Our Gun, Our Consciousness, and the Collective: Letters from the Discussion in Prison

“We are disarmed, but what they will never be able to take away from us, if we defend it tooth and nail, is our consciousness and the collective.”

Ulrike Meinhof was one of the founding members of the Red Army Faction. This followed her lengthy involvement in the protest movements of the 1960s, during which she had become the left’s most respected journalist in the Federal Republic of Germany. Incarcerated and held in isolation after her arrest in June 1972, she died in 1976 in her prison cell, having been subjected to years of torture as well as police and media smear campaigns. For this collection, in order to show who she really was, her surviving comrades in arms have released the letters she wrote for the group’s internal discussion in prison, as well as a number of texts delivered during the main Stammheim trial against members of the RAF.

With an introduction and comments by her former comrades, as well as chronological and bibliographical references, this volume includes the last texts that Meinhof had prepared for the prisoners’ collective, in which she played an active part, alongside a statement that she presented at another trial, regarding the group’s founding act: the prison breakout of Andreas Baader, in addition to other texts, some published here for the first time in English.

Ulrike Meinhof was one of the founding members of the Red Army Faction, after a long experience in the mobilizations of the protest movements of the 1960s, and after she had become the movement’s most respected journalist. Incarcerated and isolated after her arrest in June 1972, she died on May 9, 1976.