THE STAMMHEIM MODEL

Judicial Counterinsurgency

by Michael Ryan

On May 4, 1988 Julio Rosado, a member of the Moviemiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN), spoke in Montréal, addressing the topic Resistance and Repression in Puerto Rico.  Talking about the Lexington Control Unit, in which Puerto Rican Prisoner of War Alejandrina Torres and two political prisoners, Silvia Baraldini[1] and Susan Rosenberg, were being held, Rosado said something i’d heard before and have heard since.  He referred to Lexington as “the Stammheim Model,” in reference to the high security unit housing political prisoners, primarily members of the Red Army Faction (RAF), in Stuttgart, West Germany.

Having made several extended visits to West Germany and spoken to individuals involved in various aspects of prisoner support I felt Rosado and others making this claim were correct in some essential ways.  However, what does such a statement mean to the average North American listener?  Very little i surmised.  One might have a vague idea from films such as Margarethe von Trotta’s Marianne and Julianne (a film that was subject to much criticism in West Germany) or Reinhard Hauff’s Stammheim (a film that was treated as blatant counterinsurgency and targeted for attack upon its release in West Germany).  At best, one might have read a short but limited article or interview at some point which allows some extrapolation as to the meaning of “the Stammheim Model.”

As I began to look at the issue, to search for a way to clarify what exactly this model entailed, i began to find the context in which said model had to be placed, if we were to begin to understand it, was much broader than my previous understanding had allowed.

Stammheim is not simply an architectural construct, a building; of that fact I had always been clear.  Nor, however, is Stammheim simply a model for imprisonment.  It is that and much more.  Stammheim is a terrain of struggle between western imperialism and international anti-imperialism.  As it was formulated by Andreas Baader[2] in 1974:

(T)he dead-wing is only a means in a strategy, isolation is only a terrain....  (I)solation is only the reaction of the prison system.[3]

Stammheim was and is the logical, perhaps inevitable, result of the restructuring of western Europe in general and West Germany in particular following the second World War.  If it is a model prison, and I believe it is, it is a model prison of a model state, “Modell Deutschland,” a state conceived and constructed as part of NATO’s post-war period.

Yes, Stammheim is all that and more.  Stammheim, the Stammheim of von Trotta’s Marianne and Julianne, of Reinhard Hauff’s Stammheim, the Stammheim of countless left analyses in West Germany, is a vital moment in the conflict between western imperialism and international anti-imperialism.  Stammheim is a decisive point in the struggle between these two forces on the judicial plane.  This conflict established a balance of power between the anti-imperialist movement and the West German state.  One of the elements is the so-called “Stammheim Model.”  If this model is to have any meaning it must be understood within the totality of its historical and social context.

What follows is neither a complete history nor a definitive analysis, it is simply an attempt to establish the parameters of this “Stammheim Model.”  As an example of what might be called judicial counterinsurgency, Stammheim presents much worthy of our attention.

Modell Deutschland - The Economic Miracle

The defeat of Nazism in West Germany in May 1945 spelled the end of Germany’s national sovereignty.  It also spelled the beginning of the U.S. imperialist “Cold War” against the Soviet bloc.  Germany was to become an important chip, both militarily and economically, a position it continues to occupy today.  As Werner Hülsberg has noted:

In spite of the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, the theatre of the Cold War was Europe.  The division of Germany was a “natural consequence” of the strategic goal of U.S. imperialism.[4]

The strategic goal was, in keeping with the Truman Doctrine, the creation of an anti-communist bulwark in Germany.  The vehicle for this project was the so-called Marshall Plan, a blueprint for the economic and military reconstruction of West Germany, spearheaded in the U.S. Congress by one General George C. Marshall.  Through the “European Relief Program” the West German economy was to be rebuilt in such a way that it:

·       guaranteed the expansion of U.S. economic influence in Europe

·       was the foundation of the military and political integration of Western Europe into the anti-communist bloc.

·       facilitated, through the control of the German economy by U.S. capital, the Americanization of European societies, especially West Germany, by American culture and American technology.  Thus the “American way of life” was imported as an unquestionable prototype.[5]

In short, West Germany, demolished by war and in social and economic chaos, was offered reconstruction, rapid economic growth, and integration into the Allied Bloc in exchange for the use of its territory as a front line state in the cold war with the USSR.

By the time West Germany was ushered into full statehood in 1949 its role had been clearly defined.

The coming into force of the constitution, the “basic law,” in May 1949, and the elections in August of the same year were a pure formality.  The de facto division of Germany was given formal constitutional status and the erection of the anti-communist bulwark was given legitimation.[6]

For U.S. imperialism, West Germany was to be more than a physical bulwark against the “encroaching red menace;” West Germany was to be western imperialism’s visible model of the economically and socially “progressive” nature of capitalism.  Modell Deutschland (Model West Germany), as it was to be known, was to serve as an example to other west European states and as a taunt to the working class on the other side of the “Wall.”

