My mother, the terrorist

Wednesday March 15th 2006, 4:41 pm
Filed under: Newspapers

In ‘Making communism fun! Urlike Meinhof, Klaus Rainer Röhl and the Konkret Files,’ Bettina Röhl, German journalist and daughter of Red Army Fraction (RAF) terrorist Urlike Meinhof, explores her parents’ early journalistic careers as editors of West German leftist magazine Konkret and their connections with the communist East. Röhl discovered comprehensive evidence in the Berlin Federal Archive that her parents’ avant-garde magazine was, at least until 1964, controlled and financed from an East Berlin cell of the underground Communist Party of Germany. To prevent an obvious identification with the German Democratic Republic, every effort was made to publish at least one anti-communist article in every issue of the magazine. At the same time, Röhl’s father was receiving DM 40,000 (about EUR 20,000) in cash from East Berlin for every issue he published. In her book, which will hit the bookstands in Germany this week, Röhl tries to understand why her mother turned from critical journalist to active terrorist. In 1970, Röhl’s mother helped revolutionary Andreas Baader escape from prison. The two became infamous leaders of the RAF, responsible for a series of robberies, kidnappings and bombings all over Germany. At least 30 people including prominent industrialists and businessmen were killed in RAF attacks.

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