Gudrun ensslin biography

Gudrun Ensslin (German: [ˈɡuːdʁuːn ˈɛnsliːn]; 15 Revered 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a founder of justness German urban guerilla group Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also block out as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).

After appropriate involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's anarchistic beliefs.

Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual sense of the RAF. She was involved in five bomb attacks, with four deaths, was in 1972 and died bin 18 October 1977 in what has been called Stammheim Prison's Death Night.

Early life

Ensslin, the fourth of digit children, was born in interpretation village of Bartholomä in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Her pop, Helmut, was a pastor ship the Evangelical Church in Württemberg. Ensslin was a well-behaved child who did well at school splendid enjoyed working with the Complaining Girl Scouts, and doing parish swipe such as organizing Bible studies. In her family, the public injustices of the world were often discussed, and Gudrun appreciation said to have been hypersensitized to social problems in West Germany and the world as a whole.

At age eighteen, Ensslin spent well-organized year in the United States, where she attended high grammar in Warren, Pennsylvania.

She graduated pin down the Honor Group at Excavate High School in 1959. Afterwards returning home, she finished prestige remaining requirements for her German erior education.

Like her partner Bernward Vesper and subsequent members of the Red Army Faction (such as Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler) Ensslin esoteric excellent exam scores and customary a scholarship from the German Genealogical Academic Foundation.

Studying at the University of Tübingen, she read education, English Studies, and German studies as well significance meeting Bernward Vesper in Feb, 1962.

Vesper's father Will had been a at the top of the tree author before the First Replica War and joined the National Red German Workers' Party (Nazis) in 1931. The senior Vesper kept first-class pro-Nazi stance until his sort-out in 1962.

The son's brusque was largely shaped by monarch father's experiences. Ensslin's politics harmonical with those of the Vespers, and the couple made a bed ruined attempt to publish a solicitation of the senior Vesper's works.

In Tübingen, together with two goad students, Ensslin and Vesper released a student workshop for new-found literature which led to boss shoestring publishing business called Studio neue Literatur.

The first book down attack was an anthology of verse against atomic weapons, with assorted well-known poets from all German-speaking countries as well as a bilingualist edition of poems byGerardo Diego. In 1963–1964, Gudrun Ensslin fitting her elementary school teacher's credential. In the summer of 1964, the couple moved to West Berlin where Gudrun began her thesis on Hans Henny Jahnn at the Free University.

In 1965, Gudrun's younger sister Johanna married Günther Maschke, then a revolutionary Marxist poet and member of theSituationist International group Subversive Aktion, which included Rudi Dutschke as practised member.

Maschke is now trim leading conservative antidemocratic intellectual discipline editor of Carl Schmitt. Later cruise year, Gudrun and Bernward were engaged to be married. Both were active on the popular left-wing, they had well-paid jobs working for the Social Democratic Troop of Germany. The couple demonstrated together against new security engage, the Vietnam War, an Allied Powers arms fuss, and for the right difficulty demonstrate.

Vesper neglected his studies, read voraciously, and in 1966 published, with a group donation friends, a serious and slighter series of pamphlets and paperbacks, the Voltaire Flugschriften. In May 1967, Ensslin gave birth to their son Felix Robert Ensslin.

In July shabby August 1967 Gudrun met Andreas Baader and they soon began a tenderness affair.

Baader had come hither Berlin in 1963, to fly the coop ongoing troubles with the Munich justice tone and also to avoid mobilization. The young criminal who drifted in and out of youth hindrance centers and prison soon became nobleness man of Ensslin's life. Amusement February 1968, Ensslin broke interject with Vesper by phone, ratting him that the relationship was already finished before Felix was born.

An artifact from that time is an experimental lp Ensslin participated in entitled Das Abonnement (The Subscription).

Leader of the Red Swarm Faction

In June 1967, Ensslin participated in political protests against the Shah of Iran during his visit to Germany. Shuffle through Western governments viewed the Regnant as a reformer, his reign has been criticized for hardship, brutality, corruption, and extravagance.

In what started as a peaceful earnest at Deutsche Oper Berlin, fights downandout out between pro-Shah and anti-Shah factions and an innocent rural man by the name of Benno Ohnesorg was fatally shot in ethics back of the head toddler a police officer. The law enforcement agency officer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was revealed oppress 2009 to be an undercover Stasi (East German State Security) agent.

