Members of the Red Army Faction

Red Army Faction Insignia.

The Red Army Faction (RAF) operated in Germany from the late 1960s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as "German Autumn". The RAF was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Horst Mahler, and others, and the first generation of the organisation was commonly known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang".

The RAF was responsible for 34 deaths, including many secondary targets such as chauffeurs and bodyguards and many injuries in its almost 30 years of activity. Below is a list of the most members of the group.

Eileen MacDonald claimed in Shoot the Women First (1991), that females made up about fifty percent of the membership of the Red Army Faction and about eighty percent of the RAF's supporters. This was higher than other similar groups in West Germany, in which females made up about thirty percent of the membership.

First generation Red Army Faction (1970-1975)

Founding First Generation Members

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Main Article
Andreas Baader	6 May 1943	18 October 1977	Andreas Baader
Andreas Baader was one of the founding members of the RAF. Baader was involved in bank raids and arson. He was arrested and tried at Stammheim Prison alongside Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof and Jan-Carl Raspe, and given three times life imprisonment. He then supposedly committed suicide in prison on 18 October 1977 using a handgun although it is also claimed that he was murdered in an extrajudicial killing. He was Ensslin's boyfriend and described as a Marlon Brando type.
Gudrun Ensslin	15 August 1940	18 October 1977	Gudrun Ensslin
Gudrun Ensslin was one of the founding members of the RAF and the girlfriend of Andreas Baader. She helped free Baader from police custody in 1970 and was involved in bank raids and arson and was given three times life imprisonment when charged at Stammheim. Supposedly committed suicide by hanging in prison on 18 October 1977, although it is also claimed that she was murdered in an extrajudicial killing.
Ulrike Meinhof	7 October 1934	9 May 1976	Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Meinhof was another founding member of the RAF, Meinhof was a well-known journalist who wrote for the konkret, and was the wife of Klaus Rainer Röhl. She helped free Andreas Baader from police custody in 1970 and was involved in car theft, arson and bank robbery. She was arrested. Testifying at the trial of Horst Mahler, regarding a statement by the two in support of the September 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, she stated "Auschwitz means that six million Jews were murdered and carted on to the rubbish dumps of Europe for being that which was maintained of them — Money-Jews.". Meinhof was given an eight-year prison sentence for freeing Baader. She apparently killed herself in her prison cell by hanging on May 9, 1976. After a later examination of Meinhof's brain, a psychiatrist claimed that Meinhof's 'slide into terror' might be due to surgery performed in 1962 to remove a brain tumour.
Horst Mahler	23 January 1936		Horst Mahler
Horst Mahler was a German lawyer who is considered another founding member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Mahler wanted to convert Marxist theory into praxis and decided to do this through the establishment of urban guerrillas i.e. The Baader-Meinhof Gang. His chance came to do this when he met Baader and Ensslin who he defended in court in 1968 against their arson charge. Mahler organised several bank raids and is believed to have organised the expedition to Jordan to train in urban guerrilla warfare with the PLO in 1970. Later that year Mahler was arrested after police discovered an RAF hideout in Berlin. Mahler was sentenced to fourteen years in prison in 1972 (of which he had already served two). It was around this time that Mahler began to shed his Marxist beliefs and a manifesto that he composed for the Baader-Meinhof gang expressing his new ideas was renounced by the rest of the group. After this Mahler was virtually kicked out of the group; a group he helped establish. He was, however, offered the chance to leave prison in 1975 - a demand of the Peter Lorenz kidnappers, but he refused to go. He was released from prison in the early 1980s, was allowed to practice law again and completely reversed his politics. He became interested in neo-fascism and has recently joined the far right Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands.