Through the financial assistance offered by the Marshall Plan, West Germany was able to construct an economy that throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies truly was the envy of other western capitalist states.  In every area of the economy West Germany shone.  Unemployment declined consistently from 11% in 1950 to 3.7% in 1958.  The rate of investment grew from 19.1% in 1950 to 26.5 % in 1965.  Even with the recessions of the seventies it wasn’t until 1976 that the rate of growth had fallen back to 20%.  In 1960 when France was showing a rate of investment of 17.4% and both Britain and the U.S. only registered 16%, West Germany was already showing an investment rate of 24%.  With the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which served to stem the flow of economic refugees from the east, West Germany managed full employment.  West Germany’s growth rate was 15% in 1955.  As a result of the recession of 1957-58 and that of 1963 the growth rate had declined to 6.6% by 1963, but was back up to 9.4% by 1965.  In concrete terms this “economic miracle” meant an increase in net salaries of 143% from 1950 to 1962 and a parallel increase in the income of independent entrepreneurs of 263%.  As Werner Hülsberg notes:

It is against this background that we must see the tragedy of the integration of the West German working class into the capitalist system and the loss of political strength.[7]

Throughout the fifties and sixties all was peaceful on the labour front.  Throughout this period the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the trade union leadership worked hand in glove with capital to contain any nascent unrest, the SPD pushing forward social programs, such as improved pension and medical plans, in exchange for moderation in wage demands.  However, with the oil crisis of 1973, the SPD was forced to institute an austerity program.  Nonetheless, it was not until 1975-76 that wages suffered a real decline for the first time, spelling the end of the “miracle.”

NATO:  The U.S. Makes the FRG an Offer It Can’t Refuse

As was noted earlier, the Marshall Plan was not simply an economic project, but had a very important military component.  From the very beginning it was intended that West Germany be a military outpost of U.S. imperialism in Western Europe.  This, in fact, is indicated not only in the virtually simultaneous foundation of both NATO and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1949, but in the very nature of the FRG as a state.  The FRG was not given formal sovereignty until 1955, and then only on the condition that it become part of NATO.  Further the FRG is legally bound not to withdraw from NATO.  And perhaps most significantly, the commanding officer in NATO also becomes the commander-in-chief of the West German army in the case of a military conflict.  As Rudolph Augstein, the editor of the influential bourgeois weekly Der Spiegel, stated in 1955:

The new German army has not been founded to guarantee the safety of Bonn; rather the new state has been founded to be able to build up an army against the Soviet Union.[8]

And this function is much more than theoretical.  Germany has more than one hundred U.S. bases on its territory.  During the Vietnam War the U.S. headquarters in Heidelberg coordinated the B-52 bomb attacks.  Rapid deployment forces are stationed in the FRG.  The intervention into Iran in May 1980 was launched from Rammstein, West Germany.  The so-called Startbahn West (Runway West) in Frankfurt is NATO’s key take-off point for interventions into the Middle East and Africa.  All U.S. bases have extra-territorial status and function under U.S. law.  They are, of course, also the site of CIA interventions in the FRG and in Western Europe in general.  According to “Operation Plan 101-1” the U.S. commander-in-chief in Europe is legally entitled to intervene in cases of internal unrest in West Germany.  As well, West Germany is an important site for tactical nuclear weapons, and even today the U.S. does not inform the West German government exactly how many of these weapons are on its territory.

While economic aspects of the Marshall Plan were carried out with little or no opposition, the rearming of West Germany, not surprisingly when one considers the outcome of both World Wars, met with intense opposition.  In 1949 only 6.9% of West Germans were in favour of rearmament.  By 1952 this amorphous anti-rearmament sentiment had consolidated into a broad based movement, including the West German Communist Party (KPD), trade unions, socialist youth groups, church groups, pacifists, and, at times, albeit ambivalently, the SPD.

When the SPD government responded favourably to a U.S. “offer” of tactical nuclear weapons the reaction was swift.  Members of West Germany’s largest union, the “Public Services, Transport and Communications Union” (ÖTV) voted 94.9% in favour of a strike against nuclear armament.  The president of IG Metall, West Germany’s most powerful union, called for warning strikes.  In Munich eighty thousand people demonstrated against nuclear armament.  Opinion polls showed 52% of the population supporting an anti-nuclear general strike.  The SPD and trade union brass moved to squash this mass movement, threatening to grow out of control, proposing a referendum instead of a general strike.  The government took this referendum proposal to Constitutional Court, where it was ruled unconstitutional.  The ploy had worked; by 1959 the anti-nuclear movement had dissipated.  Modell Deutschland had weathered its first political storm.

But the first seeds of the conflict that would smash Modell Deutschland’s progressive image had been planted.

