Irmgard Möller

Irmgard Möller (born 13 May 1947, Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a former member of the German militant group the Red Army Faction (RAF). Her father was a high school teacher^[1] and before joining the RAF, she was a student of German studies.

RAF activity

• On 12 May 1972, Möller and Angela Luther walked into police headquarters in Augsburg carrying suitcases. They placed pipe bombs in empty offices on the 3rd and 4th floors and walked out again. The subsequent explosions (around 12:15pm) injured five policemen and collapsed the fourth floor ceiling.
• On 24 May of the same year it is thought that Möller was one of two people who drove cars full of explosives into the United States Military Intelligence Headquarters (G-2), (HQ USAREUR), at Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg. Three soldiers were killed in the attack (Ronald Woodward, Charles Peck and Captain Clyde Bonner) and five were wounded.
• Möller was set up by fellow Red Army Faction member Hans-Peter Konieczny and was arrested on 9 July 1972, being subsequently sentenced to a lengthy prison term by a Hamburg court. She was then transferred to Stammheim Prison.

Imprisonment and suicide attempt

According to prison reports, she attempted suicide by stabbing herself in the chest on the morning of 18 October 1977. Of the imprisoned RAF leaders, only Möller survived what is widely assumed (following extensive inquiries) to have been the result of a suicide pact by the group. The other Red Army members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe died by gunshot or hanging. With the successful Mogadishu raid there was no more chance to escape jail. During the height of the German Autumn the nature of these suicides was believed by supporters and sympathizers to be suspicious given their location in a maximum security prison; Möller herself has always maintained that she did not attempt suicide and that there was no pre-arranged suicide pact between the prisoners.^[2] She claims that the prisoners were murdered in response to the militants' demands that the prisoners be released (see German Autumn).^[3]

Möller was released from prison in 1995. Today she lives in anonymity.

See also

• Members of the Red Army Faction
• Red Army Faction

References