Peter Homann

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Peter Homann (* 1936 ) is a German journalist , producer and author . For a while, he was considered a founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF), but was actually one of the first to break away from the terrorist group that was being founded. Even in the so-called RAF founding year 1970 there was a rift and in November 1971 Homann surrendered to the authorities. He was released after four weeks, as all suspicions against him were broken. Homann then accompanied the early phase of the RAF with sensational interviews and publications in which he sharply criticized their militant approach.

Life

Peter Homann studied painting at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts in the 1960s and worked as a freelance artist and journalist, among other things for the magazine concrete .

There he met Ulrike Meinhof , with whom he became friends. The two of them lived in a shared apartment in Berlin, which led to Homann being suspected of being involved in the act after the liberation of Baader on May 14, 1970, and was put on the wanted list. Although not actually involved in the action, Homann decided to go into hiding and, together with Horst Mahler , Andreas Baader , Gudrun Ensslin , Ulrike Meinhof, Brigitte Asdonk and about twelve others, took part in an Al Fatah training camp in Jordan between June and August 1970 , where the group wanted to get military training. During the stay at the camp, the contradictions between Homann and the rest of the group quickly came to light, serious frictions arose, which ultimately led to Homann's escape from the camp and his return to Germany. He was supported in his escape by the Palestinian hosts of the camp after it became clear that the German group, under the decisive influence of Baader, had decided to murder Peter Homann, as he represented a potential traitor to them. According to Homann, Baader is said to have proposed a joint execution disguised as a shooting accident, in which all group members should take part. Horst Mahler later contradicted the representation in an open letter to Stefan Aust that he had actively participated in this decision.

Back in Germany, Homann made contact with Stefan Aust, with whom he picked up Ulrike Meinhof's two daughters from a hiding place in Sicily and brought the children to their father in Hamburg . Aust reports that there was then an attempt by Baader and Mahler in Hamburg to shoot Homann and him, both of whom narrowly escaped.

Homann hid in Hamburg for some time before he turned himself in to the authorities in Hanover on November 17, 1971. Shortly before, he had given a detailed interview to Der Spiegel , in which he kept a low profile regarding his personal relationship with his former comrades, but had already carefully analyzed the dynamics of terrorist violence and the state's reactions to it.

In the 1970s, Peter Homann resumed his work as a journalist and worked, among other things, as an author for NDR television . At the end of the 1970s, Peter Homann, together with the conductor and festival director Irmgard Schleier, developed the concept of a loose international production community of high-ranking artists of all genres who come together in changing line-ups on contemporary historical, artistic and socio-political topics. To this end, he invented a new form of musical-literary revue that presents chansons and literature, scenic, art and contemporary documents, contemporary, modern, classic and popular in dramaturgies of great narrative density and historical rigor.

At the end of the 1990s, Homann lived as a journalist in Hamburg.

In the early 2000s he moved to Berlin and worked together with his wife Irmgard Schleier in the artistic direction of numerous musical and literary revues. In 2008 his role in the Red Army faction was portrayed in the film Der Baader Meinhof Complex by Jan Josef Liefers .

He now lives and works with his wife in Wendland on the organization of cultural events.

Work (selection)

A large number of Hamburg and Berlin stage and concert productions can be traced back to Peter Homann's ideas and books.

  • “In this hotel to earth” (Walter Mehring program), Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 1982
  • "Resists, those who are inexperienced in winning!" (With Peter Rühmkorf, among others), German theater in the Kampnagelfabrik, 1984
  • “From Ulm to Metz, from Metz to Moravia” (revue for Eva Mattes), Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris, 1987
  • "Voices - Hommage à Rolf Liebermann", Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, 1990
  • "Oops, we're alive! A hundred German years ”, Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, 1999
  • "And above us heaven" (revue for Eva Mattes), St. Pauli Theater Hamburg, 2005

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "I had the most beautiful job in the world". Interview with Stefan Aust, in: Die Zeit, No. 38/2008 from September 11, 2008 ( Memento from September 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Peter Homann: Little Berija - that's what we called Horst Mahler . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1972 ( online - 23 October 1972 ).
  3. ^ Ulrich Stoldt: Peter Homann . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1997 ( online - May 19, 1997 ).
  4. ↑ Peter Homann: People's Court in the desert sand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1997 ( online - May 19, 1997 ).
  5. ↑ Horst Mahler: Open letter to Stefan Aust. In: Die Zeit No. 23/1997 of May 30, 1997
  6. ↑ October 21, 2002 Re: RAF . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 2002 ( online - October 21, 2002 , internal communication).
  7. ↑ "I had the most beautiful job in the world". Interview with Stefan Aust, in: Die Zeit No. 38/2008 from September 11, 2008 ( Memento from September 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Andreas Baader? He's a coward . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1971 ( online - November 22, 1971 , Interview Wolfgang Sternsdorff, Manfred W. Hentschel with Peter Homann).
  9. ↑ Biography - Irmgard Schleier. Retrieved January 19, 2020 (German).
personal data
SURNAME Homann, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, producer and author
DATE OF BIRTH 1936