Art and Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Relation to the Red Army Faction

Authors

Joanie LangeFollow

Document Type

Research Paper

Publication Date

4-22-2020

Publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Publisher Location

Las Vegas, Nevada

First page number:

1

Last page number:

30

Abstract

Advanced Undergraduate Winner

The Red Army Faction, active from 1970-1998, was an infamous West German far-left terrorist group. Its ideology and numerous terrorist acts not only left a lasting impact upon the politics and culture of Germany, but noteworthy is also the fact that the group inspired the creation of countless works of art. This research paper seeks to understand and explain this phenomenon. It argues that the artworks inspired by the RAF are a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a peculiarly German concept “coming to terms with the past,” most often used in relation to fiction and art exploring the Nazi era. The paper begins with a description of the RAF’s establishment and history, and then offers a consideration of some of its members’ relationships to the arts. The zenith of RAF-related art occurred after the group’s dissolution in 1998, so the paper analyzes artworks before and after this year in two separate portions of this text. It devotes particular attention to the concept of Prada Meinhof, which is a critique of the way that extremist views and terrorism are sometimes used as an aesthetic and alternative stage upon which to perform. The analysis of numerous works of art shows that while the earlier examples tended to analyze or discuss the RAF’s existence in a serious manner, later works tended to satirize or even glamorize the group.

Keywords

Red Army Faction; Baader-Meinhof Gang; West German terrorism; Left-wing terrorism; Vergangenheitsbewältigung; Art; Film; Prada Meinhof

Disciplines

Contemporary Art | European History | German Literature

File Format

pdf

File Size

329 KB

Language

English

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Repository Citation

Lange, J. (2020). Art and Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Relation to the Red Army Faction. 1-30.
Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/award/44