Members of the Red Army Faction

Members of the Red Army Faction can be split up into three generations. The first generation existed from 1970 onwards. The second generation emerged from 1975 and included people from other groups such as the Socialist Patients' Collective and the 2 June Movement. The third generation began in 1982. The group announced its dissolution in 1998.

Overview

The Red Army Faction existed in West Germany from 1970 to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the "German Autumn". The RAF was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Horst Mahler, and others. The first generation of the organization was commonly referred to by the press and the government as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang", a name the group did not use to refer to itself.
The RAF was responsible for 34 deaths, including many secondary targets such as chauffeurs and bodyguards, and many injuries in its almost 30 years of activity.
Eileen MacDonald stated in Shoot the Women First that women made up about fifty percent of the membership of the Red Army Faction and about eighty percent of the RAF's supporters. This was higher than other similar groups in West Germany, in which women made up about thirty percent of the membership.
The RAF announced its dissolution in 1998 with the paper Die Stadtguerilla in Form der RAF ist nun Geschichte.

First generation Red Army Faction (1970–75)

Founding first generation members

Name	Dates	Notes
Brigitte Asdonk	1947–2025	Arrested in 1970, released from prison 1982.
Andreas Baader	1943–1977	Involved in the 1968 Frankfurt department store firebombings, founded the RAF, and was arrested during the 1972 May Offensive. Seen by the German state as a leader of the first generation alongside Ensslin, Meinhof, Meins and Raspe. Visited in jail by Jean Paul Sartre. Allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head in Stammheim prison on 18 October 1977.
Ingeborg Barz	1948–?	Early member, quit the RAF in 1972, thought to be dead.
Monika Berberich	1947–	Arrested in 1970, escaped in July 1976, and was recaptured two weeks later. She was released in 1988.
Gudrun Ensslin	1940–1977	Involved in the 1968 Frankfurt department store firebombings, founded the RAF, and was arrested during the 1972 May Offensive. Seen by the German state as a leader of the first generation alongside Baader, Meinhof, Meins and Raspe. Allegedly committed suicide in Stammheim prison on 18 October 1977.
Irene Goergens	1951–	Met Ulrike Meinhof as a teenager and was arrested in 1970. She was released in 1977.
Manfred Grashof	1946–	Arrested in 1977 and released in 1988.
Peter Homann	1936–2023	Founding member of the RAF, broke with the RAF after participating in the training camp in Jordan. Went with Stefan Aust to Sicily and took Ulrike Meinhof's children to their father, whereas Meinhof wanted them to go to her sister.
Horst Mahler	1936–2025	Lawyer who joined the RAF and was arrested in 1970. By 1974 he had been expelled from the RAF. After his release from prison in 1980, he went on to join the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands and to found a holocaust denial group.
Ulrike Meinhof	1934–1976	A well-known radical journalist who was editor of konkret. She was married to Klaus Rainer Röhl then divorced him. She became friends with Baader and Ensslin, then helped free Andreas Baader from imprisonment on 14 Mai 1970. Arrested with Gerhard Müller in 1972 and seen by the German state as a leader of the first generation alongside Baader, Ensslin, Meins and Raspe. She was found hanged in her prison cell on 9 May 1976. The International Investigatory Commission into the Death of Ulrike Meinhof announced in 1978 that she had been sexually assaulted and murdered.
Astrid Proll	1947–	Arrested in 1971 and released to hospital in 1973 due to health conditions caused by solitary confinement. She escaped and went to England, where she was re-arrested in 1978.
Petra Schelm	1950–1971	Early member, shot dead by Hamburg police in 1971 at the age of 20.
Ingrid Schubert	1944–1977	Founding member and amongst the first group of RAF members to be arrested alongside Asdonk, Berberich, Goergens and Mahler. Allegedly committed suicide in a Munich prison on 13 November 1977, two weeks after the deaths of Baader, Ensslin and Raspe.

