Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin (German: [ˈɡuːdʁuːn ˈɛnsliːn]; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a German far-left terrorist and founder of the West German far-left militant group Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).

After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the development of his political beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF. She was involved in five bomb attacks, with four deaths, was arrested in 1972 and died on 18 October 1977 in what has been called Stammheim Prison's "Death Night".

Ensslin was the fourth of seven children, and grew up in Bad Cannstatt, Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, where her father Helmut Ensslin (de) was a pastor of the Evangelical Church.

Ensslin was a well-behaved child who did well at school and enjoyed working with the Protestant Girl Scouts, and doing parish work such as organizing Bible studies. In her family, the social injustices of the world were often discussed, and she is said to have been sensitized to social problems in West Germany and the world as a whole.

At the age of eighteen, Ensslin spent a year in the United States, where she attended high school in Warren, Pennsylvania. She graduated in the honors group at the high school in 1959. After returning home, she finished the remaining requirements for her secondary education.

Like her partner Bernward Vesper (de) and other members of the Red Army Faction, including Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler, Ensslin had excellent exam scores and received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. Studying at the University of Tübingen, she read education, English studies, and German studies. Ensslin also met Vesper in February 1962.

In Tübingen, together with two other students, Ensslin and Vesper organized a student workshop for new literature which led to a shoestring publishing business called Studio neue Literatur. The first book produced was an anthology of poems against atomic weapons, with prominent poets from all German-speaking countries as well as a bilingual edition of poems by Gerardo Diego.

In 1963 and 1964, Ensslin earned her elementary school teacher's diploma. In the summer of 1964, the couple moved to West Berlin where Ensslin began her thesis on Hans Henny Jahnn.