Terrorism, Trauma, and the Search for Redemption

[You Say You Want a Revolution]

How does an ordinary, obedient child of the 1950s and a beneficiary of the economic miracle of that era turn into a terrorist, an accessory to murder? How does a girl of postwar Germany recoil in horror at the atrocities committed by her parents' generation and then go on to participate in the commission of her own generation's atrocities? "I believe that nothing you do is by chance," says Maier-Witt. "It wasn't by chance that I took up family therapy. It wasn't by chance that I became a revolutionary."

For Maier-Witt, part of the answer lies in a dusty attic in her father's house in Hamburg, where she grew up. One day when she was 12 years old, she found a collection of her father's Nazi war memorabilia in an old box in the attic, evidence of his membership in the SS -- the Schutzstaffel, Hitler's elite bodyguard unit that was headed by Heinrich Himmler. But at the time, she didn't know what those items meant. A few years later, she asked her father about the 6 million Jews killed in concentration camps. Her father wouldn't speak about it, so Maier-Witt refused to speak to him for two months. It was only 10 years ago that she realized the significance of what she had found in the attic so long ago. Her father -- an engineer, solid citizen, and responsible parent -- was party to mass murder.

Another part of the answer lies in the time she spent as a teenager in the United States. At 16, she traveled from West Germany to Michigan as an exchange student, an experience that left her disturbed and disappointed. The middle-class, Mid-western values that she encountered seemed narrow to her. Worse still, her classmates felt sorry for her. Sorry that she was German, sorry that she had grown up in the shadow of Hitler's war and the crimes of the Nazis. It felt to Maier-Witt as if her concerned hosts were giving voice to her private shame.

Back in West Germany, Maier-Witt entered the University of Hamburg in 1969, studying for a degree in psychology. But her real interest was in social inequality. She tried to organize anti-authoritarian kindergartens and, as a member of the Committee Against Torture, campaigned against the prison conditions endured by members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, a group that was dedicated to the violent overthrow of capitalism in West Germany. Maier-Witt was then living in a collective that drew heavily on recruits for the Red Army Faction (RAF), another name for the gang. Becoming a member, she says, was more a result of drift than of choice.

"Choosing to be part of the RAF was not so much a decision," she says. "I was already working for the Committee Against Torture. The committee members told me that one of these days, I might face the problem of getting arrested. That was when I decided that I'd put my fortunes with the group."

In 1977 she picked her first cover name, Sonja. She wasn't part of the hard-core command forces. Instead, she traveled to Amsterdam, where she trained as a member of the support group. She would rent cars and use them to transport weapons across borders; she would check out locations from which the RAF could conduct business. She learned to draw counterfeit stamps for passports and became a "postman," disappearing into dangerous places, gathering information, and delivering it.

The job of being a revolutionary, she says, wasn't exciting. For the most part, it was confusing. "The passion was less in the work," she says, "than in the general emotions of life."

It was in 1977 that the RAF planned a series of major actions designed to force the government to release some of the gang's imprisoned members. Among the missions: the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, president of the German Employers Federation. "It was decided that I should go to Germany to join them," Maier-Witt says. "I got involved in checking out the route he was using and renting apartments for the group." The RAF kidnapped and killed Schleyer -- one of nearly three- dozen people the gang murdered over two decades. "At the time, I didn't give myself the chance to think about my feelings," Maier-Witt says. "I was proud that the others thought I could do the job. I was 27. The group was strong. The RAF consisted of about 20 or 25 members."

After Schleyer's murder, opposition to the gang became intense. "I went to the hairdresser," says Maier-Witt, "and the 'Wanted' poster with my face on it was hanging before the mirror: 'Height, 171 centimeters; blue eyes.' I thought, Now they have a lot of time to recognize me. But my training taught me that by turning your interest to others, you make yourself invisible. My outward appearance is such that people think I can't do much harm. They trust me. The true observer disappears. The good listener is unseen."