Sieglinde Hofmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sieglinde Hofmann (born March 14, 1945 in Bad Königshofen , Lower Franconia ) is a former member of the terrorist organization Red Army Fraction (RAF) and is considered one of the leading figures of the second generation . In 1977 she was involved in the kidnapping and murder of the employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer and in 1979 in the attack on the then NATO commander in chief in Europe, Alexander Haig . She was arrested in 1980, sentenced twice, and finally released in 1999.

Life

After attending a Catholic girls' school, she trained as a doctor's assistant. After completing her technical college training as a social worker in Heidelberg, she worked as a social worker in the field of drug counseling in the business area of ​​the Archdiocese of Freiburg from 1970 . She radicalized herself through her work in the socialist patient collective in Heidelberg and joined the RAF in 1976.

In the summer of 1976 she completed military training together with other members of the so-called Haag / Mayer gang (including Siegfried Haag , Peter-Jürgen Boock and Stefan Wisniewski ) in a PFLP training camp in South Yemen and took part in the first plans for Offensive 77 , whose aim was to free the RAF members incarcerated in German prisons.

After Haag's arrest, Brigitte Mohnhaupt took over the leadership of the RAF in February 1977 . Hofmann quickly became their most important confidante and in the following months and years acted as a kind of deputy ( BKA boss Horst Herold later referred to Hofmann as "the chief of staff of the Mohnhaupt").

As a member of the closest leadership of the RAF, she was instrumental in planning and executing the terrorist attacks of the "Offensive 77" and the German Autumn . On September 5, 1977, she opened fire on the convoy of the employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer with a rapid-fire rifle and was one of Schleyer's permanent guards for the following weeks.

On May 11, 1978, she was arrested together with Mohnhaupt and Boock in Zagreb , but in November 1978 she was deported by the Yugoslav authorities to Aden in southern Yemen. From there she returned to Europe in the spring of 1979 and took part in the attempted assassination attempt on the then NATO commander in chief in Europe, Alexander Haig .

In May 1980 she negotiated on behalf of Mohnhaupt about the merger of the RAF with the June 2nd Movement , but was arrested at a conspiratorial meeting in a Paris apartment. She was extradited to the Federal Republic of Germany against the promise not to charge Hofmann with murder. In June 1982 she was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempted hostage-taking, attempted kidnapping and membership in a terrorist organization . The conviction for participating in the attempted kidnapping of Jürgen Pontos was essentially based only on the statements of the key witness Hans-Joachim Dellwo . It later emerged that she was not involved in the attempted kidnapping of Pontus, in which he was shot by the RAF, and that her conviction was a misjudgment .

It was only after the arrest of RAF dropouts in June 1990 who had gone into hiding with the assistance of the Ministry for State Security in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that Hofmann's leading role within the RAF became known in all its significance. In 1995, shortly before her regular release from prison, she was charged a second time. In the same year she was - largely based on the statements of the GDR dropouts - as a participant in the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer and because of "responsible involvement" in the failed attack on the NATO commander-in-chief Alexander Haig to a life imprisonment with determination of the convicted of particular severity of guilt. In 1999 she was released early on parole .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ex-terrorists accuse Wisniewski. In: sueddeutsche.de. September 27, 2010, accessed June 21, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Key witness accuses RAF member. Berliner Zeitung, September 14, 1995, accessed on May 12, 2020 .
  3. ↑ rafinfo.de: short biography Sieglinde Hofmann
  4. ^ RAF terrorists , photo from 1995 and short biography, Tagesspiegel , September 17, 2008
  5. ↑ Andreas Ritter, Klaus Gimmler: Traces of the RAF in Haßgau and in the grave field. November 12, 2007, accessed May 12, 2020 .
  6. ^ Stefan Aust : The Baader Meinhof Complex. Page 417
  7. ^ Butz Peters : Deadly error. Page 513
  8. ^ Butz Peters: Deadly error. Page 404
  9. ^ Ralf Ahrens, Johannes Bähr: Jürgen Ponto. Banker and citizen. A biography . P. 207
  10. ↑ Trick with a crutch . Der Spiegel, No. 25/1982
    Michael Sontheimer: Terror Trials     : The Doubtful Judgments of the RAF Tribunals , Spiegel Online, May 2, 2010, edited excerpt from: Michael Sontheimer: “Of course you can shoot”. A Brief History of the Red Army Faction. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2010
  11. ^ Conviction of the RAF terrorist S. Hofmann , press release of the Federal Court of Justice of April 11, 1996
  12. ↑ Completely responsible for Schleyer's death , Die Welt , September 27, 1995
  13. ↑ Spiegel Online: What became of top terrorists, February 12, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Hofmann, Sieglinde
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist of the Red Army faction
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Königshofen , Lower Franconia