Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin in "Das Abonnement" (1967)

Gudrun Ensslin (ˈɡuːdʁuːn ˈɛnsliːn; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a founder of the German terrorist group Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang). After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's voluntaristic anarchistic beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF.

Quotes

• The people in our country and in America and in all West European countries, they have to gorge and guzzle so that they don't even start to think about the fact that we have something to do with Vietnam or what it might be about, OK?
  • Audiovisions: cinema and television as entr'actes in history By Siegfried Zielinski

• I just can't believe that there won't come a day when people won't be fed-up with being overfed. That they won't get fed-up with the self-deception that all this fantastic food is the whole point of life.
  • Audiovisions: cinema and television as entr'actes in history By Siegfried Zielinski

• Wonderful, I like cars, too, I like all the great things you can buy in a department store. But when you have to buy them in order to stay unaware, comatose, then the price you pay is too high.
  • Audiovisions: cinema and television as entr'actes in history By Siegfried Zielinski

• Ahab makes a great impression on his first appearance in Moby Dick... And if either by birth or by circumstance something pathological was at work deep in his nature, this did not detract from his dramatic character. For tragic greatness always derives from a morbid break with health, you can be sure of that.
  • Stefan Aust, Terrorism in Germany: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

• Violence is the only way to answer violence.
  • Violence is the Only Way

• This is the Auschwitz generation, and there's no arguing with them!
  • Violence is the Only Way

• Don’t blather that it is too hard. The action to liberate Baader wasn’t crocheting doilies either.
  • Build Up the Red Army!

• ...it is not the lefty ass-kissers you have to agitate, but the objective left-wing...
  • Build Up the Red Army!

• We are brutal with ourselves...., and one of the consequences this could have is that we will be equally brutal and cold with everyone else. Perhaps that's exactly what I've been missing.... A stroke of a sword, a well-aimed bullet must be less than what I feel when I think of being near you.
  • Letter to Baader in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on February 22, 2010.

• Hell YES! Andreas, praxis, you said it!
  • Letter to Baader in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on February 22, 2010.

• If we made a mistake, then we made a mistake (I don't see it myself); after all, what's been missing in the European fight for socialism over the last 100 years, is the element of 'madness'
  • Letter to Baader in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on February 22, 2010.

• Please never say again that I wanted to be rid of Felix, I am getting frantic here … When I get out I 'want' Felix terribly, but I don't want to take him away from you.
  • Letter to Baader in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on February 22, 2010.

Quotes about Ensslin

• It astonished me that Gudrun, who has always thought in a very rational, intelligent way, has experienced what is almost a condition of euphoric self-realization, a really holy self-realization... To me, that is more of a shock than the fire of the arson itself—seeing a human being make her way to self-realization through such acts.
  • Helmut Ensslin, Gudrun's father, in Stefan Aust, Terrorism in Germany: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

• They must have wanted to tell us — Look, this is where we are, where you have brought us. It is the position you have put us in.
  • Helmut Ensslin, Gudrun's father, in Stefan Aust, Terrorism in Germany: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

• I feel that by her act, she did something liberating, even for our family
  • Ilse Ensslin, Gudrun's mother, in Stefan Aust, Terrorism in Germany: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

• I am also overcome by fury and helplessness when I read these letters... What twisted thinking! What helplessness! What desperation and brutality against themselves, against me and others.
  • Son Felix on Gudrun's and Baader's letters in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on February 22, 2010.

• These letters have come to be important to me because they help throw a little sand in the inevitability of the great story-telling machine in which everything is propelled towards death, murder, suicide.
  • Son Felix on Gudrun's and Baader's letters in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on February 22, 2010.

See also

• Ulrike Meinhof