Ulrike Meinhof

In 1967, wrote & edited Konkret, a weekly porn & politics zine that became very popular in Berlin, while she was also one of the few female political pundits regularly appearing on television news discussions.

In 1970, increasingly disenchanted with mainstream politics, she used her librarianship and political sway to get Andreas Baader (a convicted luxury department store arsonist) visitation rights to her library, on the premise that he was to write a book. The authorities at the time felt this might aid the rehabilitation process, and permission was granted. Baader arrives, doors are locked, the police distracted. Suddenly, without warning, she and two others start a running gun-battle with the police escort. They and Baader escape in a stolen police van - the Baader Meinhof Gang is born.

By the summer of 1971, Meinhof has been trained in urban guerrilla warfare by the PLO, helped plan & execute bank robberies & car theft, and formed alliances with the Socialist Patients Kollective (SPK), self-proclaimed experts in Marxist dialectic, modern sexuality, religion, and more interestingly, high explosives and karate.

By the spring of 1972, Meinhof and Baader bring the groups together under the name Red Army Faction, and proceed to get in shoot-outs with Hamburg authorities, driving stolen BMWs, and blowing up things like police stations, US Army barracks and the cars of state judges.

That summer, German police and INTERPOL get serious and capture Baader & some accomplices as they load grenades into a stolen Porsche in North Frankfurt. A month later, in June, Meinhof is arrested with a suitcase of pistols & plastique. The subsequent trial drags on four years, until Meinhof hangs herself in her cell after becoming a cause celebre with leftist European intellectuals of the time.