Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (Movie on Red Army Faction, 2008)

an action romance about this bunch of bourgeois wannabe marxist/leninist weirdos?

 

some of us did and still do their thing and i hope with more consciousness and sense... and the cause of the raf wasn't ours...
they achieved nothing - except to give people like horst herold the excuse for the development of the police state.
there are rumors around that the group was just a tool of the repressive state to justify the more or less open system of tracing, observation and police surveillance, the isolation prison of stammheim, shoot to kill and other tactics to get rid of the militant movement or at least spread terror and deterrence.
the raf never got the support of the left or the militant movement in germany, they saw themselves as avantgarde and acted elitist and totally isolated.
their victims weren't important, except for buback and some secret service specialists claim that he, ponto, schleyer and herrhausen died because of the intentional lack of personal protection - somebody in the system just decided to eliminate them via the raf and use them as scape goats.
the mogadishu action was actually done by a palestine commando which was executed by a german special police commando established just weeks before - baader, meinhof and ensslin were murdered in stammheim - and the german public applauded and don't questioned the official version...
after the reunion of east and west germany the secret service swiftly seized the east-german documents concerning the knowledge the west germans had about the travels of raf-members between the two states. the west germans seemed to be well informed about the movements and whereabouts of searched "terrorists", resting in the former ddr and coming back to the brd under some aliases - guess why they don't took them in...
we know some people from the former outer core of sympathisants and supporters and most of them share the opinion that the whole thing started with a bunch of too-well off kids who never realized the trouble they asked for and never cared about the wider consequences. try to find some of their really weird elitist marxist-leninist writings and i guess you'll throw up violently - not even trotzky was that worse...
i have only readed parts of aust's book, he had some dealings with baader and meinhof in the early seventies, but i think he's toomuch of a buisnessman to write about the bitter history of the german armed struggle (try to translate his german wikipedia entry - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Aust - sadly the english one lacks the details.)
the book sold because of the huge pr-campaign and the movie - it's just liberal entertainment, nothing more.

 

Ungov: as much as I agree with you on most things, anti-Zionism isn't always anti-Simitic, there are Jewish anti-Zionists and they are most definitely not anti-Simitic. In many cases it is thinly veiled bigotry, and in many others it is a rejection of Palestinian oppression.

Lil: great to hear from your camp again as I sorely miss our German friends on this forum, I agree with most of your critique and you would know more about some of the underground information. However some of the RAF's actions were admirable from a strictly revolutionary point of view, whether they were bourgeoisie to begin with, is a matter of class that they weren't in a position to, or allowed to choose. SubCommandante Marcos comes from a middle-class Creole background as well which he has chosen to reject. Ultimately I think that Capitalism run rampant creates a Police state regardless of resistance from within said state, the RAF probably did precipitate the justifications of the German Govt. to evolve in that manner but I think it was inevitable either way.
I hope Vassily is ok and out of Spanish jail, if not, is there anything I could do to help? Please let me know in a private message if there is...

 

thanks for your care about vassil and gobble, they are still in custody but they are ok, and after some serious discussions about their not-that-smart/constructive discovery of the "arts in resisting the authorities" they are just serving the last term of a series of extra time sentences - we expect their deportation back to germany in about ten days.
great thanks for your offered support, but everything possible is already done and without their playing the bouncing p(unk), while the cops already won the main game, they would be back long ago. but lock them in and they will...

right now i am a bit in a hurry, so i just want to say that ungovernable has a point about the antisemitic aspect of at least the german/palestine cooperation in the direct action against repressive states. i still feel disturbed about the fixation of the anti-imperialist movement on israel and the known plans to murder jews like simon wiesenthal or heinz galinski in europe - they might have been zionists, but they never were representatives of the state israel.

and you're right, punkmar, there is no original sin in beeing born into a certain social or economic class.
i didn't realize that we use the term "bourgeois" with a different meaning, for me it's an expression for revolutionaries never taking subcommandante marcos step to reject everything else than to be a:
gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 p.m., a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains’. In other words, he is simply us: we are the leader we’ve been looking for.

and i still guess we aren't looking for leaders like baader and ensslin...

