Hanns Martin Schleyer
Hanns Martin Schleyer was a German business executive and employer and industry representative, who served as President of two powerful commercial organizations, the Confederation of German Employers' Associations and the Federation of German Industries. Schleyer's role in those business organisations, his positions in the labour disputes and aggressive appearance on television, his conservative anti-communist views and position as a prominent member of the Christian Democratic Union, his past as an enthusiastic member of the Nazi student movement made him a target for radical elements of the German student movement in the 1970s, he was subsequently murdered. The German government decided to not negotiate with terrorists; the abduction and murder are seen as the climax of the RAF campaign in 1977, known as the German Autumn. After his death Schleyer has been extensively honoured in Germany. In 2017 German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the German government marked the 40th anniversary of the kidnapping.
Born in Offenburg, Grand Duchy of Baden, Hanns Martin Schleyer came from a national-conservative family. His father was a judge and his great-great uncle was Johann Martin Schleyer, a renowned Roman Catholic priest who invented the Volapük language. Schleyer began studying law at the University of Heidelberg in 1933, where he joined the Corps Suevia, a student fraternity. In 1939 he obtained a doctorate at the University of Innsbruck. Early in his life he became a follower of National Socialism. After a stint in the Hitler Youth, the youth organization of the National Socialist Party, he joined the SS on 1 July 1933, SS number Nr. 221.714, was an SS Untersturmführer. During his studies he was engaged in the Nazi student movement. One of his mentors at this time was the student leader Gustav Adolf Scheel. In the summer of 1935 Schleyer accused his fraternity of lacking "national socialist spirit", he left the fraternity when the Kösener SC, an umbrella organization, refused to exclude Jewish members.
Schleyer became a leader in the national socialist student movement and in 1937 joined the Nazi party. At first he was the president of the student body of the University of Heidelberg. Reichsstudentenführer Scheel sent him to post-Anschluss Austria where he occupied the same position at the University of Innsbruck. In 1939 Schleyer married Waltrude Ketterer, daughter of the physician, city councillor of Munich and SA-Obergruppenführer Emil Ketterer, they had four sons. During World War II Schleyer was spent time on the Western Front. After an accident, he was appointed president of the student body in Prague. In this position he met Bernhard Adolf, one of the German economic leaders in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, who brought Schleyer to the industrial association of Bohemia and Moravia in 1943. Schleyer became an important adviser to Bernhard Adolf. On 5 May 1945, Schleyer escaped from the city shortly after the start of the Prague uprising. After World War II, the Allies held Schleyer as a prisoner of war for three years because of his membership as an Untersturmführer in the SS.
In his denazification proceeding, Schleyer falsely understated his rank so as to reduce his prospective punishment. He was repatriated in 1948. In 1949 he became secretary of the chamber of commerce of Baden-Baden. In 1951 Schleyer joined Daimler-Benz, with help from a mentor, Fritz Könecke became a member of the board of directors. At the end of the 1960s, he was appointed chairman of the board, but lost the position to Joachim Zahn. Successively, Schleyer became more involved in employers' associations, was a leader in employer and industry associations, he was president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations and the Federation of German Industries. His uncompromising acts during industrial protests in the 1960s such as industrial lockouts, his history with the Nazi party, his aggressive appearance on TV, made Schleyer the ideal enemy for the 1968 student movement. In 1977 Schleyer debated with Heinz Oskar Vetter, chairman of the Confederation of German Trade Unions in a crosstalk at the 8.
