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Katharina Hammerschmidt | |
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Born | 14 December 1943 |
Died | 29 July 1975 (age 31) West Berlin, Germany |
Years active | 1970–71 |
Organization | Red Army Faction |
Katharina Hammerschmidt (14 December 1943 - 29 July 1975) was a German student of pedagogics and sympathizer of the first generation of Red Army Faction (RAF). She died in 1975 due to throat cancer, which was treated far too late in a West German state prison. When the RAF disbanded in 1998, they remembered Hammerschmidt as one of its victims.
Katharina Hammerschmidt was born in Gdansk in 1943. She studied pedagogics.[ when? ][ where? ]
In 1970 she got in touch with the RAF through her friend Gudrun Ensslin. Hammerschmidt was suspected of having transported weapons packages as a courier and of having rented apartments for the group. Police filed a warrant against her and Hammerschmidt flew from West Germany to France. Upon the advice by her laywer Otto Schily, she returned to West Germany and turned herself in to the police on 29 June 1970. Schily had expected that Hammerschmidt would be questioned but then released, but she was taken into custody.
When she began her detention,[ when? ] she complained of health problems. After a physical examination, she was prescribed sedatives and laxatives. [1]
Her health continued to deteriorate, but the prison doctors could not diagnose anything. At the end of November 1973, Hammerschmidt suffered an attack of suffocation. Schily filed a complaint against the prison doctors for attempted murder. The notice, signed by 131 doctors, stated that “this [missing the tumor] cannot be explained by insufficient medical knowledge.”
In December 1973 she was allowed to see an independent internist. The doctor diagnosed a “tumor the size of a child’s head” in the chest area. She died a year and a half later in the West Berlin FU Clinic Steglitz. [2]
The last official action of the RAF, the Weiterstadt prison bombing, was executed by the RAF's Katharina Hammerschmidt Command. In their communiqué the RAF wrote "We greet all who fight for dignity in prisons ...." [3] . In the bombing, the RAF attacked the new prison under construction with 200 kg of explosives. The command captured the prison guards, took them to safety, and put up warning signs for the population.
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.
The German Autumn was a series of events in Germany in 1977 associated with the kidnapping and murder of industrialist, businessman, and former Schutzstaffel member Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI), by the Red Army Faction (RAF), a far-left militant organisation, and the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The hijackers demanded the release of ten RAF members detained at the Stammheim Prison plus two Palestinian compatriots held in Turkey and US$15 million in exchange for the hostages. The assassination on 7 April 1977 of Siegfried Buback, the attorney-general of West Germany, and the failed kidnapping and then murder of the banker Jürgen Ponto on 30 July 1977, marked the beginning of the German Autumn. It ended on 18 October, with the liberation of the Landshut, the deaths of the leading figures of the first generation of the RAF in their prison cells, and Schleyer's death.
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.
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.
Astrid Huberta Isolde Marie Luise Hildegard Proll was an early member of the Red Army Faction. She is a photo editor and published a book.
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.
Petra Schelm was a German founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF). She trained as an urban guerilla in an Jordan and was killed in a shootout with the police in Hamburg in July 1971.
Birgit Hogefeld is a former member of the West German Red Army Faction (RAF).
Stammheim Prison is a prison in Stuttgart, Baden Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the northern boundaries of Stuttgart in the city district of Stuttgart-Stammheim, right between fields and apartment blocks on the fringes of Stammheim. The prison was built as a supermax prison between 1959 and 1963 and taken into operation in 1964.
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.
Ernst-Volker Staub is a German fugitive associated with the third generation Red Army Faction (RAF). Arrested in 1984, Staub was convicted of membership in a terrorist organization in 1986 and sentenced to 4 years in prison. Following his release in 1990, Staub went into hiding. He is wanted by the German police on suspicion of having rejoined the RAF and having been involved in further RAF activities since then.
Burkhard Garweg is a suspected former German terrorist associated with the third generation Red Army Faction (RAF). He went underground in 1990 and has been sought by police since then.
Germany in Autumn is a 1978 West German anthology film about the period of 1977 known as the German Autumn, which was dominated by incidents of terrorism. The film is composed of contributions from different filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Bernhard Sinkel, Alf Brustellin, Hans Peter Cloos, Katja Rupé, Peter Schubert and Volker Schlöndorff. It was entered into the 28th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a Special Recognition award.
The kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer marked the end of the German Autumn in 1977.
The Weiterstadt prison bombing occurred on 27 March 1993, when the Red Army Faction (RAF) Command Katharina Hammerschmidt bombed and destroyed a newly built prison in Weiterstadt, near Frankfurt am Main in Germany. It was the RAF's "last anticapitalist attack" before it dissolved. Nobody was harmed in the explosion of the empty prison. Estimates of damage varied widely. Perpetrators were linked 14 years later through DNA evidence in skimasks left behind. In February 2024 Daniela Klette, one of the 4 perpetrators was arrested.