As of: February 27, 2024, 6:42 p.m
By: Kai Hartwig
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The RAF is responsible for over 30 murders of people from politics, business and administration.
There were three generations of the terrorist group.
Berlin – The left-wing extremist Red Army Faction (RAF) has terrorized the Federal Republic for more than three decades.
The terrorist group officially announced its dissolution in April 1998.
Since then, several former RAF members have gone into hiding.
Daniela Klette was also able to evade the authorities for almost 30 years - before she was arrested in Berlin on Monday (February 26th).
Klette was part of the so-called third generation of the RAF.
As are the ex-terrorists Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, who are still wanted.
Former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette was arrested.
She is assigned to the third generation of the terrorist group.
© Tim Brakemeier/dpa/BKA
This is how the left-wing extremist terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF) came into being.
The RAF initially became known as the Baader-Meinhof Group in the late 1960s.
After the death of the demonstrator Benno Ohnesorg in June 1967 and the attack on the student leader Rudi Dutschke in April 1968, parts of the extra-parliamentary opposition became radicalized.
Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and two other people carried out arson attacks on two department stores in Frankfurt am Main in 1968 to protest against the Vietnam War.
Journalist Ulrike Meinhof comes into contact with Baader and Ensslin during the court case surrounding the attacks.
She later joins the group: in May 1970, Meinhof and three accomplices forcibly free Baader from prison in Berlin.
This action is considered to be the birth of the terrorist group RAF, which then went underground.
Terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF)
The RAF sees itself as part of the class struggle and a global uprising against imperialism and capitalism.
Its name refers to the army of the communist Soviet Union (Red Army).
With its armed struggle and the concept of an alleged urban guerrilla, it compares itself to global liberation movements.
First generation of the RAF - Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof do not shy away from murder
The group around Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof committed numerous bank robberies and bomb attacks on US military facilities and German security authorities until the end of 1974.
Four people die and 41 are injured.
They had previously received military training in Jordan from the Palestinian organization Fatah.
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The undated tableau shows the RAF terrorists wanted by the German judicial authorities with an arrest warrant from 1970 (top row, lr): Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Ronald Augustin, (bottom row lr): Jan-Carl Raspe, Klaus Jünschke, Ilse Stachowiak and Irmgard Möller.
Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin.
© dpa
In May 1972, US officer Paul A. Bloomquist was the first RAF bomb death.
Twelve days later, three soldiers die in an explosive attack on the European headquarters of the US armed forces in Heidelberg.
In June, the investigators arrested the hard core of the RAF with Baader, Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe, followed shortly afterwards by Ensslin, Meinhof and Brigitte Mohnhaupt.
In prison, the prisoners repeatedly protest against the prison conditions.
Holger Meins died during a hunger strike in November 1974.
Well-known members of the first generation of the RAF:
Andreas Baader
Gudrun Ensslin
Ulrike Meinhof
Holger Meins
Jan Carl Raspe
Second generation of the RAF: “German Autumn” and assassination of employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer
From around 1975, the aim of the second generation and its leading figures Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt was to improve the prison conditions of the prisoners in Stuttgart-Stammheim and to force their release - for example with a hostage-taking in the German embassy in Stockholm in April 1975. Theirs The federal government rejects the request.
Two diplomats and two hostage takers die.
Meinhof hangs herself in her cell.
In the so-called “German Autumn” of 1977, the RAF attacked the Federal Republic of Germany with a series of brutal assassinations in order to free the Stammheim prisoners.
First Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback was shot in Karlsruhe in April, then Dresdner Bank boss Jürgen Ponto was murdered in Oberursel in July.
In September, an RAF commando kidnapped the employers' president Hanns Martin Schleyer in Cologne.
In October, Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Lufthansa plane “Landshut”.
Despite the cold-blooded shooting of the flight captain, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) remains firm and has the elite border guard GSG 9 storm the plane.
Baader, Ensslin and Raspe then commit suicide in prison.
Schleyer's body is found in Mühlhausen, Alsace.
Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped by the RAF in Cologne on September 5, 1977.
© dpa
Well-known members of the second generation of the RAF:
Brigitte Mohnhaupt
Christian Sure
Peter-Jürgen Boock
Susanne Albrecht
Monika Helbing
Third generation of the RAF: murders of Deutsche Bank board member Herrhausen and Treuhand boss Rohwedder
After Klar and Mohnhaupt were arrested in 1982, the third generation, which includes Daniela Klette, changed their strategy.
The RAF is now increasingly pursuing the internationalization of terrorism.
The wave of violence continues below a “command level” that is hardly known by name.
There were several targeted assassination attempts until 1990.
The CEO of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, died in a bomb attack in Bad Homburg in November 1989.
Treuhand boss Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was shot at his desk in his Düsseldorf home from more than 60 meters away in April 1991.
In both cases, the perpetrator and motive remain unknown to this day.
Rohwedder's death is the last assassination attempt attributed to the RAF.
To this day, many of the crimes committed by the third generation of the RAF have still not been solved.
This picture goes around the world: After the assassination attempt on Alfred Herrhausen in November 1989, his blown-up Mercedes stands on the street in Bad Homburg.
Police officers examine the wreckage.
© Kai-Uwe Wärner/dpa
Well-known members of the third generation of the RAF:
Wolfgang Grams
Birgit Hogefeld
Daniela Burdock
Burkhard Garweg
Ernst Volker Staub
End of the RAF and its aftermath
Almost 28 years after its founding, the RAF declared its dissolution in a final letter in 1998.
More than 30 murders have been attributed to them, some of which are considered unsolved.
There are also kidnappings, hostage-taking and bombings.
A number of RAF members were sentenced to life imprisonment, and two dozen were killed or took their own lives.
When the Federal Republic of Germany searched for RAF terrorists around the world, the GDR state security enabled ten of them to lead a civil life with false identities in eastern Germany.
Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were some of them exposed.
The authorities continued to search for other former RAF terrorists later on, among other things because of robberies that they committed for a living.
After Daniela Klette's arrest on Monday, these are Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub, who, like Klette, are assigned to the third generation.
Some former terrorists have now been released from prison after serving their sentences or receiving pardons.
They include Birgit Hogefeld, Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt.
(kh with dpa)