Gudrun Ensslin

--- created: 2026-05-15 updated: 2026-05-15 title: Gudrun Ensslin aliases:

• Gudrun Ensslin tags:
• Person
• Germany
• Terrorism
• RedArmyFaction
• 1970s category: "Political Figure" summary: "Gudrun Ensslin was a co-founder of the Red Army Faction and the romantic partner of Andreas Baader who provided much of the ideological seriousness of the group's founding generation, was convicted at Stammheim, and was found dead by hanging in her cell on October 18, 1977 on the same night as Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe." born: 1940-08-15 died: 1977-10-18 location: "Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison, West Germany"

Gudrun Ensslin (August 15, 1940 - October 18, 1977) was a West German activist and co-founder of the Red Army Faction who, with Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, constituted the founding leadership of the organization. The daughter of a Protestant pastor and a product of the West German student movement, Ensslin provided the ideological commitment and political seriousness that complemented Baader's operational drive. She was arrested in 1972, tried at Stuttgart-Stammheim Prison, convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, and found dead by hanging in her cell on October 18, 1977 - the same night Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead - following the West German government's successful rescue of Lufthansa Flight 181 hostages in Mogadishu, Somalia.¹

Background and Radicalization

Ensslin was born in Bartholomae in Baden-Wurttemberg, the sixth of seven children of a Protestant pastor. She studied German literature and education at the University of Tubingen and the Free University of Berlin, graduating with distinction and beginning doctoral work in German literature. Her academic credentials and intellectual background distinguished her within the RAF's founding circle.

She became politically active in the student movement of the late 1960s and met Andreas Baader in 1967. The relationship between Baader and Ensslin was the personal core around which the early RAF was organized. Ensslin's religious upbringing was reflected in the absolutism of her political commitment: she increasingly characterized West German society as irredeemably fascist and conventional political opposition as futile.¹

Frankfurt Arson and Imprisonment

In April 1968, Ensslin and Baader set fire to two Frankfurt department stores as a protest against the Vietnam War - an act Ensslin framed in explicitly moral terms as a necessary response to the violence of capitalism and American imperialism. They were arrested, tried, and convicted of arson. Ensslin's statement at trial - "You can't talk with the people who made Auschwitz" - became a defining formulation of the RAF's radicalism.

Released pending appeal in 1969, she and Baader used the time to build the network of contacts that would become the RAF. Following Baader's prison break in May 1970, both went underground.¹

RAF Operations and Arrest

Ensslin played a central role in the RAF's operations including the 1972 bombing campaign. She was arrested on June 7, 1972, in Hamburg, found in a boutique where she was shopping. The circumstances of her arrest - found in a high-street shop - were used to mock the RAF's stated rejection of consumer society.

The Stammheim trial lasted from 1975 to 1977. Ensslin, along with Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe, was convicted in April 1977 and sentenced to life imprisonment. She was found dead in her cell on the night of October 18, 1977, hanging from window bars. The official ruling was suicide, disputed by RAF supporters on the same grounds they contested Baader's death: that the maximum-security facility made access to the means of hanging impossible without guard knowledge.²