Letter From Birgit Hogefeld, RAF Prisoner
July 22nd 1993
The reality is by now widely known: Klaus
Steinmetz is a police informant, and he brought the secret service on
our track, thus making the action of killer-troops in Bad Kleinen
possible [1]. Without his services
as an informant, Wolfgang would still be alive today, and we would
still be free.
Along with the decision of the RAF, the
prisoners, and sectors of the revolutionary resistance movement at the
end
of the 1980s to make political openings to all progressive elements in
the
society came a danger which we were all well aware of. I can remember
several
discussions in all sorts of groups, during which we talked about the
fact
that building up a newer and broader movement to fight for changes in
the
inhumane living conditions, both here and across the globe, would, at
the
same time, offer new possibilities for the insertion of informants and
other
spies, and, of course, you can't, on the one hand, say that you want to
be open to various people and groups in order to look and see how we
together
can build a "counter-power from below", and then, on the other hand,
treat
people whom you are meeting for the first time with mistrust.
Nevertheless,
the end result of these discussions was always the same, namely that it
should be possible, through the closeness, intensity, and exactness of
a
relationship among those who find themselves in this struggle, to get
to
know other people, despite all of their complexities and
contradictions,
and to thereby get some understanding of whether they can be afforded
absolute
trust.
But over these last few weeks, despite
the bitter experience of Klaus Steinmetz, who caused Wolfgang's murder
and my arrest, I still believe that trust between people is possible:
It exists
everywhere where people desire a common life.
What went wrong with our ties to Klaus
Steinmetz while we were in illegality? Where do the uncertainties and
mistakes lie
which led to such a poor estimation of him?
The feeling was, after the contact with
Klaus Steinmetz had taken place, that comrades (to whom I still feel
close
ties to today) would "put their hands in the fire" for him, and they
felt
sure that he could be trusted.
I, of course, have several questions
which I would like to ask these comrades, but most of them are rather
self-evident.
I met with Klaus Steinmetz on Thursday
(June 24) in Bad Kleinen, afterwards we traveled together to Wismar to
find some place to spend the night. The media reported that I had often
spoken to
Klaus Steinmetz on the telephone on the days prior to this, and even
called
him at home, in order to talk about Weiterstadt [2] - that is complete nonsense. We had met with Klaus
Steinmetz in April and had arranged the meeting in Bad Kleinen at that
time. On Thursday, the mood between us was rather tense from the start.
Klaus Steinmetz was
apparently in the ex-GDR [3] for the
first
time, and he kept objecting to everything. He measured everything
according
to West German standards, and even the luggage carriers at the train
station
were too careless for his liking. He was rather arrogant to most of the
people we dealt with. I asked him why he was being like that, glaring
at everything in the way that he was, and why he wasn't at all
interested in what was
going on here or what the people were like. He then, of course, said
that
everything did interest him. I then began telling him how, for example,
in 1990/91, I had wandered around pretty much aimlessly with another
person
through the ex-GDR, because at that time it was still quite possible to
have a conversation with various types of people. I found it very
exciting
and interesting at the time, because most people were still relatively
isolated,
so they talked a lot about their situation and wanted to hear about
life
in the West. Today, you don't come across such openness very often,
usually
only with rather elderly people. But my conversation with Klaus
Steinmetz
didn't go much further, because I stopped it when I noticed that he was
generally
indifferent to what I was saying and thinking.
During previous meetings with him, we
always were left with the feeling that he sought to avoid content
discussions,
and that he was happy when external situations made political
conversations
impossible. On Friday, I told him about our impression of him, and made
mention of a common discussion we had had about the mistakes of the KPD
[4] during the 1920s, during which we
had
taken rather opposing positions - he seemed not to remember anything. I
was totally confused. That Friday, every discussion was initiated by
me,
and he often told me that other comrades were hindering the discussions
which he felt were most important. But he had never started such a
discussion
with me, nor had he taken up any of my thoughts.
After a day and a half, I had a very
distant feeling about Klaus Steinmetz, and there was another reason for
this.
