The Tupamaros West-Berlin (TW) were a small German

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

organization which carried out a series of bombings and arsons at the end of the 1960s. In 1969

Dieter Kunzelmann Dieter Kunzelmann (14 July 1939 – 14 May 2018) was a German left-wing activist. Gruppe SPUR In the early 1960s Kunzelmann was a member of the Situationist International-inspired artists' group Gruppe SPUR. Kunzelmann was recognized as the "ch ...

Georg von Rauch Georg von Rauch (12 May 1947 – 4 December 1971) was a member of the 1960s-70s German student movement. He was part of the Movement 2 June and a leader of the Tupamaros West-Berlin. In 1970 he was arrested for assaulting a journalist. He w ...

, and a few others traveled to Jordan to train at a

Fatah Fatah ( ; ), formally the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (), is a Palestinian nationalist and Arab socialist political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...

camp, forming the Tupamaros on their return to Germany. The group took their name from the Uruguayan

Tupamaros The National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros (, MLN-T) was a Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla group that operated in Uruguay during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1989, the group was admitted into the Broad Front and a large number of its membe ...

. The TW had a core membership of about 15 people. Their first action was an attempted bombing of

West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...

Jewish Community Centre A Jewish Community Center or a Jewish Community Centre (JCC) is a general recreational, social, and fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities. JCCs promote Jewish culture and heritage through holiday celebrations, ...

on November 9, 1969 (the anniversary of

Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...

); the bomb, supplied by the undercover government agent

Peter Urbach Peter Urbach (2 May 1940 – 3 May 2011) was an informant and agent provocateur of the West Berlin domestic intelligence agency, the ''Verfassungsschutz'', in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He had contacts with the Kommune 1 and with several p ...

, failed to explode. Translated into English by Sign and Sight. This was followed in the fall of 1969 by a number of bombings and arsons targeting police, judges, and US and Israeli targets.Kundnani 97 The TW claimed responsibility for these attacks under a variety of different names in order to exaggerate the size of their movement. The group was led by Kunzelmann and von Rauch, and dissolved after the former was arrested in 1970 and the latter was killed by police in 1971. Its core members then formed the Movement 2 June, while some others joined 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 ...

The Jewish Community Centre bombing attempt

Historian

Wolfgang Kraushaar Wolfgang Kraushaar (born 2 September 1948) is a political scientist and historian. After a residency at the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung from the 1980s until 2015. In 2015 he continued his research at the Hamburg Foundation for the Pro ...

's 2005 book on the Tupamaros' attempted bombing of the West Berlin Jewish Community Centre set off a debate on

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

in the

German student movement The West German student movement (), sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany (), was a left-wing social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as ...

. The bombing was allegedly planned by Kunzelmann and the bomb itself planted by Albert Fichter, brother of the

Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund The Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund — the Socialist German Students' Union or Socialist German Students' League — was founded in 1946 in Hamburg, Germany, as the collegiate branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the ...

's then-chairman Tilman Fichter. On the date of the attempted bombing more than 200 people had gathered in the community center to commemorate Kristallnacht.

The Tupamaros Munich

Around the time of the TW's creation

Fritz Teufel Fritz Teufel (17 June 1943 – 6 July 2010) was a prominent figure in the West German political left of the 1960s. One of the founders of Kommune 1, Teufel cultivated a theatrical, humorous public image—encapsulated in his idea of the " Spaßgu ...

formed a similar group in Munich, the Tupamaros Munich (TM).

Brigitte Mohnhaupt Brigitte Margret Ida Mohnhaupt (born 24 June 1949) is a German convicted former terrorist associated with the second generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF) members. She was also part of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK). From 1971 until ...

, later an important figure in the second generation of the RAF, was a member.

References

{{Authority control Antisemitism in Germany Außerparlamentarische Opposition Far-left politics in Germany Left-wing militant groups in Germany Terrorism in Germany 1969 establishments in West Germany 1971 disestablishments in West Germany Politics of Berlin 20th-century attacks on Jewish institutions Communist terrorism 1960s in West Berlin Socialist antisemitism