Michael C. Moynihan: Baader-Meinhof myth exploded
[Michael C. Moynihan is a senior editor of Reason magazine.]
ON June 2, 1967, the shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, exited a performance of The Magic Flute at the Berlin Opera House to a throng of rock-throwing protesters, already into their second hour of battle with police.
As the situation escalated, Karl-Heinz Kurras, a detective sergeant in the West Berlin police force, approached an unarmed student he misidentified as a ringleader of the protest. After tussling with the suspect, Kurras unholstered his Walther PPK service pistol and squeezed the trigger. A single bullet smashed into the temple of 26-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg. He died 20 minutes later.
Stefan Aust, former editor of the newsweekly Der Spiegel and author of a popular history of Germany's Baader-Meinhof terror group (also known as the Red Army Faction), cites the Ohnesorg killing as "a turning point in the thinking and feeling of many" in Germany; a martyrdom that would function as a foundation myth for the country's radical left movement, many of whom would later transform into university-educated urban guerillas.
A simple narrative soon emerged on campuses across Germany: Ohnesorg, a pacifist active in Protestant student groups, had been brutally murdered by the "fascist pig" Kurras.
When Kurras was twice acquitted in the killing - he claimed the shooting was accidental - it further "proved" that West Germany was merely a rump state of the Third Reich.
Following the Ohnesorg shooting, philosopher Theodor Adorno momentarily abandoned abstruse Marxist theory for unambiguous hysteria, declaring that "the students have taken on a bit of the role of the Jews".
To future Baader-Meinhof leader Gudrun Ensslin, the shooting demonstrated that West Germany was a "fascist state (that) means to kill us all". Ensslin, a 27-year-old pastor's daughter, provided a tidy apophthegm for those who would join terror organisations such as Movement 2 June (a tribute to Ohnesorg) and the Red Army Faction: "Violence is the only way to answer violence."
And it is this narrative that has persisted until last week.
According to new documents uncovered by two German researchers, Kurras was not the fascist cop of popular indignation but a longtime agent of the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) and a member of the East German Communist Party. In a rare moment of justified breathlessness, the ever-excitable German tabloid Bild called it the "revelation of the year".
While there is no evidence that Kurras acted as an agent provocateur in shooting Ohnesorg, it is doubtless true that had his political sympathies - and his covert work for the Stasi - been known in 1967, the burgeoning radical student movement would have been deprived of its most effective recruiting tool. As Bettina Roehl, the journalist daughter of terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, argued in Die Welt, the glut of post-Ohnesorg propaganda helped establish "the legend of an evil and brutal West Germany" while minimising the real brutality of communist East Germany.
For those who sympathised with the 1968 student Left, the Kurras revelation struck like a thunderbolt. In an interview with The New York Times, Aust argued: "The pure fact that (Kurras) was an agent from the East changes a lot, whether he acted on orders or not."
Otto Schily, who provided legal counsel for many Baader-Meinhof terrorists and would later serve as chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's interior minister, admitted that the Ohnesorg case must be "politically and legally re-evaluated".
But when it comes to the wickedness and depravity of the (fantastically misnamed) German Democratic Republic, re-evaluation is not something most Germans have been keen to engage in...
Read entire article at Australian
ON June 2, 1967, the shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, exited a performance of The Magic Flute at the Berlin Opera House to a throng of rock-throwing protesters, already into their second hour of battle with police.
As the situation escalated, Karl-Heinz Kurras, a detective sergeant in the West Berlin police force, approached an unarmed student he misidentified as a ringleader of the protest. After tussling with the suspect, Kurras unholstered his Walther PPK service pistol and squeezed the trigger. A single bullet smashed into the temple of 26-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg. He died 20 minutes later.
Stefan Aust, former editor of the newsweekly Der Spiegel and author of a popular history of Germany's Baader-Meinhof terror group (also known as the Red Army Faction), cites the Ohnesorg killing as "a turning point in the thinking and feeling of many" in Germany; a martyrdom that would function as a foundation myth for the country's radical left movement, many of whom would later transform into university-educated urban guerillas.
A simple narrative soon emerged on campuses across Germany: Ohnesorg, a pacifist active in Protestant student groups, had been brutally murdered by the "fascist pig" Kurras.
When Kurras was twice acquitted in the killing - he claimed the shooting was accidental - it further "proved" that West Germany was merely a rump state of the Third Reich.
Following the Ohnesorg shooting, philosopher Theodor Adorno momentarily abandoned abstruse Marxist theory for unambiguous hysteria, declaring that "the students have taken on a bit of the role of the Jews".
To future Baader-Meinhof leader Gudrun Ensslin, the shooting demonstrated that West Germany was a "fascist state (that) means to kill us all". Ensslin, a 27-year-old pastor's daughter, provided a tidy apophthegm for those who would join terror organisations such as Movement 2 June (a tribute to Ohnesorg) and the Red Army Faction: "Violence is the only way to answer violence."
And it is this narrative that has persisted until last week.
According to new documents uncovered by two German researchers, Kurras was not the fascist cop of popular indignation but a longtime agent of the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) and a member of the East German Communist Party. In a rare moment of justified breathlessness, the ever-excitable German tabloid Bild called it the "revelation of the year".
While there is no evidence that Kurras acted as an agent provocateur in shooting Ohnesorg, it is doubtless true that had his political sympathies - and his covert work for the Stasi - been known in 1967, the burgeoning radical student movement would have been deprived of its most effective recruiting tool. As Bettina Roehl, the journalist daughter of terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, argued in Die Welt, the glut of post-Ohnesorg propaganda helped establish "the legend of an evil and brutal West Germany" while minimising the real brutality of communist East Germany.
For those who sympathised with the 1968 student Left, the Kurras revelation struck like a thunderbolt. In an interview with The New York Times, Aust argued: "The pure fact that (Kurras) was an agent from the East changes a lot, whether he acted on orders or not."
Otto Schily, who provided legal counsel for many Baader-Meinhof terrorists and would later serve as chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's interior minister, admitted that the Ohnesorg case must be "politically and legally re-evaluated".
But when it comes to the wickedness and depravity of the (fantastically misnamed) German Democratic Republic, re-evaluation is not something most Germans have been keen to engage in...