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Gudrun Ensslin (15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a German student, activist, and co-founder of the terrorist Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group. After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's voluntaristic anarchistic beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF. She was involved in five bomb attacks, with four deaths, was arrested in 1972 and died on 18 October 1977 in what has been called Stammheim Prison's Death Night.

Work area
"Now is the time."

- Who



Early life
1940-May 1967

Ensslin, the fourth of seven children, was born in the village of Bartholomä in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Her father, Helmut, was a pastor of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Ensslin was a well-behaved child who did well at school and enjoyed working with the Evangelical Girl Scouts, and doing parish work such as organizing Bible studies. In her family, the social injustices of the world were often discussed, and Gudrun is said to have been sensitized to social problems in West Germany and the world as a whole. At the age of eighteen, Gudrun got the chance to spend a year in the United States of America, where she attended high school in Warren, Pennsylvania. She graduated in the Honor Group at Warren High School in 1959. After returning home, she finished the remaining requirements for her German secondary education.

Like her partner Bernward Vesper and other members of the Red Army Faction (such as Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler) Ensslin had excellent exam scores and received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. Studying at the University of Tübingen, she read education, English Studies, and German studies as well as meeting Bernward Vesper in February, 1962.

Vesper's father Will had been a best-selling author before the First World War and joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1931. The senior Vesper kept a pro-Nazi stance until his death in 1962, and his writings, compiled posthumously as Die Reise (The Trip), are an explosive mixture of radical left-wing and radical right-wing views. The son's life was largely shaped by his father's experiences. Ensslin's politics harmonized with those of the Vespers, and the couple made a failed attempted to publish a collection of the senior Vesper's works.

In Tübingen, together with two other students, Ensslin and Vesper organized a student workshop for new literature which led to a shoestring publishing business called Studio neue Literatur. The first book produced was an anthology of poems against atomic weapons, with many well known poets from all German speaking countries. as well as a bilingual edition of poems by Gerardo Diego. In 19631964, Gudrun Ensslin earned her elementary school teacher's diploma. In the summer of 1964, the couple moved to West Berlin where Gudrun would finish her thesis on Hans Henny Jahnn at the Free University.

In 1965, Gudrun's younger sister Johanna married Günther Maschke, then a revolutionary Marxist poet and member of the Situationist International group Subversiven Aktion, which included Rudi Dutschke as a member. Maschke is now a leading conservative antidemocratic intellectual and editor of Carl Schmitt. Later that year, Gudrun and Bernward were engaged to be married. Both were active on the democratic left-wing, they had well-paid jobs working for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The couple demonstrated together against new security laws, the Vietnam War, for the right to demonstrate, and an Allied Powers arms show. Vesper neglected his studies, read voraciously, and in 1966 published, with a group of friends, a serious and important series of pamphlets and paperbacks, the Voltaire Flugschriften.

In May 1967, Ensslin gave birth to their son Felix Robert Ensslin.

Formation of the Red Army Faction
thumb|right|250px|Gudrun Ensslin before arson of two department stores in Frankfurt. June 1967-October 1968

In June 1967, Ensslin participated in political protests against the Shah of Iran during his visit to Germany. Though Western governments viewed the Shah as a reformer, his regime has been criticized for oppression, brutality, corruption, and extravagance. In what started as a peaceful demonstration at Deutsche Oper Berlin, fights broke out between pro-Shah and anti-Shah factions and an innocent young man by the name of Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the back of the head by a police officer. That night, Ensslin angrily denounced West Germany as a fascist state at a Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund meeting. Also, Berlin's own urban guerrilla organization, Movement 2 June, named itself after this event.

The police officer who shot Ohnesorg, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was revealed in 2009 to be an undercover Stasi agent. Kurras was charged with manslaughter and acquitted of the charge on 23 November 1967, which caused public outrage. Matters eventually cooled, which enraged Gudrun Ensslin. She had left Bernward Vesper and her child for good early in 1968 and now she, Andreas Baader and Thorwald Proll decided to escalate the fight against the system. They left Berlin around March 20, and in Munich decided to fire-bomb department stores in Frankfurt, where an Socialist German Student Union congress was taking place. Together with Horst Söhnlein, they left for Frankfurt on April 1.

In July or August of 1967 Gudrun met Andreas Baader and they soon began a love affair. Baader had come to Berlin in 1963, to escape ongoing troubles with the Munich justice system and also to dodge the draft. The young criminal drifted in and out of youth detention centers and prison became the man of Gudrun Ensslin's life. An artifact from this time is an experimental film Ensslin participated in entitled Das Abonnement (The Subscription). Ensslin broke up with Vesper by phone in February, 1968, informing him that the relationship was already finished before Felix was born.

On the night of 2 April 1968, two fires were set in two department stores in Frankfurt. Baader, Ensslin, Proll and Söhnlein for some reason remained in Frankfurt and were arrested three days later. In October 1968, they were sentenced to three years in prison for arson.


