Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women's Political Violence in the Red Army Faction

by Patricia Melzer

“Death in the Shape of a Young Girl is so deeply revealing of how the actual complex gender politics of a radical movement get swept under the media's rug of stereotypes. Melzer shows us in gripping detail how intensely the women inside this 1970s German underground movement interacted with the feminist debates of the time. Anyone interested in social movements, feminism in the Cold War, and the genderings of political violence will have their minds opened by reading this book.”—Cynthia Enloe, author of Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered

In the early 1970s, a number of West German left-wing activists took up arms, believing that revolution would lead to social change. In the years to come, the bombings, shootings, kidnappings and bank robberies of the Red Army Faction (RAF) and Movement 2nd June dominated newspaper headlines and polarized legislative debates. Half of the terrorists declaring war on the West German state were women who understood their violent political actions to be part of their liberation from restrictive gender norms. As women participating in a brand of systematic violence usually associated with masculinity, they presented a cultural paradox, and their political decisions were viewed as gender transgressions by the state, the public, and even the burgeoning women’s movement, which considered violence as patriarchal and unfeminist.

Death in the Shape of a Young Girl questions this separation of political violence from feminist politics and offers a new understanding of left-wing female terrorists’ actions as feminist practices that challenged existing gender ideologies. Patricia Melzer draws on archival sources, unpublished letters, and interviews with former activists to paint a fresh and interdisciplinary picture of West Germany’s most notorious political group, from feminist responses to sexist media coverage of female terrorists to the gendered nature of their infamous hunger strikes while in prison. Placing the controversial actions of the Red Army Faction into the context of feminist politics, Death in the Shape of a Young Girl offers an innovative and engaging cultural history that foregrounds how gender shapes our perception of women’s political choices and of any kind of political violence.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2015

Reviews

[Maria Beltrami · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the end of World War II Europe, and Germany in particular, experienced a huge economic recovery which, however, not joined by an equally significant social reconstruction. Because of various kinds of compromises the Nazi-fascist mentality was not completely eradicated from the society, and especially from the current mentality. For it payd mainly women, prone to a sort of perpetual social, physical and psychological minority.
In this rather feeble climate began to appear protest groups, which in many cases made the decision to take up arms against a state that seemed not to want to evolve.
Among others emerged the RAF, Red Army Faction, that roses to the headlines in particular for its "unusual" female component.
This component, its history and its motivation, how the state and society reacted to the idea of "violent" women, and how these women related themselves with the more peaceful feminist movement, speaks extensively this very well documented essay .
Unfortunately, despite the interest of the subject and the validity of the documents, the reading is made difficult by the convoluted prose, the constant repetition of concepts and the obscurity of some passages that instead should, at least from what we understand from the statements of the author, be clarifying.
Thank NYU Press and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.


Al termine della seconda guerra mondiale l'Europa, e la Germania in particolare, vissero un enorme ripresa economica alla quale però non si affiancò un'altrettanto rilevante ripresa sociale. A causa di compromessi di vario genere la mentalità nazifascista non venne completamente eradicata dalla società, e soprattutto dalla mentalità corrente. A farne le spese furono soprattutto le donne, soggette a una sorta di perenne minorità sociale, fisica e psicologica.
In questo clima piuttosto asfittico cominciarono a comparire gruppi di protesta, che in moltissimi casi presero la decisione di prendere le armi contro uno stato che pareva volersi evolvere.
Tra gli altri emerse la RAF, Rote Armee Fraktion, che assurse agli onori delle cronache in particolare per la sua "inusuale" componente femminile.
Di questa componente, della sua storia e della sua motivazione, di come lo stato e la società reagirono all'idea di donne "violente", e di come queste donne si rapportarono col più pacifico movimento femminista, parla estesamente questo saggio assai ben documentato.
Purtroppo, nonostante l'interesse dell'argomento e la validità della documentazione, la lettura è resa difficile dalla prosa involuta, dalle continue ripetizioni di concetti e dall'oscurità di alcuni passaggi che dovrebbero invece, almeno da quel che si capisce dalle dichiarazioni dell'autrice, essere chiarificanti.
Ringrazio NYU Press e Netgalley per avermi fornito una copia gratuita in cambio di una recensione onesta.

