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November 1974, Stuttgart - Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (center) interviews Andreas Baader in Stammheim Prison at Ulrike Meinhof's request. On the left is Baader-Meinhof lawyer Klaus Croissant, and on the right is Sartre's driver in Stuttgart, Hans Joachim Klein, who later goes underground after joining in terrorist actions with "Carlos the Jackal."
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1974
4 February, Hamburg & Frankfurt
Police raids in Hamburg and Frankfurt result in the re-arrests of Ilse Stachowiak, Christa Eckes, and Margit Schiller, and the arrests of Helmut Pohl, Kay-Werner Allnach, and Wolfgang Beer.
5 February, Cologne
Gudrun Ensslin is transferred from Essen to Cologne's Ossendorf prison, and placed into the cell next to Ulrike Meinhof.
13 February, Berlin
The trial for the bombing of Berlin's British Yacht Club by members of the Movement 2 June begins. Verena Becker, Wolfgang Knupe, and Willi Rather are the defendants. Students and radicals riot outside the courtroom.
April, Stuttgart
Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin are transferred to Stuttgart's Stammheim prison. They are the first residents of Stammheim's newly refitted high-security wing. The plan is for all of the major Baader-Meinhof defendants to ultimately live in Stammheim. Plans are set in motion to build a large, self-contained courthouse in the potato field beside Stammheim prison. The courthouse, costing millions, is to be built especially for the pending Baader-Meinhof trial, and then converted for prison use.
27 April, Berlin
Meinhof is transferred temporarily to Berlin's Moabit prison to be tried for her part in the May 1970 freeing of Andreas Baader. Meinhof is tried with Horst Mahler, who is already serving time for his part in the crime (he had previously been found Not Guilty of participation, but the verdict was set aside), but is now being tried for "criminal association, and Hans-Jürgen Bäcker, who is believed to be the gunman who shot the elderly librarian Georg Linke in the 1970 rescue of Baader.
Meinhof uses her courthouse pulpit to announce another hunger strike among the prisoners. Mahler declines to take part in the hunger strike, thus essentially confirming that he is no longer a member of the RAF. His former associate Monika Berberich denounces him on the Moabit stand: "[Mahler is an] unimportant tattler and a ridiculous figure."
4 June, Berlin
Ulrich Schmücker, a member of Movement 2 June, 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 designed to scare him.
A lawyer for the SPK, Eberhard Becker, is arrested.
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4 June 1974, Berlin - Ulrich Schmücker of Movement 2 June is shot dead in a Berlin park by members of the group, reportedly because he was an informant. According to Stefan Aust, the death may have been an accident; the result of a mock death sentence gone awry.
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Mid-year, Federal Republic
"The Urban Guerrilla and Class Conflict," an official history and manifesto of the Red Army Faction, is written by Meinhof (with major editing by Ensslin) and released (Full German Text).
September, Federal Republic
A document from some of the imprisoned group leaders, explaining the reasons for their hunger strike, is smuggled out of prison by defense lawyers and released publically.
2 October, Stuttgart
The five primary members of the gang, Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Holger Meins, are indicted officially of dozens of crimes, including murder. Baader is transferred to join Ensslin in Stammheim (Meinhof is still on trial in Berlin). Holger Meins, whose physical health has been severely weakened by the hunger strike, stays in his Wittlich jail cell. All of the prisoners continue their hunger strikes, though there is evidence to believe that a few of the prisoners, like Baader, are cheating. Prison officials begin force feeding Ensslin and Meins, strapping them to tables, opening their mouths with pry-bars, and forcing feeding tubes down their throats.
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9 November 1974, Wittlich - Holger Meins, a tall man of 6 foot 4, dies after starving himself on a hunger strike. His weight at death was 100 pounds. Revolutionary Cells terrrorist Hans-Joachim Klein would say of this photograph: "I have kept this photo in my wallet to keep my hatred sharp."
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9 November, Wittlich
Holger Meins lays dying in his Wittlich cell. A tall man, he now weighs less than 100 pounds. His lawyer, Siegfried Haag, visits him in jail and realizes that he is dying. By 5:00 PM, Holger Meins is dead.
10 November, Berlin
The response to Meins' death is immediate. Demonstrations take place in Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, and Stuttgart.
In the evening, a delivery man shows up at the door of Günter von Drenkmann, the president of Germany's Superior Court of Justice. Von Drenkmann, celebrating his 64th birthday, opens the door to the delivery man, and several other people jump from the bushes and overpower von Drenkmann. In the mêlée, Drenkmann gets shot three times, and dies a short while later in the hospital.
The attack was apparently a botched kidnapping by Movement 2 June, in response to the death of Meins.
Germany is polarizing. Many people interpret Meins' death as a murder, pure and simple, and join the growing number of "sympathizers" who support the terrorists' cause. Others are sickened by the murder of von Drenkmann and look for the government to stop the terrorists by any means necessary.
Police conduct massive nationwide raids in the weeks following von Drenkmann's murder. Two Protestant church figures, Rev. Cornelius Burghardt and Undine Zühlke (a social worker and wife a prominent minister), are arrested, accused of smuggling a Baader-Meinhof letter out of prison. Over 100 members of the Evangelical Church quit the following day in disgust with the police action. Burghardt and Zühlke are released on 29 November.
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November 1971 - Angelike Speitel helps coordinate the "info system" of communication between various prisoners across Germany. Following the death of Holger Meins, her husband Volker goes underground. |
Volker Speitel, a former Red Aid volunteer who, along with his wife Angelike, has been working in Klaus Croissant's office organizing the "info system" between the various prisoners, goes underground following the death of Meins. The lawyer Siegfried Haag puts Speitel in contact with the remnants of the Red Army Faction. Speitel meets up in Frankfurt with Hanne-Elise Krabbe, Bernhard Rössner, Lutz Taufer and Ullrich Wessel. Most of these people are former members of the Heidelberg Socialists Patients Collective (SPK), a radical organization of psychiatric-patient students who believe their mental illnesses are the result of Capitalism. Speitel quickly surmises that the constant police raids have decimated the RAF, leaving it with a few hand grenades, some guns, bombs, and five weary terrorists. After a short stint with the RAF, Speitel quickly tires of life underground and rejoins Croissant's office.
Late November, Cologne & Stuttgart
Former student leader, "Red" Rudi Dutschke, visits Jan-Carl Raspe in Ossendorf prison. Dutschke's young son, Hosea-Ché Dutschke (named after a biblical character and Ché Guevara), tags along. Raspe is transferred to Stammheim shortly thereafter.
At Meinhof's urging, Baader-Meinhof lawyer Klaus Croissant convinces famous French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre to visit Andreas Baader in prison. His chauffeur in Stuttgart is Hans Joachim Klein, who will participate two years later with Carlos the Jackal in the terrorist take-over of the yearly OPEC ministers meeting.
29 November, Berlin
Meinhof is sentenced to eight years imprisonment for her part in the 1970 freeing of Baader. Mahler is given an additional 4 years (for a total of 12 years), and Bäcker is found not guilty.
