Militant Subcultures: The Origins of West German Terrorism in the Late 1960s

Deutscher Herbst – “German Autumn” – was the name a group of filmmakers bestowed upon a series of terrorist attacks and the atmosphere of crisis they provoked in West Germany in late 1977. On September 5 of that year, the self-styled urban guerillas of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, RAF) kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, a prominent businessman, and demanded that imprisoned RAF members be freed as the condition for Schleyer’s release. After the government of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to meet the kidnappers’ terms, a group of Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa passenger jet and, like Schleyer’s kidnappers, demanded the release of the imprisoned RAF members. West German counterterrorist forces stormed the plane in the night of October 17-18 and succeeded in rescuing the 86 passengers on board. Later that same night, four imprisoned RAF members attempted suicide; three died, the fourth survived. Shortly after the raid on the hijacked plane, Schleyer was shot by his captors; his corpse was found on October 19. These events and the measures enacted in response to them gave new urgency to West Germany’s long-running debate on political violence and civil liberties. This lecture series will revisit the Deutscher Herbst and West Germany’s confrontation with terrorism.