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SCREENING THE RED ARMY FACTION: HISTORICAL AND
CULTURAL MEMORY
By Christina Gerhardt
London: Bloomsbury, 2019, 308 pp.
REVIEWED BY MURAT AKSER, ULSTER UNIVERSITY
Much of the previous work on the 1960s and 1970s West German p­ olitical
­activist group the Red Army Faction (RAF) has been social, historical, or journalistic accounts of their activities within the context of West Germany's p­ olitics.
However, the RAF’s filmic, print, and artistic representations have not been the
­ aader ­Meinhof
subject of serious study, although the Oscar-nominated film The B
Complex (Uli Edel, 2008) did shed new light on the group and its ­activities.
Christina Gerhardt’s book Screening the Red Army Faction is a complete and
exhaustive volume of all the works on the subject, situating these films within
­German cinema’s three prolific ages: Weimar cinema, New German ­Cinema,
and the Berlin School.
Gerhardt uses a historical and cultural method of analysis whereby she
­divides the filmic representations and social dynamics of the RAF’s emergence
chronologically into two eras, which she dubs the “long sixties” (1957–1975)
and the “long seventies” (1967–1982). She situates the RAF’s emergence within the context of the traumatic effect felt by 1960s youth. This generation, she
argues, became politically active for a variety of reasons, such as the trauma felt
due to World War II and the Nazis’ rise to power, the Holocaust, and the conservative and distorting media representations of youth movements in the Springer
media. She divides the book into six chapters based on the political activities of
the RAF; the films that dealt with the RAF and issues of labour politics by filmmakers such as Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta,
and Reiner Warner Fassbinder; and representations of the RAF in different
­media (film, print, art, etc.).
The first chapter examines the political and historical context of 1945–1970
from which the RAF came into existence. Here, Gerhardt looks at both domestic
(the assassination of labour activists and communist party leaders) and international (colonial liberation wars and the Vietnam War) events. This chapter lays
out the social and cultural background of the period extensively, with discussion
of debates around NATO, the use of nuclear weapons, and the limits of representative democracy. Following this line of argumentation, the book successfully
illustrates how political parties failed to address issues raised by citizens, and
left-wing groups tried to fill the political vacuum through n­ on-violent ­actions
such as sit-ins, demonstrations, and marches. The role of corporate media and
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the limits of state surveillance also inform Gerhardt’s analysis, and which illustrates how representations of the RAF in films depict their political responses to
these issues.
The second chapter shifts the focus to print media and social movements
in West Germany between 1968 and 1972. Here, the comparison between the
right-wing corporate media of Springer Press and leftist publications such as Agit
883 sheds light on the framing and depiction of the left in West G
­ ermany at the
time. Gerhardt compares the corporate media’s efforts to situate itself as consensus journalism—seeking broad cooperation with government and shying away
from conflict (Bild)—while portraying student and labour activists as criminals. The 1960s witnessed a rise in critical, investigative journalism that sought
­democratization (Der Spiegel, Stern) by establishing a more participatory public
sphere and supporting student movements. The Red Army Faction, as Gerhardt
proposes, was thus able to find its voice in this kind of media.
In the third chapter, Gerhardt turns to issues of terrorism, state surveillance, and the German Autumn (1975–1977), focusing on an analysis of The
Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Völker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta,
1975) and Germany in Autumn (various, 1978). Her analysis positions the films
as taking on the relationships of institutions of power like the political establishment, the legal system, and corporate media. Gerhardt argues that the passing
of repressive laws in West Germany in the 1970s created a hostile ­environment
for social movements and led to more violent action by the RAF. This expression of repression, she argues, is found both thematically and stylistically in the
cinema of the period. Gerhardt argues that Katharina Blum is an archetypal example of this. Gerhart also draws parallels between the opening and the closing
events of the German Autumn in Germany's political memory and their representation in cinema through these two films. The chapter ends with discussion
of the impact of the repressive laws on German cinema via the omnibus film
Germany in Autumn, which can be best understood if these laws are taken into
account.
