Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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Table 4.4
Decisive Biographical Occurances :in Left-w:ing Terrorists r 1978
Year of Birth
Total% 1945 1946 1951 1956
or to to or
earlier 1950 1955 later
Orphan 5 13 3 0 0
Death of father 15 19 14 12 0
Death of mother 6 4 9 6 0
Death of a parent 26 36 26 18 0
Divorce of £arents 10 9 5 17 17
63 81 57 53 17
Source: Gerhard Schmidtchen, "Terroristische Karrieren: Soziologische
Anlayse anhand von Fahndungsunterlagen und Prozessakten", in: Herbert
Jaeger [ Gerhard Schmidtchen, Lieselotte Suellwold, Lorenz Boellinger
(eds.), Lebenslaufanalysen: Analysen zum Terrorisrrrus 2 (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 13-77, 66.
The implications are that over half of the left-wing terrorists in
the seventies lived without both parents, with an even higher percentage
of the founder terrorists affected by this problem of only one immediate
'significant other' for role model identifications. Where both parents
are dead, this 'significant other' may not necessarily 'be a 'father' and
'mother', but two aunts, as occurred with Baader.
A possible speculation would be that not knowing one's parents'
involvement- -and not personally knowing them- -would make the negative
identification of 'fascist Germany' easier. Therefore the founder
terrorists could be more easily moved to act against the state.
Furthermore, it could be speculated from this data that the followers- -
mainly from whole families- -were not moved by the negative
identification of the continued 'fascist state' , but by the
identification with imprisoned persons that were held by the
'imperialist state' as discussed in chapters two and three.
The influence of the loss of one or both parents on problems with
education and other experiences is highlighted in Table 4.5 (page 134)[
which shows that educational discontinui ty is more influential.
Generally, the conflicts in society at home and in schools and
uni versi ties, and encounters wi th the court and police systems, were
found to go with discontinuity problems of moving home,
training .1 0 7
school and
107 ibid.[ 37, 66.