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Siegfried Haag | |
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| Born | 13 March 1945 Aurich, Germany |
| Organization | Red Army Faction |
Siegfried Haag (born 13 March 1945) was a member of the West German Red Army Faction (RAF). He became a leading figure of the second generation of the group.
After qualifying in 1973, Haag worked as a lawyer in Heidelberg and briefly defended Holger Meins in 1974 and Andreas Baader in 1975 during his trial at Stammheim. [1]
Haag was known to be a leftist terrorist sympathizer, and supposedly while he was working as a defence lawyer, he would act as a messenger, passing on information, between different members of the RAF. His crimes became more substantial however and in 1975 he was arrested for smuggling weapons through Switzerland (with the help of Elisabeth Von Dyck) and served six months in a detention centre. He was released and immediately went underground. [2]
Haag became an important member of the second generation of the RAF and recruited many new members. He was once quoted as saying; [3]
"If I am a general in the Red Army Faction, Baader is a mere corporal."
He took part in a number of bank robberies, was involved in logistics and weapons procurement. It is thought that he was crucial in planning the West German embassy siege in Stockholm, though he himself did not take part. For a period between 1975 and 1976, Haag underwent guerilla warfare training in a Southern Yemen camp, before returning to West Germany. [4]
In November 1976 Haag was arrested in Hanover when police stopped a stolen car that he was driving. In the vehicle they found weapons and cryptic documents that revealed details of the Hanns Martin Schleyer kidnapping, which were deciphered at a later time, only in hindsight. With Haag in prison, leadership of the group was assumed by Brigitte Mohnhaupt, though authorities suspected for a while that somehow Haag was still issuing commands from prison. [5]
In 1979 Haag was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Stuttgart court. He was released in 1987 on account of ailing health and apparently regretted his previous life of terrorism.
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.
Irmgard Maria Elisabeth 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.
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.
The Socialist Patients' Collective is a patients' collective founded in Heidelberg, West Germany, in February 1970 by Wolfgang Huber. The kernel of the SPK's ideological program is summated in the slogan, "Turn illness into a weapon", which is representative of an ethos that is continually and actively practiced under the new title, Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, PF/SPK(H). The first collective, SPK, declared its self-dissolution in July 1971 as a strategic withdrawal but in 1973 Huber proclaimed the continuity of SPK as Patients' Front.
Siegfried Hausner was a student member of the German Socialist Patients' Collective who was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 1972 for terrorist related crimes. When he was released in 1974, like many other former members of the SPK, he joined the Red Army Faction.
Margrit Schiller is a German far-left activist formerly associated with the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK) and then the Red Army Faction (RAF). She was released from prison in 1979 and has written two autobiographical books.
Susanne Albrecht is a former member of the Red Army Faction.
Christian Klar is a former leading member of the second generation Red Army Faction (RAF), active between the 1970s and 1980s. Imprisoned in 1982 in Bruchsal Prison, he was released on 19 December 2008, after serving over 26 years of his life sentence.
Jillian Becker is a South African-born British author, journalist, and lecturer, who specialises in research about terrorism. Her work includes Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang (1977).
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.
Verena Becker is a former West German member of the Movement 2 June and later the Red Army Faction.
Adelheid Schulz is a former member of the West German terrorist Red Army Faction.
Ingrid Siepmann was a German political militant who was a member of the Movement 2 June (M2J) and later the Red Army Faction (RAF). She was freed from prison during the Peter Lorenz kidnapping and is believed to have died fighting against the Israel Defense Forces during the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre.
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