Other First Generation Members

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Main Article
Horst Söhnlein	13 October 1943		Horst Söhnlein
Horst Söhnlein never really became a member of RAF but on 2 April 1968, along with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Thorwald Proll, he set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt. All four were arrested and convicted of arson and endangering human life and were sentenced to three years in prison. In June 1969 they were temporarily paroled under an amnesty for political prisoners, but in November of that year, the Federal Constitutional Court ordered that they return to custody. Unlike his three confederates, who fled to Paris, Horst Söhnlein complied with the order.
Thorwald Proll	22 July 1941		Thorwald Proll
Thorwald Proll never really became a member of RAF but on 2 April 1968, along with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Horst Söhnlein, he set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt. All four were arrested convicted of arson and endangering human life and were sentenced to three years in prison. In November of that year, the Federal Constitutional Court ordered that they return to custody, but Thorwald Proll and Baader and Enslin went underground and made their way to France. They stayed there for a time in a house owned by prominent French journalist and revolutionary Régis Debray. He introduced his sister, Astrid Proll, to the RAF. She joined Baader, Ensslin and others in forming the Red Army Faction. However, Thorwald Proll turned away from the group and in December left Paris for England. On 21 November 1970 he turned himself in to the public prosecutor's office in Berlin. In October 1971 he was released early from prison.
Jan-Carl Raspe	24 July 1944	18 October 1977	Jan-Carl Raspe
Jan-Carl Raspe was an early member of the Baader-Meinhof gang and was captured a short while before both Holger Meins and Andreas Baader were arrested in Frankfurt in 1972 (he had been the driver of their Porsche Targa). Alongside Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Stammheim. Raspe supposedly committed suicide in his cell using a 9 mm Heckler & Koch handgun on 18 October 1977, however, it is also claimed that he was murdered in an extrajudicial killing.
Irmgard Möller	13 May 1947		Irmgard Möller
Irmgard Möller was an early member of the Baader-Meinhof gang and murdered three people when she drove a car full of explosives into United States Military Intelligence (G-2) Headquarters at Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg (1972). In July 1972, she was arrested and given a lengthy prison sentence. She supposedly attempted suicide by stabbing herself in the chest on 18 October 1977 in her prison cell in Stammheim, but she survived and says that there was no suicide pact between Baader-Meinhof Gang members Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader and that they were the victims of extrajudicial killing. She was released from prison in the 1990s.
Holger Meins	26 October 1941	9 November 1974	Holger Meins
Holger Meins was a leftist cinematography student in West Germany and was tired of being hassled by police for his political viewpoint. He joined the Baader-Meinhof gang quite early on along with Beate Sturm and was seen somewhat as a leading member. In 1971 he was arrested alongside Jan-Carl Raspe and Andreas Baader during a shoot-out with the police in Frankfurt. In prison the Baader-Meinhof gang called for a hunger strike, as they felt they were being treated unfairly by the government. Meins died on 11 November 1974 as a result of the hunger strike. Meins weighed less than 100 pounds at the time of his death; he was over six feet (1.8 m) tall. His death sparked rage amongst RAF members everywhere. The terrorists who executed two hostages during the West German embassy siege in Stockholm named their commando unit in his honour.
Astrid Proll	29 May 1947		Astrid Proll
Astrid Proll was the younger sister of Thorwald Proll and met Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin through him. Proll was involved in bank robbery and also was an expert car thief. She was the getaway driver for Baader after he was freed from police custody by Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Ingrid Schubert and Irene Goergens in 1970. She was arrested in Hamburg on 6 May and was imprisoned but released for health reasons. However, she quickly absconded to England where she worked in various jobs. Proll was discovered and arrested by the Special Branch in 1978 and returned to West Germany in 1979 to fight her case there. She was given five and a half years imprisonment on account of bank robbery and falsifying documents. However, she had already spent at least two-thirds of that time in German and English prisons and therefore was released immediately. She did not rejoin the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
Ingrid Schubert	November 1944	13 November 1977
Ingrid Schubert was involved in freeing Baader from police custody in 1970 (along with Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Irene Goergens and Peter Homann) and also took part in a few bank raids. Later that year police discovered an RAF hideout in Berlin and entered the hideout to find Schubert there. She produced fake ID but when searched, a gun was found on her person. She was subsequently arrested and sentenced to thirteen years in prison for freeing Baader. After Meinhof's suicide in 1976, Schubert was transferred to Stammheim to soothe and console Ensslin, and she was then transferred to Stadelheim Prison in Munich after Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe and Andreas Baader all supposedly committed suicide on 18 October 1977. Two weeks later Schubert followed suit and committed suicide in her prison cell by hanging on 13 November 1977.
Monika Berberich
Monika Berberich was involved in a bank robbery and was also one of the members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang who trained in urban guerrilla warfare in Jordan with the PLO in 1970. She also facilitated Andreas Baader's escape from custody in 1970 by getting permission from prison officials to let Baader write a book with Ulrike Meinhof. Later that year, Berberich arrived at a Berlin apartment used as an RAF hideout. Hearing noises coming from the room, she listened at the door but was spotted by police who had been watching the apartment (the police had also just arrested both Ingrid Schubert and Mahler at that address a few hours beforehand). Berberich was dragged into the apartment and a few minutes later, Irene Goergens and Brigitte Asdonk (fellow terrorists) arrived at the door. Berberich screamed out and tried to warn them, but she was jumped on by the police. Both Asdonk and Goergens were arrested. Berberich was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment in 1974 (of which she had already served four years) for bank robbery and membership in a criminal association. However in 1976 she managed to escape from a maximum security prison in Berlin (along with J2M's Inge Viett, Gabriele Rollnick and Juliane Plambeck) by overpowering a guard and going over the wall. However, she was re-arrested 14 days later on July 21. In 1995 Berberich took part in an interview for a BBC documentary called "States of Terror." In the interview Berberich revealed that she has not changed her passion against the "fascism" of the German state.
