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Extremism & Violent Networks | Ulrike Meinhof was a West German journalist who co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970, was arrested in 1972, and was found hanged in her Stammheim cell on May 9, 1976, a death ruled suicide. | 1934-10-07 | 1976-05-09 | Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison, West Germany |
Ulrike Marie Meinhof (October 7, 1934 - May 9, 1976) was a West Germany journalist and political activist who became the most publicly prominent figure of the Red Army Faction, the urban guerrilla organization she co-founded in 1970. Before joining the underground, Meinhof was a widely read left-wing journalist whose columns in the West German magazine konkret had made her one of the best-known political commentators in the country. Her transformation from respected journalist to wanted terrorist - effected by her participation in Andreas Baader's prison break on May 14, 1970 - made her perhaps the defining figure of the RAF in the eyes of the West German public.1
Journalism Career
Meinhof was born in Oldenburg, Germany, and studied philosophy and education at the University of Munster before transferring to Hamburg. She became editor of konkret, a left-wing magazine with ties to the East Germany communist party that provided some financial support in its early years. Her columns addressed West German politics, the Vietnam War, the persistence of former Nazis in positions of authority in the Federal Republic, and the student protest movement that emerged in the late 1960s. Meinhof followed the 1968 trial of the Frankfurt arsonists for the magazine and criticized the arsons in her column, arguing that attacks on the consumer world "do not lift that consumer world off its hinges, do not even injure it."2
The shooting of student Benno Ohnesorg by police at a demonstration against the Shah of Iran's visit to Berlin in June 1967 radicalized much of the West German student movement. Meinhof increasingly concluded that conventional political journalism could not address what she characterized as the structural violence of the capitalist state.1
Founding of the RAF
On May 14, 1970, Meinhof participated in the operation that freed Andreas Baader from custody at a Berlin institution where he had been given a supervised library visit to research a book. Meinhof, who had arranged access to the visit on journalistic pretexts, helped Baader escape in a confrontation in which a guard was shot and seriously wounded. Her participation transformed her from a journalist investigating radicals into a wanted criminal overnight.
The RAF's founding document, "The Concept of the Urban Guerrilla," published in April 1971, was attributed to Meinhof and laid out the group's theoretical framework for attacking West German capitalism and American military presence. The document argued that armed struggle within the metropolitan center - rather than in the developing world as in Che Guevara's model - was politically necessary.1
Arrest and Imprisonment
Meinhof was arrested in Hanover on June 15, 1972, following the RAF's bombing campaign of May 1972 - a series of attacks on American military installations, the Hamburg police headquarters, and the federal judge's offices in Karlsruhe. She was held in conditions she and her attorneys characterized as sensory deprivation - extended periods of isolation in a sound-deadened cell.
The trials of Meinhof and the other founding RAF members were conducted at Stammheim Prison, a special high-security facility built to house them. Meinhof was separated from the main trial of Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe and tried first; she was convicted and sentenced to eight years for her role in the prison break. The sentence was imposed on November 29, 1974, in the trial over the liberation of Baader, and Horst Mahler received a combined sentence of 14 years in the same proceedings.3
Death
Meinhof was found dead in her cell at Stammheim on May 9, 1976, before the conclusion of the main Stammheim trial. She was hanging from a rope made from a towel attached to the window of her cell. Prison authorities ruled the death a suicide.
The RAF and its supporters disputed the ruling, arguing that the prison's maximum-security conditions made access to rope materials impossible without guard complicity and suggesting that Meinhof had been killed by state actors. An international commission convened by sympathizers concluded the evidence was consistent with murder. Subsequent independent forensic examinations did not resolve the dispute to universal satisfaction, though official inquiries consistently upheld the suicide finding.4
Footnotes
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Aust, Stefan. The Baader-Meinhof Complex. Bodley Head, 2008. Colvin, Sarah. Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence, and Identity. Camden House, 2009. ↩︎
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Ulrike Meinhof, Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar (1980), p. 153, as quoted in the judgment, 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 [...]." ↩︎
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Urteil des Oberlandesgerichts Stuttgart vom 28. April 1977, Az. 2 StE (OLG Stgt) 1/74, in: Das Stammheim-Protokoll. Die Gesamtedition (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, p. 156 (printed page marker [156], footnote on the Baader liberation trial). German: "Meinhof wurde am 29. November 1974 zu einer Freiheitsstrafe in Höhe von acht Jahren verurteilt, Mahler unter Einbeziehung einer bereits zuvor ausgeurteilten Haftstrafe zu einer Gesamtfreiheitsstrafe in Höhe von 14 Jahren verurteilt." ↩︎
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Varon, Jeremy. Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies. University of California Press, 2004. Peters, Butz. RAF: Terrorismus in Deutschland. Knaur, 1993. ↩︎