 

I thought it was a great film for the same reason that I enjoyed the super long Benicio Del Toro "Che" movie: its a good story with some serious food for thought.
I don't agree at all with the end goal of the RAF, but their story is interesting, especially because of its setting. We think of Germany as a "western" country, where stuff like this could never happen, just like what happened with the Weather Underground in my home town.
(if you aren't familiar with the Weathermen, its worth some research)

 

after reading some more critics about the movie i think it's interesting for brainfeeding if you are considering your very own position when the question of armed struggle or militant resistance against the system comes up.
but you need more than the background information provided by the movie and after the reading of some left-wing critics about it, i feel confirmed that it's important not to forget that the movie was made by people not standing in opposition to the system and it's by no means a documentary but meant for enter(info)tainment.

funnily i felt the same about the "western" u.s. when i learned a bit about the wheater people years ago, but i have to admit that i don't know much about them. i was impressed by their selfconciousness, attacking gouverment buildings, but evading the useless killing of replaceable people, or changing from "weatherman" to "weatherpeople" in respect of their female activists.
the raf would have needed that conciousness very badly, and like them, the weatherpeople were communist, their general judgement about the white majority as racist and counterrevolutionary smells too elitist to me - but your're right, they are worth some research - even if we don't need no weathermen to know which way...

 

I fuckin loved that movie...best ambush scene ever...with the baby-pram....when I saw it I couldn't help myself I had to laugh hard.


[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wLSFsYkknE[/video]

 

so i've watched the complete movie today for the first time, guess i will watch it again just to get straight with it. and i have "hunger" made by steve mcQueen too on the desk, dealing with the IRA-prisoners in maze prison, ulster 1981. but for now it's only first impression of the baader meinhof complex:

very accurate in reconstructing the atmosphere of the late 60's and mid-70's, and nearer to the historical facts than i have expected, including the portrayal of baader as the "middle-class"-sexist-wannabe-revolutionary that he actually was, or gudrun ensslin as the chronically A-she-wolf fighting mostly for her position in the group than fighting for any other cause.

the scenes in the high-security prison were impressive, but the whole horror they had to go through wasn't dramatisized enough, including the fact, that this isolated "command"-group drove holger meins into starving to death, creating a martyr while ending their own hungerstrike to minimize the "losses".

the movie is promoting the "suicidal" unhappy ending in stammheim, but there is really too much evidence for the "execution"-version to make such a definitive statement and actually in real life there might be a new official investigation about the real circumstances.

best scene: the small documentary cut where this fucking christian-democrat (i have to find out his name) is reacting to the protests against him speaking in public "...i am convinced about the necessity to restore order in this country" - and yesterdays riots in stuttgart/germany showed again, what kind of order these upright citizens want.

i could post a very famous statement made in april 1977 - it's the infamous "mescalero; - buback – an obituary-letter - written by a leftwing-activist and giving a "scene"-insight about the critics on the raf dating from the critical phase shortly before the deaths of the stammheim prisoners.

the text is a bit long, it would be a waste if nobody is interested in reading it here, we translated it for an english-speaking group of friends, so the translation is already evaluated accurate and understandable.
just tell me if you want to read it here too.

 

This movie is far from the reality, it is a sort of procapitalist propaganda, they have depicted andreas baader as an nonchalant and insouciant guy with no principles an no moral. In sum this movie is a deformed image of "baader meinhof", and it is very similar in it's deformity to the movie about red brigades "year of the gun".

 

@ lil apple: yes please

 

the movie is far from reality, i agree, it was made by people who never opposed the repressive system militantly because they evaded the personal risks, but became later part of the liberal establishment.

so how to expect a radical point of view in a movie produced in a country where a former raf-lawyer (otto schily) became federal minister of the intern and responsible for the tightening of the immigration laws?

but procapitalist propaganda? - at least the movie is giving a (maybe) too fast overview about the chain of important incidents like the anti-schah-protests, police violence at vietnam-protests, the killing of von rauch und ohnesorg or the assassination attempt on rudi dutschke.

and portraying baader, ensslin and meinhof as the weird characters they have actually been, doesn't support capitalism, but it shows at least a bit, how the whole drama started, achieved nothing for the people but became a struggle for survival only - ending up with the police-state germany is today.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie sometime. And it's a good discussion, i'm reading with interest.