Marianne Herzog	October 1939
Marianne Herzog was the girlfriend of Jan Carl Raspe and joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang along with him in the early 1970s. Her apartment was sometimes used for Baader-Meinhof Gang meetings. It is thought that when Astrid Proll was arrested in 1970, she attempted to free her from prison. Herzog herself was arrested on 3 December 1971 along with Rolf Pohle after police had increased their efforts in the search for RAF/J2M members. She was charged with involvement in a criminal association.
Hans-Jürgen Bäcker
Hans-Jürgen Bäcker was one of the earliest members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (joining before Andreas Baader was freed from police custody in 1970). His codename was Harp. He trained in Jordan with the PLO alongside the other original core members of the group shortly after Baader's escape. After the arrests of Horst Mahler, Ingrid Schubert, Irene Goergens, Monica Berberich and Brigitte Asdonk in October 1970, Bäcker was suspected by the remaining members of the gang to be a double agent working with the police. He was already untrusted in the group because he didn't get on well with Andreas Baader as he couldn't accept his authority. When, at a group meeting, Bäcker was confronted about his supposed betrayal he stormed out and the rest of the group accepted this as an admission of guilt. Bäcker parted ways with the group soon after that albeit because of his supposed deceit, Astrid Proll tried to assassinate him in a driveby shooting, but she missed. Bäcker was arrested on 2 February 1971. In 1974 he was tried and acquitted of participating in the raid that rescued Baader.
Thomas Weissbecker	February 1944	2 March 1972
Thomas 'Tommy' Weissbecker was an associate of Horst Mahler and a minor member of the Baader-Meinhof gang. He was first involved with the Blues-Scene and West Berlin Tupamaros but in July 1971 he met with som RAF members and together with Angela Luther he expressed interest and started working with the RAF. In 1971 he was charged and acquitted with assaulting a Springer journalist. Later, on March 2, 1972, Weissbecker, along with Carmen Roll, was stopped by police outside a hotel in Augsburg. Weissbecker was shot dead by the police when he reached into his pocket, supposedly to grab his gun. However, Stefan Aust claims that he was simply reaching into his pocket to produce ID. On 12 May 1972, over two months after Weissbecker's death, RAF terrorists bombed a police station in Augsburg and a Criminal Investigations Agency in Munich. They claimed responsibility for the bombings in the name of the 'Tommy Weissbecker Kommando'.
Wolfgang Grundmann	June 1948
Wolfgang Grundmann was very politically active and was associated with underground papers such as Agit 883. Grundmann was the boyfriend of Ingeborg Barz and joined the RAF along with her in 1971. It seems he took part in at least one bank raid on December 22, 1971 in Kaiserslautern alongside Barz and Klaus Junschke. On 2 March 1972, Grundmann and Manfred Grashof entered an RAF apartment used for forgery. Unbeknownst to them, police were hiding in the apartment, ready to capture anyone who would enter. When the police drew their weapons on Grundmann and Grashof, Grashof quickly drew his pistol and returned fire, but Grundmann surrendered and put his hands up straight away. Grashof was wounded, and then both men were arrested. Grundmann was released four years later in 1976.
Werner Hoppe	February 1949
Werner Hoppe was a lumpenproletariat self-cured drug addict. Hoppe joined the Baader-Meinhof gang around 1970 and was with Petra Schelm when she sped past a police roadblock on 15 July 1971 in a BMW. A short car chase ensued with the BMW eventually being forced off the road. Hoppe ran off in a different direction from Schelm (who was subsequently shot to death), and was followed by a police helicopter. He was eventually surrounded by 80 or so policemen, so he surrendered. He was arrested and imprisoned.
Ingeborg Barz	July 1948
Ingeborg Barz was known to play around with radical politics (she had joined a revolutionary group called Black Help in Berlin) before joining the Baader-Meinhof Gang with her boyfriend Wolfgang Grundmann in 1971. Barz was seemingly involved in at least one bank robbery (on December 22, 1971 in Kaiserslautern - with Grundmann) where a policeman was shot dead. Barz soon decided she wanted out of the group because she disliked their violent ways and on the February 21, 1972 she phoned her mother, tearful and distraught, saying that she wanted to come home. Barz disappeared around this time and was never seen alive again. A decomposed body was found beside the autobahn near Munich in July 1973, believed, but not proven, to have been Barz's. It was presumed that Andreas Baader executed her after he found out that she wanted to leave the Gang. Karl-Heinz Ruhland said that the general idea was that if anyone wanted to desert the group then they would be liquidated and Gerhard Müller, a former RAF member, claimed that Baader murdered her, however his story was very inconsistent and so Barz's murder was never solved.
Karl-Heinz Ruhland	March 1938
Karl-Heinz Ruhland was in the employ of Eric Grusdat. Ruhland helped Grusdat doctor stolen cars for the Baader-Meinhof Gang and later became a more active member of the Gang around October 1970; he went with Ulrike Meinhof to Hannover, Cologne and Oldenburg to scout out safe houses for the gang and took part in bank robbery and also raided some municipal offices (stealing blank passports, ID cards etc.). On 20 December 1970, Ruhland was driving through Oberhausen with fellow RAF members Ali Jansen and Beate Sturm when police stopped his car. When they checked his papers they noticed something was wrong with them. Ruhland turned himself in but first gave his associates time to escape. When in custody Ruhland provided detailed accounts of his time with the RAF and informed police about the whereabouts of some safehouses. He also agreed to give evidence against Horst Mahler in December 1972. Ruhland was never part of the main circle of the Gang even though he was Meinhof's occasional lover. He hardly knew any of the other members of the gang by their real names (he only knew their codenames). He once punched Jansen in the face after he defaced a Volkswagen in Oberhausen.
