Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau 2008. 328 pages, numerous black-and-white images, soft cover Series: Literatur – Kultur – Geschlecht, Studien zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte [Literature – Culture – Gender, Studies on Literature and Cultural History], short series, Volume 24 ISBN: 978-3-412-20077-0
Information about the book
Though the RAF officially announced its own dissolution in 1998, it is still far from »dead«, and, in fact, is still making an impact today. Particularly in the past several years, authors, artists and directors have been increasingly interested in the RAF and its myths. Immediately after the German Autumn in 1977, filmmakers and authors like Schlöndorff, Fassbinder, Vesper and Böll compared the images of the »Baader-Meinhof Gang« distributed in the media with differentiated designs. In the meantime, it is the children of the RAF and those who participated in the protests in 1968 who are taking a critical look at their parents’ objectives, ideals and Utopian concepts.
The book looks at literary and cinematic as well as artistic productions from 1977 to today. The spectrum spans from current theater productions like »Ulrike Maria Stuart« (Jelinek 2006) to cinema and documentary films like »The Silence After the Shot« (Schlöndorff 1999/2000), »Internal Security« (Petzold 2000), »Black Box BRD« (Veiel 2001) and »Baader« (Roth 2002) through to texts from Rainald Goetz, Leander Scholz, Erin Cosgrove, Tim Staffel and Christoph Hein. Artistic works from Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler are also discussed, alongside Gerhard Richter’s RAF Cycle and Hans-Peter Feldmann’s The Dead.
Reviews
- Jochen Strobel: Deutsche Auf-Brüche [German Departures]. In: literaturkritik.de, March 2009.
- P. Terhoeven: Traumatisches zur RAF [Trauma Related to the RAF]. In: Neue Politische Literatur [New Political Literature], Year 53 (2008).
- Markus Joch: Nachbilder der RAF. In: Weimarer Beiträge [Weimar Articles], 56 (2010) 3.