[Wayde Compton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two particularly excellent aspects of this book: 1. Melzer reveals a completely new perspective on Ulrike Meinhof's choice of the armed struggle over raising her daughters (Chapter 2) that I think alters the previous narrative irrevocably. 2. Her overview of autobiographical writing by women in the Red Army Faction and June 2nd Movement is both moving and illuminating -- in particular Melzer's description of the political evolution of Gabriele Tiedemann, as seen through her prison correspondence (Chapter 5). I think that any serious research into the RAF and the West German urban guerrilla phenomenon must now include this book.

[Pip]

DNF. Prose is repetitive and goes around in circles a bit, then when I got 18% in the author hit me with

The anti-Israel position taken by many leftists stood in startling contradiction to the antifascist discourse the New Left had introduced, and the radical anti-National Socialism position taken by the RAF.

Sorry, what?? Note that the author offers absolutely no explanation or argument for her position as to why this would be a “startling contradiction”, only that it “appears anti-semitic” to criticise Israel - no concrete examples of antisemitism or inflammatory rhetoric are provided, just the fact that they criticised Israel and cooperated with Palestinian and middle eastern militant organisations. The author states that the New Left “completely ignored the historical reality of the existence of Israel” but it seems that she is the one with a superficial and lacking understanding of history. Why bring it up only to treat it so flippantly and dispense with it after a page and a half?

I can’t rely on a supposed academic book that throws around accusations of antisemitism with zero supporting evidence, not to mention that it suggests a complete failure to understand or accurately explain her subjects and their political positions.

[Stu Napier · Rating 1 out of 5]

A real challenge to get through, the writing was a tad repetitive and could likely have been condensed

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some thought-provoking material in this book. It's not so much about the exploits of the Baader Meinhof group as it is about how female terrorists/freedom fighters (depending on your perspective) were regarded by the media (especially the Springer press) as somehow different from male terrorists. The author's thesis is that a lot of the coverage and analysis of the female members of the group was more grounded in visceral bourgeois horror at women not adhering to traditional gender roles rather than at their terrorism. Female gang members, for instance, had their participation in revolution/terrorism sexualized and sensationalized in ways that male members never had to endure. The author also does a good job of highlighting how even male leftists in groups like the SDS, while willing to challenge authoritarian structures in government, very much insisted on hypocritically adhering to traditional gender norms in the home/bunker/bomb-making lab.

The parts of the book that don't work are those influenced by the New Left tendency toward deliberate obscurantism in language, the Lacan/Foucault dialectic style we all learn in the humanities, whereby one exerts a ton of effort to repeatedly say nothing in opaque prose that borders on parody. The author also has some (dangerous) blind spots that make it easy to see how impressionable, entitled left-wing kids from upper middle class backgrounds think they have the right to murder people while rationalizing their aggression as "resistance." Melzer is also kidding herself if she thinks the left is even fighting any sort of right-wing conservative power/patriarchy at this point, rather than acting from a place of strength and privilege in academia/media/finance/law. Honestly, who has more power, Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton, or a right-wing populist like Marine La Pen?

Melzer extends quite a bit of courtesy and understanding to left-wing murderers (stopping short of condoning their actions, of course, in her apologia) but I somehow don't see her going through the same mental gymnastics on behalf of people who don't look good while killing (radical chic and all) who are on the right end of the political spectrum. Then again, that could be my male privilege talking. Arguments about the "essentialist" debate -i.e. the idea that men and women have fixed, genetic characteristics- also serve as a reminder that conservative creationists don't have a monopoly on placing belief before science (I think someone at Salon, in a rare lapse into honesty, admitted this stuff is "liberal creationism") and that those in the humanities ignore or lie about science (social or hard) when it doesn't serve their ends. (See Margaret Meade, Boas, Gould, etc.).

Recommended for those oppressed by indoor plumbing, paved roads, cars, computers, air-conditioning, and other things built and maintained by oppressive males in our phallocentric patriarchy.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this as a galley copy from the publisher. It was fascinating. I was looking for some historical ficiton and I found a wonderful book with a perspective on history I was not familiar with. Eye opening and challenging.