As the proliferation of discourses on women and violence in West Germany¹ of the 1960s and 1970s testifies, there is something deeply fascinating and deeply troubling about the combination of femininity, youth, beauty, and violence, both during that period and more generally.² If woman’s cultural role is to give life, the woman who is violent and potentially murderous is, at best, difficult to comprehend and, at worst (and in the words of Gilda Zwerman), “the ultimate pariah of the modern world … possessing an identity that exists outside the limits of political and moral discourse.”³ The will to discuss violence...

In August 1977, Der Spiegel reproduced a striking photograph of a woman with a bomb, masquerading as a pregnant woman,¹ in a cover story titled “Terroristinnen: Frauen und Gewalt” (Female terrorists: Women and violence) (fig. 3).² The accompanying caption in the magazine informed the reader that the photograph was taken during a police training demonstration. Although the device was constructed by Dierk Hoff, an accomplice of the RAF, there is no evidence that it was ever used by West German woman terrorists.³ There is also no mention of the contraption in the main body of the twelve-page Spiegel feature. This...

“Bonnie und Kleid” (Bonnie and dress/Clyde) was the title of a short fashion article published in Der Spiegel in February 1968.¹ Arthur Penn’s film Bonnie and Clyde (1967) had been released in West Germany two months earlier and would be cited continually in association with terrorist violence in the decade to come. Aside from being a mildly amusing pun, the Spiegel title is indicative of a cultural tendency to feminize the violent woman (and that which is deemed culturally threatening). I want to address this tendency now, in an exploration of how the violent woman’s threat is defused through association...

An article published in Bild in February 1974 demonstrates how violence perpetrated by women can be redefined as a crime against gender and normal female sexuality. The article is titled “Das Leben der Terrormädchen: Potente Männer, scharfe Waffen” (The life of the Terror Girls: potent men, loaded weapons) and is designated as “Thema des Tages” (topic of the day).¹ An image of an almost naked Gudrun Ensslin dominates the article and page two of this Bild edition (fig. 23). It is a film still from Das Abonnement (1967), a short, experimental film that appeared three years before Ensslin went underground...

Quick’s response to the RAF murder of Jürgen Ponto and to the involvement of women in that operation was to bring filth into the discussion. A four-page article, published on 4 August 1977, opens with the following words in bold: “immer wenn der Terror bei uns sein schmutziges Gesicht zeigt, sind Mädchen am sinnlosen Töten beteiligt” (whenever terrorism shows its filthy face here, girls are involved in this senseless killing).¹ Terrorism is metaphorically equated with filth and is personified — it has a face. Furthermore, it is when women are involved that terrorism shows its filthy face. By extension, terrorism...

In the German History Museum’s permanent exhibition, the centerpiece of the exhibit dedicated to West Germany’s terrorist past is a pram (fig. 32). The same pram was used in the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer on 5 September 1977, an event that marked the start of what has become known as the German Autumn. As I demonstrated in chapter 1, the use of the pram in this violent operation was deemed highly provocative. Its image was designated “Bild der Woche” (photograph of the week) by Welt am Sonntag, and the author of the article expressed indignation that the object (“das Symbol...