20 September, Zweibr?cken

Meinhof is transferred from Ossendorf Prison to Zweibr?cken Prison to take part in an identification line-up. Meinhof is determined to ruin the process by screaming “I’M ULRIKE MEINHOF!” The police instruct the other women in the line-up to follow suit; the witnesses are treated the unforgettable spectacle of six women screaming and clawing at their guards; five impostors and one true criminal all screaming hysterically: “SWINE!” “THIS IS ALL JUST A SHOW!” and “I AM ULRIKE MEINHOF!”

(source: baader-meinhof.com)

I see that Roger SARL actually quoted this some time ago. It’s a tremendous story, however, and worth retelling - the proper inversion of the “I’m Spartacus!” (or “we are all German Jews”, or “we are all Hezbullah” - I’d like to see a placard with both of those slogans placed side by side…) solidarity-in-anonymity meme.

I thought initially that out of all of the chapters of my current ultra-secret book project, the one I had planned on Meinhof and Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist had the shakiest chance of working out. But there is some fantastically good material to work with (much of it collated at the site referenced above).

A plea: if anyone knows where to find the text of the manifesto of Horst Mahler to which Meinhof’s “The Concept of the Urban Guerilla” was a reply and rebuttal, please let me know. I think there’s a dimension of Meinhof’s text that can’t be properly understood out of its polemical context - the constant emphasis on action as the only true path to revolutionary consciousness has for me the character of an impatient retort to a theoretical renegade…