Ulrich Scholze	December 1947
Ulrich 'Uli' Scholze was a very minor member of the Red Army Faction and was only involved with the Gang for a few months in 1970. On 21 December 1970, Scholze tried to steal a Mercedes-Benz along with Astrid Proll, Ulrike Meinhof and Ali Jansen, but the car back-fired and woke its owner, who subsequently called the police. Proll and Meinhof escaped, but Scholze and Jansen were chased by the police and caught. Scholze went quietly, but Jansen fired crazily at the police. Both men were arrested, but Scholze was released the next day. He quit the Baader-Meinhof Gang and returned home to his mother and college. In 2007 he worked as a professor (Prof. Dr.-Ing.) in Hochschule Reutlingen.
Manfred Grashof	October 1946
Manfred Grashof was an army deserter. Grashof seems to have been intrigued by the idea of communism and joined the countercultural commune Kommune 1 in Berlin in the late 1960s. After this he decided to take more direct action against the state and joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang along with his girlfriend Petra Schelm in 1970 and trained with the gang in Jordan under the tutelage of the PLO. He once escaped arrest with Astrid Proll on 10 February 1971 when they were stopped by police. Although Grashof did produce a gun, he didn't fire a shot, and he managed to run away from the police when a sympathetic passer-by bought him a U-Bahn ticket. However, Grashof wasn't so lucky the next time. On 2 March 1972 in Hamburg, Grashof and Wolfgang Grundmann walked into a trap; the police were lying in wait in an apartment used by the RAF for forgery. Grashof started firing at the police. He fatally wounded one of them (who died three weeks later in hospital) but was shot twice and arrested. He survived the ordeal but was transferred from hospital to an isolation cell (with the lights switched on day and night) when he was well enough. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 2, 1977. To avenge his imprisonment, the RAF terrorists who bombed judge Wolfgang Buddenberg's car on May 15, 1972 named their commando 'The Manfred Grashof Commando' in his honour.
Heinrich Jansen	February 1948
Heinrich 'Ali' Jansen (born February 1948) joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang after they returned from training in Jordan. He participated in some Berlin bank raids in September 1970 and also helped Karl-Heinz Ruhland and Ulrike Meinhof steal cars and raid municipal offices (for blank passports and ID cards, etc.). He was known for getting drunk, and once in Oberhausen he spent money allotted for fake IDs on alcohol instead. Also, he caused another incident in Oberhausen when he defaced the Volkswagen of a radio DJ. He was dealt with by Ruhland, who punched him in the face. He was nearly arrested once on 20 December 1970, when he was driving through Oberhausen with Ruhland and Beate Sturm and their car was stopped by police. He managed to escape with Sturm, but Ruhland was arrested. However, a day later on 21 December, Jansen was arrested when trying to steal a Mercedes-Benz with Ulrike Meinhof, Astrid Proll and Uli Scholze. The car back-fired and woke its owner, who called the police. Proll and Meinhof escaped when the police arrived, but Scholze and Jansen weren't so lucky. Jansen whipped out his handgun and started firing crazily at the police. No one was hurt, however, and both Jansen and Scholze were arrested. Jansen was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Petra Schelm	August 1950	15 July 1971
Petra Schelm joined the Baader-Meinhof group along with her boyfriend Manfred Grashof. She travelled to Jordan alongside the rest of the Gang and trained in urban guerrilla warfare with the PLO in May 1970. On July 15, 1971, Schelm was driving through Hamburg with Werner Hoppe when she sped her BMW through a police roadblock. The police gave chase and forced her BMW off the road. Schelm and Hoppe ran off in different directions. Hoppe was followed by a police helicopter and was caught and arrested, but Schelm did not surrender. She threw away a jacket she was holding to reveal a handgun and fired at the police, but the police returned fire. Jillian Becker states that Schelm was killed by a burst of gunfire from a submachine gun, but Stefan Aust states that it was a single bullet wound to the head that killed Schelm. Additionally, a closeup photograph of Schelm taken at the scene immediately after her death (probably by a police photographer) clearly shows a single gunshot wound through the eye. Regardless, Schelm died, aged 20. Some RAF members called for "retribution" for Schelm's death. She was buried at a cemetery in Spandau. At her funeral, fifty or so youths laid a red flag on her grave, though policemen later came and removed it. Irmgard Moeller bombed the Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg on 24 May 1972. She claimed responsibility in the name of the Commando 15 July (the date of Petra Schelm's death) in honour of Schelm.
Brigitte Asdonk	October 1947
Brigitte Asdonk joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang quite early in the 1970s and trained with them in Jordan under the tutelage of the PLO. She participated in some bank raids in Berlin, but her life of crime was halted in October 1970 when she walked with Irene Goergens into a Berlin apartment in which police were hiding. She was immediately arrested but released from prison in 1982.
Peter Homann	1936
Peter Homann was a close friend of Ulrike Meinhof. He lived with Meinhof in Berlin and it is believed that he helped Meinhof free Andreas Baader from police custody in 1970, along with Ingrid Schubert, Gudrun Ensslin and Irene Goergens. Homann travelled to Jordan later in 1970 alongside the Baader-Meinhof Gang to train in urban guerrilla warfare with the PLO. However, in Jordan Homann fell out with Andreas Baader and distanced himself from the group. He associated himself more with the fedayeen in the camp, and this led his fellow Gang members to suspect him of being a traitor. He eventually had to be removed from the camp and given a minder for his own safety. When he returned to West Germany, he left the Baader-Meinhof Gang. He soon travelled to a hippie colony near Mount Etna in Sicily where Meinhof's twin children were staying. He took the children and returned them to their father, Klaus Rainer Rohl. He did this because Meinhof wanted to send her children to an orphan camp in Jordan, even though she would never see them again. Homann was involved in a controversy in 1997 when he gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he suggested that Horst Mahler had "sentenced" Homann to death in Jordan in 1970 (and Homann only thwarted the plan by leaving the training camp early). Mahler took severe umbrage at the suggestion that he called for Homann's death.
