Bommi Baumann

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Michael "Bommi" Baumann (born August 25, 1947 in Berlin-Lichtenberg ; † July 19, 2016 in Berlin-Friedrichshain ) was a co-founder of the terrorist organization Movement June 2nd . He was one of the central figures of the increasingly violent left-wing radical scene in West Berlin that had developed from the 1968 movement . At the end of 1971 his friend Georg von Rauch was shot dead by the police in a firefight. In February 1972, in a bomb attack on a marina in Berlin, a person died for the first time from a bomb that Baumann helped build. He then broke away from the June 2nd Movement. He was wanted by the police and began to flee through various countries. In 1974 he publicly called on his former comrades from the underground to end the armed struggle, because he recognized it as the wrong path. He was caught in the 1980s and spent five years in prison for his previous crimes.

Life

Michael Baumann was born in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg . He was a trained concrete worker . According to his own statement, he got his nickname as a schoolboy after the Bommerlunder aquavit brand .

First underground activities

Bommi Baumann was in the 1960s, contact with the West Berlin student movement and the Commune I . Through various experiences with the police, media and authorities, he became increasingly radicalized. The death of Benno Ohnesorg on June 2, 1967 had a lasting impact on him. Then he began to include property damage as a tool in the political struggle. As a worker with practical work experience, unlike many intellectual students in the SDS , he attached great importance to “ direct action ” and the practical “struggle in the metropolises” as flanking support for guerrilla and liberation movements in the Third World .

After arson attacks against a British airline that Bundeswehr - deserters had flown from West Berlin in the Federal Republic of Germany, Baumann spent in February 1970 to the summer of 1971 a few months in prison.

Death from smoke and an bystander

Later Baumann and his friend Georg von Rauch joined the central council of the wandering hash rebels , which later joined together with other left-wing radical groups and "revolutionaries" to form the terrorist group " Movement June 2nd ", which Baumann led. During the "implementation" of a stolen vehicle from Berlin's Winterfeldtplatz that was observed by the police , the police tried to arrest von Rauch. He was shot - standing next to Baumann. A few months later, boat builder Erwin Beelitz, who was a caretaker, died in the British Yacht Club in Berlin-Gatow from a bomb that Baumann helped build. These two events moved Baumann to break away from the terror scene.

Renunciation of terror and flight

From 1972 his flight began through various countries, including Syria , Iran , Afghanistan and India . In a highly acclaimed interview with the title Friends, Throwing Away the Gun , he explained from the underground in the magazine Der Spiegel in 1974 that he had recognized violence as the wrong path and urged his former colleagues to give up violence. Since he had recruited some of them for the June 2nd Movement, for example Verena Becker , he owed them this.

Spiritual roots: Tupamaros

In 1975 he published (still as wanted) a book to defend his position with the title How everything began. In it he went into his spiritual fathers, described his development to the " urban guerrilla " modeled on the Tupamaros in Uruguay and dealt critically with the armed struggle. This edition by the Munich-based Trikont-Verlag was seized by the police on November 24, 1975 because of a suspected "call to violence" during a nationwide search . In 1976, more than 300 left-wing groups, some of them prominent, including writers and publishers, from several European countries came together to criticize this as censorship. They released an unmodified new edition that sold without any problems.

Detention

In February 1981, Scotland Yard arrested Baumann in an occupied house in Hackney, London . Half a year later the Berlin Regional Court sentenced him to five years and two months in prison for two bank robberies and a bomb attack on the Berlin State Criminal Police Office .

In prison, he wrote another autobiographical book that appeared after his release.

Statements in Stasi custody

In his book Hi Ho - Whoever does not go away, does not come again , published in 1987, Baumann reported that he was arrested by the Stasi in Berlin in 1973 and interrogated for six weeks . In 1998 it became known that he had passed on much of his inside knowledge in a total of 114 hours. There are 165 pages of interrogation minutes. At the request of his interrogators in custody, he also wrote a 125-page handwritten report on a total of 94 people involved in the armed struggle in West Germany. In it he reported on assaults, attacks, sexual preferences and technical details (e.g. weapon caliber). Among other things, he had described the RAF co-founder Andreas Baader as a "whisker with brutal behavior towards group members" and as a "crank with completely infantile behavior". After this became known, Baumann was confronted with allegations that he had betrayed his comrades. Baumann, who was wanted by the police in West Germany in 1973 and threatened with a long prison sentence, said: “Otherwise they would have deported me to the West or simply left me dead. And against the Stasi jail, the prisons I knew from West Berlin were pure rest homes. ”The ex-RAF terrorist Astrid Proll said that Baumann's statements did no harm. Other alumni were more critical of the tenor that Baumann wanted to buy his way out. Baumann later apologized for his statements to some of those affected.

