Revolutionary Brain

It has emerged that the brains of three leading members of the violent revolutionary group, the Red Army Faction (RAF), including its co-founder, Andreas Baader, have disappeared after being preserved for scientific research.

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The grisly revelation comes just days after the twin daughters of Ulrike Meinhof, the other RAF founder, finally won permission to have her brain returned for burial.

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Meinhof’s brain was extracted after her alleged suicide in jail in 1976, but for years its whereabouts remained a mystery.

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Last month it was revealed that the brain had been preserved secretly in a scientific laboratory in Frankfurt.

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The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, began a campaign of political killings and kidnappings of senior business leaders in the 1970s aimed at overthrowing the German state which they called “Nazi capitalism.”

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 Meinhof allegedly hanged herself in her cell in Stuttgart’s Stammheim Prison in 1976; her comrades  Baader,  Ensslin and Raspe were found dead in their cells in Stammheim Prison  on “Death Night,” October 18, 1977.

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The official report states that Baader and Raspe shot themselves to death and Ensslin hanged herself.

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The Red Army Faction cell block had been touted as the most secure prison block in the world; the press was filled with accounts of lawyers interrogated and searched for an hour or more before being admitted to visit their clients.

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When it was announced that Baader and Raspe shot themselves with guns smuggled into their cells, it was cynically assumed that the authorities assassinated them, as well as Ensslin and very possibly Meinhof the year before.

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Their dead bodies were promptly autopsied and their brains extracted and donated to “Science.”

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Gottschalk König, CEO of the Neurological Research Institute of Heidelberg University where initial tests were done, admitted that he could not account for the disappearance of the brains.

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They might have been moved to make way for other organs and finally burned, he said, but he would not rule out theft.

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Now Ulrike Meinhof’s brain has suddenly reappeared, in the possession  of a medical pathologist who insisted on anonymity.

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The anonymous pathologist said that Meinhof’s brain surgery in 1962 in which a benign lesion was removed very likely contributed to her becoming one of Europe's most feared urban guerrillas.

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Her slide into “terror” would then be explained by her brain illness.

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Moreover, the anonymous pathologist claimed that clinical tests on Ulrike Meinhof's brain soon after her death cast doubt on her fitness to stand trial.

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 Meinhof was considered the intellectual head of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing revolutionary group that spread fear across West Germany in the

1970s and into the 1980s, after her death.

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The anonymous pathologist confirmed that he carried out the research on Meinhof’s brain over the last ten years primarily in a laboratory in Frankfurt.

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He told a news conference on Tuesday that he gained possession of the brain in 1997 after applying for permission to examine it.

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Previously it was held by a Stuttgart neurologist named Muehl who had conducted the autopsy after her suicide.

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The anonymous pathologist said that although there might have been other factors, the brain surgery in 1962 could have led to behavioral changes that turned Meinhof from a talented and ambitious journalist to co-founder of the revolutionary Red Army Faction.

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The RAF carried out a campaign of killings and bombings against leading industrial figures beginning in the 1970s.

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Many of those figures had been influential Nazis in the Third Reich.

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The anonymous pathologist’s involvement came to light last week, when Meinhof's  twin daughters, in a law suit, insisted that her mother's brain was removed without the family's permission.

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 Meinhof's twin daughters have also filed a criminal complaint against the anonymous pathologist, accusing him of disturbing the peace of the dead.

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They are seeking to have the brain buried with their mother's remains in Berlin.

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But the latest revelations indicate the medical authorities also had a morbid fascination with the revolutionary killers.

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An unauthorized plaster death mask of Andreas Baader had evidently been made by one of the anonymous pathologist’s medical team who had mixed his own semen with the plaster.

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The anonymous pathologist claims not to know who was responsible.

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German authorities were said to be conducting DNA tests to uncover which of

the anonymous pathologist’s medical team’s semen was involved in Baader’s death mask.

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Andreas Baader was a telegenic Brando-type bad boy who had turned to political terrorism for the methamphetamine-like rush it gave.

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The news of the plaster and semen death mask of Andreas Baader comes amid official concerns that a series of recent videos about the violent 1970s have portrayed the terrorist killers as pop icons.

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Celebrations of revolutionary violence unsettle German authorities who are always on the lookout for a resurgence of Nazism.

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Prosecutors are now examining documents from the time of Meinhof's death to establish how her brain came to be preserved for 30 years and whether any offence was committed.