And a song from my favorite band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhHRnJ_eHjY

 

There are many points which had been evoked, I'd like to discern them separately:
- a former radical militant who becomes a minister in a capitalist state is not a strange thing an has no consequences on what should be done, there are many many other example( Daniel Cohn-Bendit the former leader of may 68, who became later minister of European Parliament,Patrizio Pecithe former red brigades who collaborates later with italian police to capture BR members...) the temptation to be corrupted is natural thing and I agree Léo Ferré who said "La gauche est une salle d'attente pour le fascisme" for none french speaking that means " the left is a waiting room for the fascism" see this video"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFa1_Un1An4".
-it's a procapitalist propaganda I keep my point of view, apart from the excerpts from the documentaries movies all the movie is deformed, we should see other documents and chronicles written by former raf to perceive the difference.
-I'm not a sympathist of raf and I diverge greatly with their ideology, but I admire their human qualities, their devotion to their movement, their integrity which had endured to the end.

 

so here it comes:

chief federal prosecutor siegfried buback was murdered by the red army faction [rote armee fraktion or raf] on april 7, 1977.
the “obituary” first appeared in a student newspaper at the university of göttingen on april, 25, 1977 and was subsequently reprinted in numerous daily newspapers. these newspapers, however, only republished certain parts of the article and thereby misrepresented its message. for example, passages referring to the “clandestine joy” over buback’s murder were reprinted but not those that criticized the violence.
In 2001, klaus hülbrock, a lecturer in german, told the taz (a left-of-center berlin daily newspaper) that he was the author of the article. he also apologized to the son of the murdered prosecutor for his statements at the time.

buback – an obituary

this is not necessarily supposed to be an assessment or an annotated trashing from my desk, performed with a papal air and characterized as “loyal criticism.” balance, rigorous argumentation, dialectic and contradiction – I couldn’t care less about all of that. this buback story* has left a bad taste in my mouth and these burps should get put down on paper. maybe they will contribute a bit to a public controversy. (*ed: buback was the federal prosecutor in charge of suppressing the raf)

my immediate reaction, my “dismay” after buback was shot down, can be described quickly. I could not and did not want to (and still don’t) deny having felt clandestine joy. I often heard this guy agitating; I know that he played an important role in pursuing, criminalizing, and torturing leftists. whoever saw his face even once in the last few days can recognize the characteristics of the rule of law in this state, which he embodied so outstandingly. and they also know a few features of the faces of the upright democrats who are now crying out, as if with one voice, in outrage and sadness. honestly, I do regret a little that we can no longer add this face to the little red-and-black criminal album that we’ll publish after the revolution in order to get hold of the most sought after and hated representatives of the old world and present them before a public hearing. alas, not him – a child lost, enfant perdu.

but this is not all that has been haunting my mind and those of many others since this thing happened. a feeling of genuine joy, like when carrero blanco left this world,** just didn’t happen for me. not that I let the really well-staged “public outrage and hysteria” get to me. this spectacle seems to work better each time, and none of us believes anymore that even a single “critical” voice would be raised somewhere in the concert of these political eunuchs, who live (and live well) by creating “public opinion.”
(**ed the 1973 assassination of the Spanish collaborator and assigned successor of Franco by the basque nationalist eta)

but I’m not so totally indifferent to this seemingly hermetic block of conformist media spurting official announcements and commentaries that I don’t have to worry about it at all during various actions anymore. the *bugging scandal has shown that this chorus of the upright has put lice into their hides, which are now irritating them and cannot be erased through opinions and commentaries. So at least tears and cracks have appeared in this apparently firm façade of legitimation; we can and have to take advantage of them, even with respect to stammheim.*** There a public murmur developed, a public uneasiness about the nonchalance with which the bubacks, maihofers, schiess, and benda commit the grossest infringements of the law, and we missed the chance to use it offensively for our cause and for the prisoners. this chance is lost for the moment. now, after the assassination, not only is any means allowed to smash the “terrorist mob,” but the means being used are even too minor.
(bug - eavesdropping devices, illegally installed by the secret service in the high-security-prison stammheim to control the raf-prisoners, lil)

