankfurt Regional Court opened in October 1968, with the Berlin law professor Ernst Heinitz, her friend since her Berlin years, as her defence counsel. On October 31, 1968, the court sentenced each of the four to three years' Zuchthaus for endangering human life by arson.¹⁵¹²

Ulrike Meinhof, who reported on the trial for the magazine konkret, criticized the arson in her column. She wrote that an attack of this kind on the capitalist consumer world does "not lift that consumer world off its hinges, does not even injure it."¹³ Ensslin was released from pretrial detention on June 13, 1969. The Federal Court of Justice rejected the appeal in November 1969, and she fled to Paris and Italy. She returned to West Berlin in February 1970 and lived underground.¹ The accounts of Aust and of the historian Jeremy Varon hold that during the release pending appeal in 1969 she and Baader built the network of contacts that became the RAF.⁷

Underground and the liberation of Baader

On May 14, 1970, Ensslin took part in the liberation of Baader from custody in Berlin. The judgment describes the operation as carried out by a group around Ensslin and Meinhof.¹² From June to August 1970 she trained in weapons and explosives at an Al Fatah training camp in Jordan. From 1970 to 1972 she took part in bank robberies, car thefts, burglaries, explosive attacks and the group's "May offensive" (Mai-Offensive).¹ The police who pursued the group believed that Meinhof supplied the theory while Ensslin gave practical help, arranging lodgings, managing the cash box and assisting the preparation of group operations.⁵

The 1972 bombings and arrest

The judgment records six explosive attacks in 1972, in Frankfurt, Augsburg, Munich, Karlsruhe, Hamburg and Heidelberg, and attributes them to the three defendants as originators.¹⁴ On May 11, 1972, three devices exploded at the headquarters of the 5th US Corps in Frankfurt, and one person was killed. On May 24, 1972, bombs in two vehicles at the US Army headquarters in Heidelberg killed three American soldiers.¹⁴ The RAF declaration of May 25, 1972, justified the Heidelberg attack with the words "That is genocide, that would be the 'final solution,' that is Auschwitz"; the judgment attributes the declaration to the RAF, not to Ensslin personally.¹⁴

On Wednesday, June 7, 1972, Ensslin was arrested in Hamburg. The court places her in the Linette fashion boutique on the Jungfernstieg at about 1 p.m. She had taken off her suede jacket at the back of the shop while trying on a sweater. A member of staff noticed an unusual weight in the jacket, suspected a firearm and called the police. When an officer entered the shop at about 1:30 p.m., Ensslin turned toward him and reached into the right outer pocket of her jacket for a .38 Special revolver loaded with hollow-point ammunition. The court found that she intended to shoot him and accepted that his death was likely.¹⁵ A police patrol car stopped near the shop at 1:26 p.m., and a second officer standing behind her seized her as she turned. Her handbag held a second pistol, a Belgian 9 mm FN, 830 marks, and an identity card in the name of Margarethe Reins together with a Hamburg address, where police then detained five members of a commune who were soon released. She was flown by police helicopter to Essen.⁵

Der Spiegel reported that a leading investigator told it: "My impression is that she provoked her arrest herself," and that former friends of hers suspected she had "deliberately set out to be recognized." The magazine added that Baader had been arrested six days earlier with Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe in Frankfurt and that her handbag contained newspaper clippings on his arrest and wounding.⁵

The judgment quotes a note, attributed by the court to Ensslin and written in Essen prison, that describes the shop: "the idea was other clothes, a taxi into the city, covering the trail," and that otherwise "a saleswoman would now be dead (hostage)."¹⁶ The circumstances of her arrest, in a high-street shop, were used to mock the RAF's stated rejection of consumer society.¹⁷ Ensslin was held in the Essen prison until February 1974.¹⁸