Ilse Stachowiak	May 1954
Ilse 'Tinny' Stachowiak was one of the youngest members of the group when she joined in late 1970 at only 16 years old. She was involved in scouting out banks to see if they were suitable to be robbed. However on 12 April 1971, at a Frankfurt train station a policeman recognised her from a wanted poster, and she was arrested. She was given a short sentence. Upon her release she immediately returned underground. In 1972 she was involved in the 19 May bombing of the Springer Headquarters in Hamburg in which 17 people were injured. A month later in June, she was staying in Angela Luther's apartment when it was wrecked by explosions. She survived and managed to escape, however she was rearrested on 1 February 1974 and imprisoned.
Irene Goergens	April 1951
Irene Goergens was the abandoned, illegitimate daughter of an American soldier. She lived in a state home and it was there that she met Ulrike Meinhof (who was doing research for her film Bambule), and after that she became a sort of protégé of Meinhof. She was involved in the freeing of Andreas Baader in 1970 (along with Ingrid Schubert, Gudrun Ensslin, Peter Homann and Meinhof) and she also took part in some Berlin bank raids. She was arrested in October 1970 with Brigitte Asdonk when she walked into an apartment in which police were hiding. She was released from prison with remission on 13 May 1977 and did not rejoin the Gang.
Beate Sturm	1950
Beate Sturm, Holger Meins' protégé, briefly joined the Baader-Meinhof Gang in late 1970, probably for the same reasons Meins did (weariness of police harassment) but she also claimed she was trying to recreate the exciting world created in U.S. crime films. During her time with the Gang, Sturm was often selected to go into shops to buy things because it was believed that she was the one who looked the most bourgeois. On 20 December 1970, Sturm was nearly caught as she was travelling through Oberhausen with Karl-Heinz Ruhland and Ali Jansen when their car was stopped by police. Ruhland was arrested, but she managed to escape along with Jansen. A month later in January 1971, Sturm was scouting out banks in Kassel when she decided she no longer wanted to live a life of crime. She called home and subsequently left the Gang without ever having technically committed any crimes. She later provided detailed information about the workings and structure of the gang. Her codename was Jutta.
Eric Grusdat	April 1936
Eric Grusdat owned his own auto shop. He met Horst Mahler via Hans-Jürgen Bäcker. Through monetary enticement and political persuasion Grusdat, along with his employee Karl-Heinz Ruhland, agreed to doctor stolen vehicles for the Baader-Meinhof Gang, however he soon became much more involved than that; in 1970 he was involved in bank robbery in Berlin and devised an instrument (much like a road spike) made of pipes and nails he called a Crows Foot, which could be used to stop police cars if they were ever chasing the gang. After Horst Mahler was arrested, Grusdat suggested building a small helicopter in order to get him out. Nothing came of the idea. He was arrested and imprisoned on 4 December 1970.
Katharina Hammerschmidt	February 1943	1975
Katharina Hammerschmidt was an early acquaintance of Gudrun Ensslin from the student days and provided accommodation for Baader-Meinhof Gang members around late 1970. Her house was eventually raided by police and Hammerschmidt fled abroad, but she grew tired of life on the run and returned to West Germany in 1972 to hand herself over to authorities. When in custody she developed a brain tumour from which she died in 1975. Prison doctors were chastised for not noticing it early enough, and accusations were made that prison authorities failed to give her proper medical care.
Kay-Werner Allnach
Kay-Werner Allnach was an early member of RAF but was first arrested in February, 1972. In August, 1976 he and other imprisoned RAF members were placed on trial for their participation. During his previous two years in solitary confinement and in a hospital recovering from intestinal cancer, Allnach had chosen to break from the RAF. During his trial, however, Allnach refused to testify against his former comrades.
Dierk Hoff
Dierk Hoff was not a real member of the RAF but built several bombs used by them. He built the so-called "baby bomb". The construction consisted of a steel container a woman could carry. The container then looked like the belly of a pregnant woman. Once the supposedly pregnant women had placed the bomb, she could bloat a balloon which simulated a thick belly. The baby bomb was repeatedly reported but it was never used. Hoff parted with the RAF after the core members of the first generation were arrested in 1972.
Christa Eckes
Christa Eckes was arrested on 4 February 1972 when the police raided RAF safehouses simultaneously in Hamburg and Frankfurt together with Helmut Pohl, Ilse Stachowiak, Eberhard Becker, Margrit Schiller, Kay-Werner Allnach and Wolfgang Beer. On 28 September 1977, she was sentenced to seven years in prison. After her release, she was arrested again on 2 July 1984 in Frankfurt, after several RAF members accidentally discharged a gun into the apartment below their safehouse. The other arrested were Helmut Pohl, Stefan Frey, Ingrid Jakobsmeier, Barbara Ernst and Ernst-Volker Staub.
Angela Luther	1940
Angela Luther was first involved with the Blues-Scene and West Berlin Tupamaros, but in July, 1971, she met with som RAF members, and together with Thomas Weissbecker she expressed interest and started working with the RAF. On 12 May 1972, she participated in the bombing of a police station in Augsburg together with Irmgard Möller, and on 24 May 1972 she was involved in the bombing of the officers club and the Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg.
Eberhard Becker
Eberhard Becker was...
Jörg Lang
Jörg Lang was...
Sigurd Debus
Sigurd Debus was...
Helmut Pohl
Helmut Pohl was...
Ronald Augustin
Ronald Augustin was a Dutch RAF terrorist, he joined the raf in 1969 and he is locked up in 1973.