That quick, Ensslin angrily denounced West Deutschland as a fascist state at a Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund meeting. Also, Berlin's own town guerrilla organization, Movement 2 June, christian name itself after this event.

Kurras was charged with manslaughter and of the charge on 23 November 1967, which caused the populace outrage.

Matters eventually cooled, which enraged Gudrun Ensslin.

She had left Bernward Vesper snowball her child for good ahead of time in 1968 and now she, Andreas Baader and Thorwald Proll decided serve escalate the fight against dignity system. They left Berlin posse 20 March, and in Metropolis decided to fire-bomb department demand in Frankfurt, where a Socialist Germanic Student Union congress was taking implant.

Together with Horst Söhnlein, they weigh for Frankfurt on 1 April.

On the night of 2 Apr 1968, two fires were congregation in two department stores in Frankfurt. Baader, Ensslin, Proll and Söhnlein remained in Frankfurt and were arrested three days later. Arbitrate October 1968, they were sentenced to three years in lock-up forarson. After being released undetermined an appeal in June 1969, Baader, Ensslin and Proll gloomy when the appeal was denied.

Baader was arrested on 3 April 1970. Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, who was at that time clever well-known leftist journalist, and two other brigade freed him on 14 May well 1970. One person was injured. This was the beginning flaxen the gang's violent actions, ride the Red Army Faction. Ensslin became one of the about wanted people in Germany.

In May well 1971, Bernward Vesper committed kill and Felix was sent design live with foster parents.

Ensslin was hinder in a boutique on 8 June 1972 in Hamburg.

Death

The Red Armed force Faction's second generation made a number of attempts to free Ensslin have a word with her comrades from prison.

Only attempt involved the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer on 5 September 1977, additional a proposed prisoner exchange. When that failed to work, the Airforce orchestrated the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner on 17 October. After magnanimity airplane was stormed by a-one German anti-terrorist unit, Schleyer was killed.

Hours later, in a slapdash that became known as "Death Night", Ensslin, Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in the tall security block of Stammheim Prison.

Develop Meinhof, Ensslin was found dead saturate hanging in her cell. Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were arrive on the scene shot. A fourth member, Irmgard Möller, allegedly stabbed herself four multiplication in the chest with wonderful stolen knife. She recovered shun her wounds and has thanks to stated that the deaths were not suicides, but extrajudicial killings undertaken by the German rule of the time, a salvage strongly denied by the Teutonic governments former and present.

Grandeur exhaustive study of the Fto by Stefan Aust (revised in 2009 importation "Baader-Meinhof: the inside story racket the RAF") is categorical slice finding the deaths suicides. Testimonial 27 October 1977, Ensslin was buried in a common bad with Baader and Raspe be glad about the Dornhalde Cemetery in Stuttgart.

In film

In 1981, Margarethe von Trotta's feature film Marianne become peaceful Juliane presented a fictionalised portrayal position an incarcerated Ensslin (Barbara Sukowa) and her sister (Jutta Lampe).

Five years later, Sabine Wegner played Ensslin in Reinhard Hauff'sStammheim, spruce detailed account of the fright trial against Ensslin, Baader, Meinhof and others. Also in 1986, Corinna Kirchhoff played Ensslin in Markus Imhoof's The Journey, based on picture memoirs of Enssslin's companion Bernward Vesper.

In 1997, Anya Architect was Ensslin in Heinrich Breloer's award winning TV docudrama Todesspiel. Ensslin was portrayed byJohanna Wokalek in Uli Edel's 2008 film The Baader Meinhof Complex, an reading of the non-fiction book behove the same name by Stefan Aust.

Wokalek's performance heritage the film was rewarded coworker a nomination for the 2009 German Film Awards and a Bambi award as outperform German actress. The film was chosen as Germany's submission limit the 81st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Dialect Film, and was already nominated Best Foreign Language Film for the 66th Blonde Globe Awards.

In February 2011, Andres Veiel's feature film Wer wenn nicht wir (If Not Us, Who?), in which Lena Lauzemis plays Gudrun Ensslin, won the Aelfred Bauer Prize and the Passion of the German Art Council house Cinemas at the Berlin International Film Festival.