that might be my own personal impression. I did not have any ideas or strength to intervene in this scandal. but what I want to criticize might be easier to illustrate through the example of the roth and otto trial in cologne.* in this trial, the strategy of the bubacks was to convict the leftists, who were proven not to have taken a shot, as police murderers. revolutionary leftists are killers; their attitudes, their practices predestine them to be killers who do not shy away from any means – according to the equation made by the prosecutors and (evidently) the judges.
(*ed - Karl-Heinz Roth and Roland Otto faced trial in 1975 as “psychological accomplices” in a police murder in Cologne)

in painstaking, detailed work the comrades involved succeeded at least partially in thwarting this strategy, and thwarting it in such a way that even the conformist media was forced to report on the scandals, inhuman prison conditions, procedural errors, etc. that is how the little stammheim in cologne was able to spotlight the real stammheim. last wednesday, the lawyers of roth and otto filed a petition for them to be released from custody because the body of evidence could no longer support a charge of the joint murder of the police officer Pauli. the equation “leftists equal killers” was foiled. but I still fear that the attack on buback took the good cards out of the comrades’ hands, that this did an unintentional service for the judiciary that might even have a negative effect on the verdict.

the blindness of those whose political world is reduced to stammheim and who fight and choose their means totally irrespective of the current “political situation” could thereby disarm other comrades and serve as an involuntary contribution to doing them in. “counterinsurgency” the other way around….

these thoughts alone were enough to stop any internal hand-wringing. but it gets worse. for a certain time (like so many of us), I also appreciated the action of the armed fighters. I, who as a civilian never had a weapon in my hand, let a bomb go off. I even got off on it a little when something else exploded and the whole capitalist in-crowd along with its henchmen was thrown into turmoil. these were things that I had wanted to do in daydreams but never had the nerve to do.

now I just imagined again what it would be like if I were with the armed fighters, were being sought, hunted, living somewhere in a conspiratorial context of just a few people, having to be careful that my everyday activities (shopping, emptying the trash, watching a movie) would not be my undoing.

and I have to ask myself how – cut off from everyday personal and political contexts – I could even make the decision with my people to undertake such an action. How I’d have to spend months preparing for the fact that buback had to be gotten rid of, how logistics and ballistics would have to determine my whole way of thinking. how I could be certain that this guy and no one else has to die, how I would take for granted that someone else will be killed too, and how a third person might become a paraplegic, etc.

I’d have to turn my thinking around totally. I still think that the decision to kill or murder is in the hands of those in power: judges, cops, factory security services, the military, nuclear power plant operators. That I’d have to get special training to do that; cold-blooded like al capone, fast, brutal, calculating.

how should I decide that buback is important, not for me and my people, but for other people too? that he is more important than judge X at prison Y or one of its guards? or that the salesman in the corner, who keeps yelling “off with his head,” is less “guilty” than buback? just because he has less “responsibility”?

why this politics of personalities? couldn’t we all kidnap a female cook together someday and see how they then respond, the upright democrats?

shouldn’t we be putting more of our focus on female cooks?

when one of these state-approved killers gets bumped off in argentina or even spain, I don’t have these problems. I believe I can feel that the hate of the people against these figures is truly a popular hatred. but who and how many people hated buback (to death)? where could I – if I were part of the armed struggle – get my ability to decide over life and death?

we all have to get away from hating the oppressors of the people on behalf of the people. Just as we have already gradually gotten away from acting or building up a party on behalf of others. if buback was not a victim of popular anger (or, if you like, class hatred, so no false suspicions arise), then the violence that is exercised comes just as little from the people as buback’s violence did.

we just have to open a newspaper and follow the daily headlines: the strategy of liquidation, this is one of the strategies of the powers that be. why do we have to copy it? it frightens people (“The People”!). they have had their own experiences with this, as with incarceration and work camps. whatever we do, it throws a light onto our goals. we will not liquidate our enemies. we will not lock them up in prisons and work camps but nonetheless we are not going to treat them gently.