Security State:  A Model for Repression

While both the economic and military aspects of Modell Deutschland were, to a greater or lesser degree, formulated in and in some cases against public sentiment, the model had another equally important aspect, which was much more subterranean in its formulation.  Ona Zukumpft[9] describes it this way:

Finally, the last part in the Modell Deutschland comes out of the tube:  Sicherheitsstaat, or the Security State.  The instructions say it is to be nested within the macro-courthouse and that it has the feature of remaining invisible so long as the circle of prosperity and social peace is rotating fluidly.[10]

It is this aspect of Modell Deutschland that bears most directly on the topic under discussion here.  Werner Hülsberg has stated:

(A)lliance with the United States, anti-communism and the economic miracle were the three pillars of West German society...(bold lettering mine).[11]

As we shall see, this anti-communism was far from simply a conceptual formulation; rather the legal structure of West German “constitutional democracy” has from its inception aimed to prevent and/or annihilate all left opposition (while consistently treating neo-nazi opposition much less harshly).

When the FRG was founded in 1949 the penal code of the Third Reich remained in force.  The Korean War, which began on June 25, 1950, offered the fledgling state the opportunity needed to introduce sweeping anti-communist legislation.  Speaking in defense of draconian “internal security” provisions, Minister of Justice Dehler said in the Bundestag (Parliament) on September 9, 1950:

(W)e don’t need to go as far as Korea.  The evil is so close.  We have what is happening in the Eastern Zone.  Over there every instrument of propaganda and subversion is being used to bring about the disintegration and collapse of the Federal Republic.  In my view we cannot look on passively.  The battle-cry is not “Hannibal at the gates” but “the Trojan horse in our midst.”[12]

On July 11, 1951 the Basic Law, including state security measures, passed into effect.  Dehler described the target of these measures varyingly as “ideological high treason,” “ideological subversion,” and “ideological sabotage.”  In short, thought crime.  These measures have less in common with measures consistent with liberal constitutional democracy and more in common with the Nazi laws of the mid-30s.

The immediate target of these statutes became clear with due haste.  On November 23, 1951, when the Basic Law was barely four months old, the federal government applied to the Constitutional Court to have the KPD proscribed.  (This at a time when the KPD held 15 seats in the Bundestag.)  The KPD’s program opposed the integration of the FRG into NATO and as late as 1952 openly called for the revolutionary overthrow of the Adenauer government.  This platform, however, clearly didn’t have major political support; in 1952 the KPD had only polled 2.2% of the electoral vote.[13]

The trial of the KPD began on November 11, 1954.  Sensing the direction things were going in, the KPD distanced itself from revolutionary politics in public statements in early 1956.  It was already too late, however.  On August 17, 1956 the KPD was illegalized.  Subsequent to the ruling there were hundreds of arrests.

It is worth noting in passing that neither the NPD, the key neo-nazi party, which fields candidates in elections, nor the associations of former SS officers have ever been illegalized.

However, the Basic Law cast its net much wider than the KPD.  On August 2, 1954 the high court ruled that the organization and promotion of demonstrations, meetings, and strikes could also constitute treason. Throughout the fifties socialist and communist organizations were charged with every possible offense that could be deemed to constitute treason or high treason during the anti-rearmament movement.

The high court’s June 4. 1955 ruling on the constitutionality of the general strike exemplifies the essential nature of the Basic Law.

A strike restricted in area , or limited to a particular, non-vital branch of industry or activity will not normally constitute the use of force against organs of the constitution, since compulsion cannot be achieved in this way.  With mass or general strikes, however, it is different.  In a highly industrialized and thickly populated country like the Federal Republic the provision of the necessary goods and services for the population requires the smooth interaction of the most diverse institutions, enterprises and activities.  If essential parts of this complicated mechanism are put out of action over a large area or for any length of time, or if, as with a general strike, there is a paralysis of the whole of public and economic life, the orderly functioning of the government system becomes impossible, and chaotic conditions must necessarily result....  The general ban on political strikes is based on §105 StGB, “The exercise of compulsion against organs of the constitution.[14]

On October 19, 1954 the federal high court had already ruled, as regards strikes in general:

No action in a strike which goes beyond the cessation of work and violates interests protected by the law is justified by the so-called strike law[15]

SDS and the Birth of the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition

The Socialist Student Union (SDS), the student wing of the SPD, was founded in 1946 and functioned primarily as a training ground for the future elite of the party.  Helmut Schmidt, West Germany’s first Social Democratic chancellor, was, for instance, the first president of the SDS.  The SDS maintained this status for more than a decade after its formation, but in the context of the anti-rearmament movement a shift began to occur.  In 1958 the various forces making up the left wing of the SDS won the leadership.  Ill-formed and ill-defined, this left gained its cohesion from a growing anti-SDS sentiment based on anti-nuclear politics, which were increasingly driving a wedge between the SPD and the various left forces, including the left-wing of its own base.

