Holger Meins

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Holger Klaus Meins (born October 26, 1941 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel , † November 9, 1974 in Wittlich ) was a German terrorist of the Red Army Faction (RAF). The former filmmaker died in custody in 1974 as a result of a hunger strike .

Life

Youth, film studies, politicization

Holger Meins was the son of the Hamburg merchant Wilhelm Julius Meins (1907–1986). He was a scout in the CPD Hamburg and took part in the 1957 Jamboree in Sutton Coldfield . From 1962 Meins studied at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HfbK). In 1964 he worked on the set design of the " Theater im Zimmer " in Hamburg. In the autumn of the same year, Meins began an internship at the RIVA television studios in Unterföhring and became a camera assistant at ARPA-Film in Munich . In 1966 he broke off his art studies and switched to the newly founded German Film and Television Academy (dffb) in Berlin . During his studies there, Meins made several short films and also worked on the films of others, occasionally as an actor, but mainly as a cameraman. First he shot the “precisely and sensitively photographed” documentary film Oskar Langenfeld. 12 times in the style of Direct Cinema , which observes the everyday survival strategies of a homeless person suffering from tuberculosis .

In the same year Meins took first on a demonstration of the SDS against the Vietnam War in part. He was also present at the demonstration on June 2, 1967 in West Berlin against the Shah of Persia, at which Benno Ohnesorg was shot. As a result, there was a radicalization of the student body, in which Holger Meins also participated.

On February 1st, 1968 he showed the three-minute documentary How do I build a Molotov cocktail at a protest event at the Technical University of Berlin , the “Spring Tribunal” co-organized by Horst Mahler . The film was initially shown anonymously and circulated at various teach-ins and in municipality 1 . Meins' authorship is now considered secure. The building instructions had Meins Régis Debray's guerrilla instructions Revolution in the Revolution? taken. In the film, the assembly of the incendiary bottle is precisely documented, the interlocking of many hands to complete it symbolizes the supposedly broad basis of the revolutionary movement. At the end there is a cut to the publishing house of Axel Springer AG , the obvious target of the arson attacks. A “myth” develops around the film.

Because Meins was awaiting criminal trial because of the Molotov Cocktail film , he and his fellow student Günter Peter Straschek drove to Munich in early 1968 , where the University of Television and Film (HFF) had just opened. No HFF lecturer declared himself ready to declare the film as an abstract work of art that did not call for the use of force.

In May, Meins took part in the cast of the German Film and Television Academy (dffb). Because of this, he and 15 others, including Hartmut Bitomsky and Harun Farocki , were banned from studying on November 27, 1968. This decision was overturned by the court on November 11, 1969 and Meins and his fellow students were again admitted to the dffb.

Membership in the Red Army faction

Meins, Raspe and Baader were arrested on June 1, 1972 in front of this apartment building at Hofeckweg 2-4 in Frankfurt am Main

In September 1969, Meins moved into Commune 1 in Berlin. He worked on the underground newspaper Agit 883 and pushed through the reprint of the RAF call to be founded in its 62nd issue . He is also known for his design of a poster entitled Freedom for All Prisoners , which stylized a flower with an egg grenade and cartridge cases as well as the names of international guerrilla and liberation movements such as the Viet Cong , Tupamaros and Black Panther . For printing this poster, the writer Peter-Paul Zahl was sentenced to six months imprisonment on probation in 1972 for publicly inciting criminal offenses . On August 14, 1970, Meins was arrested on suspicion of being involved in a bomb attack on a police car. He was released after a month of pre-trial detention in Berlin- Moabit . Ralf Reinders had borrowed his car and committed the attack.

In October 1970, Meins joined the Red Army faction under the code name "Rolf" (later Starbuck , after the helmsman of the Pequod in Moby Dick ) and went into hiding. He was later accused of having participated in attacks on American facilities in Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg in the course of the May offensive . On June 1, 1972, Meins was arrested together with Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe after a shooting in Frankfurt am Main and then, according to their own statements, they were mistreated by the police. At first Meins was imprisoned in Bochum , later in Koblenz and finally in Wittlich .

The phrase “Either you are part of the problem or you are part of the solution”, which is often associated with mine, found its way into the German vocabulary as a winged word . The sentence is in a letter dated June 5, 1974, in which mine is about "the human weapon". In the original context it says:

“The PRACTICE which, by drawing a clear line between itself and the enemy, will be fought most severely. the practice that expects nothing other than bitter hostility. - THAT REQUIRES TO BE CLEAR about YOUR OWN MOTIVATION, to be sure that Bild-Zeitung methods don't get caught in you anymore, THE WHOLE SHIT that they don't hit you. either you are part of the problem or you are part of the solution. THERE IS NOTHING IN BETWEEN. so easy and yet so difficult. "

In fact, the phrase comes from English and Meins probably came as a quote from a speech by the American activist Eldridge Cleaver . However, it had been printed on various occasions since 1937.

