Die Revolution ist verfilmt worden

[muckefuck]

The second night on my own turned out more interesting than the first. Once I figured out that the young cub I ran into last weekend was "giving me the basket" (wie man auf deutsch zu sagen pflegt), I tried to set something up with cuore_felice34, who similarly flaked. Only after I decided, fuck 'em all, I was taking myself out to Massouleh with The Economist as my dining partner did I think to call the every dependable welcomerain. She lives just around the corner for there, so I thought I might drop in for a chat; she had plans but offered her husband, and he responded to my suggestion with, "Where are you going for dinner? Give me half an hour and I'll meet you there." It was a lovely meal, a sincerely why-do-we-do-this-more-often experience, but not a long one, so when I got home I thought I've got just enough time to watch the new NetFlik and do some tidying up before monshu gets home. And I would've, too, if I hadn't broken at the 1:45 mark for a little tea and gossip.

The movie was Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, a film about the early days of a notorious German left-wing terror group, the Rote Armee Fraktion. I don't remember hearing about them before my arrival in Germany in 1990. They were still very active then, having assassinated the chairman of Deutsche Bank the previous year, and before I returned to the States they shot to death the head of the Treuhandanstalt (a government agency responsible for privatising the assets of the GDR). Nevertheless, I recall a curious sense of culture shock upon first seeing a wanted poster listing known members. After all, I came from country where organised political terror of this sort had been dead for a decade already. Bombings and shootings were the work of crazed loners, not armed revolutionary groups.

So I had a great deal to learn about the group and the history of the radical left in Germany in general. At the time, I was more interested in current events than recent history (after all, my country had just initiated a war in a Middle Eastern country) and didn't pursue this, so the movie was an excellent primer on an important period of German history. I had never even encountered the term "Deutscher Herbst" ("German Autumn") until reading the Wikipedia article just now. I certainly didn't know that the tiny band of leftists kidnapping bankers had once convinced the PFLP to hijack a plane for them.

It can be tough in films like these to strike the right balance of sympathy with the protagonists. Too little and you're left with a bunch of psychopaths offing people for no reason; too much and you're glorifying cold-blooded murder. I think Eichinger handles this well, making it clear how they caught the imagination of a generation (one of the characters quotes an Allensbach poll that showed one in four Germans under 40 expressing sympathy for the group and one in ten willing to shelter a member) while at the same time presenting the cynicalness of their manipulation of public opinion. The only time he seems to err too far on the side of the terrorists is in the elegiac final sequence.

Baader in particular comes off here as far more thoughtful and mature than he has throughout the film (where he is depicted as the "charismatic, spoiled psychopath" described in the source text). But at least the deaths are shown as unambiguously self-inflicted, two-and-a-half decades of lefty conspiracy theory to the contrary. Overall, Lola rennt's Bleibtreu does a particularly fine job of illustrating how a violent misogynist could attract so many women to the cause. (The gender parity among first-generation members of the organisation was striking to me, and in particular how many women are shown planning and leading attacks.) And learning that Ulrike Meinhof was a popular journalist who had appeared on television before going underground really clarifies for me the popular appeal of the group at the time.

This also makes her a handy identification figure early in the film. It was instructive watching Baader and his partner Ensslin bully her into laying down the pen for the sword, but what I missed was insight into how the two of them arrived at their extreme views. Later, focus shifts to the farsighted director of the Bundeskriminalamt, who apparently completely reformed the German police force making it a model for other states to follow. (It took me more than half the film to be sure that he was played by one of my favourite German actors, Bruno Ganz, and then only because his accent and delivery resembled that which he employed as Hitler in Untergang; I'm not sure whether to credit a fantastic makeup job or the sad fact that advanced age has taken more of a toll on his features than I suspected.)

It's also inevitable that a film this ambitious would leave loose ends. In particular, I was confused by the fate of Meinhof's twin daughters, who were hidden in Sicily when the founding members of the RAF fled to a PFLP training camp in Jordan. Peter Homann is shown leaving the camp to save them, but it's not him who arrives in Italy to take them back to Germany. (In fact, the character on screen must be Stefan Aust, a colleague of Meinhof's and author of the book upon which the movie is based, who cooperated with Homann to return the children to their father, a colleague of both Meinhof and Aust.) Another armed revolutionary group, the Tupamaros, are referenced but their relationship to the RAF is never made clear. (Come to think of it, it's not even clear whether the group in question is the one based in Berlin, notorious for an attempted bombing of the Jewish Community Centre there [on Kristallnacht, no less!] or another of the same name in Munich, to which key second-generation RAF leader Brigitte Mohnhaupt belonged.)