Between 1958 and 1961 the SDS took a series of positions that placed it in opposition to the SPD.  As well as anti-nuclear and anti-military positions, they adopted a position supporting self-determination for Algeria.  In May of 1960 students loyal to the SPD formed the Social Democratic Student Union (SHB) after having received official recognition from the SPD in February of that year.  In October 1961 SPD left wingers formed the Society for the Promotion of Socialism (SF).  Faced with growing dissent within it own ranks the SPD decided it was time to move.  The SF and SDS were purged; a move which completed the alienation of the critical intelligentsia and youth from the party.

For several years following the expulsion, the SDS was silent, turned inward, struggling to elaborate a consistent analysis and strategy.  When the SDS returned to the public forum it was as a consciously anti-imperialist organization influenced by the experiences of China, Cuba, Algeria, and Vietnam.  When Congolese President Moise Tshombe, the man responsible for the murder of Patrice Lumumba[16], visited the FRG at the end of 1964 the SDS organized a demonstration.  In the period that followed the SDS, based on university campuses, became the key organization in the growing and increasingly militant protest against the war in Indochina.

The economic crisis of 1966-67, which pushed unemployment to over a million for the first time, led to the formation of the so-called “Grand Coalition” of the SPD and the Christian Democratic Party/Christian Socialist Party (CDU/CSU), creating a situation where former resistance fighter and SPD chief Willi Brandt was the vice-chancellor alongside the old Nazi Georg Kiesinger and the extreme right-winger Franz Josef Strauss was Minster of Finance alongside the SPD’s young luminary, Karl Schiller, who held the Economics portfolio.  The disenchantment of West Germany’s youth was complete.  The Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) was born.

The growing revolt was focused in West Berlin, where a group of students, gathered around Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rebehl, were questioning not only the economic system, but the very nature of society itself.  The structure of the family, the factory, and the school system were all challenged.  Communes and housing associations began to spring up.  The women of the SDS challenged the male leadership and orientation within the SDS and the APO, setting up women’s caucuses, daycares, and women’s centres.  The counter-culture allied itself to the political insurgency.  Political protests encompassed traditional demonstrations, as well as sit-ins, teach-ins, and happenings.  So called “Republican Clubs” were set up in virtually every town and city as centers for discussion and activity.  On February 17 and 18, 1967 this movement reached what was perhaps its peak when five thousand people attended the “International Congress on Vietnam,” which brought representatives from the anti-imperialist movement throughout the world to West Berlin.  The congress closed with a demonstration of more than twelve thousand people.

On June 2, 1967 the state counter-attacked.  A demonstration outside the “German Opera,” protesting a state visit from the Shah of Iran, was brutally attacked by the police.  Many protesters were hospitalized, some for several days, and a young student, Benno Ohnesorg, a member of the “Evangelical Student Association,” who was attending his first demonstration, was shot in the back of the head and killed.  A young nurse who tried to treat him was savagely beaten.  Following mass protest the director of the police, Duensing, was forced out of his job, Senator for Internal Affairs Buensch and the Mayor of Berlin, Albertz, both resigned.  An uneasy calm reigned in the wake of these events.  The stage was set for a definitive explosion.

The explosion was not long in coming.  On April 11, 1968 Josef Bachmann, a young right wing worker, shot Rudi Dutschke three times, once in the head, once in the jaw, and once in the chest.  Dutschke, who was recognized as the key theoretician of the SDS and the APO, had been a target of a massive anti-communist smear campaign in the media, particularly in a chain of papers owned by arch-reactionary Axel Springer.  For four days demonstrations turned into showdowns with the police.  Thousands were arrested, hundreds were hospitalized, and two people were killed.  On May 1, fifty thousand people demonstrated in West Berlin.

In response to this challenge the Bundestag passed the so-called “Emergency Powers Act” on May 11.  While the Bundestag was speeding the Act through sixty thousand people gathered outside to protest against its inauguration.  This law was meant to open up the movement to greater intervention.  Article 10 of the Basic Law was altered to allow the state to tap phones and observe mail unhindered by previous stipulations requiring that the targeted individual be informed.  Provisions were introduced in particular for the telephone surveillance of people suspected of preparing or committing “political crimes,” especially those governed by the catch-all Paragraph 129 of the penal code, illegalizing the “formation or support of a criminal association.”  The “Emergency Powers Act” also inaugurated the use of clandestine photography, “trackers,” and the so-called “V-men[17],” undercover informants and provocateurs.

In the same time period, as was the case with most western “democratic” powers, financial support for police forces involved in political control began to increase in an unprecedented way.  The following charts demonstrate this quite graphically.

