Richter Cycle: Funeral
Title: Beerdigung 1988. Oil on Canvas 200 cm X 320 cm This largest painting of the cycle is of the massive funeral of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe in a Stuttgart cemetery a week after their deaths in Stammheim prison in 1977. Ensslin’s father had struggled to find a cemetery that would allow [read all]
Richter Cycle: Man Shot Down 1 & 2
title: Erschossener 1 und 2 1988. Oil on Canvas 100.5 cm X 140.5 cm These two paintings feature alternate versions of an image of a dead Andreas Baader in his Stammheim prison cell. The official version of Baader’s death claims that sometime in the night of October 17 and early in the morning of October [read all]
Stammheim
Stammheim was the name of the Stuttgart prison that housed the major Baader-Meinhof defendants during their trials, as well as the courthouse in which they were tried. The section in which the prisoners were kept was billed as the most secure prison block in the world, but this didn’t prevent Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and their co-defendants [read all]
Death Night
According to German authorities Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe all committed suicide in their Stammheim prison cells early on the morning of 18 October 1977. It is perhaps understandable that many Germans had trouble believing them. The Red Army Faction cell block had been described over the previous five years as the most [read all]
Jan-Carl Raspe
Young Jan-Carl Raspe, born on July 24, 1944 and living in East Berlin, found himself on the west side of the Berlin Wall when the East Germans raised on the night of 12 August 1961. He decided to stay in the west, living with relatives. In 1967 he helped found Kommune II, an experimental Berlin [read all]
Chapter 20 — The German Autumn
September 1977 – November 1977, 60 pages: The final chapter will provide a fitting climax to the story. It will primarily focus on the 44 days in the fall of 1997 that have become known as “The German Autumn.” In April of 1977 the longest and most expensive trial in German history is over. Andreas [read all]
Andreas Baader
Andreas Baader was one of the two namesakes of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. A juvenile delinquent, Baader was drawn towards the leftist student movement because of the excitement, and the potential for violence. He was convicted of the 1968 arson bombing of a Frankfurt department store, along with his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin. He escaped from police [read all]