On April 20, 2998, decades of terror were declared to be over. In the case of several media, an eight-page letter is received. “Almost 28 years ago, on May 14, 1970, the RAF was formed in a liberation campaign. Today we are ending this project. The urban guerrilla in the form of the RAF is now history.”
The Red Army faction announces its dissolution – after at least 34 murders, which the federal prosecutor’s office blames on its members.
RAF members commit dozens of murders before disbanding
The first happened in 1971 to a police officer during an arrest attempt in Hamburg. Among others, Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback, Dresdner Bank CEO Jürgen Ponto and Employer President Hanns Martin Schleyer were killed in the “German Autumn”, the unprecedented series of terror attacks in 1977. The last murder victim of the self-proclaimed urban guerrilla in 1991 was the head of the Treuhandanstalt, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder.
The blood trail of the RAF brings the German constitutional state to the brink of self-abandonment. Increasingly stricter anti-terror laws are passed in the Bundestag, “conspiratorial housing” or “raster search” are words of the years 1978 and 1980, wanted posters hang in almost every post office at the peak of RAF terror, society is extremely polarized.
+++ Also read: “‘Operation Fire Magic’ and the night of death in Stammheim – the 1977 terror year ends with the ‘German Autumn’ +++
Ultimately, the Red Army Faction cannot assert itself with its violence, in the end the terrorists also see it that way; altogether there were between 60 and 80 people. “The RAF was the revolutionary attempt by a minority, contrary to the tendency of this society, to contribute to the upheaval of capitalist conditions. We are glad to have been part of this attempt. The end of this project shows that we could not get through on this path”, write the remaining members in their self-dissolution 25 years ago. The writing is the final chord under a chapter of contemporary West German history that is as bloody as it is formative
See the photo gallery above: “Three decades of terror – the history of the Red Army Faction in pictures”.