Second generation Red Army Faction (1975-1982)

By 1972, a large number of the core members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang had been captured and imprisoned. However, there were other young terrorists available to swell the dwindling ranks of the Gang. These revolutionaries mostly had similar backgrounds to the first generation e.g. they were middle class and frequently students. Most of them joined the Gang after their own groups dissolved e.g. the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK) and Movement 2 June (J2M).

Former J2M members

Movement 2 June was founded in 1972 and was allied with the RAF but was ideologically anarchist as opposed to the Marxist RAF. In the early eighties, the movement disbanded and many members then joined the RAF.

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Main Article
Verena Becker	31 July 1952		Verena Becker
Verena Becker was freed from prison in 1975 as part of the Peter Lorenz kidnapping deal. She was likely recruited into the RAF by Siegfried Haag in Yemen between 1975 and 1976. Becker was one the suspects of the Siegfried Buback murder case.
Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann	1951	1995	Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann
Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann was also freed from prison in 1975 as part of the Peter Lorenz kidnapping deal.
Norbert Kröcher	1950		Norbert Kröcher
Norbert Kröcher was co-founder of Movement 2 June and participated in a number of bank robberies in the 1970s. He then settled in Stockholm and integrated into the radical leftist scene there. In response to the failed West German embassy siege by the RAF in Stockholm and the swift extradition of the surviving members of "Kommando Holger Meins" to Germany, Kröcher took part in planning the so-called Operation Leo, the kidnapping of Anna-Greta Leijon, who as immigration minister was responsible for the swift extradition. The operation failed when the investigating authorities gained knowledge of the plan. On 31 March 1977 Kröcher was arrested in Stockholm. Some days later was extradited and later sentenced as a terrorist. He was released in 1989.
Inge Viett	12 January 1944
Inge Viett joined the RAF in 1980 when Movement 2 June was disbanded. As a member of J2M she was imprisoned but also escaped prison several times. On 1 April 1982 she fled to the DDR together with Henning Beer and was given new a identity and lived under the name Eva-Maria Sommer in Dresden, where she trained as a repro photographer. She later moved to Magdeburg. After German reunification, she was arrested on 12 June 1990. She was sentenced to 13 years in prison because of a shoot out in Paris in August, 1981, where she attempted to kill a police officer. In January, 1997 she was released from prison and is now a writer.
Ingrid Barabass
Ingrid Barabass was first arrested alongside Sieglinde Hofmann in Paris in 1980 following a raid on a RAF safehouse. She was then again arrested in Frankfurt on 4 July 1985. She had been spotted in Paris shortly before René Audran's assassination by the Action directe, a French ally to the RAF.
Ingrid Siepmann	12 June 1944
Ingrid Siepmann was in 1974 sentenced to 13 years in prison for robbing a bank in Hamburg on 6 August 1973 together Ilse Stachowiak. On 3 March 1975, she was released as part of the Peter Lorenz kidnapping and exchange together with Rolf Pohle, Verena Becker, Rolf Heissler and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann and ended up in South Yemen. She then lived in a training camp for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) and should have been part of the abduction of the Austrian textile industrial Walter Palmers in November, 1977 but was not involved when it was put into action. She is believed to have been killed by an Israeli airstrike in 1982 in Lebanon.
Juliane Plambeck	16 July 1952	25 July 1980
Juliane Plambeck was arrested together with members of Movement 2 June Inge Viett and Ralf Reinders on 9 September 1975. They are all suspects in the Peter Lorenz kidnapping. On 7 July 1976, she along with RAF member Monika Berberich and J2M members Gabriele Rollnick and Inge Viett overpowered a guard and scaled the wall, escaping from the Lehrter Women's Prison in West Berlin. On 25 July 1980, Plambeck, then a RAF member, and Wolfgang Beer were killed in a traffic accident outside of Bietigheim-Bissingen. In the car several weapons, one of which had been used in the abduction of Hanns Martin Schleyer, are found next to fake identification documents and vehicle registration.
Rolf Heissler	3 June 1948
Rolf Heissler became acquainted with Brigitte Mohnhaupt in the late 1960s and first became a member of the Munich Tupamaros and later joined the RAF together with his ex-wife Mohnhaupt, but he was also closely acquainted with the Movement 2 June. On 13 April 1971 he was involved in a bank robbery in Munich but was arrested. In 1972 he was sentenced to a six-year imprisonment. On 3 March 1975, he was released as part of the Peter Lorenz kidnapping and exchange together with Rolf Pohle, Verena Becker, Ingrid Siepmann and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann and ended up in South Yemen. In October 1976 he returned undetected to Germany and on 1 November 1978 he and Adelheid Schulz shot two Dutch customs officers, Dionysius de Jong and Johannes Goemans, at a passport control in Kerkrade and seriously injured two more. de Jong died instantly, and Goemans died on 14 November 1978. When he was arrested on 9 June 1979 in Frankfurt am Main, Heissler was seriously injured by a shot in the head but survived. On 10 November 1982, he was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years for murders and membership in a terrorist organisation. On 25 October 2001, he was released on probation.
Rolf Pohle	4 January 1942	7 February 2004
Rolf Pohle was first arrested on 17 December 1971 when he attempted to buy thirty-two firearms in a gun shop in Neu-Ulm which the police claimed were meant for the RAF. In 1974 he was sentenced to four years in prison because of membership in a criminal organisation, weapon possession and support activities for the RAF. On 3 March 1975, he was released as part of the Peter Lorenz kidnapping and exchange together with Rolf Heissler, Verena Becker, Ingrid Siepmann and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann and ended up in South Yemen. On 21 July 1976, he was arrested again in Athens but first extradited to Germany on 1 October after a lengthly negotiation with the Greeks. On top of his original conviction he was given a further three years and three months. He was released in 1982 and returned to Greece two years later. Until the outbreak of cancer, he worked as a teacher and translator. Pohle himself continued to deny any profound relations with the RAF. He died on 7 February 2004.

The Haag/Mayer Group

The Haag/Mayer Group was a minor group of members within the second generation of the RAF. They were recruited by Siegfried Haag, who organised the regrouping of the RAF in the mid 1970s together with Roland Mayer before Brigitte Mohnhaupt took over the leadership after their arrest in 1976. Knut Folkerts from SPK and Verena Becker from J2M was also part of this group.

