Ulrike Meinhof facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ulrike Meinhof
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Meinhof as a journalist, c. 1964
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Ulrike Marie Meinhof
7 October 1934 |
| Died | 9 May 1976 (aged 41) |
| Organization | Red Army Faction |
| Spouse(s) | Klaus Rainer Röhl (divorced) |
| Children |
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Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement"; condemns "reformism" as "a brake on the anti-capitalist struggle"; and invokes Mao Zedong to define "armed struggle" as "the highest form of Marxism-Leninism".
Meinhof, who took part in the RAF's May Offensive in 1972, was arrested in June of that year and spent the rest of her life in custody, largely isolated from outside contact. In November 1974, she was sentenced to 8 years in prison for an attempted murder that had taken place during the RAF's successful jailbreak operation of Andreas Baader.
From 1975, she stood trial on multiple charges of murder and attempted murder, with the three other RAF leaders: Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe. Before the end of the trial, she was found dead in her cell in the Stammheim Prison.
Contents
Early life
Meinhof was born in 1934 in Oldenburg. Her father Werner Meinhof, a curator of Jena Museum, 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 after Jena fell under Soviet occupation as a result of the Yalta agreement. Meinhof's mother, Ingeborg Meinhof, an art historian, began to work as a teacher and died from cancer in 1949. Riemeck took on the role of guardian of Meinhof and her elder sister, Wienke.
Student activist 1950s
In 1952, Meinhof took her Abitur at a school in Weilburg. She then studied philosophy, sociology, education and German at Marburg, where she became involved with reform movements. In 1957, she transferred to the University of Münster, where she met the Spanish Marxist intellectual Manuel Sacristán (who later translated and edited some of her writings), joined the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), the German Socialist Student Union, and participated in protests against the rearmament of the Bundeswehr and its involvement with nuclear weapons that were proposed by Konrad Adenauer's government. Meinhof eventually became the spokeswoman of the local Anti-Atomtod-Ausschuss (Anti Atomic-Death Committee). In 1958, she spent a short time on the AStA (German: Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss, or General Committee of Students) of the university and wrote articles for various student newspapers.
Konkret and protest in the 1960s
In 1959, Meinhof joined the banned Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later began working at the magazine konkret, a monthly which, until 1964, had clandestine financing from the East German government. Konkret was widely read by student activists and progressive intellectuals, and as its chief editor from 1962 to 1964, Meinhof was able to elicit contributions from established journalists and authors.
On 2 June 1967, Meinhof's exposure in konkret of German complicity in supporting the Pahlavi dynasty helped rally students to a demonstration in West Berlin against the visit of the Shah of Iran. When Iranian counter-demonstrators, including agents of the Shah's intelligence service, attacked the students, the police joined the affray beating the demonstrators into a side street where an officer shot and killed the student protester Benno Ohnesorg The leading Stern columnist, Sebastian Haffner whom Meinhof had befriended, took to konkret to suggest "with the [anti-] Student pogrom of 2 June 1967 fascism in West Berlin had thrown off its mask".
In February 1968, Meinhof was a participant in the International Vietnam Conference in West Berlin, which the authorities had permitted only in the face of large-scale protests. She was co-signatory, along with intellectuals including Ernst Bloch, Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawn, Ernest Mandel, and Jean Paul Sartre, of the final declaration. This defined the U.S. intervention in Vietnam as "the Spain of our generation" and called for mobilisation against the "extermination" (Vernichtung) of the Vietnamese people.
Marriage to Klaus Rainer Röhl
In 1961, Meinhof married the co-founder and publisher of konkret, Klaus Rainer Röhl. Their marriage produced twins, Regine and Bettina, born on 21 September 1962. Meinhof and Röhl separated in 1967 and divorced a year later.
Benign brain tumor surgically removed
In 1962, Meinhof had a benign brain tumor surgically removed; the 1976 autopsy showed that remnants of the tumor and surgical scar tissue impinged on her amygdala.