Stammheim trial

The trial at Stammheim opened on May 21, 1975, before the Higher Regional Court Stuttgart (file 2 StE (OLG Stgt) 1/74) and ended with the judgment of April 28, 1977.¹² The court found the three defendants jointly guilty of three murders combined with six attempted murders, and of a further murder combined with one attempted murder. It also found them guilty of attempted murders and explosions in the other attacks. Ensslin was separately convicted of one attempted murder combined with resistance to officers. The court found that the three had formed a criminal association, and it sentenced each of them to life imprisonment.¹⁹ For the completed murders in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, the court imposed two life sentences.²⁰

In her statement of May 4, 1976, Ensslin accepted responsibility for the attacks without qualification. The judgment quotes her: "Put simply, we are also responsible for the attacks on the CIA headquarters and the headquarters of the 5th US Corps in Frankfurt and on the US headquarters in Heidelberg, insofar as we were organized in the RAF since 1970, fought in it and took part in shaping its politics and structure."²¹

The court identified notes signed "Smutje" as Ensslin's and found that she organized the group's work from prison. One draft, it found, was to be put to Ulrike Meinhof and Baader for approval.²² Her defence counsel Otto Schily filed an appeal after the judgment.¹ According to the reporting of the time, the Baden-Württemberg Justice Minister Traugott Bender and the Interior Minister Karl Schiess had defence conversations with RAF defendants secretly overheard in April 1975 and around the turn of 1976 to 1977, contrary to law and the constitution; Bender later called the admission of the unlawful action a "psychological-cosmetic" matter. The senate chairmanship went to Judge Theodor Prinzing in 1974 after a rotation of posts between the Higher Regional Court and the state ministry of justice.²³

The last weeks of 1977

On September 30, 1977, the Bundestag passed the Contact Ban Act (Kontaktsperregesetz), which allowed authorities to cut all contact between prisoners linked to terrorist groups and the outside world, after the kidnapping of the employers' president Hanns Martin Schleyer. The anonymous 1978 leaflet on the events of October 18, 1977 reproduces the text of the law and the restrictions imposed at Stammheim.²⁴

On October 9, 1977, a Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) official spoke with Ensslin at Stammheim. The government's documentation on the terror attacks, as described by Der Spiegel, showed that the isolated prisoner knew exactly of a seven-minute conversation the official had held with Baader the day before. In the individual talks all three prisoners told him that they wished to take the decision out of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's hands, "as a decision about us" (Ensslin).²⁵

Der Spiegel reported that in the days before her death she telephoned Bonn offices and tried to win the head of the Federal Chancellery (Germany), Manfred Schüler, or the minister of state Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, for a "political conversation" in the prison, without result. On the evening before her death she received the two prison chaplains, evangelical and Catholic, for a conversation of an hour and a half that the clergy described as not a pastoral talk. The chaplains wrote afterwards to her parents that she had asked them to see that three letters addressed to the head of the Chancellery, kept in her cell in a folder marked "Anwalt," reached him.³

According to the same report, the letters could not be found: no one at the Chancellery, the BKA, the Federal Ministry of Justice or the Stuttgart prosecutor's office said they had seen them, and a prosecutor at the scene first confirmed the seizure of a letter and then called it a mistake. Officials of the Chancellery were convinced that Ensslin had misled the chaplains to stage mysterious circumstances of death. The magazine also reported that she had written to her court-appointed counsel Manfred Künzel months before: "I am certain that we will be liquidated in the shadow of Buback's end."³

Deaths at Stammheim

On October 18, 1977, the GSG 9 unit stormed the hijacked aircraft at Mogadishu. Raspe was found with a head wound in his cell at about 7:40 a.m., during the distribution of food, and died in the Katharinenhospital at 9:40 a.m.; Baader was found dead in his cell, a pistol beside him; Ensslin was found hanged at the window grille in cell 720; Irmgard Möller, the surviving defendant, was found with knife wounds and survived.⁴²⁶²⁷ A witness report reproduced by Karl-Heinz Weidenhammer in his 1988 documentary describes her body as "hanging dead from the window grille."²⁷

