"SPK"
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 patients organized the SPK, held protests, occupied the hospital administration offices, and convinced the university to retain him.
By mid-1971, the SPK had officially disbanded, and many of its former members moved into doing low-level terrorist activities, releasing communiqués after every "praxis," in keeping with urban guerrilla revolutionary practices. the communiqués stopped being signed with "SPK" and were now being signed "RAF," though it is not clear that they had any connections to the Red Army Faction at this point. By the time that most of the original members of the RAF were in jail in mid-1970s, many former members of the SPK had joined the RAF.
