The beginning of the “German Autumn”

A series of terrorist attacks by the Baader-Meinhof Gang throws West Germany into crisis

In 1977, the second generation of the Baader-Meinhof Gang launched “Offensive 77” to force the release of its founders from custody. In April, the West German Director of Public Prosecutions Siegfried Buback and two others were shot dead in Karlsruhe. In July, the spokesman of the Dresdner Bank was murdered. In August, an attack on the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe failed.

The situation escalated in September, ushering in a period that would later become known as the “German Autumn”. On 5 September 1977, the Baader-Meinhof Gang kidnapped Hans Martin Schleyer, President of the Employers’ Association, and killed four of his companions. The West German government rejected the terrorists’ demand to exchange Schleyer for imprisoned Baader-Meinhof members. In response, terrorists from a Palestinian group hijacked a Lufthansa flight on 13 October and demanded the release of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and others. After flying through various Arab countries and killing the pilot, the plane finally landed in Mogadishu, Somalia. Shortly after midnight on 18 October, German Special Forces stormed the aircraft and rescued all 86 hostages unharmed. That same night, three of the imprisoned leaders took their own lives in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. Shortly afterwards, Hans Martin Schleyer was murdered. At the beginning of the crisis, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had set up a small executive cabinet – something not foreseen in the West German constitution – in order to make decisions more quickly. Some believed that this had placed the state in an undeclared state of emergency.