Gudrun Ensslin

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Gudrun Ensslin
Ensslin in a scene from Das Abonnement in 1967 1967
Born(1940-08-15)15 August 1940
Bartholomä, Nazi Germany
Died18 October 1977(1977-10-18) (aged 37)
Stuttgart, West Germany
Burial placeDornhalde Cemetery, Stuttgart, West Germany
EducationFree University of Berlin
OrganizationRed Army Faction
SpouseBernward Vesper
ChildrenFelix Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin (German:

far-left militant group Red Army Faction
(Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).

After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of his anarchist beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF. She was involved in five bomb attacks, with four deaths, was arrested in 1972 and died on 18 October 1977 in what has been called Stammheim Prison's "Death Night".[3]

Early life and education

Ensslin was the fourth of seven children, and grew up in Bad Cannstatt, Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany, her father Helmut Ensslin was a pastor of the Evangelical Church.[4]

Ensslin was a well-behaved child who did well at school and enjoyed working with the Protestant Girl Scouts,[5] and doing parish work such as organizing Bible studies. In her family, the social injustices of the world were often discussed, and she is said to have been sensitized to social problems in West Germany and the world as a whole.[6]

At the age of eighteen, Ensslin spent a year in the United States, where she attended high school in Warren, Pennsylvania.[7] She graduated in the honors group at the high school in 1959.[8] After returning home, she finished the remaining requirements for her secondary education.

Like her partner

German National Academic Foundation. Studying at the University of Tübingen, she read education, English studies, and German studies. Ensslin also met Vesper in February 1962.[9]

In

atomic weapons, with prominent poets from all German-speaking countries as well as a bilingual edition of poems by Gerardo Diego
.

In 1963 and 1964, Ensslin earned her elementary school teacher's diploma. In the summer of 1964, the couple moved to West Berlin where Ensslin began her thesis on Hans Henny Jahnn.[10]

Career

In 1965, Gudrun's younger sister Johanna married

left-wing, they had well-paid jobs working for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The couple demonstrated together against new security laws, the Vietnam War, an Allied Powers arms show, and for the right to demonstrate. Vesper neglected his studies, read voraciously, and in 1966 published, with a group of friends, a serious and important series of pamphlets and paperbacks, the Voltaire Flugschriften.[11] In May 1967, Ensslin gave birth to their son Felix Ensslin.[12]

In July or August 1967, Ensslin met Andreas Baader and they soon began a love affair. Baader had come to Berlin in 1963, to escape ongoing troubles with the Munich justice system and also to avoid conscription. Baader, who drifted in and out of youth detention centers and prison soon became the man of Ensslin's life. In February 1968, Ensslin broke up with Vesper by phone, informing him that the relationship was already finished before Felix was born. An artifact from this time is an experimental film Ensslin participated in entitled Das Abonnement (The Subscription).[13]

Red Army Faction leader

Further information: Red Army Faction

In June 1967, Ensslin participated in

Movement 2 June
, named itself after this event.

Kurras was charged with

Socialist German Student Union congress was taking place. Together with Horst Söhnlein, they left for Frankfurt on 1 April.[18]

The night of 2 April 1968, a department store in Frankfurt was set ablaze, for which Baader, Ensslin, Proll and Söhnlein were subsequently arrested and prosecuted.[19] In October 1968 they were sentenced to three years in prison for arson.[20] After being released pending an appeal in June 1969, Baader, Ensslin and Proll fled Italy via France when the appeal was denied.[21]

Baader was arrested on 4 April 1970 in

leftist journalist, and two other women freed him on 14 May 1970. One person was wounded. This was the beginning of the gang's violent actions, and the Red Army Faction.[23] Ensslin became one of the most wanted people in Germany.[24][25]

In May 1971, Vesper committed

foster parents.[27]

Ensslin was arrested in a boutique on 7 June 1972 in Hamburg.[28]

Death

Burial site of Baader, Raspe, and Ensslin

The Red Army Faction's second generation made several attempts to free Ensslin and her comrades from prison. One attempt involved the

anti-terrorist unit, Schleyer was found dead inside the trunk of a car in France on 19 October.[29]

Hours later, in a night that became known as "Death Night", Ensslin, Baader, and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in the high security block of Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart. Like Meinhof, Ensslin was found dead by hanging in her cell. Baader and Raspe were found shot. A fourth member, Irmgard Möller, allegedly stabbed herself four times in the chest with a stolen knife. She recovered from her wounds and has since stated that the deaths were not suicides but extrajudicial killings undertaken by the government of the time, a claim strongly denied by the governments former and present.[30] One exhaustive study of the RAF by Stefan Aust (revised in 2009 as "Baader-Meinhof: the inside story of the RAF") seconds the state's official ruling that the deaths were suicides.

