Podcast 32: Carl Tighe on Heinrich Böll and the Springer Press
An interview with noted UK author and professor Carl Tighe on the conservative Springer Press (the hated enemy of the Baader-Meinhof Group) and the Springer Press’ relationship with Heinrich Böll. Read professor Tighe’s masterful essay on Heinrich Böll and the Springer Press.
11-17-1971 Campus Struggle Forming (AP)
A brief, semi-inflammatory Associated Press article detailing efforts to organize on German campuses by leftist groups. The article is notable for being the first English newspaper account that I’ve found mentioning the “official” name of the group, the Red Army Faction. PDF: 11-17-1971 Campus Struggle Forming AP
12-21-1972 Violent Crime Wave Stirs Debate in Germany (NY Times)
A New York Times article detailing recent violence attributed to the Baader-Meinhof Gang. PDF: 12-21-1972 Violent Crime Wave Stirs Debate in Germany
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]
March 6, 1975 Paris
A bomb rips through the Paris offices of Axel Springer’s newspaper chain, destroying it. A Paris news agency receives a typewritten note from “the 6 March group,” claiming that the bombing was committed to demand “the liberation and total amnesty of the Baader-Meinhof group.”
Springer Press
The bane of leftist Germans, the Springer newspapers were outrageously conservative. Owned by Lord Axel Springer, the Springer Press controlled almost half of the newspaper circulation in West Germany. Springer was an avowed anti-communist. During a time when others corporations were leaving West Berlin in droves (fearful of the tenuous political situation that barely kept [read all]
Ilse “Tinny” Stachowiak
Ilse Stachowiak (born in May of 1954) joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang late in 1970. She has just turned 17 and the youngest ever member of the group. She was arrested not too long afterwards on 12 April 1971 at the Frankfurt train station after a policeman recognized her from her wanted poster. She was not [read all]
May 19, 1972 Hamburg
Ulrike Meinhof, Siegfried Hausner, Klause Jünschke, and Ilse Stachowiak place six bombs in the Hamburg offices of the Springer Press. Three fail to explode, but the other three bombs blow up around 3:15 PM, injuring 17 people. “The 2 July Commando” claims responsibility.
January 10, 1972 Federal Republic of Germany
Der Spiegel publishes a letter by future Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, in which he decries the Springer Press’s Bild newspaper for a recently published headline accusing the Baader-Meinhof Gang of murder. The Bild headline referred to the shooting of police officer Herbert Schoner on December 20. Böll says that Bild’s Baader-Meinhof coverage “Isn’t cryptofascist anymore, [read all]
Chapter 4 — Praxis
May, 1967 – May 1970, 59 pages: The stories of the three major characters, Baader, Meinhof, and Ensslin, merge into one story in this chapter, and follow a straight narrative arc for the rest of the book. But first this chapter will look into the extremes of the student movement, exemplified by a West German [read all]
December 23, 1971 Hamburg
Though there is nothing to connect the Kaiserlautern murder to the Baader-Meinhof Gang at this time, the Springer Press newspaper Bild publishes a story headlined “Baader-Meinhof murders on.”