The autopsy was performed in Tübingen in the presence of three experts from Liège, Vienna and Zurich. The protocol of Ensslin's body, reproduced in the Weidenhammer documentary, records all typical signs of death by hanging: a ligature mark on the neck, asphyxial haemorrhages under the eyelid lining and the lining of the heart, and the tip of the tongue caught between the jaws. Its secondary injuries, the protocol says, "are not suspicious of the action of another's hand."³²⁸

Der Spiegel wrote that Ensslin was last checked at 4 p.m. on the previous afternoon, that the cell doors of the wing had been fitted with foam-rubber sound insulation, that the prison doctor, the prison director and the security officer did not enter her cell when it was opened but pronounced "death by suicide" from the threshold, and that she "possibly" was still alive. In her cell the cable on which she hung had been left behind when electrical appliances were collected after the contact ban took effect.³ A week later the magazine reported that, according to the prosecutors, the two guards on the floor had not, as first assumed, been in the glass "cockpit" at the end of the corridor but in the watch officers' room behind double doors on the same floor.²³

Official findings and dissent

The Baden-Württemberg state government's preliminary report of October 26, 1977 stated, in section 5, that "on the basis of the investigation results to date as assessed by the public prosecutor, there is no indication that the deaths of the prisoners Baader, Ensslin and Raspe, or the injuries to the prisoner Möller, were caused by the fault of others."²⁴ The Landtag of Baden-Württemberg committee of inquiry heard evidence in 19 sessions on the basis of 53 evidentiary orders, and, according to the state government's later account, came unanimously to the conviction that the prisoners had killed themselves (Landtag Drucksache 7/3200, p. 47 f.).²⁹ According to Weidenhammer, the trace-evaluation report of February 28, 1978 was prepared after the Landtag committee had ended its work, and Prosecutor Christ signed the closing decision on April 18, 1978. The Neue Deutsche Biographie states that the allegation that the three deaths were not suicides "is regarded as refuted."¹³⁰

Her death was disputed by RAF supporters on the same grounds they contested Baader's death: that the maximum-security facility made access to the means of hanging impossible without guard knowledge.¹⁷ The surviving prisoner Möller's criminal complaint, filed through her lawyers, quotes her: "at no time was there an agreement between Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Karl Raspe, Andreas Baader and me to commit suicide together."²⁴ Der Spiegel reported that Möller told her lawyer that around 4:30 a.m. she had heard "bangs and squeaking," called through the door to Raspe and received a calming reply, and that doctors found no sedatives in her blood and urine and found longitudinal cuts on both wrists from a round-tipped serrated knife and four stabs into the left breast.²³ Schily, Ensslin's counsel, recalled the earlier eavesdropping affair in Stammheim, in which a "separate access" to the special floor had come into view, and said that it was "not outside the conceivable" that an intelligence service had had a hand in it this time as well.³

Weidenhammer, who was defence counsel for Raspe, argues that the cord used for the hanging was a loudspeaker cable from Ensslin's cell. The trace report of February 28, 1978 stated that the two loudspeaker boxes in her cell were connected by a green electric cable which, "at least in outward appearance, also constitutes the hanging instrument." No criminal-technical comparison of the cable ends was carried out, and Weidenhammer records that the investigator's request for a prosecutorial order for one was never issued.³¹ Weidenhammer also wrote that the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) installed listening devices in the high-security wing, that the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz and the BND had worked on the seventh floor without control since March 1975, and that on the official version the prisoners would have agreed on their suicides under the supervision of the intelligence services.³²

Helmut Ensslin openly doubted the official account of collective suicide. He wished to preach at his daughter's funeral, and the Evangelical Church in Württemberg (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat) did not grant the request. Minister-President Hans Filbinger pressed for only the Swabian Ensslin to be buried in Stuttgart, while Mayor Manfred Rommel permitted a common grave for the three at the Dornhaldenfriedhof. The funeral took place on October 27, 1977. According to the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the father was urged to stop making accusations about the deaths of the three prisoners.⁴ Filbinger attributed the failures at Stammheim to the federal government, the Federal Public Prosecutor General and the lawyers; Justice Minister Bender had resigned.²³

