6-18-1972 The wife who became Public Enemy No 1 (Guardian UK)
Great article by Neal Ascherton on Ulrike Meinhof’s journey toward terror, including memories of conversations with the subject. PDF: 6-18-1972 The wife who became Public Enemy No 1
April 11, 1968 West Berlin
A young house painter, Joseph Bachmann, waits patiently in the street outside the home of Rudi Dutschke. Dutschke is the firebrand leader of the APO — a leftist movement. In Bachmann’s coat pocket is a gun. Bachmann shoots Dutschke three times, knocking him clean out of his shoes. Dutschke survives his shooting. Immediately following the [read all]
konkret
In the late fifties Klaus Rainer Röhl founded a student magazine called the studentkurier, whose name he later changed tokonkret. Röhl later revealed that konkret was almost wholly subsidized in its early years by huge cash infusions from communist East German sources. As aggressively Marxist as it was aggressively hip, konkret attempted to defy many of the traditional conventions of [read all]
November 8, 1971 Hamburg
Renate Riemack, Ulrike Meinhof’s foster mother, publishes an open letter in Meinhof’s ex-husband’s konkret. She says that that the RAF’s ideological foundations rest on false assumptions.
Spring 1969 West Berlin
Ulrike Meinhof, having grown increasingly disillusioned with her life, divorces her husband, Klaus Rainer Röhl, and moves to Berlin. She continues to write for a while for Röhl’s konkret, but soon quits. Her fashionable Berlin apartment becomes a hangout for many in the left-wing Berlin scene.
September 1970, Italy
Stefan Aust, former editor of konkret, former friend of Ulrike Meinhof, and future biographer of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, meets up with group member Peter Homann, who had been kicked out of the group in Jordan. Homann tells Aust of Meinhof’s two daughters, Bettina and Regine, who are secretly being cared for by two hippies at [read all]