That Thursday, Kurdish comrades had
carried out occupations in several European countries in order to call
for a halt to the escalating war against their people [5]. Klaus Steinmetz's reaction to these events was
exactly
those of the right-wing newspapers and the commentators on Bayern
radio:
pointless kamikaze actions, they are alienating all their sympathetic
followers,
now they will be banned and deported - I was totally furious, because
his
whole attitude was distant and lacked any trace of solidarity. Also, he
had once again proven to me that he had absolutely no understanding of
the
political situation in which we all today are moving and must launch
initiatives
in. He had no understanding of the fact that the Kurdish comrades had
few
alternatives other than such occupations in order to gain broad
publicity
to exert political pressure against the genocide they are facing. I
thought
it was good and correct that they had decided upon these occupations
instead
of a military escalation, and they all gave a lot for this: their
freedom.
On Friday evening, I decided that I
couldn't go on with Klaus Steinmetz in this manner, I kept starting
discussions with him and continually got the feeling that they did not
interest or concern him. The result of this was that we hardly spoke to
each other for all of Saturday.
Now, of course, I have a question for
those comrades, especially those in Wiesbaden who knew him for a long
time, namely whether they had had completely different experiences with
Klaus Steinmetz than those I have sketched out here.
I'm sure that the meeting with us in Bad
Kleinen was also not a normal experience for him, for surely he knew
throughout that whole time that he was serving up Wolfgang and me to a
bunch of murderers, so, what was that like for him? On what did you all
[6] base your trust, when you wrote of
him in your information sheet of July 7 that people need to be careful
about making a so-called denunciation?
Is his whole personal history even true?
His parents' farm in Pfalz? His father's suicide? When did his service
as an informant begin - did it start during his time in Kaiserslautern?
Did the
threat of prison time for burglary pressure him into becoming an
informant - and did this lead to the change in his sentence? Or did he
just want the money?
I think that you all definitely need to
openly assess and publicize the mistakes which led to Klaus Steinmetz,
so
that other police informants who are able to get themselves into the
movement
- and I assume there are more - can never again cause such painful
experiences.
After that Sunday in Bad Kleinen, when
the thought first came to me that Klaus Steinmetz had betrayed us, I
could think of nothing about him which might rule out treason - that,
of course, is
different for other people that I know, and especially for those that I
know better. Against the notion that Klaus Steinmetz had betrayed us,
the
first thing I reflected on was that there seemed to me to be no reason
why
the police, from a tactical point of view, would have chosen that time
and
place to make their move - but I must have overestimated them. It must
have
been that the BKA, the BAW, etc. [7]
had
noticed with great disappointment that I came to Thursday's meeting
alone,
something not at all the norm. So I guess that Klaus Steinmetz informed
them
on Thursday or Friday that Wolfgang would be coming on Sunday; if my
arrest
had been planned for an earlier time (Friday or Saturday), then they
must
have pushed back the date because of this.
The series of events on Sunday before
Wolfgang's murder and my arrest was as follows: The three of us were in
the bar at
the train station (Wolfgang and myself and Klaus Steinmetz), and the
three
of us all left this bar at 3:15pm and walked beside one another and
went
down the steps into the underpass tunnel. I was on the left; I can't
remember
who was in the middle and who was on the right. When we came into the
underpass tunnel and turned to the right, the cops jumped on me right
away - I have said this before. Klaus Steinmetz was also "arrested" at
about the same
time (just seconds later) a few meters further on. He was lying in the
same
position I was, flat on the ground, behind him was guy holding a
pistol,
aimed at Klaus Steinmetz. I saw him, about 15 meters ahead of me, for
the
whole time up until a black hood was placed over my head.
I think it was bold of the state
security agencies to construct this lie in order to get him back into
his old position as an informant.
I was horrified by the reaction of the
people in the Wiesbaden Committee with regards to his letter. You all
must not
have noticed that you were in the process of repeating the same
mistakes
which had allowed a police informant to betray us in the first place.
How,
after all that had happened, could you all have questioned whether
Klaus
Steinmetz was a friend and comrade or a spy and a tool of murderers, by
asking him to "concretely explain how he had managed to escape from the
scene"?
(That's what I read in the newspaper.) And if he had been able to
"explain"
it all, and I hadn't told you anything to the contrary - what then?