State informants in the Berlin milieu

Wolfgang Kraushaar's 2005 book on the bomb intended for the Jewish community house in Berlin in November 1969 describes Peter Urbach as a West Berlin Verfassungsschutz informant from 1967. The book describes Urbach as a locksmith and agent provocateur who supplied militant circles of the APO with weapons and drugs of every kind. Kraushaar argues that the bomb came from the state office's stocks. In the book, Urbach, asked about the role of the state, told the Kommune member Rainer Langhans: "Rainer, if you only knew."³³

Footnotes

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1. "Ensslin, Gudrun," Neue Deutsche Biographie, Deutsche Biographie online, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz136461.html. Lebenslauf and Genealogie sections; Helmut Ensslin (1909 to 1984), born in Ulm; "Felix Robert Ensslin geb. 13.5.1967"; "Mitgründerin mit Bernward Vesper (1938-1971) Verlag studio neue literatur"; "Promotionsstudium, gefördert von der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (ohne Abschluss)"; "Ensslins Wahlverteidiger Otto Schily ... legte Revision ein"; death described as "gilt als widerlegt" for the claim of non-suicide. ↩︎

2. Urteil des Oberlandesgerichts Stuttgart vom 28. April 1977, Az. 2 StE (OLG Stgt) 1/74, in: Das Stammheim-Protokoll. Die Gesamtedition, ed. Jeßberger et al. (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2021), https://www.stammheim-prozess.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/OLG-Stuttgart-Urteil-vom-28.4.1977-2-StE-174-Text.pdf. Personal details on p. 1 ("Gudrun Enßlin, geb. am 15. August 1940 in Bartholomä, Krs. Schwäbisch Gmünd"); biography on p. 307 ("ist 1940 in Sankt Bartholomä im Kreis Schwäbisch Gmünd geboren"; "Im Mai 1967 gebar sie einen Sohn"). Printed pages are cited. ↩︎

3. "Dunkle Geschichte hinter dem Finstern," Der Spiegel 44/1977 (October 24, 1977), https://www.spiegel.de/politik/dunkle-geschichte-hinter-dem-finstern-a-0a67c661-0002-0001-0000-000040749081. German: "Fähig, elementar zu hassen" and "Rückgrat der Gruppe" (Redhardt); "Im Herbst 1967 waren sich Gudrun Ensslin und Andreas Baader zum erstenmal begegnet"; "Leiche wies alle typischen Zeichen für Erhängungstod auf, insbesondere eine Speichelabrinnspur vom Mund, zwischen den Kiefern eingeklemmte Zunge und Bruch der Kehlkopfknorpelhörner"; the three letters "in einer Mappe mit der Aufschrift »Anwalt«"; "Ich bin sicher, daß wir im Schatten von Bubacks Ende liquidiert werden"; Schily: "nicht außerhalb des Denkbaren" that "auch diesmal ein Geheimdienst die Hand im Spiel gehabt haben könnte"; "Tod durch Selbstmord" as "Ferndiagnose von der Schwelle." The magazine's inference that she possibly was still alive ("womöglich noch am Leben") is the magazine's own. ↩︎

4. Stuttgarter Zeitung, "Deutscher Herbst 1977: Endstation Dornhaldenfriedhof," https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.deutscher-herbst-1977-endstation-dornhaldenfriedhof.81fada0e-072e-473a-b8a1-edfd4345c65f.html. German: "Gudrun Ensslin erhängt sich in Zelle 720 ... mit einem Lautsprecherkabel am Fenstergitter"; "an der behördlichen Kollektivselbstmorddarstellung offen zweifelt"; "würde gerne selbst bei der Beerdigung seiner Tochter Gudrun und deren RAF-Genossen predigen"; "diesen Wunsch erfüllt ihm der Evangelische Oberkirchenrat nicht"; "nachdrücklich aufgefordert, keine Verdächtigungen und Vermutungen mehr über den Tod der drei Terroristen zu äußern"; Filbinger's wish that only Ensslin be buried in Stuttgart and Rommel's permission of a common grave. Funeral October 27, 1977, 10 a.m. ↩︎

