Anarchiv Collection
Period
1971-1988
Total size
4.37 m.
Consultation
Not restricted
History
Also named Knastarchiv; set up by the Autonome Knastbüro Bochum, Germany in the early 1970s as a part of their agitation against the prison system; its aim was to provide information and to stimulate public debate on imprisonment; published the review Bruchstücke. Für eine Gesellschaft ohne Knäste; next to this the Knastbüro lent assistance to prisoners and furthered a movement of prisoners; the second half of the 1970s became the most turbulent period of its existence, when much of its energy was focussed on imprisoned members of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF); as its existence became precarious in Germany the Anarchiv was integrated in the ID-Archiv in Amsterdam in 1991.
Content
Pamphlets, leaflets, copies of periodicals, clippings, stencilled documents, letters and manuscripts collected by the Autonome Knastbüro Bochum for its Anarchiv. Documents on RAF attacks, including the occupation of the German embassy in Stockholm in 1975, the shooting of Jürgen Ponto, Siegfried Buback and Hanns-Martin Schleyer in 1977, the highjacking of a Lufthansa airplane and the subsequent liberation action by commandos of the GSG 9 in Mogadishu in 1977 and the attack on the US air force base Ramstein in 1981; documents on the arrests of and the trials of Ronald Augustin, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Knut Folkerts, Ulrike Meinhof, Ingrid Möller, Jan-Carl Raspe, Christof Wackernagel and others; documents on the position of their lawyers, including Klaus Croissant, Horst Mahler and Otto Schily; documents on the death in prison of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and Raspe in 1977 and the version of suicide by the authorities; documents on the killing by the police of Georg von Rauch, Elisabeth van Dyck and other RAF members; documents concerning the ND. Nachrichtendienst der Gefangenenräte and the Knastblatt. Zeitung westberliner Knastgruppen 1973-1984; documents on prison life, hungerstrikes, compulsory feeding, visiting arrangements, isolated detention, the position of emprisoned mothers, the help to prisoners, the visit of J.P. Sartre to Baader, the Komitee gegen Folter an Politischen Gefangenen in der BRD, the Russell tribunal on human rights in West Germany, the `Magna Charta' of the rights of prisoners, the strategy of the RAF and other subjects 1974-1987; documents concerning Hans-Joachim Klein and others, who left the RAF; documents on publications by Pieter H. Bakker Schut concerning imprisoned members of the RAF; manuscripts by Peter-Paul Zahl, including `Die soziale Revolution ist die permanente Revolution ist der Klassenkampf als ständiger Lernprozess' and a manuscript by Albert Krebs on the history of the death penalty; publications on prison labour in past and present and documents on prisons in other countries.