About Me
Born in Oldenburg, I was one of the founders of the Red Army Faction (in German: Rote Armee Fraktion), which is also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.
Early on, I became involved in the anti-nuclear movement and was an editor for the radical left paper konkret. I married Klaus Rainer Röhl, a communist, in 1961 and had twin girls, Bettina and Regine, on September 21, 1962.
Divorced in 1968, I became involved with more radical people in Berlin. In 1970, increasingly frustrated with ordinary means of struggle employed by the left-wing, or lack of the same, I helped Andreas Baader to escape from prison and then took part in bank robberies and bombings of industrial sites and American military bases. The group was quickly dubbed "The Baader-Meinhof Gang" by the German press. I wrote many of the tracts and manifestos that the group produced, including the concept of the urban guerrilla, decrying what I called the exploitation of the common man and the imperialism of the capitalist system.
Captured in 1972 in Langenhagen, I was, during "preliminary hearings", sentenced to 8 years imprisonment. While on a trial that would have given me life imprisonment, I was found dead in my cell at JVA Stuttgart-Stammheim on May 9, 1976, hanging from the ceiling. The German government claimed I had hanged herself, a claim that was supported by a governmental inquiry panel. Many people, including members of the Red Army Faction have always held that I was killed by representatives of the German authorities.
In 2002, it was revealed that my brain had been removed without my family's consent, and research carried out on it. Bernhard Bogerts, a psychiatrist from the University of Magdeburg, claimed that a brain operation undergone in the 1960s may have contributed to my radicalization.
