German Autumn
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The German Autumn (German: Deutscher Herbst) was a set of events in late 1977, revolving around the kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer by the Red Army Faction (RAF), and the hijacking of the Lufthansa aeroplane Landshut by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The term "German Autumn" is derived from the 1978 film Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), which is a German film-collage in the form of a short film with news-report format. This film collectively covered the social atmosphere during the time of the RAF terrorism, while offering different critical perspectives and arguments pertaining to the situation.
On September 5, 1977, an RAF 'commando unit' attacked the chauffeured car carrying Hanns-Martin Schleyer, then president of the German employers' association, in Cologne. His driver, Heinz Marcisz, and three police escorts (Reinhold Brandle, Roland Pieler, and Helmut Ulmer) were killed in the attack, and Schleyer was abducted and held prisoner in a rented apartment in an anonymous residential neighborhood near Cologne. He was forced to appeal to the center-left West German government under Helmut Schmidt for the 'first generation' of RAF members (then imprisoned) to be exchanged for him. Police investigations to locate Schleyer proved unsuccessful.
When it became clear that the government was unwilling to entertain a further prisoner exchange given the experience of the kidnapping of Peter Lorenz two years earlier, the RAF tried to exert additional pressure by hijacking the Lufthansa aeroplane Landshut on October 13 with the help of the allied Palestinian group PFLP. After a long odyssey through the Arabian Peninsula and the execution-type killing of Captain Jürgen Schumann, the hijackers and their hostages landed in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
After political negotiations with the Somali leader Siad Barre, the West German government was granted permission to assault the plane. This was carried out on October 18 by the special task force GSG 9, which had been formed after the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis. Only one GSG 9 member and one flight-attendant were injured; of the hijackers only Souhaila Andrawes survived.
In response, Hanns-Martin Schleyer – taken to Belgium through the Netherlands – was shot and killed by his kidnappers. His body was found on October 19, 1977 in the trunk of a car in Mulhouse, France.
At the same time, founding RAF members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe – all imprisoned in Stuttgart-Stammheim – were found dead in their cells. The official investigation concluded that they all committed suicide, although it failed to establish how the handguns that were used entered the maximum security prison of Stammheim. Irmgard Möller, who was imprisoned with them, survived with four knife wounds in her chest. She later claimed that the suicides were actually extrajudicial killings.
After the Landshut crisis, the West German government stated that it would never again negotiate with terrorists.
