How RAF terrorist Gudrun Ensslin was caught in Hamburg

In the early 1970s, Gudrun Ensslin was part of the leadership of the first RAF generation. On June 7, 1972 she was arrested in a boutique in Hamburg.

It's a Wednesday around 2 p.m. On June 7, 1972, the manager of the "Linette" boutique on Hamburg's Jungfernstieg wants to put away a few items of clothing. She also lifts the jacket of a customer who is trying on sweaters in a booth. Because the thin leather jacket seems unusually heavy to her, the saleswoman feels the pockets and thinks she can feel the trigger of a pistol. She boldly calls the police from an adjoining room, even though only a thin wall separates her from the suspect. Unsure of how to assess the situation, she says, "There's someone here with a gun in their pocket. Is it okay for me to call you?"

Gudrun Ensslin's arrest while buying clothes

There is no need to stop the customer after the call, because she is still looking for socks. A little later, the first of two patrol cars arrives. "What was happening in the boutique did not reveal any particular abnormalities through the windows. To get an overview, I first entered the shop alone," recalls former police officer Ulf Millhahn. "There were about 20 people in the shop who seemed very calm." A saleswoman points out the suspect who is moving towards the exit from the higher part of the shop at the back. "The lady, having probably recognized me as a police officer, tried to avoid eye contact with me by turning her head away from me and looking emphatically down to the left."

When the suspect was near the exit at his height, Millhahn, as he says, "approached her from the right with a few steps, highly concentrated" and asked what was going on. Then, without answering, she spontaneously wanted to reach into the right pocket of her jacket. Millhahn feared the woman might pull out a gun. "The lady's hand was already a little way into her pocket when I hit her pocket and violently prevented her from reaching in any deeper," the former police officer recalls. "Immediately I tore her hand out of her pocket and brought the lady to the ground by force." By twisting her arm behind her back and putting one foot on her other, free hand, he was able to prevent her from reaching for the gun again. In a secret message from prison to Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin later wrote:"It happened so quickly that I could only get my hand out of my pocket with the gun half broken by the bull's paws."

Suspect is identified as Gudrun Ensslin

The whole event probably only lasted a few moments, because only then did his colleague Reiner Freiberg join him. "I shouted to him that I had a 'firm grip' on the lady and that he should reach into the right pocket of her jacket," says Millhahn. In fact, Freiberg found a loaded revolver in his jacket pocket. A second gun, ready to fire, is found in the woman's purse. "The overall circumstances prompted us to take the arrested lady directly to the police headquarters. At first nobody there knew who we were dealing with," reports Millhahn. Gudrun Ensslin, who was pictured on the wanted posters with straight, blond hair, could not be recognized with her dark, frizzy shock of hair. A fingerprint comparison finally brings clarity:It is the RAF terrorist who is wanted internationally for bank robberies and bomb attacks.

Several RAF members previously arrested in Frankfurt

As early as June 1, 1972, just a week before Ensslin was arrested, three members of the hard core of the Red Army Faction (RAF), Andreas Baader, Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe, were arrested after a shootout in Frankfurt. The then 31-year-old Ensslin then went to Hamburg, where she met Ulrike Meinhof, Klaus Jünschke and Gerhard Müller. The extremists have been living underground since 1970 and carried out several bomb attacks in May 1972, including against US military installations and the Springer publishing house in Hamburg.

Ensslin, one of the central figures of the RAF, has been on the Hamburg police wanted list since 1971. The officials identified three apartments in which the German studies student lived at least part of the time. Ammunition, weapons, explosive devices and radio equipment were seized in an apartment in Hamburg-Poppenbüttel that she probably rented herself.

Accident or provoked arrest?

There has been much speculation about the reasons for Ensslin's unusual lack of caution. After years of living underground without being recognized, her behavior in the boutique was exceptionally inattentive. A few days after the arrest, the news magazine Spiegel speculated that Ensslin might have deliberately provoked her arrest. This was justified by an alleged mental dependency on Andreas Baader.

Police officer Millhahn, on the other hand, believes that the then 31-year-old was surprised. "I consider it daring to speculate that Ms. Ensslin intentionally acted carelessly in order to provoke her arrest." A message from prison to Ulrike Meinhof also speaks for the accidental arrest. In it Ensslin writes that she felt recognized by a taxi driver and therefore wanted to buy new clothes quickly. "Then in the shop I just had shit in my brain, agitated, sweaty ... It also went insanely fast, otherwise a saleswoman would be dead now (hostage), me and maybe two cops."

In retrospect, Ulf Millhahn considers it fortunate that he initially entered the shop alone:​​"The fact that I first appeared in the boutique all alone perhaps aroused the thought in Ms. Ensslin that probably not a single, uniformed police officer would come around 'Just wanting to arrest a terrorist'." That is probably why Ensslin first tried to disappear as inconspicuously as possible.

Gudrun Ensslin:From the pastor's daughter to the RAF terrorist

Gudrun Ensslin is the fourth of seven children from a Protestant vicarage in Bartholomae, Swabia. In the mid-1960s, the talented German studies student ran a small publishing house with her partner Bernward Vesper and was involved in the German writers’ electoral office for Willy Brandt’s candidacy for chancellor. In 1967 the couple had a child. During a student protest, Ensslin met Andreas Baader and left Vesper. In the end she also left her son Felix behind and in 1968, together with her later RAF comrades-in-arms Baader, Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein, set politically motivated fires in Frankfurt department stores.

Baader liberation is considered a founding action of the RAF

After their arrest and conviction, the accused are initially released because they have appealed. They go into hiding, travel through Germany and Italy on their escape. The liberation of Baader, who had since been imprisoned again, on May 14, 1970 is generally regarded as the founding action of the Red Army Faction. The group receives military training in a Palestinian camp in Jordan. To finance their activities, the group commits bank robberies. Before she was arrested, Ensslin was involved in several bomb attacks that killed four people. The arrest of the hard core of the RAF in June 1972 was followed by a year-long trial in which Ensslin was defended by Otto Schily, among others. Like Baader and Raspe, she was found dead on October 18, 1977 in the high-security wing of the Stuttgart JVA in Stuttgart-Stammheim.