our goal of a society without terror and violence (even if there is still going to be aggression and militancy), a society without forced labor (even if there still will be grind), a society without a judiciary, prisons, and institutions (even if there are still rules and regulations, or better: recommendations), this goal justifies not any means, just some of them. our road to socialism (or if you like: anarchy) cannot be paved with bodies.

why liquidate? ridicule can also kill, for example, in the long run. our weapons are not simply imitations of military weapons, but ones they cannot shoot out of our hands. our strength therefore does not have to lie in a phrase (such as “solidarity”). our violence, finally, cannot be that of al capone, a copy of open street terror and daily terror. not authoritarian, but anti-authoritarian and for that reason all the more effective. for the sake of the power issue (oh my god!), leftists cannot be killers or brutes or rapists; but certainly also not saints or innocent lambs. to develop a strategy and practice of violence and militancy that is happy and to have the blessing of the participating masses: that is (turning to the practical conclusion) the task before us today. so the leftists who so act do not assume the same killer faces as the bubacks.

a little hefty, isn’t it? But written in all honesty….

a mescalero from göttingen


source: Anonymous [actually Klaus Hülbrock], “Buback – Ein Nachruf” [“Buback – An Obituary”], Göttinger Studentenzeitung, April 25, 1977.

 

I've watched the movie for the first time too, I live with Lil and we share some experience in the militant movement - so it's not surprising that I almost completely agree with her point of view about the movie.

Watching the movie really gave me the shakes sometimes, I'm old enough to remember the early seventies, part of my childhood was this atmosphere of a pink painted paradise, populated by happy garden gnomes with a growing unease about what's going on outside this consume-and buy-idyll.

The story of the making of the B&M-complex is a bad one, the story of the law suits after the premiere is kinda cynical joke - besides the feelings of the victims descendants still hurt from their personal loss.
Yes, many people who were flirting with the militant struggle changed sides and ended up like schily, fischer, cohn-bendit and all the other activists who became part of the more or less liberal establishment.

(About: "the left is a waiting room for the fascism" - horst mahler, former raf-lawyer is currently serving a five-years sentence for holocaust denial and incitement of the people (german: Volkverhetzung) after he became a antisemite aryan master race(ist), too bloody crazy for a career in the neo-fascist german npd. and by the way: the later federal chancellor, gerhard schröder, was his lawyer 1980 when mahler still was in trouble for being a convicted raf-founding member).

But this mix of so many people with "a past" and the repressive system is really weird, because of the extent of influence this number of changelings have now - so Lil was right to ask:
What do we have to expect?
(besides the fact, that this movie was never meant to be a documentary.)

I don't talk about treason or traitors to the cause/the people - because I think those "changelings" never had a "real" cause, on the other hand: even their pretended attitude isn't mine, I'm an anarchist...

They flirted with militant resistance, out of their unease about the pink-garden-gnomes paradise, personal ambition and many more individual motives - but they never became true revolutionaries.
And after the story developed a risky/deadly life of it's own, the escalation between resistance and repression got serious, most of them took the first opportunity to head towards the exit.
But not enough: the same individual traits/motives spurred many of them into making their career up to the current weirdness of the former resistance becoming part of the establishment they once pretended to oppose.

This establishment didn't approve the making of the B&M-complex, the producers had problems to get the project supported and financed - and I think the changelings had an important influence on the production using a kind of lobbyism to make it come out the way they want it to - so what can we expect from a movie produced in germoney?

You are right, pot36, there should be a true account of the story of the raf, to learn from past failings and to do better in the future, or at least to evade/correct the "mythos" of the raf.
But I think we will never get the chance.

The changelings/veterans give their version, limited by their own participation and it's consequences for their later careers, covering up the deeds they often bragged about years before. But these points are much too uncomfortable now, and an open discussion would show how weird their changing the sides is but more important another fact: The repression/atmosphere that provoked the resistance in the late sixties is still the same today. nothing has changed and this needs to be covered too, because who is responsible now?

What could have happend if the movie would promote the "execution" version of stammheim 1977?
Organized group suicide with two pistols used in high security prison cells illegally spied upon by cops and anti-terror-bka?
yukk???!!! (otto schily leading the investigation about the role of the bka and their known illegal use of bugs in stammheim? No, 2004 he was promoting tactics like dragnet and observation to become used by interpol.)