Intoxication and terror

In the book Rausch und Terror , his “political experience report” published in 2008, Baumann admitted that from 1967 to 1993 he was addicted to opiates .

Later views on left-wing terrorism

Baumann later advocated certain theses on the origins of German terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, he started from the still unexplained role of the Verfassungsschutz V-Mann Peter Urbach , who, as an agent provocateur , has proven to deliver numerous bombs and weapons to the student and anarcho scene in West Berlin at the end of the 1960s , including Baumann himself as well as founding members of the Red Army Faction such as Horst Mahler and Andreas Baader .

Baumann claimed in 1975 in his book How it all began , that the protection of the constitution on the occasion of Nixon Apostolorum 1969 in West Berlin to hash rebels " pressed his hand over Urbach the bomb would have." "We didn't overlook that at all during that time, we were the henchmen of a very specific cop strategy". In his last years he made more public statements about the suspected involvement of secret services with left-wing terrorism . In this context, he also took part twice as a speaker at events organized by the journalist Jürgen Elsässer for the Querfront magazine Compact .

The political scientist Wolfgang Kraushaar and the historian Gerd Koenen have explicitly contradicted Baumann's thesis that left-wing terrorism was “externally controlled” , but both found that Urbach had an unexplained influence of the state in the early phase of terrorist groups that urgently needs to be clarified .

Baumann - according to his own information - gave Kraushaar the decisive tip in 2002, which helped him to clarify the attempted arson attack on the Jewish parish hall in Fasanenstrasse in Berlin on November 9, 1969. Baumann disagreed with the thesis that Kraushaar has since played a key role in several writings and lectures, namely that the militant left was largely anti-Semitic .

Role in the trial against Verena Becker

Baumann was a witness in the criminal proceedings against Verena Becker for the murder of the Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback in 1977. During the trial he also came into contact with the co-plaintiff Michael Buback , who published the case with his through his book The Second Death of My Father Had just started research. Buback suspects German secret services of having been involved in the murder of his father, the then Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback, in 1977 or at least having been informed about it beforehand - and that the Federal Prosecutor's Office in conjunction with German secret services could have covered the real murderer, according to Buback very much much suggests Becker. Baumann testified several times in the process that there were long conversations with Buback in the context of a television interview, with whom he agreed on several aspects regarding the assessment of the case.

Wolfgang Kraushaar, author of the book Verena Becker and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution , pointed out that the prosecution and defense had done nothing to make Baumann appear completely unbelievable as a witness. The fact that Baumann was in a drug replacement program was not mentioned and the difference between methadone and heroin was not even discussed. Kraushaar had the impression that the public prosecutor's office wanted first and foremost that his perceptual abilities would be restricted and therefore unreliable: “The fact that in Baumann's person you were dealing with someone who, in contrast to most other alumni, was credible distanced from terrorism, by the way, was not worth mentioning. ”Baumann himself said that he had repeatedly had the feeling that he was the actual accused when he was asked about the possible role of the protection of the constitution. He had "never experienced anything like this." Kraushaar said that, in his opinion and that of other observers, "the state defends the accused". But it is a "perversion of the rule of law when the representative of the prosecution secretly represents the interests of the accused, in this case an ex-terrorist".

death

Grave of Bommi Baumann in the St. Petri-Luisenstadt cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Grave field U71 row 36 grave 02

In June 2011, in the trial against Verena Becker, he stated that he had resumed drug use in 2008, and when the public prosecutor asked for the reasons, he replied: “Because of my short life expectancy, I said to myself that it doesn't matter anymore. Irgend'n hobby has finally everyone. "Through his many years of drug use Baumann was in poor health, had to be medically treated repeatedly and suffered from hepatitis C . He died at the age of 68 in his apartment in Berlin-Friedrichshain.

