Stammheim

Based on a script by well-known German journalist Stefan Aust, who himself based the script on his lengthy book The Baader-Meinhof-Complex about 1970s terrorism in Germany, and directed by Reinhard Hauff (who already had experience with “political themes” in film, not least in Messer im Kopf), Stammheim reconstructs the trial against four leading figures of the so-called Red Army Fraction. The RAF was the prime terrorist movement in Germany from the early 70s on, split in three different “generations”, with the prisoners of this trial being the first. (The second, consisting of people who hardly knew the first, was far more violent; the third is still some sort of mystery today, since almost nobody was ever caught). Stammheim is a suburb of the city of Stuttgart, and here stands the jail house especially build for terrorists and equipped with an own trial room to host prosecution against, as it was called then, “participation in terrorist alliances”. During the course of this particular trial – which became famous as “the” Stammheim trial, thus the title –, the defendants used every opportunity to display their political propaganda, and chances were given quite a lot during the 192 days it ran. At the same time they aimed at unmasking the judge and the attorneys as ideologically driven quasi-Nazis; they tried to manipulate the trial, supported by their lawyers (some of which later became famous politicians, but not all of them remained leftist), and their eager agitation gave insight into their own thoughts, perspectives and prejudices. In essence, the four RAF leaders (two men: Baader and Raspe, two women: Ensslin and Meinhof) claimed that the German government was on it’s direct way back to fascism, especially after supporting the US-American attacks on Vietnam. Therefore it was just to fight the state, destroy it’s facilities or even kill people in charge. —IMDb