Of course, all those loose ends make for a fascinating game of Wikipedia wandering. It's heartening to discover that one of Meinhof's daughters is a successful journalist (the one, in fact, who broke the notorious file photo of Joschka Fischer beating a cop) and heart-rending to learn that, despite his extraordinary success, Herold is forced to live in a former border patrol base and bear the costs of his own protection against assassination by RAF sympathisers. (He calls himself "the last prisoner of the RAF".)

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I also came into the movie with only a sketchy notion of what the Baader-Meinhof Complex was all about, and was shocked and appalled by the amount of armed struggle there was in a modern European nation.

For me, a key early scene was one where Ensslin attacks her father, and by extension, all of the men running Germany at the time. In her eyes, they were all Nazi collaborators, and thus untrustworthy. When you start with that belief (which, after all, has some truth to it), then armed struggle feels completely justified.

The director and writer wisely decided that there was no point resorting to demonizing. They didn't just choose a few punchy statements by Meinhof, but let her explain her philosophy at length through her writing. This was much more effective in showing how deluded she became over time, and her increasing radicalization (often, it appears, to justify her own actions), as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the RAF.

I would have liked to know more about the further generations of the RAF, but that would have meant a miniseries, rather than a movie.

ah the 70s

[mlr.livejournal.com]

a little surprised you didn't know more. the 'radical' politics of the 60s actually did have manifestations.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In her eyes, they were all Nazi collaborators, and thus untrustworthy.

That's a rationalisation, but is it really a cause? Heinrich Böll felt the same way, but he expressed this by writing novels, not blowing shit up. I wanted to see how you get from "They're untrustworthy" to "The only solution is to drop out of society completely and assassinate them."

Though this does remind me of another key scene, when her parents are being interviewed and Meinhof is eavesdropping as they talk about how "liberated" the bombing made them feel. You can see in her face the realisation that destruction can be a positive force, one that frees us from the weight of the past.

From what I gather, later generations followed much the same path as comparable organisations like the IRA or ETA, destroying their public support through increasing callousness about civilian casualties (which, in turns, makes them ever more isolated, fractured, and desperate and even likelier to favour soft targets over hard).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It's not the manifestations that surprise me but--as bunj puts it--"the amount of armed struggle...in a modern European nation". The Weathermen didn't kill a soul, the SLA only two, and the Black Panthers had a body count of 9. The RAF? Thirty four people. In addition to arranging the hijacking, they also took over the German Embassy in Stockholm, attacked two US army bases, and only narrowly missed taking out Alexander Haig. We're not talking about violence on the scale of the IRA or ETA (each of which has killed hundreds), but far more than we saw from comparable groups here.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

(By the way, I'm sure you didn't intend this, but did you perchance notice how condescending your second sentence sounds?)

[mlr.livejournal.com]

Subtle point. No I didn't intend that - and I do see it.

I think my train of thought went thusly: the 60s' radical politics were indeed real!, and not just 'radical'.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

That's a rationalisation, but is it really a cause?

What I got out of it was that: everyone involved in government, regardless of their political stripe, is a criminal. As such, they are untrustworthy, and one is justified in killing them to further political struggle. Indeed, it is a justice of a sort, since they all dodged true justice at the end of World War II.

I think this also helps explain the RAF's popularity. Many felt that the same group of loathsome criminals were still in charge, just under a different name. To some extent, that was both true and unavoidable: every German of a certain age was around during World War II. Considering how small the Resistance was in Germany, the leaders in the 60s couldn't even pretend to have not made some accommodation to the regime (even if it was just serving in the Wehrmacht, or being part of the Hitlerjugend).

This was a situation unique to Germany (with the possible exception of Japan). I think this helped the members of the RAF take that fateful step from the 60s radicalism which was sweeping Europe at the time to full-on terrorism. Sure, there were German radicals who did not become terrorists, but I think this rationalization helps explain both why so many joined the RAF, and why they were so popular.

[mlr.livejournal.com]

On second thought, I think I see what you mean (and it's not the quotes.) Obviously I have a capacity to offend - and yet that's the opposite of my intention. Or so my ego says.

