Wienke Zitzlaff Papers

Period 1962, 1968-1996
Total size  4 m.
ConsultationRestricted
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Biography

Born in Oldenburg, Germany 1931; elder sister of the later member of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) Ulrike Meinhof, who was arrested for murder in 1972 and died in prison in 1976; campained for the rights of handicapped people and became a teacher and headmaster of a special school; together with other relatives of RAF-prisoners she became a fighter for more humane conditions in prisons, for visiting rights and against detention in isolation; she tried to obtain custody of the two daughters of Ulrike (both born 1962); later co-founder of the Sappho-Stiftung, an initiative for alternative housing projects for elderly lesbian women, and after her retirement working as a volunteer in an international women's café.

Content

Documents concerning the attempt of Wienke Zitzlaff to obtain custody of the children of Ulrike Meinhof 1970-1971; some letters from Ulrike to Wienke 1972 and n.d.; correspondence, photocopies of documents and documentation on the trials against RAF- and supposed RAF-members and of court cases in Germany, for the European Committee in Strasbourg, France, and the UN-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, on changes of prison conditions, on torture and on repression 1972-1990, 1992; photocopies of the official death report and investigation, texts of funeral speeches, correspondence, minutes of meetings and press statements of the International Investigation Committee to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death of Ulrike Meinhof, of the solidarity-group of relatives of political prisoners in the BRD and of the International Commission for the protection of prisoners and against conditions of isolation 1976-1983; correspondence concerning visits to and documentation on trials of individual prisoners 1976-1981, with correspondence with Gabrielle Kröcher-Tiedemann and Christian Möller 1977-1985 and some letters by others to Jan-Carl Raspe, with photo's 1976-1977; some other correspondence 1988-1996; documentation on RAF, Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe and the trials, on prison conditions of other political prisoners, also in France, Italy and Spain, and on imperialism 1968-1996; correspondence by her husband Dietrich Zitzlaff concerning his report of a politically incriminating article about his career as a teacher 1962.