Publications

  • How everything began. Trikont , Munich 1975, ISBN 3-920385-68-3 (The book was banned and "illegally" distributed with the support of numerous publishers)
  • How everything began. 30 years of "German Autumn". A biographical document. Rotbuch , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86789-000-7 .
  • HiHo. If you don't go away, you won't come back. Frölich and Kaufmann in Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-455-08655-1 .
  • HIHO. The adventurous escape of an ex-terrorist. Panama Publications, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-936732-04-7 .
  • with Till Meyer : Radical America. How the American protest movement changed Germany. Rotbuch, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86789-010-6 .
  • with Christof Meueler: Intoxication and Terror. A political experience report. Rotbuch, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86789-036-6 .

literature

  • Jürgen Arnold, Peter Schult: A book is banned. Bommi Baumann documentation. Trikont, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-88167-034-3 .
  • Uwe Backes : Terrorist biographies: Michael "Bommi" Baumann. In: Ders .: Leaden years. Baader-Meinhof and afterwards (= Series Extremism and Democracy . Volume 1). Straube, Erlangen a. a. 1991, ISBN 3-927491-36-5 , p. 142 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Sontheimer : Obituary for Bommi Baumann: How everything ended . taz , July 20, 2016, accessed July 22, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b Movement June 2nd . ( Memento from October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Protection of the Constitution of North Rhine-Westphalia , accessed on July 22, 2016.
  3. ^ A b Wolfgang Kraushaar: A farce in Stammheim . taz , June 8, 2011, accessed July 22, 2016.
  4. ^ A b c Wolfgang Kraushaar: Verena Becker in court: An RAF trial as a farce . In: taz , June 7, 2011, p. 15; Retrieved July 22, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Friends, throw away the gun." In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1974, p. 32 ( online ).
  6. ↑ The title read: “This book was confiscated on November 24th, 1955 and is now being reissued by the following people and publishers despite the ban: Prof. Wolfgang Abendroth [...] Prof. Elmar Altvater [...] Horst Bingel [...] Heinz Brandt […] Daniel Cohn-Bendit […] FC Delius, typesetter […] Dr. Ingeborg Drewitz […] Rudi Dutschke […] Giulio Einaudi […] Bernt Engelmann […] Hans Magnus Enzelsberger […] Inge Feltrinelli, publisher […] Prof. Dr. Ossip Flechtheim […] Erich Fried […]. The book itself contains an 'Editors List' which is almost nine pages. It was printed in Amsterdam. "
  7. ↑ Michael Baumann: Hi Ho. If you don't go away, you won't come back. 1987, ISBN 3-455-08655-1 , pp. 59-64.
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: Our infiltrated years. In: FAZ , April 7, 1998, p. 45.
  9. ↑ a b alias anarchist . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1998 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Michael Baumann: How it all started. ISBN 3-86789-000-5 , p. 54.
  11. ↑ Gerd Koenen: Rainer, if you only knew! The attack on the Jewish community on November 9, 1969 has now been solved - almost. What was the role of the state? In: Berliner Zeitung . July 6, 2005.
  12. ↑ Marcus Klöckner: The RAF and the secret services . Interview with Wolfgang Kraushaar in Telepolis , November 10, 2010; Retrieved July 22, 2016.
  13. ↑ Stefan Reinecke , Wolfgang Gast: Anti-Semitism in the 70s left: "In retrospect, everyone is smarter" . In: taz . May 12, 2013, accessed July 22, 2016.
  14. ↑ Christian Rath: The criminalist against his will . In: taz . September 29, 2010; Retrieved July 22, 2016.
  15. ^ Thomas Moser: Indictment and counter-opinion: Michael Buback: "The second death of my father", Droemer Verlag . Book review on Deutschlandfunk , November 24, 2008, accessed on July 22, 2016.
  16. ↑ Clemens and Katja Riha: In sight: The trial against Verena-Becker has begun . 3sat broadcast Kulturzeit , October 7, 2010, accessed on July 22, 2016.
  17. ↑ a b Meeting of Buback and Baumann. 3SAT Kulturzeit, June 7, 2011.
  18. ↑ Pieke Biermann : An uncomfortable suspicion: Wolfgang Kraushaar: "Verena Becker and the protection of the constitution", Hamburg 2010, 203 pages . Review in Deutschlandradio Kultur , October 18, 2010, accessed on July 22, 2016.
  19. ↑ Matthias Matussek : When we were young and beautiful. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-10-048924-1 . (books.google.de)
  20. ↑ Terrorist and hash rebel: Bommi Baumann is dead . In: Spiegel Online . July 21, 2016.
  21. ↑ Michael Sontheimer : Obituary for Bommi Baumann: How everything ended . In: taz . 20th July 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Baumann, Bommi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baumann, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and terrorist of the June 2nd movement
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Lichtenberg
DATE OF DEATH 19th July 2016
Place of death Berlin-Friedrichshain