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1976, Stuttgart - In his fourth year in custody, Andreas Baader sleeps in his bed in Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison.
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1976
13 January, Stuttgart
After months of pretrial courtroom maneuvers, the Baader-Meinhof trial officially begins. The defendants immediately admit to membership in an urban guerrilla group, and admit to "political responsibility" for the bomb attacks that they have been charged with (as opposed to direct responsibility).
Late January, Stuttgart
Dierk Hoff, in who's metal shop the Baader-Meinhof bombs of 1972 were made, testifies for the prosecution.
February & March, Stuttgart
The trial continues with testimony about the bombings of the Heidelberg U.S. Army headquarters, the Augsburg police offices, and the Criminal investigation offices in Munich. The defendants do not attend most of the proceedings. Privately, the tension between Ulrike Meinhof and the other prisoners, particularly Gudrun Ensslin, heats up. Meinhof grows increasingly depressed.
Gerhard Müller and Irmgard Möller, on trial elsewhere, get four and a half years for some of their terrorist activities.
March, Düsseldorf
The trial of the SPK/RAF defendants who overtook the Stockholm Embassy begins.
4 May, Stuttgart
After staying away from the courtroom by choice for a month, Meinhof attends the trial with Andreas Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe. She leaves after 15 minutes, never to appear in court again. After she leaves, Baader-Meinhof lawyers attempt to have the court compel several witnesses: Richard Nixon, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Georg Kiesinger, Walter Scheel, and others. The lawyers' plan is to prove that the United States' involvement in Southeast Asia was a violation of international law, and therefore the American targets of the Baader-Meinhof Gang could be considered legitimate targets. The presiding judges reject the applications.
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9 May, Stuttgart - Ulrike Meinhof's body is found in her cell. She is hanging from a makeshift noose made from a towel carefully torn into long strips. It is Mother's Day.
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9 May, Stuttgart
The body of Ulrike Meinhof is found hanging by a makeshift rope from the grating covering her Stammheim cell window -- it's Mother's Day.
Meinhof had torn a towel into long strips, and twisted the strips into a rope. She stood on a stool under the window, carefully threaded the rope through the small mesh grating, wrapped the other end of the rope around her neck, and kicked the stool aside.
The death is ruled suicide by strangulation at the post-mortem held later in the afternoon.
11 May, Stuttgart
A second post-mortem is held at the request of Weinke Meinhof, Ulrike's sister, and at the request of the Baader-Meinhof defense lawyers. The presiding examiner, Dr. Werner Janssen, issues a statement after the examination: "To judge by the usable findings of the second post-mortem, Frau Meinhof suffered death by hanging. The findings of the examination so far available give no grounds for suspecting any extraneous factors.
Later, the findings of the two postmortems are called into question by those believing Meinhof to have been murdered, but no convincing counter-evidence is ever presented.
Jan-Carl Raspe speaks about Meinhof's death in open court: "We believe that Ulrike was executed," he says. Raspe says that even though the relationship between Meinhof and Baader was strained at times, it should be not considered evidence that she wanted to commit suicide.
Mid-May, Frankfurt & Berlin
Massive demonstrations against the "murder" of Meinhof are held throughout the Federal Republic, the largest being in Frankfurt and Berlin. Bombs go off in Nice and Paris, France, and at the American air base in Frankfurt.
16 May, Berlin
Meinhof's funeral is held at Holy Trinity Protestant Cemetery in the Mariendorf section of West Berlin. Thousands of supporters attend. Klaus Wagenbach, the leftist publisher who unwittingly became a central part of the ruse to free Baader in 1970, speaks to the crowd, along with several other prominent leftists.
27 June, Entebbe, Uganda
An Air France Airbus is hijacked en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, and touches down in terrorist-friendly Uganda. The terrorists are led by the notorious "Carlos the Jackal," and include Revolutionary Cells (RZ) members Wilfred Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann.
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27 June, Entebbe, Uganda - Revolutionary Cells member Wilfred Böse joins Carlos the Jackal and others in hijacking a plane and directing it to Uganda. Böse and most of the hijackers are killed by Isreali commandos, Carlos escapes.
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In exchange for the hostages, the hijackers demand the release of forty Palestinians held in Israel, five prisoners held in Kenya, one in France, one in Switzerland, and six German prisoners: Jan-Carl Raspe, Ingrid Schubert, and Werner Hoppe of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and Fritz Teufel, Ralf Reinders and Inge Viett of Movement 2 June. Before any prisoners are released, an Israeli commando team storms the plane and frees all of the hostages, save for an elderly Jewish woman, Dora Bloch; she had been transported earlier to a hospital. When the hostages were rescued, an angry Ugandan president, Idi Amin, reportedly showed up at the hospital to personally strangle her with his bare hands. Böse, Kuhlmann and most of the other hijackers are killed; Carlos escapes.
7 July, Berlin
Monika Berberich of the Baader-Meinhof Gang escapes from Lehrterstrasse maximum security prison in Berlin, along with Movement 2 June members Inge Viett, Gabrielle Rollnick, and Juliane Plambeck. They beat up a guard, hop over a wall, and disappear.
8 July, Stuttgart
Gerhard Müller, former Baader-Meinhof comrade who had been arrested with Ulrike Meinhof, testifies against the defendants in the Stammheim trial in exchange for a reduced sentence. Müller describes the structure of the RAF in great detail.
21 July, Berlin & Athens
Monika Berberich is captured in Berlin. Rolf Pohle, who specialized in acquiring arms for terrorists like the RAF, is captured in Athens. Pohle is only extradited after Helmut Schmidt threatens the Greek government with massive economic sanctions if they fail to turn him over (he is returned to Germany in October).
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28 July 1976, Stuttgart - Presiding Judge Theodor Prinzing (left) is physically attacked by witness Klaus Jünschke during the Stammheim trial.
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22 July, Stuttgart
Brigitte Mohnhaupt testifies at the Stammheim trial, refuting Müller's damaging testimony.
28 July, Stuttgart
SPK member Klaus Jünschke also testifies against Müller's testimony at the Stammheim trial. At one point Jünschke leaps over the judge's bench and attacks presiding judge Theodor Prinzing. The attack is used against Jünschke the following year during sentencing for his own crimes; it is used as "proof" of Jünschke's fanatical hatred of the state. He is given life imprisonment for "joint murder" during the pre-Christmas 1971 Kaiserlautern bank raid, despite flimsy evidence of his presence at the bank.
August, Hamburg
Kay-Werner Allnach and other imprisoned RAF members are placed on trial for their participation. During his previous two years in solitary confinement and in a hospital recovering from intestinal cancer, Allnach had chosen to break from the RAF. During his trial, Allnach will refuse to testify against his former comrades.
22-27 November, Frankfurt
Siegfried Haag, a former lawyer associate of Baader-Meinhof lawyer Klaus Croissant, and Roland Mayer are arrested in Frankfurt. Haag had gone underground after the arrests of Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and the others to attempt to rebuild the RAF.
13 December, Vienna
Sabine Schmitz and Waltraud Boock, comrades of Haag's, are arrested following an unsuccessful bank raid in Vienna.