2.  Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Vefassungsschutz)

In February 1970 when the SDS dissolved the APO was beginning to fragment, but not before altering the very nature of West German society.  Hülsberg summarizes the impact of the APO this way:

Among the consequences were the reform of education; a new Ostpolitik[19]; the deconstruction of the authoritarian patriarchal relations in the family, school, factory and public service; the development of state planning in the economy; a greater integration of women into professional life and a reform in sexual legislation.  ...  Secondly the APO also provided the impetus to a socio-cultural break with the past.  There was a very rapid change in social outlook and behavior patterns.  The old ascetic behavior based on the notion of duty came to an end.  Along with a different conception of social roles came a new set of sexual mores and a dissolution of the old respectful and subservient attitude towards the state and all forms of authority.  There developed, in other words, a new culture which was to pave the way for the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s.[20]

Anti-Imperialism Goes Underground

The decline of the APO led to the formation of a veritable alphabet soup of Maoist and, to a lesser degree, Trotskyist sects, none of which was to last out the decade, as well as to the reformation of the banned KPD under a new name, DKP, but boasting the same program and leadership.  As well, and most important to our discussion, a section of the movement chose to take the struggle against U.S. and West German imperialism underground.

This underground tendency had its earliest manifestation in the firebombing of a Frankfurt department store on April 3, 1968 to protest the war in Vietnam.  On April 5 Horst Söhnlein, Thorwald Proll, Gudrun Ensslin, and Andreas Baader were arrested and charged with arson.  They subsequently received a three year sentence.  While out on bail Ensslin and Baader vanished.  Baader was rearrested on April 3, 1970.  Following Baader’s arrest well-known left journalist Ulrike Meinhof applied for and received the right to work on a book about youth centers with Baader (an area in which they both had experience).  For this work Baader was escorted under guard to the Free University library.  On May 14 Meinhof, Irene Goergens, and Ingrid Schubert free Baader in an armed attack and the Red Army Faction (RAF) was born.

For two years the RAF patiently constructed their organization, a period during which several clashes with the police occurred, leaving two members dead and many more in prison.  Finally in May 1972 the RAF went into action in a series of events that were to become known as the “May Offensive.”  On May 11, the day the U.S. blockade of Vietnam began, the RAF bombed the U.S. Army headquarters and the site of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Frankfurt, killing one American officer and injuring 13 others, as well as causing extensive damage.  On May 12 the police headquarters in Augsburg and Munich were bombed in response to the May 2 shooting of RAF member Thomas Weisbecker.  Thirteen people were injured.  On May 16 the RAF placed a bomb in the car of high court judge Wolfgang Buddenberg, the judge responsible for all proceedings against arrested RAF members.  Buddenberg’s wife was injured.  On May 19 the Springer high-rise in Hamburg was bombed in retaliation for the consistent anti-left and counterinsurgency propaganda in the Springer press.  Three warnings were ignored and, as a result, 34 employees were injured.  On May 24 the RAF bombed the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe, in Heidelberg, in retaliation for the carpet bombing and mine blockading in North Vietnam.  The computer was completely destroyed, three soldiers were killed and six others were injured.

Following this offensive the West German state mobilized one hundred and thirty thousand cops, supported by both West German and U.S. intelligence units, in a determined effort to destroy the RAF.  On June 1 Holger Meins, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader were arrested following a shoot-out with the police.  On June 7 Gudrun Ensslin was arrested in Hamburg.  On June 9 Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Bernhard Braun were arrested in West Berlin.  And finally, on June 15 Ulrike Meinhof and Gerhard Müller were arrested in Hanover.  Following the successes of this counterinsurgency campaign the West German government felt confident it had decapitated the RAF.

Enter the Stammheim Model

Having captured the individuals they felt were the ideological leadership of the RAF, the West German state set in motion the second element of their counterinsurgency project, the so-called “Stammheim Model.”  The removal of the perceived leadership of the RAF from the field of conflict was not sufficient.  They were to be destroyed, rendered ineffective not only as combatants, but also as spokespeople for anti-imperialist resistance.  If at all possible, they were to be deconstructed as human beings and reconstructed as representatives of the counterinsurgency project.  If the latter was not possible, as a bare minimum, they were to be destroyed.  The weapon for this campaign was complete and total isolation, both from each other and from the outside.

As early as June 7, 1972 the importance of isolation was enunciated by Horst Ehmke (SPD), the minister responsible for coordinating intelligence operations.  He stressed the need to “completely break all solidarity (with the RAF), to isolate them from all others with radical opinions in this country.  That is the most important task.”[21]

As of April 11, 1973 Holger Meins was held in single isolation in a prison wing where the cells above, below, to the left, and to the right of him were empty.  His cell was searched daily.  He was denied all group activities including church.  And he was shackled whenever he left his cell.

Andreas Baader was held under similar conditions from the day of his arrest (June 2, 1972) until November 11, 1974.  His isolation was total; in that entire time he did not see another prisoner.