St. Gallen Symposium, which gained a high profile, after Schleyer's kidnapping. On 5 September 1977, an RAF "commando unit" attacked the chauffeured car carrying Hanns Martin Schleyer president of the German employers' association, in Cologne, just after the car had turned right from Friedrich Schmidt Strasse into Vincenz-State Strasse, his driver was forced to brake when a baby carriage appeared in the street in front of them. The police escort vehicle behind them was unable to stop in time, crashed into Schleyer's car. Four masked RAF members jumped out and sprayed bullets into the two vehicles, killing four members of the convoy. Schleyer was pulled out of the car and forced into the RAF assailants' own getaway van; the RAF demanded captured members of their organization from the German government, of which they were declined. The members were all found dead in their jail cells. After Schleyer's kidnappers received the news of the death of their imprisoned comrades, Schleyer was taken from Brussels
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. There was no specific date on which the sectors of Berlin occupied by the Western Allies became "West Berlin", but 1949 is accepted as the year in which the name was adopted. West Berlin aligned itself politically with the Federal Republic of Germany and was directly or indirectly represented in its federal institutions. West Berlin was formally controlled by the Western Allies and was surrounded by the Soviet-controlled East Berlin and East Germany. West Berlin had great symbolic significance during the Cold War, as it was considered by westerners as an "island of freedom", it was subsidised by West Germany as a "showcase of the West". A wealthy city, West Berlin was noted for its distinctly cosmopolitan character, as a centre of education and culture. With about two million inhabitants, West Berlin had the largest population of any city in Germany during the Cold War era. West Berlin was 100 miles east and north of the Inner German border and only accessible by land from West Germany by narrow rail and highway corridors.
It consisted of the American and French occupation sectors established in 1945. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, physically separated West Berlin from its East Berlin and East German surroundings until it fell in 1989; the Potsdam Agreement established the legal framework for the occupation of Germany in the wake of World War II. According to this agreement, Germany would be formally under the administration of four Allies until a German government "acceptable to all parties" could be established; the territory of Germany, as it existed in 1937, would be reduced by most of Eastern Germany thus creating the former eastern territories of Germany. The remaining territory would be divided into four zones, each administered by one of the four allied countries. Berlin, surrounded by the Soviet zone of occupation—newly established in most of Middle Germany—would be divided, with the Western Allies occupying an enclave consisting of the western parts of the city. According to the agreement, the occupation of Berlin could end only as a result of a quadripartite agreement.
The Western Allies were guaranteed three air corridors to their sectors of Berlin, the Soviets informally allowed road and rail access between West Berlin and the western parts of Germany. At first, this arrangement was intended to be of a temporary administrative nature, with all parties declaring that Germany and Berlin would soon be reunited. However, as the relations between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union soured and the Cold War began, the joint administration of Germany and Berlin broke down. Soon, Soviet-occupied Berlin and western-occupied Berlin had separate city administrations. In 1948, the Soviets tried to force the Western Allies out of Berlin by imposing a land blockade on the western sectors—the Berlin Blockade; the West responded by using its air corridors for supplying their part of the city with food and other goods through the Berlin Airlift. In May 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade, West Berlin as a separate city with its own jurisdiction was maintained. Following the Berlin Blockade, normal contacts between East and West Berlin resumed.
This was temporary. In 1952, the East German government began further isolating West Berlin; as a direct result, electrical grids were separated and phone lines were cut. The Volkspolizei and Soviet military personnel continued the process of blocking all the roads leading away from the city, resulting in several armed standoffs and at least one skirmish with the French Gendarmerie and the Bundesgrenzschutz that June. However, the culmination of the schism did not occur until 1961 with the construction of the Berlin Wall. From the legal theory followed by the Western Allies, the occupation of most of Germany ended in 1949 with the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the German Democratic Republic. Under Article 127 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, provision was made for federal laws to be extended to Greater Berlin as well as Baden, Rhineland-Palatinate and Württemberg-Hohenzollern within one year of its promulgation. However, because the occupation of Berlin could only be ended by a quadripartite agreement, Berlin remained an occupied territory under the formal sovereignty of the allies.