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Main Article
Siegfried Haag	March 1945		Siegfried Haag
A sympathetic lawyer for the first generation of the RAF turned terrorist in late 1972. Siegfried Haag became something of a leader amongst the second generation RAF until he was arrested together with Roland Mayer on 30 November 1976 on the Frankfurt-Kassel highway. On 19 December 1979 he was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. In detention, he distanced himself from the RAF. In February, 1987 the rest of his punishment to the probation was suspended because he was seriously ill.
Roland Mayer
Roland Mayer helped Siegfried Haag regroup the RAF when most of the first generation had been arrested and imprisoned. He was arrested with Haag on 30 November 1976 on the Frankfurt-Kassel highway. He was later sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment.
Christian Klar	20 May 1952		Christian Klar
Christian Klar became a prominent member of the second generation RAF and was implicated in a number of high profile assassinations. He was released from prison in December, 2008.
Adelheid Schulz	31 March 1955		Adelheid Schulz
Adelheid Schulz was involved with terrorism in the seventies and became a significant perpetrator of the German Autumn. By the late seventies and early eighties, she was one of the RAF's most wanted terrorists. She was arrested in 1982.
Günter Sonnenberg	21 July 1954
Günter Sonnenberg participated in the murder of Siegfried Buback and his two companions on 7 April 1977. On 3 May 1977, he and Verena Becker were captured in Singen. The arrest ended in a shoot out with the police and Sonnenberg was seriously injured and suffered brain damage. On 26 April 1978 he was sentenced to twice life imprisonment. In May 1992 he was released on probation.
Peter-Jürgen Boock	3 September 1951		Peter-Jürgen Boock
Boock was a former drug addict who had left home at an early age. He became an involved member of the second generation RAF and took part in the Ponto and Schleyer incidents. He was arrested in 1981.
Uwe Folkerts	1948
Uwe Folkerts was arrested on 5 May 1977 together with Johannes Thimme in connection with the Siegfried Buback assassination. In late 1978 he was found guilty of lending his car to Adelheid Schulz and Sabine Schmitz and sentenced to sixteen months imprisonment.
Sabine Schmitz	1956
Sabine Schmitz joined the RAF sometime in 1976 but was arrested the same year on 13 December following an unsuccessful bank raid in Vienna together with Waltraud Boock.
Waltraud Boock
Waltraud Boock was arrested on 13 December 1976 following an unsuccessful bank raid in Vienna together with Sabine Schmitz. On 4 February 1977 she was sentenced to 15 years.

Other Second Generation Members

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Main Article
Susanne Albrecht	1 March 1951		Susanne Albrecht
A wealthy student turned terrorist, Susanne Albrecht was involved in the murder of her godfather Jürgen Ponto. In 1980 she fled to East Germany, though was later caught and arrested.
Sigrid Sternebeck	19 June 1949
Sigrid Sternebeck moved to Hamburg in 1971 and met Susanne Albrecht, Silke Maier-Witt, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Monika Helbing and Bernhard Rössner. In 1977 she joined the RAF and went underground. In 1980 she left the RAF and received asylum and a new identity in East Germany. She was arrested on 15 June 1990 in Schwedt together with her husband, Ralf Baptist Friedrich. After her arrest she cooperated with the police and prosecutors and in 22 June 1992 sentenced to half a year in prison due to her participation in a murder attempt on Alexander Haig and the assassination of Hanns Martin Schleyer. Today she lives under a different name in Northern Germany.
Silke Maier-Witt	21 January 1950
Silke Maier-Witt only had a minor involvement in the kidnap of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and broke away from the RAF in 1979. She escaped into East Germany to avoid arrest and lived there until her capture in 1990. She served five years in jail before going on to work as a peace activist in Kosovo.
Angelika Speitel	12 February 1952		Angelika Speitel
An associate of the lawyer Klaus Croissant, Speitel and her husband Volker Speitel both joined the RAF in the seventies. Speitel was arrested in 1978 after a shoot-out with police in a forest in Dortmund.
Volker Speitel	1950
Volker Speitel and his wife Angelika Speitel both joined the RAF in the seventies. He worked in Klaus Croissant's office. Where his wife was an active member, he was more of a supporter of the RAF. He was arrested in 1977 together with Rosemarie Preiss on a train in Puttgarden and cooperated with the police and prosecutors. He was sentenced to three years and two months for supporting a terrorist organisation, and he was released from prison in 1979.
Willi-Peter Stoll	12 June 1950	6 September 1978
An RAF member who was one of the men directly involved with the kidnap of Hanns-Martin Schleyer. He was said to have changed mentally after the event, and he became depressed and withdrew from the RAF. On September 6, 1978, Stoll was having dinner in a Chinese restaurant in the Red Light District in Düsseldorf when he was approached by police. He drew his gun and a shoot-out followed that resulted in Stoll's death.
Rolf Wagner	30 August 1944		Rolf Wagner
An involved member of the RAF, Wagner is thought to have been directly involved in the murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer. He was arrested in 1979 after a shoot-out with the police that left an innocent bystander dead.
Stefan Wisniewski	8 April 1953		Stefan Wisniewski
Stefan Wisniewski was a former inmate of a reform school who joined the RAF around 1974. He trained in guerilla warfare in a training camp in Yemen (1976). He is a suspect in the Siegfried Buback murder case.
Monika Helbing	16 November 1953
Monika Helbing joined the RAF in 1974 and was involved in the occupation of the Amnesty International offices in Hamburg. In 1976 she went underground and with Christian Klar and other members form the "Southern German cell" of the RAF. She was involved in the preparation and follow-up of the kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer in Fall, 1977. In 1980 she left the RAF and received asylum and a new identity in East Germany. She was arrested on 14 June 1990 in Frankfurt an der Oder and later on 24 February 1992 she was sentenced to seven years in prison. After her arrest she cooperated with the police and prosecutors and testified extensively. She was released in 1995 and today lives under a different name.
Christof Wackernagel	27 August 1951
Christof Wackernagel joined the RAF in 1977, and on 11 November 1977 he was arrested together with Gerd Schneider in Amsterdam. A year later they were extradited to West Germany and Wackernagel charged with participation in the Zweibrücken courthouse bombing amongst other things. On 5 September 1980 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison but released in 1987.
Hans-Peter Konieczny
Hans-Peter Konieczny was recruited by lawyer Jörg Lang and had just joined the RAF in February 1972, when he on 7 July the same year was cornered by the police in Offenbach. He was persuaded to cooperate and set up Klaus Jünschke and Irmgard Möller, who was easily captured by the police. Konieczny was released from custody two months later.
Johannes Thimme	1956	1985
Johannes Thimme became affiliated with support scene of the RAF in 1977 and served several prison sentences. In 1985 he was killed and Claudia Wannersdorfer seriously injured when a bomb he was helping to plant at the Association for the Development of Air and Space Industries in Stuttgart exploded prematurely.
Henning Beer
Henning Beer was...
Wolfgang Beer
Wolfgang Beer was...
Christine Dümlein
Christine Dümlein was...
Michael Knoll
Michael Knoll was...
Christine Kuby
Christine Kuby was...
Werner Lotze
Werner Lotze was...
Gerd Schneider
Gerd Schneider was...