Ulrike Meinhof and Astrid Proll were both held in the so-called “dead wing.”  The “dead wing” consists of acoustically sealed cells painted bright white with a single grated window.  The cell is lit 24 hours a day with a single bald neon light.  It is forbidden for the prisoner to hang photographs, posters, etc. on the walls.  The only minimal contact with another human being is when food is delivered.  Otherwise the prisoner lives 24 hours a day in a world with no variations.  Meinhof was held in these conditions for two hundred and thirty-seven days following her arrest on June 15, 1972 and for shorter periods in December 1973 and February 1975.  In the case of Astrid Proll, these conditions damaged her physical and mental health so badly that the state was obliged to release her to a sanitarium, from which she escaped, remaining free until she was arrested several years later in England.

As well as this internal isolation, the RAF prisoners were (and are) subjected to extreme isolation from the outside.  They were limited to visits from lawyers and family members.  Visits from family members were (and are) overseen by two state security employees who record all conversations.  The contents of such conversations have been entered into trials, sometimes following analysis by a psychologist.  All political letters, books, and packages are withheld.

Since 1975 all prisoners arrested under §129 in connection with “political crimes” are held under the so-called “24 Point Program.”  This program specifies, among other things, that the prisoner is banned from all common activities.  The prisoner receives one hour of solitary yard time per day, which is immediately interrupted is s/he fails to heed an order, insults a staff person, or causes any damage.  The prisoner may keep twenty books in her/his cell.  Visits are limited to people cleared by the authorities and are for a maximum of thirty minutes each (the standard is two such visits a month).  It is prohibited to discuss activities of the so-called “terrorist scene” or its support groups (the latter is a grab bag for all left organizations), prison revolts, or hunger strikes.  All visitors are searched, and this extends to lawyers as we shall see.

In a statement regarding these isolation wings Till Meyer and Andreas Vogel[22], both having been subjected to these conditions for years, wrote:

With the isolation wings, years of isolation has been carried to the extreme and the process of extermination has been perfected:  the perfection of spatial limitation and the total isolation, electronic observation with cameras and microphones (openly in each cell) - and we are guarded by special corps (corps who are trained in psychology and conditioned through BKA[23] training).[24]

They further added:

The isolation wings are the scope, means, and method of physical and psychological destruction - if one is eventually released, then s/he must be incapable of further resistance.  THAT IS THE FRONT LINE AGAINST WHICH WE ARE MOBILIZING, AGAINST WHICH WE ARE STRUGGLING.  Isolation wings are, as such, also a clear example of the conflict between the guerrilla and the imperialist state.[25]

Otherwise stated:

Isolation aims at desocializing prisoners from every social relationship including their history, their history above all.  ...  It makes the prisoner unconscious or kills her/him.[26]

Wilfried Rasch, a prison psychiatrist who examined the Stammheim prisoners, had this to say about the isolation conditions in which they were held:

The high security wing has simply the quality of torture, that is to say, an attempt through special measures, as such, to achieve something amongst the prisoners through difficult or unbearable conditions, that is to say, a change of heart, a defection.[27]

Even the visits which are permitted are designed to add to the prisoners’ stress-level.  Eberhard Dreher describes the closed visiting conditions as follows:

(T)he screen offers a pretense of contact, simultaneously limiting the contact to visual contact and making the contact unfamiliar due to the reflective quality of the glass.  ...  Further pain is created by the lack of air and the particular acoustics.  The construction of ventilators would rectify this problem.  ...  To make oneself understood, one must speak very loudly.  One’s own voice within the aquarium-like cabinet is amplified into an acoustic mountain crashing down directly onto one’s own head.[28]

Dreher further describes the effect of one such visit with his lawyer as follows:

After ... 40 minutes, I had a splitting headache and, with the consent of my lawyer, had to break off the visit.  I had a headache, needed air, was fed-up, wanted to be in my cell in peace.[29]

In its July 8, 1978 “Decision” the “European Commission of Human Rights” noted the following effects on the health of Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader as a result of their prolonged imprisonment under conditions of single or small-group isolation:

(i)           State of health

               In September 1975:

19.  The applicants are in a state of physical and mental exhaustion (Dr. Mende).  Their blood pressure is low.  Their weight is about 70% of that of a normally healthy person of the same age and build (Dr. Müller).  They present the following symptoms in varying degrees:  problems of concentration, marked fatigue, difficulties of expression or articulation, reduced physical and mental performance, instability, diminished spontaneity and ability to make contacts, depression (especially noted by Dr. Rasch).

               In April 1977:

20.  The decline in both physical and mental health is very pronounced in Ensslin (concurring opinion by Dr. Rasch, Dr. Müller, and Dr. Schröder):  loss of weight, very low blood pressure, premature aging, severe difficulties of expression and lack of concentration, motor disturbances.  The deterioration in the condition of Baader and Raspe is perceptible, though less spectacular:  Decrease in activity and spontaneity, emotional regression, problems of articulation, hesitancy in speech.  They are nevertheless fit for detention.

