Baader exemption

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The violent liberation of Andreas Baader from prison on May 14, 1970 in West Berlin is referred to as the Baader liberation . It is considered the hour of birth of the left-wing extremist terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF).

It was planned by a group around Baader's partner Gudrun Ensslin and his lawyer Horst Mahler and carried out by six people: Gudrun Ensslin, Irene Goergens , Ingrid Schubert , Astrid Proll , Ulrike Meinhof and an unknown man. Initially, Peter Homann was erroneously suspected, but no involvement could be proven for the later defendant Hans-Jürgen Bäcker.

On June 6, 1970, the group justified the act in the magazine Agit 883 as the beginning of an "armed struggle" to build a "Red Army" to liberate the " sub-proletariat " in the Federal Republic of Germany. In April 1971, the group published the “Urban Guerrilla Concept ”, in which it first referred to itself as the “Red Army Faction”. Law enforcement authorities and the media called them "Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe" or "Baader-Meinhof-Gang".

The Baader liberation was the first criminal act of the later so-called Red Army Fraction with firearms . In an exchange of fire with Baader's guards, the unknown person involved seriously injured the employee Georg Linke and injured two police officers. This started a decades-long left-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic. In the confrontation between the RAF and state power, over 60 people lost their lives until the RAF dissolved itself in 1998.

background

Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and two other perpetrators were each sentenced to three years in prison for the department store arson on April 2, 1968 and were provisionally released from custody in June 1969 - about 14 months after the arrest. When the judgments with the rejection of the revisions became final in November 1969 and appeals for clemency had been rejected, Baader and Ensslin went into hiding, first in Western Europe, then in West Berlin. There they lived for a few weeks with the journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who reported on her trial and made friends with them in the summer of 1969 as part of the student home campaign at the time.

Since the autumn of 1968, the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) and its main organization, the West Berlin SDS , had split up into warring factions and a number of K groups . Some of these groups became radicalized and discussed the formation of an illegal, armed cadre organization with social revolutionary claims, especially since the impunity law of May 1970, from which the department store arsonists and Mahler were excluded. The group around Baader was unable to come to an agreement with the Tupamaros West Berlin around Dieter Kunzelmann , who wanted to found a loosely and decentrally organized urban guerrilla based on the model of the Latin American Tupamaros .

Baader was arrested on April 4, 1970 following a tip from V-Mann Peter Urbach during a fictitious traffic control in Berlin and on April 24 he was transferred from pre-trial detention in Moabit to Tegel prison. His friends then planned his liberation in order to then build up an illegal social revolutionary organization of their own that was to take a leading role in the radical left scene. Their ideological concept only emerged after the liberation campaign and other criminal acts, including several robberies on banks and weapons depots.

Preparations

Since an exemption directly from the Tegel correctional facility was unrealistic, Meinhof's publisher Klaus Wagenbach requested Baader's "version of the source study" at the German Central Institute for Social Issues in Berlin. Allegedly Meinhof and Baader were planning a book with the working title “Organization of marginalized young people”. In the letter of May 10, 1970, the publisher asked Baader to take a look at magazines that could not be brought to the prison. Hurry, because the book should appear in autumn. The chief justice inspector refused. The prison director of the Tegel correctional facility, however, gave in two days later after a conversation with Baader's lawyer Horst Mahler and agreed to a one-time execution for three hours on May 14th.

In the Berliner Lokal "Wolf's Lair" in the Charlottenburg Grolmanstraße bought the then 19-year-old Irene Goergen, was close to the Meinhof, 1000 D-Mark , a gun-type Beretta mm, caliber 6.35, and a silencer. Astrid Proll and Ingrid Schubert procured further weapons.

On May 13th, an Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint was stolen by a group member on Kantstrasse in Charlottenburg and given a false license plate number, which was later used to escape.

