As of: February 29, 2024, 11:17 a.m
By: Dirk Walter
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After the explosion in the LKA parking lot, officials assessed the damage.
© dpa
Three murders, attacks in Munich and Augsburg: RAF terrorism also reached Bavaria between 1972 and 1986.
The chapter is far from over, as not a single crime in the Free State has been solved so far.
Munich - On May 12, 1972, a Friday, around 2:30 p.m., a huge explosion shook downtown Munich.
Bombs exploded in the parking lot of the State Criminal Police Office on Maillingerstrasse.
30 cars were literally torn apart - millions in damage.
Shortly before, an anonymous call had come in: “Evacuate the whole building immediately,” and then there was a crash.
“Windows shattered everywhere within a 100-meter radius of the LKA,” our newspaper reported under the headline “Bomb attack on LKA – hellish machine detonated.”
As the police quickly discovered, a 33 kilo gas bottle had been left in the parking lot in a blue Ford.
It quickly became clear who had put the car there: the RAF had chosen Bavarian attack targets for the first time.
At that time, the terrorist group was still a young group - which, not coincidentally, also operated in Munich.
With an early form of urban guerrilla, the Tupamaros, Munich had a virulent militant scene since the end of the 1960s that is hardly known today, says Robert Wolff, historian at the Hessian State Center for Political Education and an expert on left-wing extremism in the 1970s. years.
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Andreas Bader born in Munich - “Baader-Meinhof gang”
Andreas Baader, a native of Munich, also grew up in this milieu.
The RAF's founding date is May 14, 1970 - the day on which the future top terrorist was able to escape from custody in Frankfurt.
Through the so-called Baader liberation, the first generation of the RAF became a myth: These are names that are remembered through wanted posters at train stations: Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Jan-Carl Raspe - in June 1970 around 20 people formed the RAF.
That's what they're called today.
At the time, the police spoke of “anarchist violent criminals” and the “Baader-Meinhof gang”.
This is now taking up the fight against the hated Federal Republic and its representatives.
RAF blood trail: The first deaths in Germany
Soon there will be the first deaths: the only 20-year-old terrorist Petra Schelm is the first RAF death (July 1971, Hamburg).
Police officers also die, in Hamburg, in Kaiserslautern.
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1972 is the year of the Willy elections, Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt achieves a triumphant election victory.
But it is also a year of terror.
In September, Israeli athletes were murdered at the Olympic Games in Munich.
RAF terrorism also alerted the police: Augsburg police officers wanted to arrest two RAF members after a tip-off on March 2, 1972.
Carmen Roll, who was not known until then, succeeds, but her companion Thomas Weißbecker draws his pistol, whereupon officers shoot him.
Why Augsburg?
“RAF members went into hiding there and had conspiratorial apartments where they knew their way around,” says terror expert Wolff.
The attack in Munich in May is the RAF's almost angry “response” to this deadly exchange of fire.
Bombs had already detonated in the Augsburg police headquarters two hours before “Munich”.
Particularly bold: a still unknown man with a full beard and long black hair simply walked into the building and placed several bombs in cardboard boxes on a cupboard.
There was enormous damage to property and a police inspector was injured by splinters.
RAF attacks in Munich: bombs explode
Attacks will continue to shake Munich in the coming years.
In September 1975 a bomb exploded in a locker at the main train station, and on May 14, 1976 in the Stachus basement.
Perpetrator: unknown to date.
They are reactions to “bigger things”: to the Baader-Meinhof trial (since May 1975) in Stuttgart-Stammheim against ringleaders of the first RAF generation and to the suicide of Ulrike Meinhof (May 9, 1976).
A jump into the 1980s: A lot has happened in the meantime: In 1977, the “German Autumn” shocked the Federal Republic with the murder of the banker Jürgen Ponto, the Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback and the employer president Hanns-Martin Schleyer.
“Ponto, Buback, Schleyer – the next one is a Bavarian,” sympathizers chanted – a reference to CSU leader Franz Josef Strauss.
He is closely guarded.
In 1984 the third RAF generation was already underground.
“The first generation was a group,” says historian Wolff.
“The second consisted of several groups.
The third, however, consisted of a military-trained command level and also of several subgroups that have hardly been identified to this day, some of which acted very brutally, but also some of which were very amateurish." This also includes the now arrested Daniela Klette (born 1958).
The “Offensive 84/85” is a reaction to a hunger strike by imprisoned RAF terrorists, such as Christian Klar and Brigitte Mohnhaupt.
On December 18, 1984, the NATO school in Oberammergau is a target.
A bomb-rigged Audi 80 with a US soldier can drive through the main gate.
As it soon turns out, the driver was a terrorist disguised in a US uniform and a fake ID card (whose identity is never determined).
Due to a defect, the bomb did not detonate - there could have been deaths.
RAF murders in Bavaria: MTU boss executed, Siemens manager and driver die in attack
How cold-blooded and brutal the RAF's actions were demonstrated in the early morning of February 1, 1985: an unknown woman rang the doorbell at the house of 56-year-old MTU boss Ernst Zimmermann in Gauting (Starnberg district).
Ms. Zimmermann opens.
An armed RAF terrorist then breaks into the house.
The two intruders tie up their victims.
Mrs. Zimmermann has to wait in the hallway, Ernst Zimmermann is put on a chair in the bedroom.
He is then executed with a shot in the back of the head.
On July 9, 1986, Siemens manager Karl-Heinz (“Charly”) Beckurts (56) died together with his driver Eckhard Groppler (42) in an attack on the road shortly after Straßlach (Munich district).
The perpetrators had left gas bottles and 50 kilos of explosives on the side of the road and detonated them just as the BMW drove past.
The security service in an escort vehicle cannot do anything.
The horror was great, Claudia Groppler, the driver's daughter, recalled years later in our newspaper: “Mail came from all over Germany,” and complete strangers condoled the widow and her three children.
Both Gauting and Straßlach's murderers are unknown.
Researcher Wolff does not believe that the arrest of Daniela Klette will shed light on this.
“Even if an – unlikely – leniency program is applied, it will not incriminate anyone.” The Bavarian cases, like so many things in the history of the RAF, are an open wound in the Federal Republic.
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