5. "Ein Seitenweg," Der Spiegel 25/1972 (June 11, 1972), https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ein-seitenweg-a-79ee5520-0002-0001-0000-000042928464. German: "kam als viertes von sieben Kindern im schwäbischen Bartholomä ... zur Welt"; Warren High School, June 1958, "Internationalen christlichen Jugendaustausches"; Tübingen, Walter Jens colloquium; Studio Neue Literatur with Vesper; "Gegen den Tod. Stimmen gegen die Atombombe" (1964); Maschke: "Die haben immer nur Bücher von dem alten Vesper verkloppt, unter anderem mit Inseraten in der »Deutschen National- und Soldatenzeitung«"; Wahlkontor 1965; Vesper's death on 14 May 1971; "Am 13. Mai (1967) wurde mein Sohn Felix geboren; ein wenig früh, also sehr klein und zart"; "Gudrun Ensslin ... ›Der spinnt doch‹" (engagement ended two months before the birth); "aktiv an zahlreichen Aktionen, deren Vorbereitung und Auswertung teilgenommen"; Heinitz "verteidigte" her in the Frankfurt trial; the arrest: "Es war 13.26 ... Streifenwagen"; "eine zweite Pistole, eine belgische Neun-Millimeter-Hochleistungswaffe vom Typ FN, einen Personalausweis, ausgestellt auf den Namen Margarethe Reins ... Hochallee 21 ... fünf Kommune-Mitglieder festgenommen, aber bald wieder freigelassen"; "830 Mark"; "Mein Eindruck ist, daß sie ihre Festnahme selber provoziert hat"; "bewußt darauf angelegt, erkannt zu werden"; the SPD leaders "Gefangene des Systems"; "der große Schock" (Helmut Ensslin). The article gives the Freie Universität move as 1965; the Neue Deutsche Biographie gives the summer of 1964, which the text follows. ↩︎

6. Gudrun Ensslin, "Zieht den Trennungsstrich, jede Minute" (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 2005), co-edited by Felix Ensslin. ↩︎

7. Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1985); Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Sole source for the passage so cited. ↩︎

8. Judgment (note 2), footnote 26: "Ohnesorg wurde dabei auf einem Hinterhof von dem Polizisten Karl-Heinz Kurras erschossen." ↩︎

9. Tristana Moore, "German Policeman Unmasked as Stasi Spy," Time, May 28, 2009, https://time.com/archive/6946824/german-policeman-unmasked-as-stasi-spy/. Quoted phrases in English: "an active Stasi agent"; "under the cover name of Otto Bohl"; "unlucky accident." ↩︎

10. Christian Schneider, "Der Feind in mir. Die Wiederkehr von Auschwitz - der Mythos der RAF," Vorgänge 181 (Heft 1/2008), pp. 23-29, Humanistische Union, https://www.humanistische-union.de/publikationen/vorgaenge/181-vorgaenge/publikation/der-feind-in-mir/. German: "Dies ist die Generation von Auschwitz - mit denen kann man nicht argumentieren. Die Sprecherin hieß Gudrun Ensslin." Footnote 4: "So die Version von Stefan Aust. Ensslins Autorschaft wird inzwischen in Zweifel gezogen. Unstrittig bleiben indes die damalige Aktualität der 'Argumentationsfigur' und der Angstaffekt." ↩︎

11. Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1985), account of the evening of June 2, 1967, as cited in Schneider (note 10). Sole source for the passage so cited. ↩︎

