The trial of alleged Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist Daniela Klette is about to begin. The group also known as Baader-Meinhof Gang has attracted considerable media attention since the 1970s.
Suspected RAF terrorist Daniela Klette has the support of sympathizers todayImage: Christophe Gateau/dpa/picture alliance
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This may well be the last major trial involving the former terrorists of the far-left "Red Army Faction" (RAF). The trial of alleged former terrorist Daniela Klette will begin this Tuesday in Celle, a city in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.
The terrorist group kept West Germany on tenterhooks from the 1970s and, according to investigating authorities, was responsible for more than 30 murders.
Klette, now 66, is not being charged with murder. However, together with her accomplices Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, the defendant is alleged to have robbed armored cars and supermarkets between 1999 and 2016, primarily in northern Germany.
Because shots were fired during the robberies, Klette is also charged with attempted murder.
Staub and Garweg are still at large, and Klette was arrested in Berlin in February 2024 after living for years under a false identity in the German capital's Kreuzberg district.
Robbery for a living
The RAF was disbanded in 1998, which was announced in a letter that the authorities deemed authentic. The 13 attacks committed by Klette's trio after that, according to the indictment, were no longer intended to finance terrorist acts but apparently only served to support the three aging revolutionaries.
The President of Germany's Employers' Association Hanns-Martin Schleyer was abducted and killed by the RAF Image: AP
However, when it comes to the RAF, German investigative and judicial authorities are still on high alert. The trial was initially meant to take place in a courthouse in the city of Verden, but it was considered not large or secure enough. A former riding arena is being converted there especially for the proceedings. The trial will occur in Celle until that venue is ready.
These security concerns recall the RAF's shock-inducing attack on the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1977, a courtroom was explicitly built in Stuttgart-Stammheim for the trial of the group's leaders, right on the prison grounds where the defendants were being held.
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Murdered politicians, judges and business representatives
The RAF, which described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group, openly attacked leading representatives of government, business, and the judiciary from the early 1970s onward. Those it murdered included Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback, as well as the head of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto. A total of 27 RAF members have been sentenced to life imprisonment over the decades.
The confrontation with the German state reached its peak in the fall of 1977, when the group initially kidnapped Hanns-Martin Schleyer, then head of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, demanding the release of imprisoned RAF members. When the German government, led by then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), refused, Palestinian sympathizers hijacked a German vacation plane, which, after a stray flight through the Middle East, eventually landed in Mogadishu, Somalia. There, an anti-terror unit of the then Federal Border Guard rescued all passengers. The terrorists had previously murdered the pilot.
The 'Baader-Meinhof Gang' members' faces were printed on 'wanted posters' and put up all over GermanyImage: Polizei/dpa/picture-alliance
Following news of the failed hijacking, the RAF prisoners held in Stuttgart-Stammheim committed suicide. Schleyer was later found murdered. Nevertheless, the German state had won the war against the RAF with all its might. Although the RAF continued to murder, it never regained its former strength.
The RAF still has sympathizers
Quite a few young West Germans sympathized with the group, either secretly or openly, in the 1970s. German media reports suggested a threat, which critics claimed was blown out of proportion. Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll, for example, spoke of a lonely "battle of the 6 against 60 million." Throughout the years, the hardcore group only had around 80 active members.
Klette has never renounced the revolutionary struggle.
Small protest demonstrations have repeatedly been held in front of the prison in Vechta, Lower Saxony, where Klette has been held for more than a year. That is despite the fact that the RAF has long disbanded. The trial is expected to last around two years.
This article was originally written in German.
Films about far-left German terrorist group RAF
From bombings and kidnappings to murders, the far-left militant group Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorized West Germany in the 1970s. Learn more about the group and their acts from these films made about them.