It was a big event, and the media
repeated it often: "The first police informant to infiltrate the
commando structure of the RAF", "Informant was involved in the
Weiterstadt attack", and so
on - the security apparatus knows that these are lies. By stating that
Klaus Steinmetz was involved in the attack on the prison, the state,
once again, was doing nothing other than preparing to criminalize
comrades who live
above ground. For years, communiqués have been issued which have
stated how the RAF is organized and which have refuted these
criminalizing
lies. But the BAW keeps trying.
I lived in the underground for quite
some time, and I can say that someone like Klaus Steinmetz, with whom I
had met, could never be inserted into those living structures. There's
no point in idealizing those relationships which I grew to know and
lived with during that time - some relationships were very close and
intense, with other comrades I did not experience such closeness and
warmth - it's incredibly diverse, how I met many people in their living
conditions. But still, there are always moments when you know
everything about everyone, and by that I mean the
foundations of their lives, dreams, fears, and hopes.
From this comes a particular unity
between all those in this special living condition, namely that
everyone has made the decision to protect everyone else no matter what
the circumstances may be, even if you have to pay with your own life.
In relation to this, there exists an unbounded, two-sided trust; you
place your life into the hands
of other comrades without worrying for a second, and you are sure that
everything is built up securely there. It always meant a lot to me to
know and feel
this.
Now, briefly, my own biography: Those
things which really shook me years ago and affected me and influenced
the path
of my life were the report by a Vietnamese prisoner about torture in
the
Poulo Condor prison, and also the final notes of the dying Siegfried
Hausner.
(Siegfried was seriously wounded and taken to Stammheim, he wanted to
speak
to a lawyer, and they must have kept pressing him to write down the
names
and addresses of lawyers. He wrote these several times, each time his
handwriting
became more shaky - blurred - Siegfried must have died shortly
thereafter.)
I was glad that Wolfgang never regained
consciousness after being shot in the head, that way they were not able
to torment him anymore.
Irmgard Moeller has been in jail for 22
years; Ali Jansen isn't being released, despite having a serious case
of
asthma; the new wave of trials against comrades will cement people into
prisons for the rest of their lives; I myself am in total isolation.
I have always seen in this state's inhumane
and brutal treatment of political prisoners the particular sharpness of
its
general degradation and contempt directed against people here, thus I
was
able early on to grasp and comprehend the character of this system and
its
unending desire to destroy all that stands in opposition to it.
The death of Holger Meins (I was 17
years old at the time) had a profound effect on my life and helped
decide its
direction, just like Wolfgang's death today and the circumstances of
his
death will play a role later in life for some young people.
"With many voices, we wage the same hard
and merciless struggle, one with victims, and this struggle has not
ended. The destruction of Nazism and its roots is our solution. The
building of a
new world of peace and freedom is our goal."
That's the beginning of an oath written
by people in the concentration camp at Buchenwald - I have always seen
my
life and our struggle in light of this tradition.
Birgit Hogefeld, printed in taz, July 22nd 1993 from Angehoerigen Info #124
Footnotes
N.B. All footnotes in this document were
added by the editor. None are originally from the RAF.
[1] RAF members Birgit Hogefeld and Wolfgang
Grams had been lured to Bad Kleinen by a police informant – Klaus
Steinmetz – one June 27th 1993. While Steinmetz and the two RAF members
sat talking at the train station, 54 officers deployed around the
building
to close in as the three departed. Grams managed to get away, but was
quickly captured. According to two witnesses the cops held Grams on the
ground and shot him to death at point-blank range. Said Joanna Baron, a
sales clerk
at a station food stand: “Two policemen walked up to Grams, who was
lying
motionless. One bent over and shot him several times from close up.
Then
the second officer shot at Grams, but more at his stomach and legs. He
shot
several times.” The subsequent medical examination supported eyewitness
accounts
: it showed that the shot that caused the fatal wound to Grams head was
fired
from close range. [return to text]
[2] In March 1993 the RAF bombed the
new high-tech prison in Weiterstadt; this action was meant to prevent
this
prison from coming on line. [return to text]
[3] German Democratic Republic: East
Germany.
[return to text]
[5] On June 24/93, Kurdish militants in several
European countries carried out co-ordinated actions against Turkish
interests including attacks on banks, travel agencies and other
businesses as well
as occupations and hostage-takings at consulates and embassies. In
Germany
alone there were actions in 16 different cities including Bremen,
Berlin,
Hanover, Frankfurt and Köln. [return to text]