The "survivors" keep silent, there was a charge made by brigitte mohnhaupt (she's now 60, pardoned after 24 years in prison, living a quiet and withdrawn life) against certain scenes in the movie - the scenes following her release out of stammheim, seducing peter brook sexually to become her second in command and never question her authority.
producer eichinger won the charge, claiming artistic freedom and that the audience is obvious that his scene/implication isn't historically true - and monhaupt didn't critisized anything else about the movie.
Her former comrades? - nothing.
There a still unsolved legal risks: nobody knows who actually shot ponto or buback or schleyer, treason and it's possible consequences may be a thing to consider. Even conspiracy theories about cooperation between raf, cia, bka, the east-europe secret services and a connection with "gladio" are going round and some of their aspects may have a background - but I guess we will never know whats true or not.

I don't want to lecture you and my own experience with the militant movement gives me no special authority, but for me - sorry - their human qualities are questionable, the movie shows a little bit of it, baader's habit to silence criticism with endless barrages of sexist/homophobic insults for example, or his notorious ambition to "lead".

I met veterans from berlin in the past who are still pretending that it was impossible to cooperate/coordinate with the baader-ensslin group, just because they were unable to consider anything else but their own point of view. Especially baader obviously lacked theoretical knowledge and answered making wild speeches when ideologically challenged.
There was no movement, they rejected most of the dialogue still offered by other militants, their recruits followed the "raf-myth" and the tactical failures on certain actions show, that they mostly weren't "first choice" activists but enthusiastic amateurs doing high risk work.
the mescalero-letter we posted before is only the most explicit critic about their lack of strategy and relation to the movement, but it wasn't the first.

Their devotion? Isolated as they were, they found themselves quickly standing with the back against the wall - with nowhere else to run to. so the first generation spend most of their time in prison, the second tried to bail them out and failed - instead of breaking the chain of reaction and punishment/revenge and use the crimes of the repressing system to gain support from the still uneasy but too scared feeling masses.
What's left is that "clandestine joy" sometimes, but what has the raf really achieved?

Yes, I guess I would have ended up in a soviet gulag camp if they would have been successful... at least horst herold retired and stammheim is closed down now - after a proper cleaning.

 

Really I can't pretend to know vey well the RAF, I just see the movie and read about them somewhere else. If the movement is really criticizable, that doesn't mean that we should agree with the movie or any other who cricises it. As I said we should regard these movies with a maximum of vigilance. several movies had shown us that the reality is thrown out ("year of the gun" about red brigades, "Carlos" about Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, or "sacco et vanzetti" made by france 5 within their emission " les détectives de l'histoire"). If I criticise the movement I sohuldn't join any other else who fustigate it.

 

yes, now i agree with you almost completely. vassil and I have lots of background information, because we live in germany, vassil was born here and is old enough to remember the general atmosphere in the seventies and maybe the conflict between the raf and the repressive happy-gnomes-paradise had some subtile influence in his personal development. this conflict is part of the german history, still there are public/media discussions concerning the last prisoners to be pardoned or not, or about austs book and the movie - in the last days we collected quite a heap of interviews and reports...

important for him and me is: if you consider armed struggle or militant resistance you can learn much out of the raf-history: the reasons why they failed - starting with the immature/petty bourgeois lack of consciousness and humanity, the disability to learn and the complete ignorance about the risks of conspirative living still suffering from authoritarian attitudes.
the raf is a bad part in the history of the militant movement too, and thats the reason why we should learn from their example - and maybe do better than they did.

the film isn't a good source for learning - yes, always keep in mind: it's no documentary and it was made by people who have no real reason to tell the true story - the article vassil mentioned about monhaupts charge against eichingers "artistic freedom" really gave me fits...

and for me the necessary criticism isn't bashing - even if i call baader & ensslin revolutionary wannabees - i still respect the sheer fact that they were (misguided/ignorant/destructive) human beings, I feel sorry for them and i accuse the repressive system for manipulating, abusing and murdering them.