Susanne Albrecht

Susanne Albrecht
Born (1951-03-01) 1 March 1951
Hamburg, West Germany
Other names Ingrid Jäger
Organization Red Army Faction

Susanne Albrecht (born 1 March 1951 in Hamburg) is a former member of the Red Army Faction.

Early life

Albrecht was the daughter of a successful maritime lawyer, and spent her childhood living in a wealthy suburb of Hamburg.[1] She did not fit in well in public school, and was later sent to a private school in Holzminden. In 1971 she attended the University of Hamburg where she studied sociology, and it was around this time that she became interested in Marxism. She joined several political groups and even a squatters group before moving into an apartment with Karl-Heinz Dellwo. She also began to mingle with some Red Army Faction (RAF) members, such as Ilse Stachowiak, to whom she sometimes gave her ID papers.[1]

In 1974, along with Dellwo and a few other people who all later became involved with the RAF, she joined the Committee Against the Torture of Political Prisoners in West Germany, which protested against the conditions that several imprisoned RAF terrorists were living in.[1]

In Hamburg, she rented an apartment with six other people which had no shower or bath. She was known to have said about her former home-life; "I was sick of pigging out on caviar and smoked salmon." [1] She, along with Sigrid Sternebeck and Silke Maier-Witt (who were collectively known as the Hamburg Aunties),[2] became very important to the left-wing scene and Albrecht began to further strengthen her connection to the RAF.

Terrorism

In this apartment at the Rosenbecker Straße Nr. 3 in Marzahn Susanne Albrecht was arrested in 1990. She had lived there since 1989 under the name Ingrid Jäger with husband and child.
"it had not been clear to us that these people, who start wars in the Third World and destroy entire populations, are dumbfounded when violence faces them in their own house."[3]

Arrest and imprisonment

In East Germany, Albrecht worked as an English translator under the name Ingrid Jäger,[2] and married a scientist, with whom she had a son. Neither knew of her past. She lived in Köthen, but in 1986 she was recognised when West German television reports were broadcast regarding information on the RAF, prompting her to move to Berlin. However when Germany was reunified she was found living as a housewife under the name "Becker" and was arrested, the first of eight arrests in a ten-day period, in front of her apartment on 6 June 1990.[7] She was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment by the upper state court in Stuttgart. However, she had served only half her term when she was paroled in 1996.

Albrecht has been working as a German language teacher to immigrant children in a Bremen primary school under an assumed name.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Becker Jillian (1978). Hitler's Children. London: Granada Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-586-04665-8.
  2. 1 2 3 Stefan Aust (2008). Der Baader Meinhof Komplex. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-1-84792-045-4.
  3. ↑ Red-army faction timeline
  4. ↑ "German Who Hid in the East Charged in '77 Terror Killing". The New York Times. 20 December 1990. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
  5. ↑ http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.758/article_detail.asp[]
  6. ↑ Susanne Albrecht
  7. ↑ "Terrorism: Out of the Woodwork". Time. 25 June 1990. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
  8. ↑ "Ex-Terrorist Becomes an Issue in German State Poll". Deutsche Welle. 12 May 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2011.
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