Andreas Baader

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Andreas Bernd Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977) was one of the first leaders of the German left-wing terrorist organization Red Army Faction, also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof group.

Contents 1 Life 2 RAF Involvement 3 Stammheim 3.1 Death 4 In fiction 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Life

Born in Munich, Baader was a high school dropout and criminal before his RAF involvement. He was one of the few members of the RAF movement who did not attend a university.

[edit] RAF Involvement

In 1968, Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin were convicted of the arson bombing of a department store in Frankfurt am Main. After being sentenced, Baader fled in November 1969, but was caught in April 1970. A few weeks later, in May 1970, he was allowed to study at the library of a research institute outside the prison, without handcuffs. Journalist Ulrike Meinhof and two other women were allowed to join him, and aided in his escape by opening a door to admit a masked man who fired shots that wounded a 64-year-old librarian, hitting his liver. Baader, the three women and the masked man fled through a window, and the group soon became known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Baader and others then spent some time in a Fatah military training camp in Jordan before being expelled due to differences in attitudes. Back in Germany, Baader robbed banks and bombed buildings from 1970 to 1972. On June 1, 1972, he and fellow RAF members Jan-Carl Raspe and Holger Meins were apprehended after a lengthy shootout in Frankfurt.

During a collective hunger strike in 1974, which led to the death of Meins, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre visited Baader in Stammheim Prison where he was being held. He allegedly described Baader after the meeting as being "an asshole" ("Quel con !")^[1][2]. But even if he did not like Baader's behavior, he criticized the harsh conditions of imprisonment he thought Baader had to endure at the moment^[3][4].

Despite never obtaining a driving licence, Baader was obsessed with driving. He regularly stole expensive sports cars for use by the gang, and was arrested driving an Iso Rivolta IR300.^[5]

[edit] Stammheim

From 1975 to 1977, a long and expensive trial took place in a fortified building on the grounds of Stuttgart's Stammheim prison. According to reports from his jailers (including Horst Bubeck), the defendants, especially Baader, kept their cells as dirty and disgusting as possible in order to discourage searches for items that might be smuggled in; at this time lawyers and defendants were not separated by panes of glass during unsupervised meetings, as evidenced by photos taken by inmates.^{[citation needed]} However, as a precaution against items being smuggled in, all prisoners were strip-searched and inspected and given new clothes before and after meeting lawyers.^[6]

Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her cell at Stuttgart-Stammheim on 9 May 1976, hanging from the ceiling. Members of the Red Army Faction and others claimed that she was killed by the German authorities. The so-called second generation of the RAF committed several kidnappings and killings in a campaign in support of their comrades. Nonetheless, the three remaining defendants were convicted in April 1977 of several murders, attempted murders, and of forming a terrorist organization, and were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Terrorists tried to force the release of Baader and ten other imprisoned RAF members by kidnapping Hanns Martin Schleyer on 5 September 1977, as part of the sequence of events known as the "German Autumn", which began on 30 July 1977 with the murder of the banker Jürgen Ponto.

However, on 6 September 1977 an official statement was released in which the state declared that the prisoners would not be released under any circumstances, and on the same day a Kontaktsperre ("communication ban") was enacted against all RAF prisoners. This order deprived prisoners of all contact with each other as well as with the outside; all visits, including those of lawyers and family members, being forbidden. In addition, the prisoners were deprived of their access to post, newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. The official justification for this was a claim by the state that the prisoners had supervised Schleyer's kidnapping from their cells with the assistance of their lawyers. It was claimed that a hand-drawn map had been found which had been used in the kidnapping in Newerla’s car on 5 September. On 10 September the prisoners' lawyers lost their appeal against the Kontaktsperre order and on 2 October it became effective.^[7]

On 13 October 1977 four terrorists hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 on a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt, their leader demanding the release of the eleven RAF prisoners detained at Stammheim. The aircraft was eventually flown to Mogadishu, Somalia, where it arrived in the early hours of 17 October. The passengers of the Boeing 737 were freed in an assault carried out by German GSG 9 special forces in the early hours of 18 October 1977 which saw the death of three of the terrorists.

[edit] Death

According to official accounts of his death, Raspe learned of GSG 9's success on a smuggled transistor radio, and spent the next few hours talking to Baader, Ensslin, and Möller, who agreed to a suicide pact. In the morning, Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in their cells, having died from gunshot wounds, while Gudrun Ensslin was found hanging from a noose made from speaker wire. RAF member Irmgard Möller was found with four stab wounds to her chest, but survived^[8].

All official inquiries on the matter concluded that Baader and his two accomplices committed collective suicide, and Baader-Meinhof biographer Stefan Aust argued in his book, The Baader-Meinhof Group (1985) that they almost assuredly did kill themselves, but it remains an article of faith among many people on the left that they were murdered, including Irmgard Möller who still insists that the deaths and her injury were extrajudicial executions.

There are many debatable aspects to the deaths: Baader was supposed to have shot himself in the base of the neck so that the bullet exited through his forehead; repeated tests indicated that it was virtually impossible for a person to hold and fire a gun in such a way. In addition, three bullet holes were found in his cell: one lodged in the wall, one in the mattress, and the fatal bullet itself lodged in the floor, suggesting that Baader had fired twice before killing himself. Finally, Baader had powder burns on his right hand, but he was left-handed. Raspe, however, showed no signs of powder burns.^[6]

The theory itself that guns had somehow been smuggled into Stammheim prison depended on the testimony of Hans Joachim Dellwo (brother of prisoner Karl-Heinz Dellwo) and Volker Speitel (husband of Angelika Speitel). Both had been arrested on 2 October 1977, and charged with belonging to a criminal association; under pressure from the police they subsequently admitted to acting as couriers and testified that they were aware of lawyers smuggling items to the prisoners during the trial. Their testimony was, however, tainted because they provided it in order to avoid lengthy prison sentences and received reduced sentences and new identities. In 1979 two defence attorneys were tried and convicted for smuggling weapons. However, as noted above, the lawyers had been unable to meet with their clients after 6 September 1977 due to the Kontaktsperre order.^[6]

[edit] In fiction

• In 2002, director Christopher Roth released a film about Baader titled Baader, starring Frank Giering as Baader [1].
• In the 2008 movie Der Baader Meinhof Komplex [2] it was decided that the actor Moritz Bleibtreu who played Baader should not lisp as Baader did.^[9]

[edit] See also

• Members of the Red Army Faction

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Becker, Jillian (1977). Hitler's children: The story of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang. Lippincott. ISBN 0397011539. 

[edit] External links

• http://www.baader-meinhof.com/
• Breaking Comrade Baader Out
• Terrorist chic or debunking of a myth? Baader Meinhof film splits Germany

Persondata
NAME	Baader, Andreas Bernd
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Leader of the Red Army Faction
DATE OF BIRTH	May 6, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH	Munich, Germany
DATE OF DEATH	October 18, 1977
PLACE OF DEATH	Stuttgart, Germany