Hunger strike and death

Grave of Holger Meins

In January 1973, Meins went on hunger strike for the first time along with other prisoners to protest the conditions . The RAF prisoners wanted to be merged and claimed the status of prisoners of war . A second hunger strike followed in May, during which mine was forcibly fed for the first time . After seven weeks, the prisoners broke off their hunger strike. Meins began the third hunger strike on September 13, 1974. When he was visited by his lawyer Siegfried Haag in the Wittlich correctional facility on Saturday, November 9, 1974, he weighed only 39 kg with a height of 1.83 meters. Haag informed the judge, Theodor Prinzing , who was primarily responsible for Meins' detention, about his critical condition and demanded the approval of a medical examiner, since the prison doctor was on the weekend. Prinzing refused; Holger Meins died a few hours later. He was artificially fed during his 58-day hunger strike, but the prison doctor had only given 400 to 800 calories a day for the past two weeks and only 400 kilocalories for the past four days . After Petra Schelm , who was shot in an exchange of fire with the police on July 15, 1971, Holger Meins was the second RAF dead, the first among the RAF prisoners.

Afterlife

Mine was buried in the family grave in Hamburg-Stellingen on November 18, 1974 , and over 5000 people attended the funeral. Rudi Dutschke shouted right in front of the grave, in front of the cameras and with a raised fist: "Holger, the fight goes on!" When attacked, he wrote soon afterwards in the mirror that he had by no means dealt with the actions of the RAF and Movement 2. June want to show solidarity. The murder of Günter von Drenkman , President of the Berlin Court of Appeal, committed a few days before the death of Holger Meins from the June 2nd Movement , Dutschke described as “in the reactionary German tradition”. Rather, it was about the fight for humane prison conditions. Whether this was to be understood as showing solidarity with the RAF is controversial. Spiegel editor Rudolf Augstein criticized Dutschke.

After Meins died, there were threats to take the body out of the grave and hang it up. Left groups, on the other hand, spoke of "murder". The then RAF lawyer Otto Schily spoke of an "execution on installments". There were demonstrations with up to 10,000 participants in several cities. The authorities were charged with complicity in the prisoner's death.

Meins' “martyr's death” became a central element of the RAF's communication strategy as apparent evidence of the state's “extermination custody” and ensured solidarity and mobilization among the left. The later leading figure of the third RAF generation , Birgit Hogefeld , who attended the grammar school at the time, regarded him as “one of the central decisions” in her life: “Most of those who know it will not forget the image of Holger Meins for their entire life, certainly also because this emaciated person has so much resemblance to concentration camp prisoners, to the dead at Auschwitz. ”According to Gerd Koenen, this reaction was “ exactly the one that was supposed to be produced by the arrangement and that was prompted in the prisoners' texts . ”The picture was circulated in the left-wing scene and in foreign media and was used by RAF lawyers Groenewold and Croissant as an argument that their clients were being treated like victims of the Holocaust. Wolfgang Kraushaar emphasizes the sacred dimension of the photo of the dead mine, which was also printed in the star . It was reminiscent of the self-sacrifice of Christ and was printed in large banners at demonstrations like a monstrance . For the second RAF generation it had an "initial function".

The two murders in the Stockholm hostage-taking in April 1975 were carried out by six RAF terrorists who called themselves “Holger Meins Commando”.

Jean-Marie Straubs and Danièle Huillet's film Moses and Aron from 1974 is dedicated to Holger Meins. In the documentary film It dies everyone, the only question is how and how you lived (Holger Meins) (1976) by Renate Sami, numerous friends and fellow students with whom Holger Meins at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb) have their say had worked, including Harun Farocki , Helke Sander , Hartmut Bitomsky , Gerd Conradt and Günter Peter Straschek . The documentary Starbuck - Holger Meins. A portrait of Gerd Conradt was published in 2001.

