Ulrike Meinhof’s entrance into the West German terrorist underground was both a footnote to the waning student movement of the late 1960s, and a preamble to the bloodiest period in Germany’s post-war history. Meinhof fought to make herself heard as a high-profile journalist before becoming a founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in 1970. She continued writing in the underground and from 1972, in prison, until she was found dead in her cell in 1976. Leith Passmore traces Meinhof’s struggle to communicate from her time as a journalist, through her escape to the underground, her prison years, and the Stammheim trial. He examines for the first time the performativity of terrorist acts of language, imagery, and physical violence to reveal how Meinhof made and re-made RAF terrorism.
“A brilliant study on the key figure of German terrorism.”
—Wolfgang Kraushaar, Hamburg Institute for Social Research
“This book brilliantly demonstrates the intellectual benefits performative and communicative approaches can have for studying the history of terrorism.”
—Klaus Weinhauer, professor of Modern History at Bielefeld University
“At once sophisticated and accessible, Leith Passmore’s impressive book presents anew the life and letters of Ulrike Meinhof. Passmore combines recent understandings of terrorism as theatre with rigorous research to argue that Meinhof’s writings, actions, and biography are inseparable parts of her career as ‘terrorist’ and her historical significance. Passmore’s passion is to understand his subject, not to condemn or praise her. He has succeeded. Reading this book, you will never think of Meinhof or terrorism in quite the same way again.”
—Jeremy Varon, professor of History, The New School, and author of Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies and editor of The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture
“Passmore’s book provides an insightful analysis of Ulrike Meinhof’s role as the voice of the Red Army Faction. It demonstrates that her transition from journalist to terrorist did not entail a renunciation of political discourse in favour of violent action, but instead a mixture of both. The type of terroristic propaganda of ‘word-and-deed’ that she developed empowered the RAF to continue their fight in prison, to stage their suicides as murders and to motivate followers to form two subsequent ‘generations’ of terrorists. This study is important not only for the historiography of German terrorism but also as an innovative approach to understanding the discursive means of terrorist groups to maintain and reinvent their political identities.”
—Andreas Musolff, Professor, School of Language and Communication Studies, University of East Anglia, UK
Contents
Introduction: Performing Terrorism
Chapter 2: Writing Underground
Chapter 4: Show, Trial, and Error
Chapter 5: SUICIDE = MURDER = SUICIDE
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