Andreas Baader: Free in prison - biography reveals new details!

Andreas Baader: Free in prison - biography reveals new details!

Andreas Baader, the co -founder of the Red Army Group (RAF), felt "free" in prison, as his biographer Alex Asßmann reports. His book "Free in prison", which was published in spring, illuminates Baader's life and thoughts during his detention and gives deep insight into the psyche of a man who is considered one of the most concise actors in German left -wing extremism. Aßmann not only draws Baader as a criminal, but also as a thoughtful young man who tried to act his image during and after his time in prison.

Already in 1968 Baader had been arrested together with Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Söhnlein and Thorwald Proll after they had set fires in Frankfurt department stores to protest against the Vietnam War. Fortunately, the protest remained without injuries; The group was caught two days after their actions. In the years of his imprisonment, Baader wrote eleven claddes and notebooks in which Aßmann made deep historical analyzes. Baader developed a productive writing that helped him fight against his depression and formulate his thoughts about society and its personal ambitions.

a life in contradictions

In Aßmann's representation it becomes clear that Baader had achieved little in his previous life. He had flown from high school and had difficulty fulfilling his mother's expectations. But in custody he began to read intensely and discussed his thoughts in letters to Ensslin. These letters were often the result of several designs that refined Baader to hit the desired sound. His interest in works by philosophers and writers such as Marcuse, Lenin, Fanon, Flaubert and Wittgenstein testifies to his endeavor to develop intellectually.

Nevertheless, Baader's outbreak from prison and the subsequent foundation of the RAF 1970 was a turning point. On May 14, 1970, several masked men and women released him from custody. The participants included journalist Ulrike Meinhof. The attack on the German Central Institute for Social Questions not only left a lasting impression, but also called for a human victim when an employee was seriously injured by shots. This violent campaign was part of the 68 protest movement, which was directed against the Vietnam War.

The descent into terrorism

After his liberation, Baader initially fled to East Berlin and later into an al-Fatah camp in Jordan, where he was trained militarily and took over the management of the RAF. From August 1970 the RAF started with its series of assassinations and bank robberies. The pressure on the members grew, and over the years they have become more and more a target of state repression. Baader and his colleagues were arrested in 1972 and were on trial in Stuttgart-Stammheim from May 1975.

The processes around the RAF members were shaped by hunger strikes and the accusation of class judiciary. During this time, Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide in prison, which further changed the group's dynamics. Ultimately, the unstoppable spiral of violence led to its end: Baader, Ensslin and Raspe were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977 for four times murder. After a failed attempt to kidnap, the three committed suicide, which finally sealed the so -called German autumn.

The biographer Alex Aßmann in his work addresses the paradoxes in the life of Baader and his development as an anti -state existentialist. Today his heir is still controversial, and the effects of his acts are still noticeable.