Ulrike Meinhof

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Ulrike Marie Meinhof
October 7, 1934 – May 9, 1976
Meinhof as a young journalist.
Date of birth:	October 7, 1934
Place of birth:	Oldenburg, West Germany
Date of death:	May 9, 1976
Place of death:	Stuttgart, West Germany
Major organizations:	Red Army Faction

Ulrike Marie Meinhof (October 7, 1934 – May 9, 1976) was a German left-wing militant and co-founder of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) after originally working as a journalist for the monthly konkret.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Establishment of the RAF 3 Action in the RAF and arrest 4 Imprisonment and death 5 Bibliography 5.1 Works of the RAF 5.2 Posthumous collections of essays 6 Media and literature 7 External links 8 Footnotes

[edit] Early life

Ulrike Meinhof was born in 1934 in the town of Oldenburg. Her father, the art historian Dr. Werner Meinhof, died in 1940 and her mother, Ingeborg, passed away 8 years later, both from different forms of cancer. Historian and family friend Renate Riemeck took on the role of guardian for Ulrike and her elder sister.

In 1955 she took her Abitur at a school in Weilburg. She then studied philosophy, sociology, Pädagogik (roughly pedagogy) and Germanistik (German studies) at Marburg where she became involved with reform movements.

In 1957 she moved to the Westfälischen Wilhelms University near Münster and joined the Socialist German Student Union, participating in the protests against the rearmament of the Bundeswehr and its involvement with nuclear weapons as proposed by Konrad Adenauer's government. She eventually became the spokeswoman of the local 'Anti-Atomtod-Ausschusses' (or 'Anti-Atomic Death Committee'). In 1958, she spent a short time on the AStA (German: Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss or General Committee of Students) of the university and wrote articles for various student newspapers.

In 1959 she joined the banned KPD (German Communist Party) and later began work at the magazine konkret, serving as chief editor from 1962 until 1964. In 1961, she married the co-founder and publisher of konkret, Klaus Rainer Röhl. Their marriage produced twins, Regine and Bettina, on 21 September 1962, and lasted until their separation in 1967, which was followed by divorce the following year.

[edit] Establishment of the RAF

The attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968 provoked Meinhof to write an article in konkret demonstrating her increasingly militant attitude and containing perhaps her best-known quote:

“

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.[1]

”

Later that year, her writings on arson attacks in Frankfurt protesting the Vietnam War resulted in her developing an acquaintance with the perpetrators, most significantly Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. She left her job at konkret in the early part of 1969 (later returning to vandalise the offices in May) and began her life as a self-styled guerilla.

Perhaps her last work as an individual was the writing and production of a film titled Bambule in 1970, urging female revolt and class warfare; by the time it was scheduled to be aired, she had become a wanted terrorist and its broadcast was delayed until 1997. More specifically, by that point she had participated in the breakout of Baader on the 14 May 1970. During this assisted escape (from a research institute Baader was visiting rather than a prison), a 64-year old librarian was shot (several times with a pistol, resulting in critical liver damage) and two law enforcement officers were wounded. Baader and the three women involved were accused of attempted murder and a 10,000DM reward was offered for Meinhof's capture.^[2]

[edit] Action in the RAF and arrest

Main article: Red Army Faction

In the next two years Meinhof participated in the various bank robberies and bombings executed by the group. She and other RAF members attempted to kidnap her children so that they could be sent to Palestine and educated there according to her desires; however, the twins were intercepted in Sicily and returned to their father, in part due the intervention of Stefan Aust.

During this period, Meinhof wrote or recorded many of the manifestos and tracts for the RAF. The most significant of these is probably The Concept of the Urban Guerrilla, a response to an essay by Horst Mahler, that attempts to set out more correctly their prevailing ideology. It also included the first use of the moniker Rote Armee Fraktion and, in the publications of it, the first use of the RAF insignia.^[3] However her practical importance in the group was often overstated by the media, the most obvious example being the common moniker Baader-Meinhof gang for the RAF. (Gudrun Ensslin is often considered to have been the effective female co-leader of the group rather than Meinhof.)

On 14 June 1972 in Langenhagen, Fritz Rodewald, a teacher who had been providing accommodation to deserters from the U.S. Armed Forces, was approached by a stranger asking for an overnighting house the next day for herself and a friend. He agreed but later became suspicious that the woman might be involved with the RAF and eventually decided to call the police. The next day the pair arrived at Rodewald's dwelling while the police watched. The man was followed to a nearby telephone box and was found to be Gerhard Mueller who was armed. They then proceeded to arrest the woman – Ulrike Meinhof.

