Margrit Schiller


Margrit Schiller is a German far-left activist formerly associated with the Socialist Patients' Collective and then the Red Army Faction. She was released from prison in 1979 and has written two autobiographical books.

Early life

Schiller was born in 1948. She joined the Socialist Patients' Collective and after it dissolved, she became a member of the Red Army Faction.

Militant leftist career

On 25 September 1971, two policemen approached a wrongly parked vehicle near to the Freiburg-Basel autobahn. Schiller and Holger Meins emerged and started firing guns at them. A month later Schiller left a train station in Hamburg around 10pm and realised she was being trailed by police. She met her RAF comrades Ulrike Meinhof and Gerhard Müller, then a shootout occurred, with one of the policemen being shot dead. Schiller was arrested and later claimed that it was Müller that was responsible for the murder. She was re-arrested alongside other RAF members Kay Werner-Allnach and Wolfgang Beer on 4 February 1974 after police carried out raids in Hamburg and Frankfurt. She received a five year sentence and was released from prison in 1979. Whilst in prison Schiller took part in the RAF hunger strikes.

Later life

Schiller moved to Cuba in 1985 and then Uruguay in 1993. She described her experiences abroad in the 2011 memoir So siehst du gar nicht aus!.

Selected works

*