Andreas Baader facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Andreas Baader
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Andreas Baader, at the time of his imprisonment in Stuttgart-Stammheim.
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| Born |
Berndt Andreas Baader
6 May 1943 |
| Died | 18 October 1977 (aged 34) |
| Organization | Red Army Faction |
Berndt Andreas Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977), 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.
Life
Andreas Baader was born in Munich on 6 May 1943. He was the only child of historian and archivist Dr. Berndt Phillipp Baader and Anneliese Hermine "Nina" (Kröcher). Andreas was raised by his mother, aunt, and grandmother. Phillipp Baader served in the Wehrmacht, was captured on the Russian Front in 1945, and never returned.
Baader was a high school dropout and a bohemian before his involvement in the Red Army Faction. He was one of the few members of the RAF who did not attend university.
At the age of twenty, Baader moved from Munich to West Berlin, allegedly to do an artistic education. He worked as a construction worker and unsuccessfully as a tabloid journalist.
Baader took part in the Schwabing riots in 1962. According to his mother, he is said to have drawn the conclusion from the actions of the police that "something was wrong" in the state. According to journalist Butz Peters, the events of the Munich city summer during 1962 were "a shocking experience for the nineteen-year-old".
RAF involvement
In 1968, Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin were convicted of the arson bombing of a department store in Frankfurt, to protest what they described as the public's "indifference to the genocide in Vietnam".
After being sentenced, Baader and Ensslin fled in November 1969. They were smuggled out of West Germany by sympathizers and made the tour of the left-wing communities of France, Switzerland, and Italy before re-entering West Germany covertly in early 1970.
Baader was later caught at a traffic stop in Berlin for speeding on 4 April 1970. He produced a fake driver's license in the name of the author Peter Chotjewitz, but was placed under arrest when he failed to answer personal questions about the names and ages of Chotjewitz's children.
Ensslin masterminded an escape plan. Journalist Ulrike Meinhof and Baader's lawyers concocted a false "book deal" in which Meinhof would interview Baader. A few weeks later, in May 1970, he was allowed to meet her at the library of the Berlin Zentralinstitut outside the prison, without handcuffs but escorted by two armed guards. Meinhof was allowed to join him. Confederates Irene Goergens and Ingrid Schubert entered the library carrying suitcases, then opened a door to admit a masked gunman armed with a pistol and then drew pistols out of suitcases. They then fired shots that wounded a 64-year-old librarian, hitting him in his liver. Baader, the masked gunman, and the three women then fled through a window.
The group became known as the Baader-Meinhof Group. Baader and others then spent some time in a Fatah military training camp in Jordan before being expelled due to "differences in attitudes". Back in West Germany, Baader robbed banks and bombed buildings from 1970 to 1972. Although he never obtained a driver's licence, Baader was obsessed with driving. He regularly stole expensive sports cars for use by the gang and was arrested driving an Iso Rivolta IR 300.
On 1 June 1972, Baader and fellow RAF members Jan-Carl Raspe and Holger Meins were apprehended after a lengthy shootout in Frankfurt.
Stammheim
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From 1975 to 1977, a long and expensive trial took place in a fortified building on the grounds of Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison. As a precaution against items being smuggled in, all prisoners were strip-searched and inspected and given new clothes before and after meeting lawyers.
During a collective hunger strike in 1974, which led to the death of Meins, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre visited Baader in Stammheim where he was being held. Although he did not like Baader's behavior, he criticized the harsh conditions of imprisonment Baader endured.
Meinhof was found dead in her cell at Stuttgart-Stammheim on 9 May 1976. Members of the Red Army Faction and others claimed that she was killed by the German authorities. The second generation of the RAF committed several kidnappings and attacks in a campaign in support of their comrades.
The three remaining defendants were convicted in April 1977 of several murders, attempted murders, and of forming a terrorist organization, and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Militants tried to force the release of Baader and ten other imprisoned RAF members by kidnapping businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer in Cologne on 5 September 1977, as part of the sequence of events known as the "German Autumn", which began on 30 July 1977 with the murder of banker Jürgen Ponto.
On 6 September 1977, an official statement was released in which the state declared that the prisoners would not be released under any circumstances, and on the same day a Kontaktsperre ("communication ban") was enacted against all RAF prisoners. This order deprived prisoners of all contact with each other as well as with the outside; all visits, including those of lawyers and family members, were forbidden. The prisoners were deprived of their access to post, newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. The official justification for this was a claim by the state that the prisoners had supervised Schleyer's kidnapping from their cells with the assistance of their lawyers. It was claimed that a hand-drawn map had been found which had been used in the kidnapping in Newerla's car on 5 September. On 10 September, the prisoners' lawyers lost their appeal against the Kontaktsperre order and on 2 October it became effective. On 18 October 1977, the RAF killed Schleyer in France.
On 13 October 1977 four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 on a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt, their leader demanding the release of the eleven RAF prisoners detained at Stammheim. The aircraft was eventually flown to Mogadishu, Somalia, where it arrived in the early hours of 17 October. The passengers of the Boeing 737 were freed in an assault carried out by German GSG 9 special forces in the early hours of 18 October 1977 which saw the death of three of the militants.
Death
According to official accounts of his death, Raspe learned about GSG 9's success on a smuggled transistor radio and spent the next few hours talking to Baader, Ensslin, and Möller. In the morning, they were found dead. RAF member Irmgard Möller was found wounded, but survived.
Cultural depictions
- The Murder of Andreas Baader is a 1978 painting by Odd Nerdrum where Baader is depicted as a murder victim.
- Stammheim – Die Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe vor Gericht ("Stammheim – The Baader-Meinhof Gang on Trial") (1986) a film directed by Reinhard Hauff; with Ulrich Tukur in the role of Andreas Baader; after the book by Stefan Aust. It won the Golden Bear at the 1986 Berlin Film Festival.
- Death Game (1997) is a TV docudrama by Heinrich Breloer; with Sebastian Koch as Andreas Baader. It is about the kidnapping and later the assassination of Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbändeunion (BDA) president Hanns-Martin Schleyer.
- In 2002, director Christopher Roth released the film Baader, with Frank Giering in the title role. It covers the period between 1967 and 1972.
- Baader was portrayed by Moritz Bleibtreu in the film The Baader Meinhof Complex. The film was nominated for the 2009 foreign language film Oscar.
See also
- Baader–Meinhof effect, a cognitive bias named after Baader
