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]
Peter Homann
Peter Homann was a journalist and friend of Ulrike Meinhof in the late 1960s. After Meinhof helped free Andreas Baader from police custody in May of 1970, Homann traveled with the new terror group to Jordan for guerrilla training. While in Jordan, Homann learned that other in the group suspect him of being a traitor, [read all]
Spring, 1973 Essen
Gudrun Ensslin uses characters from Moby Dick as new code-names for the imprisoned members of the gang. Gudrun becomes “Smutje,” Baader “Ahab,” Holger Meins “Starbuck,” Jan-Carl Raspe “Carpenter,” Gerhard Müller “Queequeg,” and Horst Mahler “Bildad.” Gudrun dubs Meinhof “Teresa,” which was not a character from Moby Dick. Baader-Meinhof Biographer Stefan Aust later theorizes that Ensslin [read all]
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]
Interview: Bernd Eichinger, writer and producer of the Baader-Meinhof Complex
The late Bernd Eichinger, the writer behind the Baader-Meinhof Complex, was the most succesful film producer in Germany (he died early in 2011). His last three films from Germany are the most expensive and among the most successful German films of all time: Downfall, Perfume: the Story of a Murderer, and the Baader-Meinhof Complex. He [read all]
Interview: Stefan Aust, Author of Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex
In the world of Baader-Meinhof scholarship, there is Stefan Aust, and there is everyone else. Simply the most important observer of the Baader-Meinhof era, Aust returns to the Baader-Meinhof subject with the April 2008 publication of an English language update to his seminal book “the Baader-Meinhof Komplex. Aust came to study the Baader-Meinhof group through [read all]