It is based on photographs that document the deaths of three leading activist of the Baader-Meinhof Group in the Stammheim Prison after the release of the hostages in the hijacking by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of Lufthansa Flight 181.
The terrorism of the Red Army Faction (RAF), which kept the Federal Republic of Germany in suspense for ten years, is for Richter a metaphor for any ideology based on inhumanity.
Richter heavily cropped the image to the upper body of the prisoners, the situation can only be conjectured from the shadow cast on the wall.
The least amount of blurring is evident in Jugendbildnis (English: Youth portrait) (67 × 62 cm, Catalogue Raisonné: 672-1), that represents a 22 year old Ulrike Meinhof.
[...] Presentient, but unencumbered in its youthfulness is the gaze of the young Ulrike Meinhof who looks into the viewer's space from the black of the background.
Like in no other picture, the figure prevails against the texture of blurring and signals a remainder of immediacy; a directness that negates the entire series in its thematization of mediated communicability.Relatively clear is also Plattenspieler (English: Record Player) (62 × 83 cm, Catalogue Raisonné: 672-2).
With tone arm resting beside the record, it seems to fix a moment of silence, but in fact the record player was the "catalyst for the tragic outcome of history"; Baader's pistol was hidden inside it, and to the left of the machine are the cables that served Ensslin as a deadly sling.
It shows the burial of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin und Jan-Carl Raspe at the Dornhaldenfriedhof in Stuttgart on October 27, 1977.
In the same year, exhibitions at Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam followed.
From February 5, 2011, to May 15, 2011, the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg showed the work as part of the exhibition Gerhard Richter.