Meinhof, Ulrike Marie 1934-76
West German terrorist

Born in Oldenburg, the daughter of a museum director, she campaigned for the creation of a neutral, nuclear-free 'Greater Germany' while studying at Marburg University, and subsequently became a respected left-wing journalist. In 1961 she married the Communist activist, Klaus Rainer R�hl (divorced 1968), by whom she had twin daughters. After an interview with the imprisoned arsonist, Andreas Baader, she became committed to the use of violence to secure radical social change. In May 1970, she helped free Baader and they both then headed an underground urban guerrilla organization, the Red Army Faction, which conducted brutal terrorist attacks against the postwar West German 'materialist order'. As the Faction's chief ideologist, she was arrested in 1972, and in 1974 was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. She committed suicide in Stammheim high-security prison.