Astrid Proll
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Astrid Proll (born 29 May 1947, in Kassel) was a German terrorist and member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.[1]
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[edit] As a terrorist
Astrid Proll was the younger sister of Thorwald Proll and met Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin through him; however, her brother left the group before things got too serious, even though he was involved in firebombings in Frankfurt in 1968. It was believed she joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang not simply because of her beliefs, but because she was enchanted by the idea of an exciting underground life. Astrid Proll was involved in bank robbery and was also an expert car thief. She was the getaway driver for Andreas Baader when he escaped from police custody with the help of Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Ingrid Schubert, Irene Goergens and Peter Homann in 1970.
After Hans Jurgen Backer was suspected of betraying the Baader-Meinhof Gang, leading to the arrest of several key members (Schubert, Goergens, Horst Mahler, Brigitte Asdonk and Monica Berberich) in October 1970, Proll supposedly tried to assassinate him in a driveby shooting, but she missed.[citation needed]
Proll, along with Manfred Grashof, was stopped by police on 10 February 1971 but managed to get away. However in Hamburg on 6 May of the same year, Proll was finally arrested after a pump-attendant at a petrol station recognised her from a wanted poster and alerted the police. She attempted to flee but was surrounded by armed officers and arrested. Once she was detained, her run in with the police in February was turned into an attempted murder charge even though she never even fired a shot. She was imprisoned but released on health grounds (being kept in complete acoustic isolation in prison caused her health to deteriorate)[1] and transferred to a sanitorium.
[edit] On the run
While at the sanitorium, Proll was required to report to the police, but she soon escaped and went underground. Initially, a network of supporters and sympathizers spirited her away to Italy, but she found their attempts to help suffocating. After only a few months she relocated to London and a marriage there to a Robin Puttick allowed her to legally obtain new identity documents. With these she obtained a variety of jobs; she worked as a gardener, with the youth, as a parking attendant, in a toy factory, and finally, after taking welding classes, as a teacher of car mechanics. During this time, she tried to maintain a low profile and was deliberately vague to her acquaintances regarding her background.[1]
However, on 15 September 1978, whilst in the workshop in West Hampstead, Proll was discovered and arrested by the Special Branch of the police. She was detained and fought extradition until she herself decided to return to West Germany in 1979 to fight her case there.
[edit] Return to Germany
Back in Germany, Proll's attempted murder charge was dropped when it was gathered that the state had withheld information that could have cleared her but she was still sentenced to five and a half years imprisonment on account of bank robbery and falsifying documents; however, she had already spent at least two-thirds of that time in German and English prisons and therefore was released immediately. She did not rejoin the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
Proll is a lesbian, which the British press focused on during her time fighting extradition.[1] She has participated in many interviews about her time in the Baader-Meinhof Gang and has even published a photography-based book about the gang entitled Pictures on the Run 1. She has recently worked as a picture editor in the UK (1999). 2
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d MacDonald, Eileen (1991). "German Women and Violence", Shoot the Women First. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-41596-3.
