Remembering the Red Army Faction

Abstract

This article considers how Germany’s period of left-wing terrorism, particularly the so-called German Autumn, tends to be feminized and allegorized in contemporary public discourses, particularly those of the print media. The most striking example of this is the use of a pram as memory object at the permanent exhibition of the German History Museum. I explore how the 30th anniversary of the German Autumn was covered in the print media, particularly in Der Spiegel, Stern and Die Zeit, in 2007 and trace these representational strategies back to the print media of the 1970s with its preoccupation with the figure of the woman terrorist. I then situate the feminizing and allegorizing strategy in the context of other representational strategies that seek to distance the contemporary Federal Republic from a past which fails to disappear.