For Ulrike Meinhof he was “the pig”, for the rebel Joschka Fischer he was a mentor: On the death of the philosopher Oskar Negt, who never gave up his belief in democracy.
Two days after Andreas Baader, Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe were arrested in Frankfurt in 1972, Oskar Negt stood at the lectern in the same Frankfurt at the Römer. A large coalition of left-wing groups had invited people to a solidarity congress for Adorno student Angela Davis. Negt, a man with the best left-wing credentials, also a student of Adorno and, if in doubt, even remained a Marxist, withdrew his solidarity with the terrorists. “There was and is not the slightest thing in common with the non-political actions for which the group around Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof took responsibility that could prompt the political left of the Federal Republic to show solidarity.”