Tupamaros West-Berlin

The Tupamaros West-Berlin (TW) were a small German Marxist organization which carried out a series of bombings and arsons at the end of the 1960s.[1] In 1969 Dieter Kunzelmann, Georg von Rauch, and a few others traveled to Jordan to train at a Fatah camp, forming the Tupamaros on their return to Germany.[2][3] The group took their name from the Uruguayan Tupamaros. The TW had a core membership of about 15 people.[3]

The target of the West Berlin Tupamaros' first attempted bombing, West Berlin's (then) Jewish Community Center.

Their first action was an attempted bombing of West Berlin's Jewish Community Centre on November 9, 1969 (the anniversary of Kristallnacht); the bomb, supplied by the undercover government agent Peter Urbach, failed to explode.[4][5] This was followed in the fall of 1969 by a number of bombings and arsons targeting police, judges, and US and Israeli targets.[6] The TW claimed responsibility for these attacks under a variety of different names in order to exaggerate the size of their movement.[6]

The group was led by Kunzelmann and von Rauch, and dissolved after the former was arrested in 1970 and the latter was killed by police in 1971.[3] Its core members then formed the Movement 2 June, while some others joined the Red Army Faction.[3][7]

The Jewish Community Centre bombing

In 2005 the historian Wolfgang Kraushaar published a book on the Tupamaros' attempted bombing of the West Berlin Jewish Community Centre, setting off a debate on anti-semitism in the German left and the German student movement.[4][8] The bombing was allegedly planned by Kunzelmann and the bomb itself planted by Albert Fichter, brother of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund's then-chairman, Tilman Fichter.[4] On the date of the attempted bombing more than 200 people had gathered in the community center to commemorate Kristallnacht.[4]

The Tupamaros Munich

Around the time of the TW's creation Fritz Teufel formed a similar group in Munich, the Tupamaros Munich (TM).[6] Brigitte Mohnhaupt, later an important figure in the second generation of the RAF, was a member.[9]

References
  1. Kundnani, Hans (2009). Utopia Or Auschwitz: Germany's 1968 Generation and the Holocaust. Columbia University Press. p. 114.
  2. Kundnani 91, 99
  3. Hauser, Dorothea (2008). "Terrorism". In Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth (ed.). 1968 in Europe: a history of protest and activism, 1956-1977. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 271–72.
  4. Gessler, Philipp; Stefan Reinecke (25 October 2005). "The anti-Semitism of the 68ers". die tageszeitung. Retrieved 22 April 2010. Translated into English by Sign and Sight.
  5. Kundnani 88, 90
  6. Kundnani 97
  7. Huffman, Richard. "Tupamaros". Baader-Meinhof.com. Archived from the original on 27 July 2010. Retrieved 22 April 2010.
  8. Parkes, K. Stuart (2009). Writers and politics in Germany, 1945-2008. Camden House. p. 84.
  9. Smith, J.; André Moncourt (2008). Daring To Struggle, Failing To Win: The Red Army Faction’s 1977 Campaign Of Desperation. PM Press. p. 37. ISBN 1-60486-028-6.
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