Films with the participation of Holger Meins

  • Subjectivity 1966, tone: Holger Meins
  • Clip open, clip to 1966, tone: Holger Meins
  • Riffi 1966; Camera: Holger Meins
  • Beginning in 1966, collective film film class at Ramsbott University of Fine Arts Hamburg
  • Silvo 1967, sound: Holger Meins
  • The words of the chairman in 1967, camera: Holger Meins
  • Color test - Rote Fahne 1968, actor: Holger Meins
  • Oskar Langenfeld short film, 1967, director: Holger Meins
  • How do I build a Molotov cocktail? Documentary film three minutes, Germany 1968, director: Holger Meins (cannot be found in the original, but a reconstruction exists).

literature

  • Gerd Conradt : Starbuck - Holger Meins. A portrait as an image of time. Espresso, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-88520-788-5 .
  • Petra Kraus, Natalie Lettenewitsch, Ursula Saekel, Brigitte Bruns, Matthias Mersch (eds.): Germany in autumn 1977–1997. Terrorism in the movie. Series of publications Münchner Filmzentrum, Munich 1997.

Web links

Wikiquote: Holger Meins  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ spielfilm.de and VCP Federal Archives, Kassel
  2. ^ Klaus Kreimeier : Counter-public? Sixty-eight: the wild beginnings. In: Kay Hoffmann, Erika Wottrich (Ed.): Protest - Film - Movement. New ways in the documentary. Edition Text + Criticism, Munich 2015, p. 57 (e-book edition); Film website at the dffb. Video on the Internet Archive .
  3. ^ Anna Pfitzenmaier: Documentary productions: RAF, Linksterrorismus and "German Autumn" in the film. An annotated filmography (1967–2007). In: Zeitgeschichte Online , May 2007.
  4. ^ Heinrich Hannover : The republic in front of the court. 1954-1974. Memories of an uncomfortable lawyer. Structure paperback, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7466-7031-4 , p. 410.
  5. ^ Stefan Aust: The Baader Meinhof Complex. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-455-08253-X , p. 243 f .; Gerd Conradt: Starbuck - Holger Meins. Espresso, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3885207885 , p. 17 f.
  6. ↑ Pieter H. Bakker Schut (ed.): Das Info: Letters from prisoners from the RAF 1973–1977. Neuer Malik, Kiel 1987, ISBN 3-89029-019-1 , PDF, here pp. 63–67. The abbreviation ji at the end of the letter stands for Jimmy , the RAF-internal name of Holger Meins (see list of names p. 335).
  7. ^ Eldridge Cleaver: post-prison writings and speeches. Edited by Robert Scheer . Random House, New York 1969, ISBN 978-0394423234 , pp. XXXII books.google .
  8. ↑ Jennifer Speake: The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs , 6th ed. 2015, p. 291 books.google ; 43rd National Safety Congress 1955, p. 105 books.google
  9. ↑ Michael Sontheimer : Holger, the fight continues! In: Spiegel Online , one day , November 8, 2007.
  10. ^ Pieter Bakker Schut : Stammheim. The trial of the Red Army faction. 2nd edited edition. Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-89144-247-5 , pp. 117-119.
  11. ↑ letter in Der Spiegel , no. 48/1974, p 7 (PDF).
  12. ↑ Der Spiegel 42/1977, p. 8 f., At Spiegel.de ( Memento from May 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) and as PDF .
  13. ↑ Robert Wolff: Torture and murder of the “heroes of the people” in German penal institutions? The conspiratorial worldview of the Red Army Faction, 1970–1977 . In: Johannes Kuber, Michael Butter, Ute Caumanns, Bernd-Stefan Grewe, Johannes Großmann (eds.): From back rooms and secret machinations. Conspiracy theories in the past and present (=  In dialogue. Contributions from the Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart ). 2020, ISSN  2698-5446 , p. 121-138 ( uni-tuebingen.de ).
  14. ↑ Martin Steinseifer: “Terrorism” between event and discourse: On the pragmatics of text-image compilations in print media in the seventies. De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2011, p. 308.
  15. ↑ Birgit Hogefeld: Process declaration from July 21, 1995. In: Nadir , November 20, 1996.
  16. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The red decade. Our little German cultural revolution 1967–1977. 5th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 407. See overall for the media distribution of the image Petra Terhoeven : victim images - perpetrator images. Photography as a medium of left-wing terrorist self-empowerment in Germany and Italy during the 1970s. In: History in Science and Education . Vol. 58, 2007, No. 7/8, pp. 380-399, here p. 392 f.
  17. ^ Petra Terhoeven: The Red Army faction. A history of terrorist violence. CH Beck, Munich 2017, p. 58 f.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: The blind spots of the RAF. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-608-98140-7 , p. 230.
  19. ^ Film website at the dffb.
  20. ↑ Reviews of Petra Groll: Pictures from the Past. In: Die Tageszeitung , March 10, 2001; Marina Achenbach: A mosaic of tender memories of a starved terrorist. In: Friday , March 23, 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Mine, Holger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meins, Holger Klaus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist of the Red Army Faction (RAF)
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg-Eimsbüttel
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1974
Place of death Wittlich