Hence, the Basic Law was not applicable to West Berlin. On 4 August 1950 the House of Representatives passed a new constitution, declaring Berlin to be a state of the Federal Republic and the provisions of the Basic Law as binding law superior to Berlin state law. However, this became statutory law only on 1 September and only with the inclusion of the western Allied provision according to which Art. 1, clauses 2 and 3, were deferred for the time being. It stated that: Article 87 is interpreted as meaning that during the transitional period Berlin shall possess none of the attributes of a twelfth Land; the provision of this Article concerning the Basic Law will only apply to the extent necessary to prevent a conflict between this Law and the Berlin Constitution... Thus civic liberties and personal rights guaranteed by the Basic Law were valid in West Berlin. In addition, West German federal statutes could
Fascism
Fascism is a form of radical, right-wing, authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, strong regimentation of society and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I before it spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum. Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, the state, technology; the advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war; the war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have described themselves as fascist, the term is instead now used pejoratively by political opponents; the descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far-right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th-century fascist movements.
The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio meaning a bundle of rods from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Mussolini's own account, the Fascist Revolutionary Party was founded in Italy in 1915. In 1919, Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista two years later; the Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio—a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate carried by his lictors, which could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements: for example, the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke. Historians, political scientists, other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism.
Each group described as fascist has at least some unique elements, many definitions of fascism have been criticized as either too wide or narrow. One common definition of the term focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations. According to many scholars, fascism—especially once in power—has attacked communism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support from the far-right. Historian Stanley Payne identifies three main strands in fascism, his typology is cited by reliable sources as a standard definition. First, Payne's "fascist negations" refers to such typical policies as anti-communism and anti-liberalism. Second, "fascist goals" include an expanded empire. Third, "fascist style" is seen in its emphasis on violence and authoritarianism and its exultation of men above women and young against old. Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism". Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: " the rebirth myth, populist ultra-nationalism, the myth of decadence".
Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence. Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion". Racism was a
Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a West German far-left militant. She co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970, after having worked as a journalist for the monthly left-wing magazine konkret, she was arrested in 1972, charged with the formation of a criminal association. In 1976, before the trial concluded, Meinhof was found hanged in her prison cell; the official statement claimed. Ulrike Meinhof was born in 1934 in Germany. In 1936, her family moved to Jena when her father, art historian Dr. Werner Meinhof, became Director of the city's museum, her father died of cancer in 1940, causing her mother to take in a boarder, Renate Riemeck, to make money. In 1946, the family moved back to Oldenburg because Jena fell under Soviet rule as a result of the Yalta agreement. Ulrike's mother, Dr. Ingeborg Meinhof, worked as a teacher after World War II and died 8 years from cancer. Renate Riemeck took on the role of guardian for her elder sister. In 1952, she took her Abitur at a school in Weilburg, she studied Philosophy, Sociology and German at Marburg where she became involved with reform movements.
In 1957, she moved to the University of Münster, where she met the Spanish Marxist Manuel Sacristán and joined the Socialist German Student Union. Meinhof participated in the protests against the rearmament of the Bundeswehr and its involvement with nuclear weapons that were proposed by Konrad Adenauer's government, she became the spokeswoman of the local Anti-Atomtod-Ausschuss. In 1958, Meinhof spent a short time on the AStA of the university and wrote articles for various student newspapers. In 1959, Meinhof joined the banned Communist Party of Germany and began working at the magazine konkret, serving as chief editor from 1962 until 1964. In 1961, she married the publisher of konkret, Klaus Rainer Röhl, their marriage produced twins and Bettina, on 21 September 1962. Meinhof and Röhl divorced a year later; the attempted assassination of socialist activist Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968 provoked Meinhof to write an article in konkret demonstrating her militant attitude and containing her best-known quote: Later that year, her writings on arson attacks in Frankfurt as protests against the Vietnam War resulted in her developing an acquaintance with the perpetrators, most Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin.
