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In 1970 Ulrike Meinhof abandoned a career as a political journalist to join the Red Army Faction; captured as a terrorist along with other members of the group in 1972, she died an unexplained death in a high-security prison in 1976. A charismatic spokesperson for the RAF, she has often come near to being idealized as a freedom fighter, despite her use of extreme violence. In an effort to understand how terrorism takes root, Sarah Colvin seeks a dispassionate view of Meinhof and a period when West Germany was declaring its own "war on terror." Ulrike Meinhof always remained a writer, and this book focuses on the role of language in her development and that of the RAF: how Meinhof came to justify violence to the point of murder, creating an identity for the RAF as resistance fighters in an imagined state of war that was reinforced by the state's adoption of what Andreas Musolff has called 'war terminology.' But its all-powerful identity as a fighting group eroded the RAF's empathy with other human beings - even those it once claimed to be 'fighting for.' It became a closed unit, self-justifying and immobilized by its own conviction that everything it did must be right. This is the first specialized study of Meinhof and the RAF in English - which is remarkable given the current interest in the topic in both Europe and the U.S. Sarah Colvin is Professor and Eudo C. Mason Chair of the German Department at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Political violence. --- Terrorism in literature. --- Terrorism --- Terrorism. --- Women terrorists --- Women terrorists. --- History. --- Meinhof, Ulrike Marie. --- Rote-Armee-Fraktion. --- Germany (West). --- History --- Female offenders --- Terrorists --- Acts of terrorism --- Attacks, Terrorist --- Global terrorism --- International terrorism --- Political terrorism --- Terror attacks --- Terrorist acts --- Terrorist attacks --- World terrorism --- Direct action --- Insurgency --- Political crimes and offenses --- Subversive activities --- Political violence --- Terror --- Meinhof, Ulrike Marie --- Identity. --- Language. --- Ulrike Meinhof. --- Violence. --- West German Terrorism.
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As the controversy surrounding the release of Uli Edel and Bernd Eichinger's 2008 feature film 'The Baader Meinhof Complex' demonstrates, West Germany's terrorist period, which reached its height in the 'German autumn' of 1977, is still a fascinating - and troubling - subject. One of the most provocative aspects, still today, is the high proportion of women involved in terrorism, most notoriously Ulrike Meinhof. That the film concentrates on the trajectory of Meinhof's life and mobilizes established and hence reassuring paradigms of femininity in its representation of her (as 'mother' and 'hysterical woman') suggests that the combination of women and violence is still threatening and that there is still mileage to be had from feminizing the discourse. The present study returns to the West German print media of the 1960s and 1970s and raises questions about the continuing preoccupation with this period. Looking at publications from the right-wing 'Bild' to the liberal 'Der Spiegel', it explores how violent women - not only terrorists but also others such as the convicted murderer and media femme fatale Vera Brühne - were represented in text and image. This is the first book to explore print-media representations of German terrorism from an explicitly gendered perspective, and one of very few books in English to address the period in Germany at all, despite steadily increasing interest in the UK and the US. Clare Bielby is Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Hull.
German literature --- Mass media --- Women and literature --- Women in literature. --- Violence in literature. --- Women in mass media. --- Violence in mass media. --- Woman (Christian theology) in literature --- Women in drama --- Women in poetry --- Mass communication --- Media, Mass --- Media, The --- Communication --- History and criticism. --- History --- 1960s. --- 1970s. --- German history. --- German terrorism. --- Ulrike Meinhof. --- Violent Women. --- West German Print Media. --- discourse. --- femininity. --- gendered perspective. --- media coverage. --- media studies. --- print-media representations. --- representations. --- terrorism. --- violent women. --- women's history.
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