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dee9401's review
5.0
This collection of essays by German leftist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) is an intriguing read. It provides some intellectual background for a person who's main contemporary notoriety is her involvement with the RAF. You often have to read deeply into an article to see that she was an established journalist and liberal, intellectual thinker who grew up and lived in the early decades of postwar West Germany. Her take on students, criminals, political figures and their spouses echoes many thoughts heard in the US from the 1950s until this very day. Her piece on a German show called "File Number XY" was incisive and foreshadowed contemporary American TV reality crime shows such as America's Most Wanted. Feminist thought is a central theme, as well as class. The last piece offered was called "Columnism", published in 1968. It's an interesting look at what it means to be a columnist for a paper and how it benefits the paper and sometimes diminishes the impact the columnist might originally have wanted to have. Given the big name columnists in today's left, middle and rightwing publications, it should be required reading for any consumer of today's printed "talking heads."
The articles, all published by Meinhof in the weekly magazine konkret, are bracketed by two pieces. The first is a well-written and concise biography of Meinhof's life. The second is an attempt at a rebuttal to the pro-Meinhof camp. It's written by Bettina Röhl, one of Meinhof's daughters. For someone who's a published author and publicist, I expected a lot more. It's a superficial rant from the neoconservative right that implies Meinhof was either a fool or a tool of Communist East Germany, the USSR and/or China. This writing could have the names and places replaced and would easily fit into 1950s America or even the rants from the fringe right today. Röhl's piece is basically preaching to the choir, the rightwing, reactionary anti-communists' choir. Ironically, she's exactly the group that Meinhof wrote against in the preceding chapters. Röhl says, rightfully so in some places, that the East German regime was a vicious dictatorship. However, she paints the West (US, France, West Germany, etc.) as being angelic, free, democratic and averse to any illegal or unsavory practices. She misses the coups, assassinations, drug experiments, kidnappings, bribery, bugging, mail interception, etc. that was carried out in kind by the Western intelligence services. She says the USSR wants communism to rule the world, all the while never problematizing or exploring that the US/West want capitalism to rule the world.
There's a publisher's note before Röhl's rant that explains why a great introduction and Meinhof's lucid and exploratory essays could be followed by such trite writing. To quote, "The inclusion of this essay was a condition set by Bettina Röhl, the daughter of Ulrike Meinhof, in exchange for the publication rights to her mother's work." She leveraged her mother's excellence to allow her failed retort.
The articles, all published by Meinhof in the weekly magazine konkret, are bracketed by two pieces. The first is a well-written and concise biography of Meinhof's life. The second is an attempt at a rebuttal to the pro-Meinhof camp. It's written by Bettina Röhl, one of Meinhof's daughters. For someone who's a published author and publicist, I expected a lot more. It's a superficial rant from the neoconservative right that implies Meinhof was either a fool or a tool of Communist East Germany, the USSR and/or China. This writing could have the names and places replaced and would easily fit into 1950s America or even the rants from the fringe right today. Röhl's piece is basically preaching to the choir, the rightwing, reactionary anti-communists' choir. Ironically, she's exactly the group that Meinhof wrote against in the preceding chapters. Röhl says, rightfully so in some places, that the East German regime was a vicious dictatorship. However, she paints the West (US, France, West Germany, etc.) as being angelic, free, democratic and averse to any illegal or unsavory practices. She misses the coups, assassinations, drug experiments, kidnappings, bribery, bugging, mail interception, etc. that was carried out in kind by the Western intelligence services. She says the USSR wants communism to rule the world, all the while never problematizing or exploring that the US/West want capitalism to rule the world.
There's a publisher's note before Röhl's rant that explains why a great introduction and Meinhof's lucid and exploratory essays could be followed by such trite writing. To quote, "The inclusion of this essay was a condition set by Bettina Röhl, the daughter of Ulrike Meinhof, in exchange for the publication rights to her mother's work." She leveraged her mother's excellence to allow her failed retort.
sonicdonutflour's review
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
It’s deflating how many of her cultural criticisms are still relevant. I wish this included her communiques from the underground once the RAF started.
jamiereadthis's review
4.0
Stephen's Christmas present to me: "You're the one person I know who will appreciate this," he said, after covering Meinhof's work in Art History and wanting someone else to discuss it further. I read it in practically one sitting, a fascinating look at Meinhof's transformation from journalist to revolutionary to terrorist; becoming, in a sense, part of the cycle of inhumanity she had tried so futilely to fight. My father, stationed with US forces in Berlin in the late sixties and early seventies, had first-hand experience of Germany's Cold War politics of the time, the background against which Meinhof lived and died— which, in short, for me, made it all the more an intriguing piece of history.
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