(ii)  The Causes

21.  The experts ascribe the applicants’ state of health to a series of factors and circumstances:  the particular conditions of their imprisonment, the length of the detention on remand, hunger strikes, tension generated by the trial and the applicants’ wish to defend themselves, etc..  The importance attached to these different factors varies from one report to another.

The particular conditions of imprisonment

22.  There is no sensory isolations strictly speaking, such as can be brought about by a substantial reduction in stimulation of the sensory organs.  On the other hand, the applicants are subjected to evident social isolation.  The international literature on criminology and psychology indicates that isolation can be sufficient in itself to gravely impair physical and mental health.  The following conditions may be diagnosed:  Chronic apathy, fatigue, emotional instability, difficulties of concentration, diminution of mental faculties, disorders of the neuro-vegetative system.  Opinions differ on the precise scale of these phenomena.  There are no reports in the literature of situations comparable to that of the applicants (Dr. Rasch), affording a better assessment of the psychiatric effects.  From the standpoint of internal medicine, certain analogies can be found in case-studies of elderly and isolated persons, persons kept alive artificially in intensive care units, and long-term prisoners (Dr. Müller and Dr. Schröder).  However, certain experts state that they have little personal experience of the physical and mental effects of normal imprisonment (Dr. Müller and Dr. Schröder).[30]

Although the commission found that “there is no sensory isolation strictly speaking,” the deterioration in the prisoners’ health speaks for itself.

If the results of imprisonment in the isolation wing are horrifying, isolation in the dead-wing is even more destructive.  Ulrike Meinhof’s description of the result of her prolonged imprisonment in the Cologne-Ossendorf “dead-wing” bears printing in its entirety.

From the period June 16, 1972 to February 9, 1973:

The feeling, one’s head explodes (the feeling, the top of the skull will simply split, burst open) -

the feeling, one’s spinal column presses into one’s brain -

the feeling, one’s brain gradually shrivels up like, for example, a baked fruit -

the feeling, one is uninterruptedly, imperceptibly, under a torrent, one is remote-controlled, one’s associations are hacked away -

the feeling, one pisses the soul out of one’s body, like when one cannot hold water -

the feeling, the cell moves.  One wakes up, opens one’s eyes:  the cell moves; afternoon, if the sun shines in, it suddenly remains still.  One cannot get rid of the feeling of motion -

One cannot tell whether one shivers from fever or from cold -

one cannot tell why one shivers - one freezes.

To speak at a normal volume requires an effort like that necessary to speak loudly, almost like that necessary to shout -

one can no longer identify the meaning of words, one can only guess -

the use of sibilants -s, -ss, -tz, -sch - is absolutely unbearable -

guards, visits, the yard seem to one as if they are made of celluloid -

headaches -

sentence construction, grammar, syntax - can no longer be controlled.

When writing:  two lines - by the end of the second line. one cannot remember the beginning of the first -

the feeling, internal burn-out -

the feeling, if one wants to say what’s wrong, if one wants to let it out, it’s like a rush of boiling water that scalds one forever, that disfigures -

raging aggressivity for which there is no outlet.

That’s the worst.

Clear consciousness that one has no possibility of survival; a complete breakdown of the capacity to mediate this; visits leave nothing.  A half an hour later one can only mechanically reconstruct whether the visit was today or last week -

compared to this, bathing once a week means;  a momentary thaw, a moment of rest - to stop for a couple of hours -

the feeling, time and space are interlocked -

the feeling, to find oneself in an amusement park house of mirrors - to stagger -

Afterwards:  awful euphoria, that one has heard something - beyond the acoustic day and night differentiation -

The feeling, time now flows, the brain expands, the spinal column sinks down after weeks.

The feeling, as if one’s skin is thickening.[31]

Isolation Torture and International Law

Pieter Bakker Schut, a Dutch lawyer who has served as defense counsel for prisoners from the RAF and who is the author of the authoritative book regarding the counterinsurgency developments in Stammheim, which is simply titled Stammheim, notes that the isolation conditions in West Germany pose a problem on two different levels from a legal perspective, that is to say, on both the level of internationally recognized human rights, as well as on the basis of international law governing the treatment of prisoners.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by the United Nations Organization (UNO) on December 10, 1948 states:

Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment.[32]

Article 1

1.  For the purposes of the Declaration, “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating him or other persons, ...[33]

This article was again ratified by the UNO in the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on December 10, 1984.[34]

The UNO has further recognized the special danger of torture faced by political prisoners and addressed it in Resolution 32/121, ratified  at the 105th Plenary Meeting, on December 16, 1977.  That resolution reads in part:

Aware of the fact that in many parts of the world numerous persons are detained in respect of offenses which they committed, or are suspected of having committed, by reason of their political opinions or convictions,

Noting that these persons are often exposed to special dangers as regards the protection of their human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Realizing, therefore, that special attention should be given to the full respect of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of these persons,

(The General Assembly)

1.  Requests Member States:

(B)  To ensure in particular, that such persons are not subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment...[35]

The basic principles of the UNO Conventions and Declarations are echoed in the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified in Rome on November 4, 1950.