Gerhardt’s next chapter is a rich and dense analysis of women’s movements within the RAF and other left-wing social activist movements, and their
­parallel filmic representation by directors like Margarethe von Trotta. Here, she
explores alternative political trajectories, other than terrorism, through s­ ocial
movements pursued after the demise of the first RAF generation in prison. The
chapter focuses on three films that engage with these political paths on ­three
parallel tracks: Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Rainer Werner F
­ assbinder,
1975), The ­Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Margarethe von Trotta, 1978),
and M
­ arianne and Juliane (Margarethe von Trotta, 1981). Gerhardt is able to
bridge her analysis of Fassbinder’s film in relation to both German cinema of
the ­Weimar era and American film melodrama by Douglas Sirk. Her historical
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cultural analysis situates Fassbinder’s film melodrama in relation to Sirk’s films,
but suggests that Fassbinder stimulates the political consciousness of his female
characters to inspire them to get out of their situations, rather than exposing
their trapped states of mind (as Weimar cinema and Sirk melodramas do). In
her analysis of Marianne and Juliane, Gerhardt highlights the dualist nature of
RAF films, whereby main characters mirror each other as opposite ideals (such
as domestic/bourgeois/housewife vs. emancipated activist/socialist woman).
Here, Gerhardt’s impressive ability to expose the connections between New
German Cinema and the contemporary Berlin School finds its manifestation in
her linking of these works with recent films such as The State I Am In (Christian
Petzold, 2001).
In her fifth chapter, Gerhardt ventures into the contemporary period, positing that new films like The Legend of Rita (Volker Schlöndoff, 2000) look back at
the RAF’s activities as historical events rather than intervening in the discourse
on the events of the era. Her point is to ask the viewers of this new wave of post2000 heritage films to consider which narratives end up being hegemonic and
why, and which are erased and why. Gerhardt is able to demonstrate convincingly the sharp contrast between other contemporary films about the RAF and
Schlöndorff ’s film, which focuses on RAF members who took refuge in East
Germany in the 1980s. She attributes this change in perspective to the emergence of heritage cinema in post-unification Germany that views the events of
the Cold War from a distant ideological perspective. These films represent a lack
of substantive engagement with the historical details of the relationship between
the RAF and the Stasi, thus leaving many questions unanswered.
Chapter six examines terrorism and memory through art exhibitions
­depicting the RAF, especially Gunther Richter’s cycle of fifteen oil paintings titled 18 October 1977, created in 1988, as well as the Kunst-Werke Museum’s 2005
RAF exhibit. Gerhart argues that these art pieces and exhibitions function in
contradistinction to the recent films, in that they use techniques that force questions about memory about the unresolved and tragic legacy of the RAF.
In Screening the Red Army Faction, Christina Gerhardt presents a detailed
study of the cultural and political events of the 1960s and the 1970s in West
Germany in relation to the labour and student movements, focusing on the
RAF’s activities and on films depicting the processes of cultural memory. It is
abundant in detail and little goes unreferenced: there are copious footnotes
on almost every page, which occasionally take up more space than the main
content. The book acknowledges the filmic traditions, like Weimar cinema, that
preceded the New German Cinema filmmakers, and their continuation into
the contemporary practice of the Berlin School’s Christian Petzold. Gerhardt
also engages with German critical scholarship that shaped the thinking of the
RAF members when they were students. The theoretical references to Walter
SCREENING THE RED ARMY FACTION: HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL MEMORY
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Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Max Weber, and Heinrich Böll
put the Frankfurt School’s method of cultural analysis at the heart of the study.
­Similarly, Thomas Elsaesser’s lasting legacy in film studies and the study of
New German Cinema are frequently referenced (as is Harun Farocki’s work).
To sum up, Christina Gerhardt’s Screening the Red Army Faction is a rich, dense,
and highly original contribution on German cinema in particular and German
­memory studies in general.
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