Third Generation Red Army Faction (1982-1993)

This generation was active mostly throughout the eighties and early nineties. Tom Vague describes them as more vicious than their predecessors and says that they perhaps didn't have as much cause as the earlier generations to rebel.

Third Generation Members

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Main Article
Wolfgang Grams	6 March 1953	27 June 1993	Wolfgang Grams
Wolfgang Grams started visiting Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin in jail after their arrest. He found the conditions of solitary confinement inhumane but only later when he met Birgit Hogefeld, and they began dating, moved in together, did he finally join the RAF. On June 27, 1993, members of the GSG 9 were to arrest Grams and Hogefeld at the train station in Bad Kleinen. During the arrest, Grams managed to pull a gun and shoot two officers, succeeding in killing one, Michael Newrzella. Officers were quoted as saying they saw Grams "suddenly fall backward" off of the station platform and onto track. Either before or after he fell, he shot himself in the head. He was taken to the hospital by helicopter, where he died from his wounds a few hours later.
Birgit Hogefeld	27 July 1956		Birgit Hogefeld
Birgit Hogefeld was...
Eva Haule	16 July 1954		Eva Haule
Eva Haule was...
Andrea Klump	13 May 1957		Andrea Klump
Andrea Klump was arrested on 15th September 1999 in Vienna and was extradited to Germany where she was sentenced to an initial 9 year jail term in 2001. This was subsequently extended by a further 12 years in 2004 when DNA evidence emerged linking her to a bomb attack on a bus load of refugee Soviet Jews carried out in Hungary in 1991.
Ernst-Volker Staub	1954
Ernst-Volker Staub is one out of three former members of RAF still on Germany's most-wanted list together with Daniela Klette and Burkhard Garweg.
Daniela Klette	1958
Daniela Klette is one out of three former members of RAF still on Germany's most-wanted list together with Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg.
Burkhard Garweg	1 September 1968
Burkhard Garweg is one out of three former members of RAF still on Germany's most-wanted list together with Ernst-Volker Staub and Daniela Klette.
Sabine Elke Callsen
Sabine Elke Callsen was...
Barbara Meyer
Barbara Meyer was...
Horst Ludwig Meyer	1956	1999
Horst Ludwig Meyer was killed in a shoot-out with Austrian police in Vienna on 15th September 1999. He was with Andrea Klump at the time.
Christoph Eduard Seidler
Christoph Eduard Seidler was...

References

• Aust, Stefan (2008). Baader-Meinhof Complex. Vintage. ISBN 1847920454.
• Becker, Jillian (1981). "The Red Army Faction: Another final battle on the stage of history" (PDF). Terrorism: An International Journal. 5 (1/2): 1–4. Retrieved November 2008. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |trans_title=, |laysummary=, |day=, |month=, and |laysource= (help)
• Becker, Jillian (1998). Hitler's Children: Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang. DIANE Publishing Company. ISBN 0788154729.
• Boock, Peter-Jürgen (2002). Die Entführung und Ermordung des Hanns-Martin Schleyer (in German). Eichborn. ISBN 3821839767.
• Dartnell, Michael York (1995). Action directe: ultra-left terrorism in France, 1979-1987. Routledge. ISBN 0714645664. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Vague, Tom (1994). Televisionaries: The Red Army Faction Story, 1963-1993. Rev Update edition (August 1994). AK Press. ISBN 1873176473.
• Smith, J. (2009). The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History: Volume 1: Projectiles for the People, Bind 1. PM Press. ISBN 1604860294. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Strassner, Alexander (2003). Die dritte Generation der "Roten Armee Fraktion": Entstehung, Struktur, Funktionslogik und Zerfall einer terroristischen Organisation (in German). VS Verlag. ISBN 3531141147.