Umm, something more to worry about.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

This made me curious what Herold himself was up to during WWII. Sure enough, he served on the Eastern Front where he was badly wounded and taken prisoner.

Even as late as the 90s, some of the sentiment remained. I remember a German friend who had done military service claiming that the naval officers still had portraits of famous commanders from the Nazizeit on their walls.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I wasn't offended, since--as I said--I know that wasn't your intention.

Incidentally, I think you'll find that the 70s in particular are a serious lacuna for people of my generation. They were too late to be covered in our history courses (it seemed we were always racing to finish the book before the end of year, often barely making it through WWII) and too recent to count as current events. Virtually everything I knew about Watergate as an adolescent I learned through reading my parents' bound volumes of Doonesbury.

I'm sure some of my peers had an interest in these events and did a lot of reading on their own. But I was more curious about the 90% of the world that we hardly even touched upon in school. So what I read up on was the ancient history of China and Korea, not the recent history of my own country.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I can understand admiring a person's work (in the case of the military commanders) while glossing over his politics. This happens all the time.

And this sort of sentiment still remains, as long as anyone who was alive at that time is in a position of power. Just look at the current pope.

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

"Virtually everything I knew about Watergate as an adolescent I learned through reading my parents' bound volumes of Doonesbury."

I stumbled across my parents' cache of Nixon parody books when I was 6 or 7, my favorite title which I really didn't get initially or for a while - "How We Made the Dean's List"

My recollection of leftist European violence was the kidnapping and eventual murder of Aldo Moro in Italy. I was not clued in about 60's and 70's era West German and then post wall Political violence until college - and I lay the blame for that squarely at the feet of U.S. network television news and and the Chicago Tribune - I watched Walter Cronkheit with my father until I couldn't (when Uncle Walter retired). Cable wasn't a regular feature of our household until midway through college mid-80's - and CNN was largely focused on domestic news.

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

I agree with your explanation of motive.
What I wouldn't agree with is that they were popular. Certainly not with the general public they weren't, only with a small leftist minority. There was no tacit approval. I haven't seen the movie but what I heard is that the film embellishes that point. Now "popularity" is probably subject to definition and really hard to measure, and there might be others who'd see this differently from me but I don't think anybody outside radical leftist student circles thought they were anything but deluded criminal nutters. Most people didn't know what the fuck they were on about, and the "Gewalt-gegen-Sachen" actions like bombing department stores etc. might have a few people look up and listen, but once they started killing people, that was it. No excuse for that.
Ulrike Meinhof continued to be an interesting figure because of her intellectual and personal development, and there were lots of myths and stories in connection with the inprisonment and deaths in prison that fuelled conspiration theories which fit well in the rather gloomy mood of the late 1970's in Germany.
As I said, other people might remember things differently. I was living in a conservative and rural part of Germany as a teen in those years, and maybe someone from a different background has a different take on things.
So just take that as a soundbite from someone who was there at the time.

[wwidsith.livejournal.com]

Sounds fascinating.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It's two-and-a-half hours well spent.

This discussion has also made me more curious about the contemporaneous situation in France. I can't even name a single French-based revolutionary group (although articles on the RAF mention their alliance with a militant organisation called Action directe).

[wwidsith.livejournal.com]

Action Directe are still talked about, but they haven't been active since the 80s. There are the usual regional groups of course. ETA have disarmed now, but the FLNC in Corsica are still quite active -- they bombed some hotels in Marseille a few years back. I've never seen anyone on any Wanted posters though. On the other hand, normal French society is a lot more activist than I'm used to, so perhaps they feel less need to go to extremes.

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

Re-reading muckefuck's initial post, I stumbled across that Allensbach poll. Now those numbers made me jump, and they contradict what I said, don't they. Or do they? It would be very interesting to know exactly when that poll was taken, and exactly where.
Am I forgetting what a decade of fundamental (and necessary) socio-cultural but painfully slow changes the 1970' were, that the generational gap between young hippies (pardon the simplification) and authoritarian father figures at the time was really different from what it's become since, and that the RAF, never mind the criminal, murderous, incredibly self-righteous activities, were also seen as those with ultimately good goals who "at least DID something"?
Anyway, another thing I came across yesterday was the foreword to the "Deutschland im Herbst" movie, which made me want to check out the film...