Portrayals
The book Lieber wütend als traurig (Better angry than sad) by Alois Prinz was intended as a mainly faithful account of Meinhof's life story for adolescents.
Meinhof's life has been the subject, to varying degrees of fictionalisation, of several films and stage productions. Treatment in films include Reinhard Hauff's 1986 Stammheim, an account of the Stammheim trial, Margarethe von Trotta's 1981 Marianne and Juliane and Uli Edel's 2008 film The Baader Meinhof Complex. Stage treatments include the 1990 opera Ulrike Meinhof by Johann Kresnik, the 1993 play Leviathan by Dea Loher, the 2005 play La extraordinaria muerte de Ulrike M. by Spanish playwright Carlos Be and the 2006 play Ulrike Maria Stuart by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek. The 1981 French movie Birgitt Haas Must Be Killed is inspired by Meinhof's death.
In 1978, Dario Fo and Franca Rame wrote the monologue Moi, Ulrike, je crie...
The 2010 feature documentary Children of the Revolution tells Meinhof's story from the perspective of her daughter, journalist and historian Bettina Röhl.
Subtopia, a novel published in 2005 by Australian author and academic A.L. McCann, is partially set in Berlin and contains a character who is obsessed with Meinhof and another who claims to have attended her funeral.
The 2013 book "Revolutionary Brain" by Harold Jaffe features a titular section devoted to the brain of Meinhof.
The 2018 film 7 Days in Entebbe about Operation Entebbe mentions Meinhof as motivation for the participation of the Germans in the hijacking, particularly Brigitte Kuhlmann. The film suggests Meinhof was a friend of Kuhlmann and Böse and that a mistake Kuhlmann made resulted in her imprisonment and subsequent death.
Music
In 1975, the Italian singer-songwriter Claudio Lolli published the song Incubo Numero Zero (Nightmare #0), with the verse "turn off the light, thought Ulrike", and more.
Marianne Faithfull's 1979 album Broken English had the title track dedicated to Meinhof.
The anarcho punk band Chumbawamba's 1990 album, Slap! featured an opening and closing track, both named after Meinhof. The first track was entitled Ulrike and featured lyrics that directly involve Meinhof as the protagonist and the final track was an instrumental reprise of the first track. and was entitled "Meinhof". The album's liner notes included information and an article relating to the song Ulrike.
Electronica act Doris Days created a track entitled To Ulrike M., in which there is a passage spoken in German throughout the song, presumably an archived audio file from Meinhof herself. This track has since been remixed by other electronica acts like Zero 7, Kruder & Dorfmeister, and The Amalgamation of Soundz.
The German duo Andreas Ammer and F.M. Einheit released an album in 1996 entitled Deutsche Krieger, a substantial portion of which consists of audio recordings of and about Meinhof.
Der Plan, the electronic music group from Düsseldorf published 2004 the song Ulrike, as part of the Die Verschwörung album.
London-based experimental group Cindytalk has an electronic side-project called Bambule, named after the Meinhof film of the same name.
German Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein feature Meinhof, played by lead singer Till Lindemann, in the music video to their 2019 song Deutschland.
The English alternative rock band Ulrika Spacek took their name from Meinhof and American performer Sissy Spacek.
In films & documentaries
- Ulrike Marie Meinhof, a documentary produced by ARTE in 1994.
- Ulrike Meinhof – Wege in den Terror (Ulrike Meinhof – Paths to Terror), a documentary produced by RBB in 2006.
- So macht Kommunismus Spass [Making Communism Fun], a documentary produced by Bettina Röhl, Meinhof's daughter, for Der Spiegel TV in 2006.
- The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008).
- Children of the Revolution (documentary, 2010).
See also
In Spanish: Ulrike Meinhof para niños
- Baader–Meinhof effect, a cognitive bias named after Meinhof