 * "Rudi Dutschke—the most prominent spokesperson of the student movement who advocated a less radical approach"
 * "he R.A.F. was born out of the non-violent left-wing student movement of the 1960s, which became steadily radicalized in response the Vietnam war and repression of student protest"
 * "aving turned to violence, the smaller conspiratorial group carried out several bank robberies as well as bomb attacks on U.S. military facilities in Germany and on German security institutions, in the course of which four people were killed and 41 injured."
 * "Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin set fire to two Frankfurt department stores."

Fleeing Germany
June 1969-April 1970 After being released pending an appeal in June 1969, Baader, Ensslin, Proll fled when the appeal was denied.
 * "With the assistance of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s representative in Berlin—even then the Palestinian conflict was a red thread in the continuity of terror—the fugitives escaped via East Berlin to Beirut."
 * "The East German secret police, the Stasi, followed all of this, of course, but did nothing to put a stop to these would-be terrorists’ game."
 * "From Lebanon, the Baader group traveled by car to Jordan, where they attended an El Fatah training camp. They were allowed to complete a fast, intensive military training course designed for urban guerilla fighters. The leader of the camp was the director of secret service for El Fatah, Abu Hassan Salameh, known as “The Red Prince.” He was a close associate of Yasser Arafat, the future Nobel Peace Prize laureate who supported all terrorism in the Middle East"

The liberation of Baader
April 1970-June 1972 Baader was arrested on 3 April 1970. Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, who was at that time a well-known leftist polemicist, and two other women freed him on 14 May 1970. One person was shot. This was the beginning of the gang's violent crimes, and the Red Army Faction. Ensslin became one of the most wanted people in Germany.

In May 1971, Bernward Vesper committed suicide and Felix was sent to live with foster parents.

Ensslin was arrested in a boutique on 8 June 1972 in Hamburg.


 * "spring of 1972 they set off bombs in Frankfurt and Heidelberg that killed four U.S. servicemen"
 * "Then Baader was liberated from prison. Shots were fired, Ulrike Meinhof jumped out the window of the Institute for Social Questions in Berlin and went underground with the others."


 * "RAF’s active underground campaign...primarily consisted in robbing banks to fill the coffers for the revolution."
 * "acquisition and falsification of identification papers and the theft many cars,"
 * "The logistics phase of building up the RAF lasted a couple of months."
 * "On May 11, 1972, three pipe bombs demolished the entrance gate and officers’ clubhouse of the Fifth US Army Corps at IG-Farbenhaus. The outcome: thirteen wounded and one dead."
 * "On May 19, 1972, a bomb exploded in the Springer House in Hamburg. Seventeen people were wounded, two of them seriously."
 * "On May 24, bombs planted in cars detonated fifteen seconds apart in front of the US Army’s European headquarters in Heidelberg. Three American soldiers were killed; five were wounded."
 * "Andreas Baader and Holger Meins in Frankfurt"
 * "One after the other, all the significant members of the group were captured by the police. Ulrike Meinhof was ratted out by her host in Hanover. Gudrun Ensslin dropped a pistol from her handbag in a Hamburg boutique, which caused the saleswoman to call the police. Then they were all in prison. Calculated from Baader’s liberation, the underground fight had lasted just over two years."

Second arrest and trial

 * "Gudrun Ensslin, 31, a minister's daughter and former student of German literature, who was captured in a Hamburg boutique after a saleswoman noticed a pistol stuffed into her jacket."
 * "After nearly three years in prison, Baader, Meinhof and two others finally went to trial in 1975"
 * "after a nearly two-year trial the three were found guilty of murder and were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 15 years—a judicial tactic to minimize the possibility of parole."
 * "the trial cost an estimated $15 million, including nearly $7 million for the heavily guarded fortress that was specially built in Stuttgart to hold the defendants and conduct their trial"
 * "building was girded by high steel fences, roofed with bombproof metal mesh and patrolled by policemen and attack dogs"
 * "Because of flagrantly injudicious behavior by the main trial judge (who was removed in January) and highly questionable bugging of the defendants and their lawyers during the trial,"
 * "The most sensational, costly and politically explosive trial in West German history opened in Stuttgart last week."
 * "they faced charges on five counts of murder (including those of four U.S. servicemen), 54 counts of attempted murder and multiple counts of bank robbery, arson, bombing, forgery and grand larceny"
 * "the five higher-court judges who are hearing the case (there is no jury) were armed with pistols and had undergone training in target shooting"
 * "Holger Meins, died in prison last November after a two-month hunger strike"
 * threats of "ncluding an attack upon Stuttgart with rockets, flamethrowers and mustard gas, if amnesty was not granted. Since two quarts of the deadly gas had mysteriously disappeared from a North German army post a few days earlier, the government sent urgent instructions to all West German hospitals and private doctors on how to treat mustard-gas burns"
 * "Defense Lawyer Siegfried Haag left a note saying that he was "going underground to carry out important tasks in the battle against imperialism.""
 * "Chancellor Helmut Schmidt banned nonofficial visitors from government headquarters in Bonn last week and ordered that an armored car guard the chancellery building day and night."
 * "The concrete and steel Stuttgart courthouse is encircled by concentric chain link, barbed-wire and wooden fences. A steel net has been strung across the roof to keep off explosives and prevent helicopter rescue attempts. Hidden cameras monitor every inch of the floodlit complex, and more than 500 policemen share the guard duty. Roadblocks manned by submachine-gun-carrying police seal off the entrances to unauthorized visitors."
 * "Inside, the courtroom's yellow plastic chairs are bolted to the floor so that they cannot be picked up and thrown. Everyone entering the courtroom has to pass through metal turnstiles, identification checks and small cabins for body searches. All personal belongings are impounded. Journalists, however, may keep one pencil, one pen and one notebook."

