Ulrike Meinhof
The investigative passionate journalist
Konkret started off as a left-wing student journal in Hamburg called the Studentenkurier (Student Courier) in the early fifties. Originally funded by donations from publishers and independent politicians, this magazine wrote about culture and politics. It was founded by Klaus Hübotter who was an official of the Communist FDJ (Free German Youth), Klaus Rainer Röhl (later the editor), and Peter Rühmkorf. In 1957, the journal was renamed konkret (German website) to attract a broader readership. In 1958, Röhl met Ulrike Meinhof at a press conference and later traveled with her to East Berlin where they met members of the banned communist party.
Editorial staff of konkret in 1967
This picture shows the editorial staff of konkret in 1967. In the middle:
the editor-in-chief, Klaus Rainer Röhl, is standing;
Stefan Aust who is today the editor-in-chief of the Spiegel and has published an
extensive book on the Baader-Meinhof Group is sitting. On the left
towards the back Lothar Menne, who works today for the Springer
publishing house. On the right towards the back Wolfgang Röhl, today reporter
for the Stern.
In January 1959, Ulrike Meinhof participated in a large student congress
against atomic weapons in West Berlin. The congress split the students
into two factions, the konkret faction of the SDS, the student body of
the SPD (Social Democratic Party) for whom Ulrike Meinhof spoke which
believed in the reunification of West and East Germany, and the more
moderate SPD faction. Ulrike Meinhof and the SDS finally appealed for
negotiations with the DDR (German Democratic Republic) openly questioning
the anti-Communist consensus of the time. The West German press strongly
criticized the move to the left of the political spectrum and the SPD
excluded all people that worked for konkret from the SDS.
Meinhof soon started working for konkret where she published her first
column in the fall of 1959 “Peace Makes History” commenting
on the end of the Cold War as well as the meeting of the Soviet leader
Nikita
Khrushchev and President
Eisenhower at Camp David. Her language
is full of hope that the desire for peace will guide political actions – that
humanity and reason have finally won over the rivalry and arms race of
the leading nations.
“…We have reached the turning point; peace is now the decisive factor in political negotiation. The forces of reason and humanity have prevailed in Camp David. Those who weaken them are fighting in a lost cause. Those who strengthen them have the mandate of history and are negotiating on behalf of the future” (Aust 1985, 1998).
In her early work for konkret, Meinhof mainly dealt with social aspects and wrote about discrimination against women, young offenders, and assembly line work. These themes were relatively new in post-war German journalism. During this time, she convincingly participated in TV discussions and played the role of a young female star journalist drifting between two worlds. On the one hand, she was part of the high society living in an old Jugendstil villa in Blankensee furnished with antiques and on the other hand, she sought contact with the people she wrote about spending an increasing amount of time in Berlin with the student movement.
Her diary red: “My relationship with Klaus, my acceptance by the Establishment, my work with the students – three aspects of my life that seem irreconcilable are pulling and tearing at me. Our house, the parties, Kampen, all that is only partly enjoyable, but among other things it’s the basis from which I can be a subversive element. TV appearances, contacts, the attention I get, they’re all part of my career as a journalist and a Socialist…I even find it pleasant, but it doesn’t satisfy my need for warmth, solidarity, belonging to a group. The part I play…corresponds only very partially to my real nature and needs, because it involves me in adopting the attitude of a puppet, forcing me to say things smilingly when to me, to all of us, they are deadly serious – so I say them with a grin, as if masked” (Aust 1985, 1998).
Only a few months later Ulrike Meinhof became editor-in-chief of konkret in January 1960. In 1961, she married Klaus Rainer Röhl, the publisher of konkret.
In 1961, she had published an article “Hitler in you” in
which she wrote: “As we ask our parents about Hitler, we shall
be asked about Herr Strauss one day” (Aust 1985, 1998).
This resulted in a case of Franz
Josef Strauss against Meinhof that Meinhof’s
defending counsel, Gustav
Heinemann, Minister of the Interior under Adenauer
and later President of the Federal Republic of Germany 1969–1974,
won. This made her famous overnight.
