German Autumn
| German Autumn | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Cold War conflicts | |||||
 Hanns Martin Schleyer as a hostage |
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| Belligerents | |||||
 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Red Army Faction
|
 West Germany
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||
|
Andreas Baader Gudrun Ensslin Ulrike Meinhof |
Hanns Martin Schleyer Siegfried Buback |
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| Strength | |||||
| Around 14 | Thousands of German police | ||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||
| 4 | 9 | ||||
The German Autumn (German: Deutscher Herbst) was a set of events in late 1977, associated with the kidnapping and murder of industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI), by the Red Army Faction (RAF) insurgent group, and the hijacking of the Lufthansa airplane Landshut by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). They demanded the release of ten RAF members detained at the Stammheim Prison plus two Palestinian compatriots held in Turkey and US$15 million in exchange for the hostages. The assassination of Siegfried Buback, the attorney-general of West Germany on 7 April 1977, and the failed kidnapping and murder of the banker Jürgen Ponto on 30 July 1977, marked the beginning of the German Autumn. It ended on 18 October, with the liberation of the Landshut, the death of the leading figures of the first generation of the RAF in their prison cells, and the death of Schleyer.
The phrase "German Autumn" is derived from the 1978 film Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn), which is a German film-collage in the form of a short film with news-report format. An omnibus film, it collectively covered the social atmosphere during the time of the RAF, while offering different critical perspectives and arguments pertaining to the situation. The directors involved were Heinrich Böll, Hans Peter Cloos, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Maxmiliane Mainka, Edgar Reitz, Katja Rupé, Volker Schlöndorff, Peter Schubert and Bernhard Sinkel. Kluge and Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus edited the film.
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