Armed struggle – Movement June June June as a graphic novel: many mistakes, no regrets

Gabriele Rollnik was 17 when the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras on June 2, 1967. This event became the name of the movement founded in the early 70s June 2, in which Rollnik later became active. The group’s name should also emphasize that the decision for the armed struggle of the city guerrillas had not been made out of the blue, but was a reaction to government violence.

Now a graphic novel about Gabriele Rollnik, called Ella, has been released in the gallery of the aging arts. In 2022 she looks back on her life and fight on a good 200 pages, held by Michael Weber as an author and illustrated by Zaza Uta Röttgers. The basis is several conversations with Rollnik, which were held from 2022 to 2024.

In the classic shear weather of Hamburg, we accompany Ella on walks through today’s city. The port, left-wing party pancakes and McDonalds advertising form the entry into your thoughts on NATO and the failure of real socialism and radical leftists. Reviews of the past are, it is about the search for the beginnings of her political consciousness, about your childhood in the Ruhr area, about the rebellious spirit of optimism in the late 60s, the Vietnam War and the escalation in Northern Ireland.

“So armed struggle?” Throws the young Ella, who is now studying in West Berlin, in a round and reaps contradiction: »Raid hide -and -seek and banks? Not my thing, “says one,” avant -garde and so (…) no thank you “, another. But there are sympathy: “I would hide Ulrike immediately if she rings with me,” says one. After the shots on Rudi Dutschke, Petra Schelm and Georg von Rauch, it was absurd to lead the discussion of violence, because it was time to defend itself, adds another colleague.

Ella finally breaks off her studies and wants to cut back into bourgeois life. Her environment reacts with incomprehension, but she actually takes this step. The subtitle of the book, “have nothing, change everything”, emphasizes this basic attitude. “Anyone who can go back will not fight,” she states. The debate how seriously we mean or whether we remain anxious privileged bourgeois behind a verbal radical facade has lost nothing to the topicality, even though we live and struggle in completely different world -political times.

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Ella hides a hiding with her, the two become a couple, she becomes part of the movement June 2, there is a bank robbery. The group plans to kidnap the Berlin CDU top candidate Peter Lorenz to press prisoners free. You rent a shop apartment, build a soundproof “folk prison” in the basement. The hunger strike death of the RAF prisoner Holger Mein’s 1974 leads to a spontaneous decision to kidnap someone else, but the attempt fails that Chamber Court President Günter von Drenkmann is shot. The event is drastic, the group’s reaction is only a leaflet. Ella’s judgment from today’s perspective is clear: »After that, the matter was no longer really discussed. At that time it was called “revolutionary discipline”, today I would say: simple repression. “

Finally, the Lorenz renewal, in early 1975, succeeds three days before the election for the Berlin House of Representatives. The state is involved to fly out several prisoners against the release of Geisel Lorenz from Germany. A short time later, the euphoria about this successful action experiences a hard dampers when the RAF takes the staff of the German embassy in Stockholm as hostages-and fails: two dead RAF members, two hosted hostages, arrived. This was made out of arrogance and was a complete misjudgment of the balance of power, the sub -diving agreed.

The search for the search is enormous, gradually members of the movement are arrested in June 2, and Ella in mid -1975. With three fellow prisoners, she succeeds. She completes a guerrilla training in Yemen, commits bank robberies again, meets relatives of the RAF, and unsuccessfully negotiates a cooperation. Then the “German Autumn” 1977: Buback, Ponto, Schleyer die from the RAF, the kidnapping of the Lufthansa machine “Landshut”, the dead of Stammheim. An insertion in the book classifies the decision to continue from today’s perspective. One could have seen the obvious defeat. “But until well into the 1980s I was and we were not that far.”

In 1978 she was arrested in Bulgaria and flown to West Germany, followed by 14 years in prison, in which Ella also fights for better detention conditions, while the distance from the third generation of the RAF increases significantly outside. The time after dismissal is a challenge: “After the jail, there was a desert.” She sums up: “I think we rightly failed” and adds: “Error? Many. REUE? No.”

This graphic novel convinces. In terms of content, it is exciting; Not too exhausting, but told with attention to detail. From the unapproachable myth of “armed struggle of the city guerrillas”, susceptible people with strengths, weaknesses and passion become. The book has also been graphically succeeded: newspaper pages, television pictures, radio quotes, Afri-Cola and the Hamburg fish market convey atmosphere and temporal classification. The readers are always close to the action. And, almost by the way, reading conveys a feeling for the cultural differences between movement June 2 and the RAF.

Michael Weber/Zaza Uta Röttgers: Ella. Have nothing, change everything. Gallery of the off -road arts, 212 pages, born, 28 €.