Life in prison for the Baader-Meinhof Gang

One of West Germany’s largest terror trials comes to an end

Emerging from the student revolt of the 1960s, the Baader-Meinhof Gang – named after its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof – was dedicated to waging an “urban guerrilla war” against what it saw as a capitalist and imperialist state, with the aim of establishing a communist system. Starting with arson attacks on department stores, before long the group armed itself and killed policemen who had been sent to arrest them. The group soon radicalized, bombing police stations and targeting military personnel and members of the judiciary. By the end of 1972, all of the gang leaders were in custody in the high-security Stuttgart-Stammheim prison.

Claiming that they were being held in isolation, the terrorists went on hunger strike in protest. Whilst on remand, they passed messages to supporters through their lawyers and steered a second generation of terrorists, whose main aim was to free their leaders. The trial of four leading gang members opened in 1975, conducted for reasons of security in a purpose-built windowless courtroom situated in the grounds of the prison. Calling some 1,000 witnesses and generating 50,000 files, the trial became one of the largest in the history of the young West German state. It culminated after 192 days on 28 April 1977 in life sentences for three of the defendants – Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide during the trial – for four counts of murder and 54 counts of attempted murder. All three shot themselves six months later using firearms smuggled in by their lawyers.