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| German Autumn | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theCold War | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 West Germany |  Red Army Faction Revolutionary Cells Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Helmut SchmidtH.-J. WischnewskiUlrich Wegener | Andreas Baader  Gudrun Ensslin Jan-Carl Raspe Zohair Y. Akache † | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 7 dead, 4 injured | |||||||
TheGerman Autumn (German:Deutscher Herbst) refers to the period and political atmosphere in theFederal Republic of Germany (West Germany) during September and October 1977. This period was marked by a series of attacks by theRed Army Faction (RAF), afar-left militant group designated as aterrorist organization by the West German government. The German Autumn included the kidnapping and murder of German industrialist and former Nazi SS officerHanns Martin Schleyer, the hijacking ofLufthansa Flight 181, and the suicides of the imprisoned leading members of the first generation of the RAF. These events represented the final act of the RAF's so-called "Offensive 77". The German Autumn is considered one of the most serious crises in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The term "German Autumn" is derived from the 1978 filmDeutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), a collage of several documentaries by eleven directors of the "New German Cinema." The film critically examines the state's reaction toterrorism from different perspectives.[1]
In 1977, the activities of the so-called second generation of the RAF reached their peak. However, the events before September are generally not considered to be part of the German Autumn.
On 7 April 1977, theFederal Prosecutor GeneralSiegfried Buback, his driver Wolfgang Göbel, and the head of the Federal Prosecutor's Office's motor pool, Georg Wurster, were shot dead in their car by the RAF's "Ulrike Meinhof Commando" (Kommando Ulrike Meinhof) from a motorcycle inKarlsruhe.
On 30 July 1977, Jürgen Ponto, the spokesman for the board ofDresdner Bank AG, was murdered in a failed kidnapping attempt. RAF memberSusanne Albrecht, who knew Ponto personally, visited him accompanied byBrigitte Mohnhaupt andChristian Klar. Unaware of Albrecht's political radicalization, Ponto received her unsuspectingly at his private home onOberhöchstadter Strasse inOberursel. When Ponto resisted the kidnapping, Klar and Mohnhaupt shot him several times, fatally wounding him. The three then fled in the getaway car driven byPeter-Jürgen Boock, which was waiting in front of Pontos' villa.[2]
On 25 August 1977, an attack on theFederal Prosecutor's Office building inKarlsruhe failed.
On 5 September 1977, the President of theConfederation of German Employers' Associations (Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände, BDA) and theFederation of German Industries (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, BDI),Hanns Martin Schleyer, was kidnapped inCologne. His driver and three police officers were murdered.[3] The kidnappers demanded the release of eleven imprisoned RAF terrorists.
As the German government did not give in to the blackmail—unlike with the kidnapping ofPeter Lorenz two years earlier—terrorists from thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), allied with the Red Army Faction (RAF), tried to increase the pressure byhijacking the Lufthansa planeLandshut on 13 October 1977. After an odyssey through theMiddle East and the murder of the pilot, Captain Jürgen Schumann, the plane landed atMogadishu International Airport, the capital ofSomalia. Here, theLandshut was stormed by the West German counter-terrorism unitGSG 9 on 18 October at around 00:05Central European Time (CET). Later that morning, a special report onDeutschlandfunk announced that "all hostages have been freed. We do not yet know whether there were any dead or injured among them..." All 87 hostages were rescued, including four of the five crew members. Three of the hijackers were killed and one hijacker was seriously wounded.[4]
Shortly afterward, in the early morning hours of 18 October 1977, known as the "Night of death in Stammheim", RAF membersAndreas Baader,Gudrun Ensslin, andJan-Carl Raspe, who were imprisoned inStuttgart-Stammheim supermax prison, reportedly took their own lives.Irmgard Möller, who was also imprisoned there, survived an alleged suicide attempt,[5] sustaining multiple stab wounds to her chest.[6] The kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer was subsequently murdered by his captors. His body was found on the evening of 19 October in the trunk of a greenAudi 100 GL, parked on a side street inMulhouse,Alsace, France, close to the German and Swiss border.
During the German Autumn, West German political parties engaged in heated arguments. The opposition, comprising thecenter-rightChristian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and theChristian Social Union (CSU), suspected that the rulingsocial-liberal coalition of theSocial Democratic Party (SPD) and theFree Democratic Party (FDP) under Federal ChancellorHelmut Schmidt (SPD) was ideologically close to the terrorists. In response, the coalition accused the opposition of hysterical overreactions and of attempting to transform the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) into apolice state.[7]
Despite these differences, at the beginning of the Schleyer kidnapping, Chancellor Schmidt convened the so-called Great Crisis Committee (Großer Krisenstab), which included members of all parliamentary groups in the West GermanBundestag. HistorianWolfgang Kraushaar later described this period as an "undeclared state of emergency" (state of exception). One result of the cross-party consensus was the "Contact Ban Act" (Kontaktsperre) passed in the autumn of 1977, which allowed for a contact ban for prisoners, including discussions with lawyers.[8] SPD politician and lawyerHubert Weber welcomed this act, stating that "The Federal Republic is not in a state of emergency," and thus it was wrong for the courts to strain the legal definition of an emergency.[9] Additionally, the Code of Criminal Procedure (Strafprozessordnung) was amended to limit defendants to appoint a maximum of three defense attorneys.