Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

34
The first of the follow-on groups to rebuild the RAF was so nervous
and careless that it was arrested virtually en masse on 4 February 1974.
This encouraged others to be more careful and was always remembered by
them. 63 Such a security service success has not been repeated.
Some of the new RAF recruits came from the Sozialistisches
Patientenkollektiv (Socialist Patients' Collective) after some
collective members were arrested between 24 and 26 June 1971. Twenty-one
of the twenty-two member ' inner circle' eventually found their way to
the RAF. They were the main source of the so-called 'second generation'
of West German terrorists. They worked through the offices of RAF
lawyers and organised committees to publicise the terrorists' situation.
The terrorists' hunger and thirst strikes against 'Isolation Torture'
and the deaths of prisoners all kept the justice system off balance
between 1972 and 1977. That the prisoners appeared to be 'victims'
provided motivation for new members who sought to free imprisoned
ones. 64
At first the RAF tried to use whatever organisations were already
at hand after its members were arrested. Rote Hilfe (Red Aid) was begun
in 1968 in West-Berlin to help imprisoned leftists materially,
ideologically, and with legal aid, and had since spread to other cities.
The RAF used Red Aid to pressure the justice system because of previous
RAF maTIber contacts with the group. This lasted until 1975 when some of
its militant maTIbers joined the Revolutionary Cells. 65
The Red Army Faction also exploited the Infonnationszentrum Rote
Volksuniversitaet (IZRU, Information Centre Red Peoples' University)
connected with the Socialist Patients' Collective, which increased its
denunciations of the FRG 'justice system as a part of the new fascism'
in their literature in autumn 1972, and their coverage of the 'torture'
of RAF prisoners in 1973. This connection led active SPK members later
63 "Der BM-Kode wurde geknacht" Der Spiegel 7 (11 February) 1974,
29-34; Volker Speitel, "Wir wollten alles und gleichzeitig nichts" Der
Spiegel 31/1980, 36-49, 44.
64 Aust (1987), 147-151; Becker, 262; Informationszentrun Rote
Volksuniversitaet (IZRU), Aus der Krankheit eine Waffe machen. Eine
Agitationsschrift, (Munich: Trikont-Verlag, 1972), 29; Wanda von Baeyer­
Katte, "Das Sozialistische Patientenkollekti v in Heidelberg (SPK) " in:
Wanda von Baeyer-Katte, Dieter Claessens, Hubert Feger, FriedheIm
Neidhardt (eds.), Gruppenprozesse: Analysen zum Terrorisnrus 3 ( Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1982), 183-316, 263; Jochen Reiche, "Zur Kritik
der RAF" , in: Barbara Herzbruch, Klaus Wagenbach ( eds. ) , Jahrbuch
Politik 8 (West Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1978), 16-23, 22.
65 Klaus, 62-4.