Ahab makes a great impression on his first appearance in Moby Dick… And if either by birth or by circumstance something pathological was at work deep in his nature, this did not detract from his dramatic character. For tragic greatness always derives from a morbid break with health, you can be sure of that.
— Gudrun Ensslin
We have the most sexy terrorists, hands down.
The lady pictured above is Gudrun Ensslin (15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977), one of the founders and the de-facto leader of the first generation of the Rote Armee Fraktion (‘Red Army Faction’ - RAF for short), a militant left-wing terror organisation active for almost thirty years from 1970 to 1998. The self-described Communist and anti-Imperialist urban guerrilla group became infamous as one of the, if not the most violent and brutal left-wing terrorist organisation in Germany and the world. Having trained alongside the PLO in Palestine, the RAF fought what they perceived as a fascist state and Western Imperialism with a series of bank robberies, abductions, murders, bombings, and more, with their targets usually being figureheads of the German economy as well as US military bases in Germany. The second and third generations of the group came into being after the deaths of its founders, and were far more violent than the first generation RAF had ever been. The RAF was responsible for the bombing of the Axel Springer Verlag in May 1972, the West-German Embassy Siege of 1975, the German Autumn of 1977, as well as indirectly for the abduction of Lufthansa Flight 181 in 1977, and numerous other high-profile assassinations, attempted assassinations, and bombings. A police poster noting only a few of their operations during the mid-80s can be found here.
Despite its popular name in contemporary media, the ‘Baader-Meinhof Komplex’ (Baader-Meinhof Gang) was actually founded by Gudrun Ensslin along with her boyfriend Andreas Baader. The relative fame of popular journalist-turned-terrorist Ulrike Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) and loud, charismatic, and notorious Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977) led to the media adopting their names to cover the group. Nonetheless, it was highly-educated and intelligent Ensslin who was the driving and directing force and mastermind behind the group’s actions, rather than the more infamous Baader, who had started out as a petty thug.
The 2008 film The Baader-Meinhof Complex retells the story of the group’s origins and founding up to the mysterious deaths of its founding members in Stammheim Prison’s infamous ‘Death Night’. It’s a great watch, and fairly accurate as far as possible in a film.
It astonished me that Gudrun, who has always thought in a very rational, intelligent way, has experienced what is almost a condition of euphoric self-realization, a really holy self-realization… To me, that is more of a shock than the fire of the arson itself—seeing a human being make her way to self-realization through such acts. […] They must have wanted to tell us — Look, this is where we are, where you have brought us. It is the position you have put us in.
— Helmut Ensslin, Father
I feel that by her act, she did something liberating, even for our family.
— Ilse Ensslin, Mother
![wired:
It’s a rough economy for everyone: Photographer captures down-and-out superheroes.
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