12. Judgment (note 2), footnote 200, p. 137. German: "Am 2. April 1968 verübten Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Thorwald Proll und Horst Söhnlein Brandanschläge auf Kaufhäuser in Frankfurt am Main, bei denen zwar erhebliche Sachschäden entstanden, aber keine Menschen verletzt wurden." "Motiviert wurden sie durch eine Kampagne der Kommune I, die eine Brandtragödie mit mehr als 200 Toten in einem Brüsseler Kaufhaus im Jahr 1967 für Kritik am Vietnamkrieg nutzte." Sentence on the verdict: "Mit Urteil vom 31.10.1968 wurden sie zu Haftstrafen in Höhe von je drei Jahren verurteilt." The judgment's biography (p. 307) gives the verdict year as 1969 in one place. ↩︎

13. Ulrike Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar (1980), p. 153, as quoted in the judgment (note 2), footnote 200. German: "Gegen Warenhausbrandstiftung im besonderen spricht, daß dieser Angriff auf die kapitalistische Konsumwelt [...] eben diese Konsumwelt nicht aus den Angeln hebt, sie nicht einmal verletzt [...]." ↩︎

14. Judgment (note 2), footnote 32: the RAF declaration of May 25, 1972 justified the Heidelberg attack "am Tag zuvor" (the day before), and the note reprints the declaration's passage "Das ist Genozid, Völkermord, das wäre die ‚Endlösung‘, das ist Auschwitz." The declaration is printed in ID-Verlag (ed.), Rote Armee Fraktion. Texte und Materialien (1997), p. 147 f. The six attacks and the Frankfurt and Heidelberg casualties are in the judgment's findings on the 1972 attacks. ↩︎

15. Judgment (note 2), pp. 85-87. German: "Sie wollte mit dem darin befindlichen, mit Hohlspitzmunition geladenen Revolver, Kaliber 38 Spezial, auf Millhahn schießen, wobei sie dessen dann naheliegenden Tod in Kauf nahm." The judgment spells the arrest date "7. Juli 1972" once (p. 85) and "7. Juni 1972" elsewhere (for example p. 149 and footnote 81). ↩︎

16. Judgment (note 2), pp. 151-152. German: "aber da war die Idee andere Klamotten, mit d. Taxi in die Innenstadt, Spur verwischen, Unsicherheit ... sonst wäre jetzt eine Verkäuferin tot (Geisel), ich und vielleicht zwei ..." The court attributes the note to Ensslin on the basis of a typewriter analysis and its correspondence with the arrest in the boutique. ↩︎

17. Peters, Butz. Red Army Faction: A Documentary History. PM Press, 2011. Colvin, Sarah. Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence, and Identity. Camden House, 2009. Sole source for the passages so cited. ↩︎

18. Judgment (note 2), pp. 149-150, footnote 81: "Gudrun Ensslin wurde am 7. Juni 1972 in Hamburg festgenommen und war bis Februar 1974 in der JVA Essen." ↩︎

19. Judgment (note 2), tenor, pp. 2-3: "1. Die Angeklagten Andreas Baader, Gudrun Enßlin und Jan-Carl Raspe sind schuldig ... a) 3 tateinheitliche Morde in Tateinheit mit 6 versuchten Morden, b) einen weiteren Mord in Tateinheit mit einem versuchten Mord ... 2. c) die Angeklagte Enßlin eines versuchten Mordes, d) in den Fällen a) bis c) jeweils in Tateinheit mit Widerstand gegen Vollstreckungsbeamte ... 3. ... eine kriminelle Vereinigung gebildet zu haben. 4. Jeder der drei Angeklagten wird zu einer lebenslangen Freiheitsstrafe verurteilt." ↩︎

20. Judgment (note 2), p. 308: "Gegen die drei Angeklagten ... sind für die vollendeten Morde in Frankfurt und in Heidelberg zwei lebenslange Freiheitsstrafen verhängt worden (§ 211 StGB)." ↩︎

