Margrit Schiller (born March 1948) is a German

far-left Far-left politics, also known as extreme left politics or left-wing extremism, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single, coherent definition; some ...

activist formerly associated with the

Socialist Patients' Collective The Socialist Patients' Collective (German: ''Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv'', and known as the SPK) is a patients' collective founded in Heidelberg, West Germany, in February 1970 by Wolfgang Huber. The kernel of the SPK's ideological prog ...

(SPK) and then the

Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (, ; RAF ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang ( ), was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970 and active until 1998, considered a terrorist organisat ...

(RAF). She was released from prison in 1979 and has written two autobiographical books.

Early life

Schiller was born in 1948. She joined the

(SPK) and after it dissolved, she became a member of the

(RAF).

Militant leftist career

On 25 September 1971, two policemen approached a wrongly parked vehicle near to the

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

autobahn The (; German , ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. Much of t ...

. Schiller and

Holger Meins Holger Klaus Meins (26 October 1941 – 9 November 1974) was a German cinematography student who joined the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the early 1970s and died on hunger strike in prison. As a revolutionary Meins became an important member of th ...

emerged and started firing guns at them. A month later Schiller left a train station in Hamburg around 10pm and realised she was being trailed by police. She met her RAF comrades Irmgard Moeller and Gerhard Müller, then a shootout occurred, with one of the policemen being shot dead. Schiller was arrested and later claimed that it was Müller that was responsible for the murder. She was re-arrested alongside other RAF members Kay Werner-Allnach and Wolfgang Beer on 4 February 1974 after police carried out raids in Hamburg and Frankfurt. She received a five year sentence and was released from prison in 1979. Whilst in prison Schiller took part in the RAF

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance where participants fasting, fast as an act of political protest, usually with the objective of achieving a specific goal, such as a policy change. Hunger strikers that do not take fluids are ...

Later life

Schiller moved to Cuba in 1985 and then Uruguay in 1993. She described her experiences abroad in the 2011 memoir ''So siehst du gar nicht aus!''.

Selected works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schiller, Margrit 1948 births Living people People from Bonn 20th-century German criminals People imprisoned on terrorism charges German prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Germany Members of the Socialist Patients' Collective Members of the Red Army Faction Criminals from North Rhine-Westphalia German women writers