Gudrun Ensslin (15 August 1940-18 October 1977) was a leader of the German Red Army Faction Marxist revolutionary organization during the "German Autumn". She was the intellectual head of the RAF and the partner of RAF leader Andreas Baader, and she was involved in five bomb attacks that killed four people. She died on the night of 18 October 1977 in Stammheim Prison's "suicide night" along with Baader and some other imprisoned RAF members.
Biography[]
Gudrun Ensslin was born on 15 August 1940 in Bartholoma, Baden-Wurttemberg, Nazi Germany, the fourth of seven children. Ensslin did well at school and was a member of the Protestant Girl Scouts, and she attended high school in Warren, Pennsylvania in the United States. She received a scholarship from Studienstiftung due to her excellent exam scores, but she transitioned to being a Marxist while attending anti-Vietnam War protests, and in 1967 she began an affair with Andreas Baader. An intellectual, she became the ideological leader of the Red Army Faction, a Marxist revolutionary organization that Ensslin and Baader founded together. She took part in five bombings in 1968 during the "German Autumn" spree of terrorist attacks, killing four people; she denounced West Germany as "a fascist state". On 8 June 1972, she was arrested for her crimes. The second generation of the RAF failed to free their imprisoned leaders, and on 18 October 1977 she hung herself in Stammheim Prison, following in Jan-Carl Raspe and Baader's footsteps.