21. Judgment (note 2), p. 91. German: "Hier nochmal einfach: Wir sind auch verantwortlich für die Angriffe auf das CIA-Hauptquartier und das Hauptquartier des 5. US-Corps in Frankfurt/Main und auf das US-Hauptquartier in Heidelberg, insofern, wie wir in der RAF seit 70 organisiert waren, in ihr gekämpft haben und am Prozeß der Konzeption ihrer Politik und Struktur beteiligt waren." ↩︎

22. Judgment (note 2), p. 182. German: "'Smutje' (=Ensslin) schreibt also an dem Entwurf einer Abhandlung über die Massenlinie, der dann 'theres' (= Meinhof) und Andreas (= Baader) zur Zustimmung vorgelegt wird." ↩︎

23. "Licht in jede Ritze," Der Spiegel 45/1977 (October 31, 1977), https://www.spiegel.de/politik/licht-in-jede-ritze-a-b5b97cff-0002-0001-0000-000040749000. German: "Zusammen mit Duzfreund Schiess ließ Bender im April 1975 und um die Jahreswende 1976/77 entgegen Gesetz und Verfassung Gespräche zwischen RAF-Angeklagten und ihren Verteidigern heimlich belauschen"; Bender's admission as "psychologisch-kosmetischen Entspannungsangelegenheit"; Prinzing's senate chair created by a "Personal-Ringeispiel" in 1974; Möller to her lawyer: "Knallen und Quietschen"; no residues of sedatives in blood and urine; "Längsschnitte von einem an der Spitze abgerundeten Messer mit Wellenschliff" on both wrists and four stabs "in die linke Brust"; the guards "im Wachtmeisterzimmer hinter Doppeltüren"; Filbinger's allocation of blame; Bender's resignation. ↩︎

24. Anonymous leaflet, "Kontaktsperre und die Ereignisse in Stammheim am 18.10.77" (1978), https://socialhistoryportal.org/sites/default/files/raf/0019780200_0.pdf. The leaflet states that the Bundestag passed the Kontaktsperregesetz on September 30, 1977, quotes the Baden-Württemberg state government's "Vorläufiger Bericht über die Ereignisse vom 18. Oktober 1977 in der Vollzugsanstalt Stuttgart-Stammheim" of October 26, 1977, Ziffer 5 ("Nach Beurteilung der bisherigen Ermittlungsergebnisse durch die Staatsanwaltschaft bestehen keine Anhaltspunkte dafür, daß der Tod der Gefangenen Baader, Ensslin und Raspe sowie die Verletzungen der Gefangenen Möller auf fremdes Verschulden zurückzuführen sind"), and reproduces Möller's criminal complaint of December 19, 1977 ("es hat zu keinem Zeitpunkt zwischen Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Karl Raspe, Andreas Baader und mir eine Verabredung zu einem gemeinschaftlichen Selbstmord gegeben"). ↩︎

25. "Gereinigte Fassung," Der Spiegel 45/1977 (October 31, 1977), https://www.spiegel.de/politik/gereinigte-fassung-a-4d720eff-0002-0001-0000-000040748997. German: "als am 9. Oktober ein BKA-Beamter mit Gudrun Ensslin in Stuttgart-Stammheim redete, wußte die isolierte Inhaftierte exakt über ein siebenminütiges Gespräch Bescheid, das der BKA-Mann tags zuvor mit Andreas Baader geführt hatte"; "als Entscheidung über uns« (Gudrun Ensslin)." ↩︎

26. Werner Birkenmaier, "Nachträglich den Atem angehalten," Die Zeit, no. 44, October 28, 1977, https://www.zeit.de/1977/44/nachtraeglich-den-atem-angehalten. German: Raspe discovered "Um 7.40 Uhr, während der Essensausgabe"; died "um 9.40 Uhr" at the Katharinen-Hospital; "Die Zelle Gudrun Ensslins schließlich wird nach kurzer Prüfung rasch wieder abgeschlossen. Baaders Gefährtin hat sich am Fenster erhängt." ↩︎