Other first generation members

Name	Dates	Notes
Christa Eckes	1950–	Arrested on 4 February 1974 when the police raided RAF safehouses simultaneously in Hamburg and Frankfurt together with Kay-Werner Allnach, Wolfgang Beer, Eberhard Becker, Helmut Pohl, Margrit Schiller and Ilse Stachowiak. On 28 September 1977, she was sentenced to seven years in prison. After her release she was arrested again on 2 July 1984 in Frankfurt, when a gun was accidentally discharged into the apartment below a safe house. The others arrested were Helmut Pohl, Stefan Frey, Ingrid Jakobsmeier, Barbara Ernst and Ernst-Volker Staub.
Angela Luther	1940–	First involved with the Blues-Scene and West Berlin Tupamaros, but in July 1971, she met with some RAF members, and together with Thomas Weissbecker she expressed interest and started working with the RAF. On 12 May 1972 she participated in the bombing of a police station in Augsburg together with Irmgard Möller, and on 24 May 1972 she was involved in the bombing of the officers club and the Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg
Holger Meins	1941–1974	A leftist cinematography student in West Germany, he joined the Baader-Meinhof gang quite early on along with Beate Sturm and was seen as a leading member. In 1971 he was arrested alongside Raspe and Baader during a shoot-out with the police in Frankfurt. In prison the Baader-Meinhof gang called for a hunger strike, as they felt they were being treated unfairly by the government. Meins died on 11 November 1974 as a result of the hunger strike. He weighed less than 100 pounds at the time of his death; he was over six feet tall. His death sparked rage amongst RAF members everywhere. Seen by the German state as a leader of the first generation alongside Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and Raspe.
Irmgard Möller	1947–	Bombed the Campbell Barracks in Heidelberg on 24 May 1972. She claimed responsibility in the name of the Commando 15 July in honour of Schelm.
Jan-Carl Raspe	1944–1977	An early member of the RAF, captured a short while before both Holger Meins and Andreas Baader were arrested in Frankfurt in 1972. Alongside Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Stammheim. Raspe supposedly committed suicide in his cell using a 9 mm Heckler & Koch handgun on 18 October 1977, however, it is also claimed that he was murdered in an extrajudicial killing. Seen by the German state as a leader of the first generation alongside Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and Meins.
Beate Sturm	1950–	Joined the RAF in 1970 with Holger Meins when she was a 19-year-old student. She experienced difficulties imagining that innocent people could be affected by RAF actions and left the group in 1971. She later gave some newspaper interviews.
Tommy Weissbecker	1944–1972	An associate of Horst Mahler and a minor member of the RAF. He was first involved with the Blues-Scene and West Berlin Tupamaros but in July 1971 he met with some RAF members and together with Angela Luther he expressed interest and started working with the RAF. In 1971 he was charged and acquitted with assaulting a Springer journalist. Later, on 2 March 1972, Weissbecker, along with Carmen Roll, was stopped by police outside a hotel in Augsburg. Weissbecker was shot dead by the police when he reached into his pocket, supposedly to grab his gun. However Stefan Aust claims that he was simply reaching into his pocket to produce ID. On 12 May 1972, over two months after Weissbecker's death, RAF members bombed a police station in Augsburg and a Criminal Investigations Agency in Munich. They claimed responsibility for the bombings in the name of the 'Tommy Weissbecker Kommando'.

Second generation Red Army Faction (1975–1982)

By 1972 a large number of the core members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang had been captured and imprisoned. However, new members swelled the dwindling ranks of the Gang. These revolutionaries mostly had similar backgrounds to the first generation, e.g. they were middle class and frequently students. Most of them joined the Gang after their own groups dissolved e.g. the Socialist Patients' Collective and Movement 2 June.

Former SPK members

The SPK, the leftist 'therapy-through-violence' group, dissolved in 1971, and those members who had turned militant forged links and joined with the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Klaus Jünschke Carmen Roll, and Gerhard Müller had already joined as part of the first generation of the RAF but originally started in SPK.