Article 3

No one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading  treatment or punishment.[36]

Based on the principles outlined in the previously quoted documents and other similar documents, “Amnesty International” (AI) in 1973 pinpointed the following four elements constituting torture:

In the first place the nature of torture assumes the involvement of at least two persons, the torturer and the victim, and it carries the further implication that the victim is under the physical control of the torturer.  The second one is the basic one of the infliction of acute pain and suffering.  ...  Definitions that would reduce torture to physical assaults on the body exclude “mental” and “psychological” torture which undeniably causes acute pain and suffering, and must be incorporated in any definition.

Thirdly there is implicit in the notion of torture the effort by the torturer, through the infliction of pain, to make the victim submit, to “break him.”  The breaking of the victim’s will is intended to destroy his humanity, and the reaction to the horror of this finds expression in various human rights instruments in such phrases as “respect for the inherent dignity of the person.

Finally torture implies a systematic activity with a rational purpose....[37]

As such AI adopts the following definition of torture:

(T)he systematic and deliberate infliction of acute pain in any form by one person on another, or on a third person, in order to accomplish the purpose of the former against the will of the latter[38]

AI further notes:

(In a) situation of a public emergency or state of war (the European Convention on Human Rights) permits the suspension of most basic human rights.  However, is specifically holds that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”[39]

Finally AI concludes:

It can safely be stated accordingly, that under all circumstances, regardless of the context in which it is used, torture is outlawed under the common law of mankind.  This being so, its use may properly be considered to be a crime against humanity.[40]

Having defined torture and having concluded that it is uniformly in violation of all accepted international law, AI puts forward Biderman’s Chart of Coercion[41] as a guide to activities  that constitute so-called “clean torture.”  Developed in the post-Korean War period, it catalogues eight such categories of behavior, which have as their objective the “brainwashing” of the detainee.

BIDERMAN’S CHART OF COERCION

 

General Method	Effects (Purposes)	Variants
1             Isolation	Deprives victim of all social supports of his ability to resist. Develops an intense concern with self. Makes victim dependent upon interrogator.	Complete solitary confinement. Complete isolation. Semi-isolation. Group isolation.
2.            Monopolization of perception	Fixes attention upon immediate predicament; fosters introspection. Eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by the captor. Frustrates all actions not consistent with compliance.	Physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food.
3.            Induced debility; exhaustion	Weakens mental and physical ability to resist.	Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged constraint. Prolonged interrogation. Forced writing. Overexertion.
4.            Threats.	Cultivates anxiety and despair.	Threats of death. Threats of non-return.        Threats of endless interrogation and isolation. Threats against family. Vague threats. Mysterious changes of treatment.
5.            Occasional indulgences.	Provides positive motivation for compliance. Hinders adjustment to deprivation.	Occasional favours Fluctuations of interrogation attitudes. Promises. Rewards for partial compliance Tantalizing.
6.            Demonstrating “omnipotence.”	Suggests futility of resistance.	Confrontation. Pretending cooperation taken for granted. Demonstrating complete control over victim’s fate.
7.            Degradation.	Makes cost of resistance appear more damaging to self-esteem than capitulation. Reduces prisoners to “animal level” concerns.	Personal hygiene prevented. Filthy, infested surroundings. Demeaning punishments. Insults and taunts. Denial of privacy.
8.            Enforcing trivial demands.	Develops habit of compliance.	Forced writing. Enforcement of minute rules.

                                                                                                           

(I)n view of the undisputed harmful effects of isolation on the health it is essential that the health of prisoners in isolation should be regularly monitored, even where it is claimed by the authorities that the conditions are self-inflicted, and that the prisoners concerned should have the option of consulting doctors outside the prison system.[42]

Based on an understanding of their role as a metropolitan section of the international anti-imperialist guerrilla movement (a role reflected in the previously described attacks in response to the carpet bombing and the mining of harbours in North Vietnam) the prisoners of the RAF also demanded treatment as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949.  Articles 3, 4, 13, and 130 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War are of particular interest for our purposes.

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1)  Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other case, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above mentioned persons:

(a)  violence to life or person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b)  taking of hostages;

(c)  outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d)  the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

(2)  The wounded and the sick shall be collected and cared for.  An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to parties to the conflict.

The parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions in the present Convention.

The application of the preceding conventions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

•••

Article 4

All Prisoners of War, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

(1)  Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or voluntary corps forming part of these armed forces;

(2)  Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that these militias or volunteer corps, including these organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:

(a)  that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b)  that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c)  that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

•••

Article 13

Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated.  Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention.  In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or medical or scientific experiments of any kind which is not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.

•••

Article 130

Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention:  willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully deprivin