Movie Poster

I saw the movie “Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex” lately. It depicts the first years of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) (the German Wikipedia-article on the RAF has a lot more detail). It concentrates mostly on the first generation of the RAF, the events which led to the foundation of the RAF and the culmination of the RAF histeria in the “German Autumn” (Deutscher Herbst) with the Schleyer-kidnapping and the hijacking of the Lufthansa airplane “Landshut”. The general timeline of the film is from 1967 til 1977, leading to the suicides of head figures of the first RAF-generation in Stammheim Prison.

It’s a film well worth to see, especially for us Germans who were born in the early seventies. The actors were top notch and the whole atmosphere of the film was intense, going under the skin. I was born early in 1972, so seeing a film detailing the events of the first years of my childhood was very interesting and of course a bit disturbing, because you were living under the safe blanket of childhood. The film is lacking some detail on how the different generations of RAF where recruited.

A wanted poster depicting members of the RAF

I still remember the posters of the wanted person searchs, showing bad b/w-photos of the RAF-members, which where all over the places, hanging prominently in post offices and other places. I am not sure when the last of those posters were seen. I quick search on the web brought up one from 1993.

The film still got me thinking. It hardened my belief that capitalism is evil and the world’s wealth should be redistributed among humanity. But I guess we will only see the world taking another, hopefully positive direction when the current financial system finally collapses.

While I certainly disagree with the use of violence to achieve political goals, but seeing states using it, I can quite understand the notion to take up arms against the perceived injustice in the world. Sadly, most people don’t understand that violence just leads to more violence.