Name	Dates	Notes
Elisabeth von Dyck	1951–1979	Member of the SPK and then RAF. She was born in Nuremberg. She was the girlfriend of Klaus Jünschke and later of lawyer Klaus Croissant. She was involved with the 'committees against torture' in 1974. In 1975 von Dyck, along with Siegfried Haag, was arrested on suspicion of smuggling weapons out of Switzerland and served six months in a detention centre in Cologne before being released. However, a warrant went out for her arrest in 1977. von Dyck went underground, and Monika Helbing stated that around this time she fled to Baghdad for a while with Friederike Krabbe. von Dyck returned to West Germany sometime between 1977 and 1979, and on 4 May 1979, von Dyck entered a Nuremberg house, thought to have been an RAF hideout, which was under police surveillance. The police shot von Dyck through the back, killing her. A gun was found on her body. von Dyck was shot even though she was only suspected of being involved with the RAF, and was not a high-priority on the wanted list. However, it was alleged that the police shot her after she first drew a pistol and aimed it at them.
Bernhard Braun	1946–	Involved with SPH, RAF and Movement 2 June. On 9 June 1972, Braun and Brigitte Mohnhaupt were arrested in West Berlin. He broke away from the RAF whilst imprisoned.
Siegfried Hausner	1952–1975	He took part in a bombing of the Axel Springer Verlag in 1971 and was the leader of the West German embassy siege in Stockholm in 1975, when he was fatally injured after TNT was accidentally detonated
Sieglinde Hofmann	1945–	An important figure of the second generation RAF and was personally involved in the kidnap and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, his driver and three accompanying policemen.
Hanna-Elise Krabbe	1945–	Member of the IZRU and was the elder sister of Friederike Krabbe, another member. Hanna-Elise Krabbe took part in the West German embassy siege in Stockholm. She was the only female member involved in the siege. Her role during the siege was to guard the hostages. She was arrested when the siege failed and was sentenced on 20 July 1977, to twice life imprisonment. She was released from prison in 1996, after serving 21 years.
Friederike Krabbe	1950–	Younger sister of Hanna-Elise Krabbe. She is believed to have been one of the RAF members who kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer. Afterwards she fled to Iraq, living in Baghdad with Elisabeth von Dyck and Monika Helbing. She left the RAF and is thought to still live in the Middle East.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt	1949–	A leader amongst the second generation RAF and was involved in some of their most serious crimes and was a key perpetrator during the German Autumn.
Klaus Jünschke	1947–	Student member of the SPK, who managed to escape arrest when police came after certain members of the SPK in 1971. He joined the RAF with his militant girlfriend Elisabeth von Dyck and was involved in at least one bank robbery.
Carmen Roll		Involved in 'working circle explosives' in which she achieved limited success with Siegfried Hausner when they managed to manufacture a small amount of TNT in December 1970 in the University Institute of Physiology. In February 1971 Roll, along with Hausner, planned to bomb the President of the Federal Republic's special train in Heidelberg station, but she arrived too late with the explosives, and the plot failed. On 2 March 1972, Roll was confronted by police outside a hotel in Augsburg. Tommy Weissbecker was shot dead and Roll was arrested. Two weeks later to sedate her when she resisted fingerprinting she was given a near-fatal dose of ether by prison doctors. In 1976 Roll was freed from prison. She moved to Italy and became a nurse.
Lutz Taufer	1944–	Protested against the supposed torture of political prisoners in West Germany in 1974. In 1975, he joined the RAF and took part in the West German embassy siege in Stockholm. He was arrested and sentenced to two life terms, before being released in 1995.
Ulrich Wessel	1946–1975	Son of a rich Hamburg businessman. Wessel was described as a dandy, and he was a millionaire by inheritance. He was involved with the SPK and took part in the West German embassy siege in Stockholm. He died during the siege when the TNT was accidentally exploded; the force of the explosion startled him so much that he dropped a grenade he was holding and it exploded on him. He died soon afterwards.