On 27 October 1977, Ensslin was buried in a common grave with Baader and Raspe in the Dornhalde Cemetery in Stuttgart.[31]

In film

In 1981, Margarethe von Trotta's feature film Marianne and Juliane presented a fictionalised portrayal of an incarcerated Ensslin (Barbara Sukowa) and her sister (Jutta Lampe).[32]

In 1986, Sabine Wegner played Ensslin in Reinhard Hauff's Stammheim, a detailed account of the trial against Ensslin, Baader, Meinhof and others.[33][34]

Also in 1986, Corinna Kirchhoff played Ensslin in Markus Imhoof's The Journey (Die Reise), based on the memoirs of Ensslin's companion Bernward Vesper.[35]

In 1997, Anya Hoffmann was Ensslin in Heinrich Breloer's award-winning TV docudrama Death Game.[36]

In 2008, Ensslin was portrayed by

Best Foreign Language Film, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for the 66th Golden Globe Awards
.

In February 2011, Andres Veiel's feature film If Not Us, Who?, in which Lena Lauzemis plays Gudrun Ensslin,[37] won the Alfred Bauer Prize and the Prize of the German Art House Cinemas[38] at the Berlin International Film Festival.

In theatre

Ensslin appears as a character in

Ulrike Maria Stuart.[39]

Her writings feature in German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann's opera Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern.[40][41]

See also

Bibliography

  • Ellen Seiter, "The Political Is Personal: Margarethe von Trotta's Marianne And Juliane" Journal of Film and Video 37.2 (1985) : 41–46.
  • Film: "
    Die bleierne Zeit", directed by Margarethe von Trotta
    in 1981.
  • Book: Hitler's Children by Jillian Becker.
  • Book: Televisionaries (Televisionaries: the red army faction story 1963–1993) by Tom Vague.
  • Book: "High School Graduates of Warren, Pennsylvania 1889–1995"
  • Warren, PA: Warren Bicentennial History Committee, 1995. Oliphant, Nancy (editor)
  • Denise Noe (2009). "The Baader Meinhof Gang". Turner Broadcasting System. Archived from the original on 2009-06-01. Retrieved February 22, 2010.

References

  1. ^ "Baader, Andreas, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins, Jan Carl Rasp".
  2. ^ NDR. "7. Juni 1972: RAF-Terroristin Ensslin wird gefasst". www.ndr.de (in German). Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  3. ISBN 978-1-61249-444-9
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-7546-8975-1
    .
  5. ^ "Als Jugendliche wird sie Gruppenführerin beim Evangelischen Mädchenwerk und aktive Gemeindehelferin, die die Bibelarbeit leistet", Gerd Koenen, Vesper, Ensslin, Baader, Köln, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003, p. 93.
  6. OCLC 1180935826.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  7. ISBN 978-3937667652
    .
  8. ISBN 978-1-317-19903-8
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0313324857
    .
  10. ISBN 978-3-936096-65-1
    .
  11. ISBN 9780231538299
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-7735-9874-4
    .
  13. ^ Schröder & Kalender » Blog Archive » Making of Pornography (15) Archived 2008-06-14 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ISBN 9780141982533
    .
  15. ISBN 978-1-4918-4438-0
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0-8122-9502-3
    .
  17. OCLC 38668584
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-472-12054-3
    .
  19. ^ Bildung, Bundeszentrale für politische. "2./ 3. April 1968 | bpb". bpb.de (in German). Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  20. ^ Nettelbeck, Uwe. "Der Frankfurter Brandstifter-Prozeß". www.zeit.de. p. 6. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  21. ISBN 9780773598751
    .
  22. ISBN 9780262700719
    .
  23. ISBN 978-1-78306-476-2
    .
  24. ISBN 978-0-923582-00-5
    .
  25. ISBN 978-1-4634-1512-9
    .
  26. ISBN 978-1-4008-6164-4
    .
  27. ISBN 978-1-4798-6407-2
    .
  28. ISBN 978-0-7876-3736-1
    .
  29. ^ States, United; Congress; House; Committee on the Judiciary; Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights (1981). Report on domestic and international terrorism. Washington: U.S. G.P.O. p. 10.
  30. ^ Dugdale-Pointon, T. (29 August 2007). "Gudrun Ensslin (1940–1977)". Retrieved 4 April 2009.
  31. ^ Germany, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart. "Deutscher Herbst 1977: Endstation Dornhaldenfriedhof". stuttgarter-zeitung.de (in German). Retrieved 2020-11-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  32. ISBN 9781566397476
    .
  33. ISBN 978-3-96707-413-0
    .
  34. ISSN 1220-4358
    .
  35. ISBN 978-1-136-02046-9
    .
  36. ISBN 978-0814766910
    .
  37. ^ "Programme – Wer wenn nicht wir – If Not Us, Who". Berlinale. 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  38. ^ "Berlinale" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 November 2011. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  39. ^ Germany, SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg (29 October 2006). "Uraufführung 'Ulrike Maria Stuart': Heiterer Abgesang auf die radikale Linke - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Kultur". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2017-06-22.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  40. ISBN 978-1-5013-4487-9
    .
  41. ISBN 978-1-4422-4797-0
    .

External links

External images
image icon Ensslin with Andreas Baader
image icon Ensslin in Das Abonnement
image icon Ensslin with other RAF members on wanted poster
image icon Gravesite of Ennslin, Baader, and Raspe
image icon Gudrun Ensslin during legal proceedings of 31 October 1972
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gudrun Ensslin.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Gudrun Ensslin.
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