Astrid Proll | |
|---|---|
 Proll speaking in Rotterdam, May 2011 | |
| Born | Astrid Huberta Isolde Marie Luise Hildegard Proll 29 May 1947 Kassel, Germany |
| Other names | Anna Puttick |
| Organization | Red Army Faction |
Astrid Huberta Isolde Marie Luise Hildegard Proll (born 29 May 1947) was an early member of the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang). [1] She is a photo editor and published a book.
Proll was the younger sister of Thorwald Proll. They were children of an architect. They met Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin through him; Thorwald left the group relatively early in its history, after being involved in firebombings in Frankfurt in 1968. Proll was involved in bank robbery. She was the getaway driver for Andreas Baader when he escaped from police custody with the help of Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Ingrid Schubert, Irene Goergens in 1970.
Proll, along with Manfred Grashof, was stopped by police on 10 February 1971 but managed to get away. However, in Hamburg on 6 May of the same year, Proll was finally arrested after a pump attendant at a petrol station recognised her from a wanted poster and alerted the police. She attempted to flee but was surrounded by armed officers and arrested. Once she was detained, her run-in with the police in February was turned into an attempted murder charge even though she never even fired a shot. She was imprisoned but released on health grounds (being kept in complete acoustic isolation in prison caused her health to deteriorate) [1] and transferred to a sanatorium.
While at the sanatorium, Proll was required to report to the police, but she soon escaped and went underground. Given contact details of people in London she decided to go to England, arriving there at the age of 26. In London, a marriage to Robin Puttick [2] allowed her to obtain new identity documents as Anna Puttick. With these she obtained a variety of jobs. She worked for six months as a park-keeper for Hackney Council, and for a year in Lesney's toy factory. From there she took a Hackney Council-sponsored welding course in car mechanics, using her skills to train young people as part of a drug-rehabilitation initiative. During this time, she tried to maintain a low profile. [1]
On 15 September 1978 Proll was discovered and arrested by the Special Branch of the police after approaching the authorities with an enquiry. She was detained and fought extradition; the case attracted both supporters and opposition. Supporters suggested that the fact that she was teaching under-privileged children mechanics in a workshop in West Hampstead was a token of her political repentance and good faith. Critics suggested that as Proll was a lesbian the marriage to Puttick could only be a "marriage of convenience". She herself decided to return to West Germany in 1979 to fight her case there.
Back in Germany, Proll's attempted murder charge was dropped when it was gathered that the state had withheld information that could have cleared her but she was still sentenced to five and a half years imprisonment on account of bank robbery and falsifying documents; however, she had already spent at least two-thirds of that time in German and English prisons and therefore was released immediately. She did not rejoin the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Proll went on to study film and photography at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and later became a picture editor for magazine and newspaper. She was the first to assign Martin Parr and Wolfgang Tilmans magazine work for the German market.
Proll participated in interviews about her time in the Baader-Meinhof Gang and has published a photography-based book about the gang entitled Pictures on the Run. [3] She has worked, as recently as 1999, as a picture editor in the United Kingdom. [4]
During a radio chat show, when asked if she was "terribly ashamed" of being associated with the RAF, Proll said she was not, but went on to say that she did disapprove of their increasingly violent acts. [5] Interviewed by Iain Sinclair for his book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, she said that she would like to settle in Britain but did not have the money to do so.
Having previously worked as a photo editor, she is currently advising the young think tank xaidialoge on how to conceptualise democracy in a language of pictures.
The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang, was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970 and active until 1998. The RAF described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group. It was engaged in armed resistance against what it considered a fascist state. Members of the RAF generally used the Marxist–Leninist term "faction" when they wrote in English. Early leadership included Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Horst Mahler. The West German government considered the RAF a terrorist organization.
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement"; condemns "reformism" as "a brake on the anti-capitalist struggle"; and invokes Mao Zedong to define "armed struggle" as "the highest form of Marxism-Leninism".
Gudrun Ensslin was a German far-left terrorist and founder of the West German far-left militant group Red Army Faction.
Berndt Andreas Baader, was a West German communist and leader of the left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction (RAF) also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.
Jan-Carl Raspe was a member of the German militant group, the Red Army Faction (RAF).
Irmgard Möller is a German former militant. She joined the Red Army Faction (RAF) in 1971. After participating in two bombings she was arrested the following year. During the German Autumn of 1977, she was one of the prisoners demanded by the RAF to be freed and was part of an alleged suicide pact in Stammheim Prison with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe. The other three died and she survived, claiming it was an assassination attempt. She was released from prison in 1994.
Brigitte Margret Ida Mohnhaupt is a German convicted former terrorist associated with the second generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF) members. She was also part of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK). From 1971 until 1982 she was active within the RAF.
The Raspberry Reich is a 2004 film by director Bruce LaBruce which explores what LaBruce calls "terrorist chic", cult dynamics, and the "innate radical potential of homosexual expression". It is about a contemporary terrorist group who set out to continue the work of the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The group consists of several young men and a female leader named Gudrun. All of the characters are named after either original members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang or revolutionaries such as Che Guevara.
Members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) can be split up into three generations. The first (founding) generation existed from 1970 onwards. The second generation emerged from 1975 and included people from other groups such as the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK) and the 2 June Movement. The third generation began in 1982. The group announced its dissolution in 1998.
Ingrid Schubert was a West German militant and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF). She participated in the freeing of Andreas Baader from prison in May 1970 as well as several bank robberies before her arrest in October 1970. She was found dead in her cell in 1977.
Ingeborg Barz (1948–1972?) was a German militant who co-founded the Red Army Faction (RAF). She carried out bank robberies in Kaiserslautern and Ludwigshafen, then disappeared. It is alleged that she was shot by Andreas Baader because she wanted to leave the RAF, but conclusive evidence of her death has not been found.
Petra Schelm was a German founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF). She trained as an urban guerilla in Jordan and was killed in a shootout with the police in Hamburg in July 1971.
Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang is a 1977 book about the West German militant left-wing group, the Red Army Faction, by the British author Jillian Becker.
Horst Mahler is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was a far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction who later became a Maoist, before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung and Holocaust denial, and he served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.
The Baader Meinhof Complex is a 2008 German drama film directed by Uli Edel. Written and produced by Bernd Eichinger, it stars Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck, and Johanna Wokalek. The film is based on the 1985 German best selling non-fiction book of the same name by Stefan Aust. It retells the story of the early years of the West German far-left terrorist organisation the Rote Armee Fraktion from 1967 to 1977.
Thorwald Proll is a writer and was active in the German student movement in the 1960s.
Horst Söhnlein was a German activist convicted of arson in 1968, together with the future member of the Baader-Meinhof Group.
18. Oktober 1977 is the title of a series of paintings by Gerhard Richter. It is based on photographs that document the deaths of three leading activist of the Baader-Meinhof Group in the Stammheim Prison after the release of the hostages in the hijacking by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of Lufthansa Flight 181. The series shows events from a period of several years, from the capture of the terrorists to their burial. A youth portrait of Ulrike Meinhof occupies a special position.
Irene Goergens is a former member of the West German terrorist group, the Red Army Faction (RAF).
The Frankfurt department store firebombings on 2 April 1968 in Frankfurt am Main were politically motivated arsons, in which the later co-founders of the left wing extremist Red Army Faction, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin were involved. Together with Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein they set three fires, in two department stores at night and were sentenced to three years in prison each. No people were injured; the damage in the Kaufhaus M. Schneider was calculated at 282.339 DM and in the Kaufhof, 390.865 DM.
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