Goergens and Schubert visited the Berlin institute on May 13th, spied it out and announced that they would be back the next day for research on the subject of “Possibilities for the Therapy of Young Criminals”. Ulrike Meinhof also appeared at the institute on May 13th and asked whether everything had been prepared for the Baader appointment.

course

On Thursday, May 14, 1970 around 9:45 a.m., Andreas Baader was brought in handcuffs by two constables to the reading room of the institute on Bernadottestrasse in Berlin-Dahlem . Ulrike Meinhof was waiting for him there. In the room were the two judicial officers, Baader, Meinhof and an institute employee. Baader and Meinhof sat at a table for around 75 minutes, exchanging magazines and taking notes.

During this time Goergens and Schubert entered the building. They were assigned the hall in front of the reading room as a work space. At around 11 a.m., they opened the front door of the building for a hooded man. While he was still in the hall, he shot the institute employee Georg Linke and seriously injured him with a bullet through his upper arm and a sticking shot in his liver.

Goergens, Schubert and the masked man stormed into the reading room with the shouting "Hands up or we'll shoot", Schubert with a Reck P 8 pistol, caliber 6.35 mm and Goergens with a Landmann-Preetz small-bore rifle, caliber 22 with a sawed off stock, that was previously hidden in her briefcase. The two judicial officers resisted, and the scuffle was shot by a judicial officer and the liberators.

After the attackers shot a tear gas gun, which injured one of the judicial officers, all of the perpetrators managed to jump out of a window about one and a half meters above the ground and escape. Outside they ran to the previously parked Alfa Romeo with Astrid Proll at the wheel. The group changed vehicles several times, but did not leave Berlin. The police lost track of the group.

consequences

The 62-year-old institute employee Georg Linke was out of danger 14 days later and was discharged from the hospital on July 8th. The injured justice sergeant major Günter Wetter stayed in the hospital for five weeks.

As a direct consequence of the events, the ARD canceled the broadcast of the Meinhof film Bambule , which was planned for May 24, 1970. For Meinhof, being involved in the crime and fleeing meant the leap into illegality. It was recognized in the leftist circles columnist for the magazine concretely to a warrant wanted terrorist. Decades later, those involved in the crime, Astrid Proll and others, stated that Meinhof spontaneously joined the fugitives after a shootout with injured people. It was planned that Meinhof would stay seated and later report on the action without going into illegality himself.

On June 5, 1970, Agit 883 , an anarchist magazine appearing in West Berlin, published the RAF's first public programmatic declaration, the text "Build the Red Army!", In which the founding of the group was announced.

Shortly afterwards, the nationwide search for the meanwhile 50 group members began. The event is considered to be the birth of the Red Army faction . From now on, the search was for the group and no longer for individual perpetrators. The first wanted posters only bore the face of Ulrike Meinhof, who was therefore exposed to the greatest pressure to be searched. Two months after the liberation of Baader, members of the group visited a Fatah camp in Jordan and received military training. In 1972 the group began to carry out attacks.

In April 1971, the RAF distributed the strategy paper “The Urban Guerrilla Concept”, in which they commented on the shots at Georg Linke. It says:

“The question of whether the prisoners would have been released if we had known that someone on the left would be shot in the process - we have been asked often enough - can only be answered with no. The question: what would have happened if, [...] With her, people want to know whether we are as brutalized as the Springer press shows us. "

Lawsuits and convictions

On October 8, 1970, Irene Goergens, Horst Mahler and Ingrid Schubert were arrested in Berlin. The first of two trials in which the Baader exemption was negotiated began against them, accompanied by strict security precautions, on March 1, 1971, before the 8th Large Criminal Chamber of the Jury Court in Moabit . District court director Friedrich Geus presided. Horst Mahler was defended by Otto Schily , the two wives by Klaus Eschen and Hans-Christian Ströbele .

The main allegations of the prosecution against Goergens and Schubert were jointly attempted murder and prisoner release and against Mahler aiding and abetting in these crimes. The Chief Prosecutor Hans-Dieter Nagel requested six years imprisonment and four years for Horst Mahler and Schubert Ingrid youth custody for Irene Goergen. After more than 20 days of the trial, the verdict was announced on May 21, 1971, which followed the prosecution's application in the case of Ingrid Schubert and Irene Goergens. Horst Mahler was acquitted, but remained in custody on other charges. The Federal Court of Justice later overturned the judgment against Mahler.