Ulrike Meinhof in 1962
In 1962, Ulrike Meinhof became pregnant and suffered from severe headaches. Doctors advised her to be operated immediately but she chose to give birth first. After seven months, her twin girls were born via Caesarian section and she had a brain operation. After the operation, she immediately plunged back into work. According to her foster mother, she needed the reassurance of others because she was not very self-confident, a stronger personality to support her, and she mirrored her environment. This description fits very well to Ulrike Meinhof, the terrorist, who followed Baader and subjected herself to his leadership in the group.
In response to President
Kennedy’s assassination on November 22nd
1963, she writes: “The grief fades, the emptiness remains. The
man the nations of the world believed would make peace is dead” (Aust
1985, 1998). Many people in Germany saw in Kennedy a young dynamic leader
who would really change things for the better: the peaceful end of the
Cold War, justice for the Third World, and the eradication of poverty
and racial bigotry in America. He had won the hearts of the young Germans
during his State visit to West Germany and his famous sentence “Ich
bin ein Berliner” in his speech to the population of West Berlin
on June 26th 1963 made a lasting impression on the Germans.
She continues by pointing out that Germany must find “alternative
ways…it must be understood in Germany that our fate is better kept
in our own hands than in the hands of any big brother who is himself
the playing of the forces beyond his control. It is time for the Federal
Republic of Germany to make sovereign use of the sovereignty she gained
eight years ago” (Aust 1985, 1998).
At this stage in Meinhof’s career, she does not only hold peace as a key value but she also fully acknowledges the Western nation states and their politics. There is no indication of the Ulrike Meinhof she will become one day, no mention of the autonomous mechanisms of the repressive German society, the interchangeable puppets in an inhumane system, and the police state, full of capitalist pigs. This vocabulary is already prevalent among young, radical, left-wing students, foremost a group affiliated with the SDS that formed around Rudi Duschke.
In 1968, her columns adopted a more extreme tone. Sentences such as, “If one throws a stone, it’s a crime. If thousand stones are thrown, that’s political. If you set fire to a car it’s a crime, if a hundred cars are set on fire that’s political” (Aust 1985, 1998) show her increasing radicalism, her new propensity to violence, and the very disconcerting assumption that a political statement uplifts a crime into something morally justified. To Ulrike Meinhof, a political crime under German law is no longer reprehensible because it is supposed to convey a message thus, a crime to her becomes a political action. However, a crime remains a crime, no matter on what scale and with which intention it is committed.
After the attempt on Rudi Duschke’s life, the leader of the student movement, in April 1968 she wrote: “It is protest if I say this or that does not suit me. It is resistance if I ensure that what does not suit me no longer occurs” (Aust 1985, 1998). With these words, she maybe unconsciously formulates what is changing her life. Her focus slowly but surely drifts from the observant, passive role of the journalist influencing through information to an active role with the desire to directly influence the way things go. Yet, she is still careful when it comes to violence as political means: “Counter-violence runs the risk of turning to violence where police brutality decides the rules of the game, where helpless rage takes over from cool rationality, where the paramilitary actions of the police encounter a paramilitary reply” (Aust 1985, 1998).
During this time, she increasingly made use of vocabulary that centered on struggle and violence in her column headlines: “Counter- violence”, “The struggle in the Big Cities”, “From Protest to Resistance,” and “Class struggle emergency” (Aust 1985, 1998).
Early 1968, Meinhof divorced Röhl and moved to Berlin where she continued to be active as a journalist and write columns for konkret. She received DM 1500,-- per comment. In April 1969, she quitted working for konkret and wrote an explanatory note to the Frankfurter Rundschau in which she explained, “I am giving up writing for the journal because it is in the process of becoming an instrument of counter-revolution…I am abandoning my fight for the journal in order to avert the danger of our polishing up its leftwing image by continuing to contribute to it, lending it new creditworthiness” (Aust 1985, 1998).
Ulrike Meinhof did not leave it at that. She initiated a meeting to discuss konkret. It was proposed that the editorial offices should be occupied and a group traveled from Berlin to Hamburg to carry out the plan. Röhl already knew about the activity beforehand and abandoned the office. After this failed attempt, Ulrike Meinhof became increasingly isolated.
In short, her increasingly radical ideas predisposed her to become associated with militant left-wing groups.
* The title of Ulrike Meinhof’s column that she wrote in response to the attempt on Duschke’s life.
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