RAF attempts to free
The Red Army Faction's second generation made several attempts to free Ensslin and her comrades from prison. One attempt involved the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer on 5 September 1977, and a proposed prisoner exchange. When this failed to work, the RAF orchestrated the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner on 17 October. When the airplane was stormed by a German anti-terrorist unit, Schleyer was killed.


 * to liberate the founders, the RAF "mounted an attack on the German embassy in Stockholm, in which embassy employees were virtually executed and which ended in catastrophe when the explosives they had brought went off prematurely."
 * "Then the RAF tried to abduct a banker who was shot when he resisted."
 * "The Federal Prosecutor General was murdered in broad daylight."
 * "These actions were part of the operation known by the group as “the Big Raushole,” or the “Big Rescue”, and they culminated in the abduction of Hanns Martin Schleyer, head of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI). All of his bodyguards and his driver were brutally shot."
 * "When the state failed to give in, a Palestinian squad hijacked the Lufthansa jet Landshut on the way from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt. In Mogadishu, the German counterterrorism unit, GSG 9, was able to liberate eighty passengers and crew members. After that, the RAF founders imprisoned in Stammheim, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, committed suicide."


 * "Jan-Carl Raspe developed the highly efficient communications system from cell to cell in Stammheim"
 * this system "must have been used, among other things, to arrange name="ghi45"/>

Stammheim's Death Night
Hours later, in a night that became known as "Death Night", Ensslin, Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in the high security block of Stammheim Prison. Like Meinhoff, Ensslin was found dead by hanging in her cell. Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were said to have shot themselves. A fourth member, Irmgard Möller, allegedly stabbed herself four times in the chest with a stolen knife. She survived her suicide attempt and has since stated that the deaths were not suicide, but rather extrajudical killings undertaken by the German government of the time, a claim strongly denied by the German governments former and present. The exhaustive study of the RAF by Stefan Aust (revised in 2009 as "Baader-Meinhof: the inside story of the RAF") is categorical in finding the deaths suicides. On 27 October 1977, Ensslin was buried in a common grave with Baader and Raspe in the Dornhalde Cemetery in Stuttgart.


 * after death night, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt warned his countrymen to expect revenge: "No one can regard himself as safe."
 * "Two days later 1,000 radical sympathizers and curiosity-seekers attended a graveside service, also in Stuttgart, for the three Baader-Meinhof gang suicides —Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin. Once again police were there in force as West German radicals —some of them masked to conceal their identities—praised the dead prisoners as martyrs and chanted political slogans. A few carried banners: GUDRUN, ANDREAS AND JAN—TORTURED AND MURDERED AT STAMMHEIM."
 * "state government of Baden-Wurttemberg, which runs Stammheim prison, issued a preliminary report. In the terrorists' cells, investigators had found hidden explosives, razor blades, a radio and homemade Morse code equipment. They theorized that when one prisoner, Raspe, had picked up the news of the Mogadishu raid on his secret transistor radio, he immediately passed the word to the others through Morse code signals. This, the investigators speculated, led the prisoners to carry out the carefully planned suicide pact."

In film
Ensslin was portrayed by Johanna Wokalek in Uli Edel's 2008 film The Baader Meinhof Complex, an adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name by Stefan Aust. Wokalek's performance in the film was awarded with a nomination for the 2009 German Film Awards and a Bambi award as best German actress. The film was chosen as Germany's submission to the 81st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, and was already nominated Best Foreign Language Film for the 66th Golden Globe Awards.

Ensslin's life story was fictionalized into the film Marianne and Juliane.


 * German painter Gerhard Richter,
 * New York City's Museum of Modern Art
 * photo-derived art
 * "When the Baader-Meinhof paintings were shown in New York some 10 years ago, they came under clumsy attack from right-wing critics."
 * "The images are taken from the most banal police and official photographs. But the profile portraits of the dead Ulrike Meinhof — like the barely perceptible vibration in darkness that is all Richter shows of the hanging body of Gudrun Ensslin — have a deeply haunting intensity about them."