27. Karl-Heinz Weidenhammer, Selbstmord oder Mord? Das Todesermittlungsverfahren: Baader, Ensslin, Raspe (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1988), https://www.socialhistoryportal.org/sites/default/files/raf/0019771018_16_0.pdf, pp. 96-97, witness report: cell 719 (Baader) opened at 8:07, then cell 720: "Die Gefangene hängt tot am Fenstergitter," then cell 725 (Möller) at 8:10. Autopsy protocols for Baader (pp. 119-120) and Raspe (pp. 121-122), each recording a single head gunshot wound. Weidenhammer was defence counsel for Raspe. ↩︎

28. Weidenhammer (note 27), pp. 118-119, autopsy protocol. German: "Die Obduktion der Leiche von Gudrun Ensslin hat alle typischen Zeichen des Erhängungstodes ergeben ... Diejenigen Gewalteinwirkungsspuren ... sind nicht auf eine Einwirkung von fremder Hand verdächtig." The protocol ends at 0:30 on October 19, 1977. ↩︎

29. Weidenhammer (note 27), Dokument 36, pp. 442-445, statement of the Baden-Württemberg state government on a 1983 motion of the Greens in the Landtag (8th term), quoting the report of the 7th-term committee of inquiry: "in insgesamt 19 Sitzungen geprüft, wobei aufgrund von 53 Beweisbeschlüssen eine Vielzahl von Zeugen und Sachverständigen vernommen" and "ist der Untersuchungsausschuß des Landtags einstimmig zu der Überzeugung gelangt, daß sich die Gefangenen selbst getötet haben. (vgl. Drucks. 7/3200, S. 47 f.)." Weidenhammer, Dokument 38, also cites Drucks. 7/3200, S. 97, on the pistol "mutmaßlich" in Baader's record player. ↩︎

30. Weidenhammer (note 27), pp. 182-183: "Spurenauswertebericht am 28. Februar, also nachdem der Untersuchungsausschuß seine Tätigkeit beendet hatte, schließlich vorlag" and "Staatsanwalt Christ, der den Einstellungsbescheid im Todesermittlungverfahren am 18. April 1978 unterschrieb." ↩︎

31. Weidenhammer (note 27), pp. 180-181, on the speaker cable. German: "Von dem Untersuchungsvorgang, ob mit der Spur Nr.1 (Schere) ... Dieser Auftrag ist nie erteilt worden." The trace report of February 28, 1978: "Wie aus dem Lichtbild Nr. 83 der Zellenaufnahmen zu ersehen ist, waren die beiden Lautsprecherboxen der Ensslin untereinander mit einem grünfarbenen Elektrokabel verbunden, wie es, zumindest dem äußeren Anschein nach, auch das Erhängungswerkzeug darstellt." ↩︎

32. Weidenhammer (note 27), pp. 220-221 ("Verfassungsschutz und BND praktizierten bekanntlich seit März 1975 unkontrolliert im 7. Stock") and pp. 274-275 ("Und zusätzlich bauten die BND-Experten - wie jetzt zehn Jahre später ruchbar wird - im Stammheimer Hochsicherheitstrakt Wanzen ein, um alle Gespräche zu überwachen"; "nach der Amtsversion müßten sich die Häftlinge unter Aufsicht der Geheimdienste zur Selbsttötung verabredet und diese durchgeführt haben"), citing Der Spiegel 37/1987. Weidenhammer's reconstruction; the official findings above reach the opposite conclusion. ↩︎

33. Wolfgang Kraushaar, Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2005), as reviewed by Anne Rohstock, sehepunkte (October 2006), https://sehepunkte.de/old_site/2006/10/pdf/9316.pdf. The review describes Urbach as "der gelernte Klempner und agent provocateur, Peter Urbach, agierte seit 1967 als dessen V-Mann und belieferte militante Kreise der APO mit Waffen und Drogen aller Art." The remark to Langhans, "Rainer, wenn Du wüßtest," is on p. 178 of the book, as cited in the review. Sole source for the Urbach passages so cited. ↩︎