Ulrike Meinhof and the Red Army Faction: Performing Terrorism

Ulrike Meinhof's entrance into the West German terrorist underground was both a footnote to the waning student movement of the late 1960s, and a preamble to the bloodiest period in Germany's post-war history. Meinhof fought to make herself heard as a high-profile journalist before becoming a founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in 1970. She continued writing in the underground and from 1972, in prison, until she was found dead in her cell in 1976. Leith Passmore traces Meinhof's struggle to communicate from her time as a journalist, through her escape to the underground, her prison years, and the Stammheim trial. He examines for the first time the performativity of terrorist acts of language, imagery, and physical violence to reveal how Meinhof made and re-made RAF terrorism.