Image: Axel Thünker, Haus der Geschichte, Bonn
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
Perhaps the best-known film about the RAF, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" (2008) provides the terrorist group's back story and their actions based on a book of the same name written by Stefan Aust. The film received mixed reviews, with some critics claiming it mystified the RAF - in part due to a star cast including Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader and Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Constantin Film
The harsh reality on the big screen
Whether it was the murder of business executive and industry representative Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the early RAF court trials or the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane, the far-left militant group Red Army Faction (RAF) brought a wave of terror onto West Germany in the 1970s. Their actions have since inspired a number of filmmakers.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Collateral damage
In "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum," a young woman played by Angela Winkler has an affair with an alleged terrorist, drawing the attention of the police, the judiciary system and the press. The 1975 film by Volker Schlöndorrf, based on a book by Heinrich Böll, is a fictional story based on the left-wing terrorism that took place in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Dürrwald
11-part reflection of the times
"'Germany in Autumn' is not a 'good' film, but an important one," wrote Die Zeit. The 1978 film, comprised of 11 episodes, brought together top German directors including Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff. Reflecting the socio-political climate of West Germany in the 1970s, this film was also based on a work by Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Böll.
Image: Imago/United Archives
A question of violence
"Knife in the Head," starring Bruno Ganz as Dr. Hoffmann, was a 1978 blockbuster in West Germany. During a police raid, he is shot in the head but survives. But is he a victim of police brutality or terrorism? No one seems to know - not even Hoffmann, who loses his memory in the shooting.
Image: Filmfest München
Sisters on the front lines
Margarethe von Trotta's 1981 film "Marianne and Juliane" is a fictionalized account based on the biographies of two real-life sisters and pastor's daughters, Christiane and Gudrun Ensslin. Both are active in politics. While one is a quiet pragmatist, the other joins the RAF and is later found dead in her prison cell. The film helped von Trotta make her international breakthrough.
Image: Imago/United Archives
A 192-day trial
About 10 years after the Stammheim trial of RAF co-founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, filmmaker Reinhard Hauff devoted a new film to the subject of RAF terrorism. Based on authentic protocols, "Stammheim" (1986) reconstructs the 192-day trial in 1975. The narrative is limited to the protocol reproduction and does not include any commentary.
Image: picture-alliance/BIOSKOP/Ronald Grant Archive
Life after RAF?
"The State I Am In" is a 2000 film by Christian Petzold about life after being part of the RAF. A couple who defied the German state in the 1970s lives underground with their daughter for years out of fear of being caught. While the parents are plagued by paranoia, the daughter decides to break out of hiding.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Pegasos
Crossing borders
Another story of life in hiding, this time in the former East Germany, is Volker Schlöndorff's "The Legend of Rita." In the film from 2000, left-wing terrorists go underground in East Germany in the 1970s with the help of the Stasi. After German reunification, their cover is blown and they are shot and killed while trying to escape. Several RAF members really did attempt to hide in East Germany.
Image: picture-alliance/Berliner Zeitung
A true story of two deaths
The documentary film released in 2001 by director Andres Veiel, "Black Box BRD" offers a counter-narrative in which surprising parallels open up. On the one side there is Alfred Herrhausen, spokesperson for Deutsche Bank's board of directors, who was murdered by the RAF. On the other side is RAF member Wolfgang Grams, whose violent death also raises questions.
Image: X Verleih
The lawyers behind the far-left
In "Die Anwälte - Eine deutsche Geschichte" (The Lawyers - A German Story) from 2009, the careers of Otto Schily, Hans-Christian Ströbele and Horst Mahler are traced from their days as attorneys for the left-wing political opposition in the 1970s to the present. Schily (right) became interior minister; Ströbele (left) joined the Greens party; Mahler is a right-wing extremist and Holocaust denier.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Kalaene
A complex love triangle
Andres Veiel made his feature film debut in 2011, in "If Not Us, Who?" The story of an emotional and sexual love triangle follows RAF co-founder Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper, son of a Nazi poet, as they fall in love, get married and have a child. But then Ensslin leaves the family and follows Andreas Baader into the RAF underground.
Image: Markus Jans/zero one film
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