Baader Meinhof: Pictures on the Run 67-77
by Astrid Proll
Category: History

This book shows pictures from ten crucial years of German post-war history -- beginning with the death of the student Benno Ohnesorg on June 2nd, 1967, in Berlin, through to the murder of the President of the Employers' Association, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, on October 18th, 1977. The story of the Red Army Faction (R.A.F.) is also a story of the images that the group has staged, invoked and left behind: Ulrike Meinhof's warrant; the emblem with the red star and the kalashnikov; the arrest of Holger Meins; the high security wing in Stuttgart-Stammheim prison; the video tapes with the kidnapped Harms-Martin Schleyer; the photograph of the dead Andreas Baader. Today's generations are fascinated by the question how a bunch of excited intellectuals were able to declare war on the State, possibly with the intention of carrying the Vietnam jungle war into West-European metropoles. "Six against sixty millions" -- why is it that this war still occupies our minds, or the artistic creation, incorporated in the famous paintings by Gerhard Richter about the R.A.F, now at Moma, New York? Repercussions of this war can still be observed to this day.