Her code name was Lea, and in her thirties she abandoned the safety of her teaching job to take up the fight of oppressed women of the world through a systematic bombing campaign focused on an array of patriarchal targets from sex shops to sweat shops.
But after almost 20 years on the run, Adrienne Gershäuser admitted in court on Wednesday to her involvement in a 10-year assault by the militant feminist group Rote Zora.
One of the last remaining members of the leftwing group, Gershäuser on Wednesday told the Berlin court in a statement read by her lawyer that she had ”wittingly and willingly” taken part in the bombing of a bio-technology institute and a clothing factory. An offshoot of the Revolutionary Cells, which formed in Frankfurt am Main in the early 70s, Rote Zora unleashed a wave of bomb attacks across Germany, focusing on sex shops, embassies and clothing factories which the group considered responsible for female oppression.
Unlike other far-left terrorist groups, such as the Red Army Faction, whose main ideals were anti-capitalist, Rote Zora members said they did not want to cause death or injury.
Gershäuser (58) a qualified radio technician, helped build the bombs, buying the alarm clocks for detonators in two cases, neither of which were successful. She went on the run with her lover, Thomas Kram, a leading member of the Revolutionary Cells, in 1987, supposedly after a tip-off from the East German secret police, the Stasi. She emerged last December and gave herself up to the police.
Edith Lunnebach, Gershäuser’s lawyer, told a German newspaper that her client wanted to make clear to the court ”that the political connections which existed then no longer exist”, and that she no longer supported them. Her client would not express remorse, and she had given herself up because she wanted to ”bring to an end the situation of illegality which had become a burden”.
Among the evidence against her were police surveillance photographs of her in Dortmund buying the type of alarm clock favoured by Rote Zora.
If convicted Gershäuser faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail for being a member of a terrorist organisation and for attempted bombing. But the authorities have indicated that as she turned herself in, and due to the time lapse, she will probably get a two-year suspended sentence.
In her written statement Gershäuser said that her acts had complied with the political views she had at that time. While the Revolutionary Cells focused on issues such as asylum and social welfare policies, Rote Zora concentrated on sex shops, genetic technology and the exploitation of women in developing countries, aiming at companies such as the electronics company Siemens.
Although their deeds were far apart in severity terms, parallels have been drawn between Gershäuser’s case and that of the former Red Army Faction guerilla Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who last month, amid much controversy, was released from a 24-year prison sentence for nine murders. Both women have sparked deep interest about the involvement of women in terrorism.
Rote Zora is now little more than a footnote in the history of leftwing German terrorism; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it ”an almost forgotten chapter in the anti-imperialist battle”.
Gershäuser did not speak in court on Wednesday. All that has emerged about her time on the run was that she and Kram, who was known as Malte, found refuge abroad for at least 10 years, where they are believed to have led a law-abiding life.
Kram, who is still in custody, has long been wanted in connection with kidnappings, shootings and hijackings, and the bomb attack on Bologna station in August 1980 in which 85 people were killed.
Rote Zora: Targets and tactics
The militant feminist organisation, based in West Germany, stood against patriarchy, including technologies such as nuclear power, and capitalist exploitation. It began as the feminist arm of the more violent Revolutionary Cells but then went its own way. Its last attack was in 1995, on a Bremen shipyard. The name came from Red Zora and Her Gang, a children’s book tale about a red-haired Croatian orphan, written by Kurt Kläber in 1941.
Their first action was in 1974, a bombing of a Karlsruhe courthouse in protest at abortion law. Sex shops, landlords’ cars, and genetic technical institutes were among their targets. The Philippines embassy was bombed for alleged support of trafficking of women. As was the intention, the bomb attacks never injured anyone.
Members were known as ”after-work” terrorists as they often had middle-class jobs by day. When the cold war ended many fled underground. They were believed to have been behind 45 bombings and arson attacks. – Guardian Unlimited Â