She stopped writing for konkret which had in her opinion evolved into a commercial magazine in the early part of 1969, many other authors followed her. She stated that neither she nor her collaborators wanted to give a left-wing alibi to the magazine that sooner or "would become part of the counter-revolution, a thing that I cannot gloss over with my co-operation now that it is impossible to change its course", they organised an occupation at konkret's office, to distribute proclamations to the employees, something that failed since Röhl learned about it, moved the employees to their homes to continue their work from there. Röhl's house was vandalised by some of the protesters. Meinhof arrived in Röhl's villa at 11:30, after police and journalists had arrived, she was accused by Röhl as the organizer of the vandalism. It was difficult to prove, her last work as an individual was the writing and production of the film Bambule in 1970, where she put focus on a group of borstal girls in West Berlin.
Meinhof had been approached by Gudrun Ensslin, girlfriend of jailed arsonist Andreas Baader, for her help in securing the release of Baader from police custody. A scheme was developed where Meinhof would approach leftist publisher Klaus Wagenbach, seeking to have him hire Meinhof and the imprisoned Baader in writing a book. After securing a contract from Wagenbach, Meinhof petitioned authorities to allow Baader to travel from Moabit Prison to an institute for social research in the Dahlem district of Berlin; the plan was for armed guerrillas to secure the release of Baader. Meinhof was to stay behind, have a plausibly deniable explanation that she was not involved in the planning of Baader's escape. Baader arrived with two guards, set to work with Meinhof in the institute's library. Two women compatriots of Ensslin's, along with a man with a criminal record broke into the institute; the man shot the elderly librarian Georg Linke wounding him in his liver. It was claimed that the man was holding two weapons, a pistol and a gas canister gun, accidentally fired the wrong weapon in the confusion.
Because of the shooting of the librarian, it is speculated that Meinhof made a snap decision to join Baader in his escape. Within days wanted posters appeared throughout Berlin offered a 10,000 DM reward for her capture for "Attempted Murder." In the beginning, Meinhof meant to stay behind to use her power as an influential reporter to help the rest outside, but in the panic after the shooting she joined the others jumping out of the institute's window. After
West Germany
West Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, referred to by historians as the Bonn Republic, was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the western portion of Germany was part of the Western bloc during the Cold War. It was created during the Allied occupation of Germany in 1949 after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, its capital was the city of Bonn. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Eastern blocs. Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin; the Federal Republic of Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, considering itself to be the democratically reorganised continuation of the 1871–1945 German Empire. It took the line. Though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not fair. From the West German perspective, the GDR was therefore illegitimate.
Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, the Saarland joined the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957. In addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. While not part of the Federal Republic of Germany, as Berlin was under the control of the Allied Control Council, West Berlin politically-aligned itself with West Germany and was represented in its federal institutions; the foundation for the influential position held by Germany today was laid during the Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s when West Germany rose from the enormous destruction wrought by World War II to become the world's third-largest economy. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for a full alignment with NATO rather than neutrality, he not only secured a membership in NATO but was a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union. When the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well.
Following the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, there was a rapid move towards German reunification. East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990, its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin, which ended its special status and formed an additional Land. They formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany; the reunion did not result in a brand-new country. The expanded Federal Republic retained West Germany's political culture and continued its existing memberships in international organisations, as well as its Western foreign policy alignment and affiliation to Western alliances like UN, NATO, OECD and the European Union; the official name of West Germany, adopted in 1949 and unchanged since is Bundesrepublik Deutschland. In East Germany, the terms Westdeutschland or westdeutsche Bundesrepublik were preferred during the 1950s and 1960s.
This changed once under its 1968 constitution, when the idea of a single German nation was abandoned by East Germany, as a result West Germans and West Berliners were considered foreigners. In the early 1970s, starting in the East German Neues Deutschland, the initialism "BRD" for the "Federal Republic of Germany" began to prevail in East German usage. In 1973, official East German sources adopted it as a standard expression and other Eastern Bloc nations soon followed suit. In reaction to this move, in 1965 the West German Federal Minister of All-German Affairs Erich Mende issued the Directives for the appellation of Germany, recommending avoiding the initialism. On 31 May 1974, the heads of West German federal and state governments recommended always using the full name in official publications. From on West German sources avoided the abbreviated form, with the exception of left-leaning organizations which embraced it. In November 1979 the federal government informed the Bundestag that the West German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF had agreed to refuse to use the initialism.
