After the Red Army Faction: Gender, Culture, and Militancy by Charity Scribner (review)

Charity Scribner investigates the enduring influence of the Red Army Faction in several cultural productions that were created both during and after the heyday of the group's activity. In doing so she provides her readers with an account of the history of the terrorist movement but also perceptive analyses of RAF actions as cultural moments. Her study is based on the fact that RAF activities resonated for decades with artists in the German-speaking realm and internationally, even after its disbanding in 1998. Scribner presents her readers with a comprehensive study as she investigates the prevalence of women in both the theoretical defining of the group's views as well as the concretization of those views in violent actions against perceived enemies. In this regard, Scribner's study complements the work of historians and journalists with closer connections to the era, such as Stefan Aust's Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (1985), Wolfgang Kraushaar's Acht Und Sechzig. Eine Bilanz (2008), or Gerd Koenen's Vesper, Ensslin, Baader. Urszenen des deutschen Terrorismus (2003), which look, at varying levels, at the group's emergence out of the Student Movement. Scribner reminds us that the RAF was as much a cultural catalyst as a violent political movement.

This meticulously researched book is divided into two sections: the first section concentrates on the history of the RAF, its militant acts, and the resulting "cultural fallout." Scribner describes its origins in groups of counter violence after the death of Benno Ohnesorg on June 2, 1967. Violent acts were initially directed at symbolic real estate such as department stores, Springer Press property, US military bases, and Amerikahäuser. Later the targets become individuals, high-profile figures such as Jürgen Ponto and Hanns Martin Schleyer, as well as later victims Detlev Rohwedder and Alfred Herrhausen. Scribner considers the German Autumn to be the culminating moment of RAF history and views this short time, September and October 1977, as the key moment of its cultural influence, its social significance, and its political messaging. This was the time when the RAF garnered its greatest impact on political policy and public opinion.

She labels the larger second section "postmilitant culture," which for Scribner is not only culture that occurs temporally after the RAF but also constitutes artistic expression that responds to the RAF by focusing on aesthetics and politics while bracketing out violence. The common theme in both sections involves an investigation of the women of the group who populate films, narratives, and works of art. In doing so, Scribner provides insightful discussions of Volker Schlöndorff's Die Stille nach dem Schuss (2000), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's piece in Deutschland im Herbst (1978), Margarethe von Trotta's Die bleierne Zeit (1981), and Fatih Akin's Auf der anderen Seite (2007). She compares novels written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (Der Auftrag, 1986) and Friedrich Christian Delius (Mogadischu Fensterplatz, 1987). In the visual arts she discusses Joseph Beuys's Dürer, ich führe persönlich Baader + Meinhof durch die Dokumenta V (1972) and Gerhard Richter's 18. Oktober 1977 (1988). The stage piece Ulrike Meinhof (1990) by Johann Kresnik receives a lengthy analysis. This list is only representative of what she covers in the book. Her analyses are thoughtful, perceptive, and contribute to the broader discussion of the relationship between violence, activism, and art.

The tension in this ambitious study emerges from its focus on the relationship between or even the complicated conflation of feminism and terrorism. Scribner works under the valid assumption that Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin would not have reached positions of prevalence in their organization if women's emancipation of the time had not opened up this possibility. But Scribner wants to create distance between feminism and armed struggle. The underlying current of Scribner's study is the idea that feminist and terrorist goals did not coincide, a signpost that she sets a few times...