Johannes Thimme

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Johannes Thimme (born February 29, 1956 in Erlangen , † January 20, 1985 in Stuttgart ) was a supporter of the Red Army Faction (RAF).

Life

Johannes Thimme was born in 1956 as the middle of three sons of the then scientific assistant Jürgen Thimme and the teacher Ulrike Thimme. In 1973 he spent a school exchange year in America. He graduated from high school in 1975 at the Eichendorff-Gymnasium Ettlingen .

Around 1976 Thimme, who knew Christian Klar , Adelheid Schulz and Günter Sonnenberg from their “legal” time in Karlsruhe, joined the RAF . In the course of the search after the arrest of Verena Becker and Günter Sonnenberg on May 3, 1977, Thimme was arrested a short time later together with a brother of the RAF terrorist Knut Folkerts . The public prosecutor's office assumed that Thimme was the helper "Tim" mentioned in the notes of the imprisoned RAF member and former lawyer of Andreas Baader , Siegfried Haag . His girlfriend Sabine Schmitz had previously been taken into custody as an RAF courier. Although the court came to the conclusion that “the exact scope of the activity actually carried out by the defendant could not be measured”, Thimme was sentenced in 1978 to 22 months in prison for membership in a terrorist organization .

In 1981 Thimme was arrested again during a hunger strike by imprisoned members of the RAF when he was distributing solidarity leaflets. The court sentenced him to one and a half years in prison for supporting a terrorist organization. Overall, according to his mother, Thimme sat “three years and four months in prison, mostly in solitary confinement ”. Thimmes parents could only keep in touch with their son by letter. While Thimme accused the parents of undermining his "resistance to wanting to get me to collaborate with the system" and called on them to "show solidarity with me as a political prisoner", the parents tried to change their son's mind. His father condemned the harsh prison conditions, but did not accept them as a reason for attacks: "How were and are the conditions of Lorenz and Schleyer's prison, and what mental tortures and torments were and are their families exposed to?"

On January 20, 1985, on the occasion of another hunger strike by imprisoned RAF members, Thimme and a comrade planted a bomb in front of an office building complex of the German Aerospace Research Institute in Stuttgart, which detonated prematurely. Thimme died at the scene, his accomplice and then partner was injured and later served a prison sentence. Thimme was buried in Ettlingen .

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Not to be confused with the racing driver and television presenter of the same name .
  2. ↑ Tom Schimmeck: The Uncle with the Bomb ( Memento from November 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), published on Schimmecks Archive, February 2004. Tom Schimmeck: Ulrike Thimme: A bomb for the RAF. The life and death of Johannes Thimme, told by his mother , review of the book of the same name on Deutschlandfunk, March 2004. See also: Michael März: Left Protest after the German Autumn: A History of the Left Spectrum in the Shadow of the 'Strong State', 1977 -1979 , transcript, 2012, p. 183
  3. ↑ Ulrike Thimme: A bomb for the RAF. The life and death of Johannes Thimme told by his mother. CH Beck. Munich 2004, quoted from: Joachim Feldmann: When I started fighting . Friday, January 28, 2005
  4. ↑ Markus Krischer: September 18: "Either pig or man" ; in: Focus from September 18, 2007
  5. ↑ Tom Schimmeck: Ulrike Thimme: A bomb for the RAF. The life and death of Johannes Thimme, told by his mother , review of the book of the same name on Deutschlandfunk, March 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Thimme, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German RAF supporter
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH gain
DATE OF DEATH 20th January 1985
Place of death Stuttgart