Inge Viett
Inge Viett (12 January 1944 – 9 May 2022) was a member of the West German left-wing militant organisations "2 June Movement" and the "Red Army Faction (RAF)", which she joined in 1980.
[4] Described sometimes in sources as a "retired terrorist", Viett differed from other leading participants in West Germany's extremist-terrorist wave of the 1970s to the extent she was willing to talk about, and indeed to write about, those events from the activist perspective.
Her participation in street demonstrations and apparent absence of contrition over her involvement with left-wing militancy continue to attract media interest and comment.
[5][6] Inge Viett was born in Stemwarde, a short distance to the east of Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia, Germany, later in the British occupation zone.
[8] With the support of the local minister she obtained a place for a year in a Youth Facility at nearby Arnis where she was taught about house-keeping and child-care.
[7] She also had a good relationship at the time with a twenty year old supporter-trainer in Schleswig who took on responsibility for her progress and made it possible for her to attend the sports school.
When police made a move towards the house, and took up positions directly in front of it, it was her fellow squatters who prevented her from throwing Molotov cocktails at them from the roof.
On at least one occasion she undertook her actions with fellow activist Verena Becker: people clearing up the broken glass of the shop windows found printed calling cards had been left behind with the mysterious warning, "Die schwarze Braut kommt" ("The black bride is coming").
""She was reliable and very calm, but very radical"[14] Following the "Bloody Sunday" killings in Derry, in January 1972 the group planned a bomb attack on a British officers' casino in Berlin.
The conspirators intended that the bomb should explode during the night of 2 February 1972, but in the event it was placed by one of them, identified as a student, Harald Sommerfeld, outside the door of the adjacent address, which was a British Yacht Club.
[16] From January 1973 (sources are inconsistent as to precise dates) she was participating in a five-week nationwide prisoners' hunger strike in support of demands for better conditions.
[17] Later that year, using a file that a fellow inmate had smuggled into the establishment, she was able to escape through the barred window of the first-floor television room which the prisoners were permitted to use for two hours each week.
She was part of a successful escape plan that was implemented on 7 July 1976 which involved getting hold of duplicate keys and overpowering two prison officials.
[citation needed] Returning to Europe, Viett and other members of the movement went to Vienna where the businessman Walter Palmers was kidnapped for ransom.
On 21 June 1978 Till Meyer, Gabriele Rollnik, Gudrun Stürmer and Angelika Goder were recaptured by a West German anti-terrorism unit at Burgas Airport.
On 5 May 1980, Sieglinde Hofmann, Ingrid Barabass, Regina Nicolai, Karola Magg and Karin Kamp were all arrested while participating in a meeting in Paris to discuss the merger.
[24] An issue arose concerning eight "drop out" RAF members who no longer wished to participate in the group's violent activities and had become stranded without credible identity papers in Prague.
Francis Violleau, the policeman, suffered a neck injury as a result of which he was confined to a wheel chair for nineteen years until his death at age 54, in 2000.
While West German police feverishly sought the terrorist Inge Viett, in the Dresden quarter of Prohlis Eva-Maria Sommer started to build her new life.
She acquired a new life-partner with a newspaper "lonely hearts" announcement placed in Autumn 1983: "Seeking hiking friend for passing the hours together" ("Suche Wanderfreundin für gemeinsame Stunden...").
An annual cultural high-point for Eva Schnell was the Magdeburg Cabaret which was "permanently sold out", but for which she was nevertheless able frequently to obtain tickets.
[7] After spending the first 36 years of her life as a spectacularly critical citizen of West Germany, Viett was broadly supportive of the "East German project".
As the bracing winds of Glasnost swept across from, of all places, Moscow, the ruling party was no longer confident that it could rely on fraternal intervention of Soviet troops that had brutally suppressed the protests in 1953, or, in Prague in 1968.
The 1990 election in March effectively marked the end of one- party dictatorship and operated as a precursor to reunification which formally took place in October 1990.
Für diese gesellschaftlichen Ziele hab ich all die Jahre in der DDR mit großer Kraft gelebt und gearbeitet.
Till 1990 prosecutors in West Germany had been unable to unravel with sufficient precision the roles of individual RAF members for the series of terrorist murders that took place in 1977.
After 1990, with the suspected ex-terrorists extracted from East Germany, prosecutors were able to offer reduced sentences in exchange for information that could be used to secure convictions in court.
Looking back, she lamented the way that in the appetite for liberation "the guerilla fight in West Germany and in all the imperialist countries excluded from the headlines the more experienced, intelligent, persistent and constructitive aspects" of the movement.
[36] A few months later, following criticism by politicians, she was quoted in the Berlin edition mass market Bild newspaper defending her involvement, "That was an anti-militarist action.
[5] The CDU lawyer-politician Wolfgang Bosbach, at that time chairman of the parliamentary home affairs committee, went on record with his opinion that this amounted to a "call for a violent struggle against the state" (einen "Aufruf zum gewaltsamen Kampf gegen den Staat").