The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code of West Germany was "DE", which has remained the country code of Germany after reunification. ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 are the most used country codes, the "DE" code is notably used as country identifier extending the postal code and as the Internet's country code top-level domain.de. Accordingly the less used ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code of West Germany was "DEU", which has remained the country code of reunified Germany; the now deleted codes for East Germany, on the other hand, was "DD" in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and "DDR" in ISO 3166-1 alpha-3. The colloquial term "West Germany" or its equivalent was used in many languages. "Westdeutschland" was a widespread colloquial form used in German-speaking countries without political overtones. On 4–11 February 1945 leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union held the Yalta Conference where future arrangements as regards post-war Europe and strategy against Japan in the Pacific were negotiated.
The conference agreed that post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones: a French Zone in the far west.
Bartholomä
Bartholomä is a municipality in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, in Ostalbkreis district. Bartholomä is a commuter town in the historical region of Swabia, that straddles the border between Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria; the language spoken in Bartholomä is the Swabian dialect. The businesses in Bartholomä are German staples: a couple of bakeries and butcher shops, a local bar and grill called Zum Schwarzen Adler and its sister establishment, a medieval-themed venue for wedding banquets and such called Braighausen. There is a complex of houses on the outskirts of town collectively called Amalienhof. Bartholomä is a 35-minute drive from Neresheim, home of the Neresheim Abbey
Stammheim Prison
Stammheim Prison is a prison in Stuttgart, Baden Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the northern boundaries of Stuttgart in the city district of Stuttgart-Stammheim, right between fields and apartment blocks on the fringes of Stammheim; the prison was built as a supermax prison between 1959 and 1963 and taken into operation in 1964. Stammheim Prison became famous when it housed the leading members of the Red Army Faction urban guerrilla group during their trials, as well as the courthouse in which they were tried; the section in which they were kept was specially built in 1975 and at the time recognised as one of the most secure prison blocks in the world: the roof and the courtyard was covered with steel mesh. During the night the precinct was illuminated by twenty-three neon bulbs. Special forces were guarding the roof, including snipers. Four hundred police officers along with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution patrolled the building; the mounted police officers oscillated on a double shift.
One hundred more GSG-9 units reinforced the police during the trial. BKA agents guarded the front of the court area. There were helicopters flying around the area. In spite of this, the arrested guerrillas had firearms smuggled to them. Ulrike Meinhof was found hanged on 9 May 1976. Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe committed suicide in the high security block during the night of 18 October 1977, which became known as the "Death Night" for the leaders of the Red Army Faction. Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were said to have shot themselves, whereas Gudrun Ensslin chose a method of supposed suicide similar to that of Ulrike Meinhof. A fourth member, Irmgard Möller stabbed herself four times in the chest with a stolen knife, she survived her suicide attempt and has since stated that the deaths were not suicide, but rather extrajudicial killings undertaken by the German government of the time, a claim denied by the German governments former and present. The deaths of the prisoners were among the events collectively known as the German Autumn, which included a series of terrorist attacks and the West German government's response.
Officials in Baden-Württemberg announced in August 2007 they are planning to tear down the section of Stammheim prison where the leaders of the RAF terrorist group were held during the 1970s. They are considering demolishing the high-rise building because it is in urgent need of renovation and new prison quarters would be built on the site of the demolished building. Official website Sinnbild für das Ende der Terroristen, article about Stammhein Prison in the Stuttgarter Zeitung
Media related to Gudrun Ensslin at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Gudrun Ensslin at Wikiquote