The process also caused a stir because the prosecutors of evidence against the then Mahler even as a provocateur agent suspected undercover agent of the West Berlin intelligence service Peter Urbach had briefly introduced before end of the process as a prosecution witness in the process. Interior Senator Kurt Neubauer had given Peter Urbach only a very limited permission to testify about events that took place on three specific days. The request of the presiding judge Geus to extend the permission to testify was rejected by the interior senator. The trial observer Gerhard Mauz wrote: “This witness burdens lightheartedly, but cannot answer the complaint of a limited permission to testify […] if he is asked questions, the answer of which could convict him as an agent provocateur. […] West Berlin's Senator for the Interior, called Neubauer, already declared in the autumn of 1970 that Horst Mahler had been convicted in such a way that a major punishment could be expected. And if the evidence is insufficient, then V-men will be sent into the field. "

The process led to public criticism and calls for resignation. Neubauer stated that the initiative had not come from him, but that he had complied with a request from the public prosecutor. His statements of October 1970, quoted in the press, are "the conclusion of a journalist from our conversation" and he did not deny it because he "could not foresee further developments". He did not intervene in any pending proceedings.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b rotaprint 25 (ed.): Agit 883. Revolte underground movement in West Berlin 1969–1972. Association A, Hamburg / Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-935936-53-2 All editions of the 883 as facsimile with title pages and table of contents as PDF Facsimile documentation of the declaration and a brief preceding declaration as PDF: agit 883 No. 61, May 22nd 1970, p. 2 online (PDF; 2.5 MB) and: agit 883, No. 62, June 5, 1970, p. 6. online (PDF; 2.4 MB); Martin Hoffmann (Ed.) Red Army Fraction. Texts and materials on the history of the RAF. ID-Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89408-065-5 , p. 24ff. (as PDF; 1.5 MB)
  2. ^ Stefan Aust : The Baader Meinhof Complex . 2nd edition, Goldmann, 2008, p. 176 f.
  3. ^ Mario Krebs: Ulrike Meinhof , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, pp. 210–222.
  4. ^ Butz Peters: RAF. Terrorism in Germany. DVA, Stuttgart 1991, p. 81; Beatrice de Graaf: The fight against political violence. An attempt at an international structural comparison. In: the same with Nicole Colin, Jacco Pekelder and Joachim Umlauf: The “German Autumn” and the RAF in politics, media and art: National and international perspectives . transcript, Bielefeld 2015, p. 49; Sabine Bergstermann: Stammheim. A modern prison as a place of conflict between the state and the RAF . Walter DeGruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, p. 38.
  5. ↑ http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/images/Plak%20006-001-058_web1.jpg
  6. ^ RAF, Das Concept Stadtguerilla, April 1971; Documented in: Red Army Fraction - Texts and materials on the history of the RAF, Berlin 1997, p. 30.
  7. ↑ Gerhard Mauz: If you don't want it any other way . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1971, p. 100-103 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Jury court indictment of December 10, 1970 as PDF , accessed March 31, 2018
  9. ↑ Code name Rosi . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1971, p. 93-95 ( online ).
  10. ↑ On June 28, 1974, the Berlin Regional Court convicted Goergens and Schubert for participating in a coordinated attack on several banks in Berlin on September 29, 1970 (the so-called "triple strike"). This leads to total sentences of seven years youth penalty for Goergens and thirteen years imprisonment for Schubert. (Landgericht Berlin, judgment of June 28, 1974 ([500] 2 P KS1 / 71 [2/73]); cf. Butz Peters: Tödlicher Errtum. Die Geschichte der RAF. Argon-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-87024 -673-1 . P. 760, note 47)
  11. ↑ Shot in the basket . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1971, p. 87 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Gerhard Mauz: Let's just say strawberry tarts . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1971, p. 86 ( online ).
  13. ↑ Certainly the weapons were there . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1971, p. 79 ( online - SPIEGEL interview with the Berlin Senator for the Interior, Neubauer, about the appearance of V-Mann Urbach as a witness).

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