[edit] Imprisonment and death

After two years of preliminary hearings, she was sentenced to 8 years' imprisonment on 29 November 1974. Meanwhile the trial continued; it would have almost certainly resulted in a life sentence had it been concluded. Though if that had been the case she might well have served 20 years before being paroled.

On 9 May 1976 she was found hanged by a rope, fashioned from a towel, in her cell in the Stammheim Prison. It was suspected that her death had been self-inflicted and this verdict of suicide was confirmed later through further enquiries. It was later discovered that she had become increasingly isolated from other RAF prisoners. Notes exchanged between them in prison included one by Gudrun Ensslin, describing her as 'too weak'. The official findings were not accepted by many in the RAF^[4] and other militant organisations and there are still some who doubt their accuracy and believe that she was murdered by the authorities. In 2001, the findings of the inquiry were published under the title Der Tod Ulrike Meinhofs. Bericht der Internationalen Untersuchungskommission (ISBN 3-492-24058-5).

Meinhof's body was buried six days after her death in Berlin-Mariendorf. In late 2002 it was discovered, following investigations by her daughter Bettina, that her brain had been retained (apparently without permission) by a hospital in Magdeburg following the autopsy performed as part of the investigations in Meinhof's death. Bernhard Bogerts, a psychiatrist from the local university who has examined the brain, has controversially claimed that Meinhof's 'slide into terror' may be due to surgery in 1962 for removing a brain tumour.^[5] On Bettina's request, the brain was interred in Meinhof's burial place on 22 December 2002.

[edit] Bibliography

• Contributed to Karl Wolff oder: Porträt eines anpassungsfähigen Deutschen. by Heinz Otto Müller, Abendstudio, 1964
  • Karl Wolff or Portrait of an adaptable German
• Contributed to Gefahr vom Fließband. (Arbeitsunfälle - beobachtet und kritisch beschrieben.) by Peter Schulze-Rohr, Abendstudio, 1965
  • Danger of the Assembly-Line. (Industrial Accidents – observed and analysed)
• Bambule - Fürsorge - Sorge für wen? Wagenbach, 1971, (Republished 2002, ISBN 3-803-12428-X)
  • Bambule: Welfare - Providing for whom?

[edit] Works of the RAF

• Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, 1971^[3]
  • The Concept of the Urban Guerilla
• Stadtguerilla und Klassenkampf, 1972/1974^[6]
  • Urban Guerilla and Class Struggle

[edit] Posthumous collections of essays

• Deutschland, Deutschland unter anderem. Wagenbach, 1995 (ISBN 3-803-12253-8)
  • Deutschland, Deutschland amongst other things
• Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar. Wagenbach, 2004 (ISBN 3-803-12491-3)
  • The Distinction of Man is violable

[edit] Media and literature

Meinhof's life has been the subject or basis of several films and stage productions. Included in the former is Reinhard Hauff's 1986 account of the Stammheim trial and Margarethe von Trotta's 1981 Marianne and Juliane. Of the latter there has been the 1990 opera Ulrike Meinhof by Johann Kresnik and the 2006 play Ulrike Maria Stuart by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek.

Many books have been written about the RAF and Meinhoff's transformation from journalist to terrorist has obviously been a source of great interest. Amongst these are Stefan Aust's Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (1998, ISBN 3-442-12953-2) and Jillian Becker's Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang (1998, ISBN 0-7881-5472-9).

The East German punkrock band Aufbruch/Flexible ('Departure'/'Flexible') dedicated the song Für Ulrike to her.

Subtopia, a novel published in 2005 by Australian author and academic A.L. McCann, is partially set in Berlin and contains a character who is obsessed with Ulrike Meinhof and another that claims to have attended her funeral.

[edit] External links

• Baader-Meinhof.com's Ulrike Meinhoff page.
• Section on Meinhoff from Crime Library.com's article on the RAF
• My Mother, the Terrorist from (Deutsche Welle, March 14, 2006)
• About Ulrike Meinhof by the daugther Bettina Röhl

[edit] Footnotes

Persondata
NAME	Meinhof, Ulrike Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	German militant
DATE OF BIRTH	October 7, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oldenburg, West Germany
DATE OF DEATH	May 9, 1976
PLACE OF DEATH	Stuttgart, West Germany