Stammheim 77/12

Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.

In the early 1970s, Otto Schily and Hans-Christian Ströbele were part of the group of attorneys of the left-wing extraparliamentary opposition in Germany. In this function, they, for instance, represented the militant Horst Mahler in court. One thing that united all three of them was their goal to create a new and different republic. They viewed Federal Germany as an oppressor of political freedom and as a vassal of the United States. Today, Schily is a former Federal Minister of the Interior with a firmly conservative stance and Ströbele is a well-respected member of the left wing of the Green Party in the German parliament while Mahler has again come into conflict with the law because of his extremist right-wing activities.

In April 1975 Commando Holger Meins occupies the West German Embassy in Stockholm. In exchange for the hostages they want to force the release of RAF-prisoners in Germany; Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, etc. The occupation lasts twelve hours and ends in defeat for the occupants, left is a blown-up Embassy and four people dead, two of them executed by the occupants. Karl-Heinz Dellwo, 23 years old, is arrested and sentenced to jail. In 1995 he is released from prison. Today he lives in Hamburg with his girlfriend Ella, also a former terrorist. Karl-Heinz is trying to create a new life for himself, but he is always haunted by his violent past.

The filmmaker, Simon Brückner, goes in search of his long-deceased father, one of the central figures of the German students' movement. A picture of a multi-faceted character emerges and a piece of German history is retold.

This documentary film essay analyses controversial police procedures in Germany in autumn 1974, when in a number of the police interventions suspects were killed before being arrested or tried.

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.

'Der Baader Meinhof Komplex' depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the events based on Stefan Aust's standard work on the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The story centers on the leadership of the self named anti-fascist resistance to state violence: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin.

Andreas Baader starts out as a small-time criminal. In Berlin, he is recruited by a revolutionary cell. They plan to overthrow the state.

An epic meditation on psychoanalysis, the Baader-Meinhof, feminism, and pre-revolutionary Russia.