1976 – 1991: The Albartus Paper of the Revolutionary Cells

The years 1976 and 1991 mark two clear downturns in the history of the radical left in the Federal Republic of Germany. Significantly, at the end of 1991, the Revolutionary Cells' Albartus paper discussed 1976: the Entebbe hijacking. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary, we have a long article in the current Wildcat that attempts to unravel these connections: "Entebbe and the consequences." Here is a short version plus update:

In June and July 1976 there was a heat wave in Europe. Temperatures in Germany regularly rose above 30 degrees for weeks to peaks of up to 36 and 37 degrees.

Politically, the “red decade” ended 50 years ago: March 24, 1976 military coup in Argentina. Ulrike Meinhof died on May 9, 1976. At the beginning of June, at the “Pentecost Congress,” a large part of the radical left broke with militancy and headed into the institutions. The chemical disaster in Seveso began on July 10th. In August, the Tel al-Zaatar massacre. On October 6th the military coup in Thailand.

Culturally, 1976 was also bad: ABBA “Dancing Queen”, Jürgen Drews “A Bed in the Cornfield”, Boney M. “Daddy Cool”. Shortly afterwards the BeeGees came on “Stayin’ Alive” – the sound of the German Autumn!

For the German Maoists of the various K groups, 1976 was between Franz Josef Strauss's visit to Mao (January 1975) on the one hand, and Vietnam's war against Cambodia and the "reforms" of Deng Xiao Ping (both in December 1978) on the other. Most of them apostatized, many of them founded the Green Party, others later the Anti-Germans. After 1991, these conquered hegemony in the radical left.

The Entebbe Plane Hijacking…

The Lebanese civil war has escalated since the beginning of 1976. After months of siege, Falangists stormed the Tel al-Zaatar camp on August 12, killing thousands of Palestinian refugees.

In connection with this, a German-Palestinian commando from RZ and PFLP-EO hijacked a plane to Entebbe on June 27, 1976 and demanded the release of political prisoners. On the night of July 4, Israeli special forces freed most of the hostages. To this day, this is hailed by certain circles as the best commando operation of all time (for example: “With the Entebbe hostage rescue, Israel showed 50 years ago how to fight terror” Nius July 2, 2026). Benjamin Netanyahu, whose older brother died during the liberation operation, has built his entire political career on "Entebbe" and the "fight against terrorism."

"The Entebbe action quickly became a pretext for various actors who had previously been associated with the milieu of the radical left to completely break away from internationalism and anti-imperialism." (Gerhard Hanloser: "Disaster with repercussions")

The anti-repression congress of the Socialist Office at the beginning of June (“Pentecost Congress”) was groundbreaking. On the final day, future Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer broke with his militant past in the famous Römerberg speech in front of 20,000 visitors. Later, turning things chronologically upside down, he repeatedly emphasized on his way to the Foreign Ministry that “Entebbe” was the event that turned him from Saul into Paul. It only provided the excuse after the fact.

“Entebbe” is still powerful today. This was evident in the dozens of articles and several books published to mark the 50th anniversary. This was also seen in the fact that in March 2023, members of the Entebbe special unit formulated one of the harshest criticisms of Benjamin Netanyahu in an open letter. Netanyahu is sacrificing the State of Israel and the Israeli people for his own interests, defaming demonstrators against judicial reform as anarchists and those who do not support him as terrorists; he incites Israelis against each other.

... and the beginning of the institutionalization of the radical left

1976 could have turned out differently. In July, chemical workers in Seveso went on strike to make the disaster public - but they no longer had the power to reorient the country's economic policy as they had years before. The mass student protests in Soweto since June were largely self-organized and finally seemed to offer a political alternative to the ANC. But the cops brutally crushed the movement; They killed more than 500 of the insurgents, and the charismatic leader Steve Biko was also murdered in police custody. In the long term, this brutal repression led to a massive strengthening of the ANC, as thousands of young activists fled abroad and joined its armed wing for lack of an alternative. The ANC's seizure of power in 1994 was the definitive nail in the coffin for traditional anti-imperialism. In 1995, June 16th was established as a national holiday in South Africa as Soweto Day – now Youth Day.

On April 7, 1977, the RAF began its devastating offensive with the assassination attempt on Buback. In the same month, HJ Klein sent a letter and a gun to Der Spiegel; He had his comrades from the RZ bring these to him in advance. (according to "Eyewitness report of an ex-guerrilla - Thomas Kram, once a member of the RZ, speaks exclusively to the taz..."“) It was obvious that Klein was playing the wrong game - which was one of the reasons that his stories were not addressed in detail. Instead, “The dogs are barking and the caravan moves on,” ���Do you want dogs to bark forever?” But the latter explanation in particular also shows the political weaknesses: “Each of the politically significant movements of the last few years has reached a point where the only alternative for them was resignation and withdrawal or military escalation.” “At the same time, we are fighting today in the Germany model against a Europe under American-German hegemony, for a Europe of free peoples.”

[most texts here] - According to the radio feature "Free Flight into Death" (Peter Hillebrand, Free Flight into Death / In the footsteps of Gerd Albartus, swr2 feature from September 14, 2011), Gerd Albartus, himself a member of the RZ, is said to have said that the information in Klein's book "Return to Humanity" was correct.

The statement “Gerd Albartus is dead.”

And so in December 1991 - although the state of knowledge was already different - two claims by HJ Klein appeared in the RZ's statement on the death of Gerd Albartus: "The selection took place along ethnic lines. The fact that the only hostage who did not survive the hijacking was a former concentration camp prisoner was part of the logic of the operation.

It was now known that there had been more dead hostages than Dora Bloch; HJ Klein brought the “only dead hostage” and the “selection” into the world. She wasn't a concentration camp survivor either - the writers of the statement somehow made that up.

We discuss the political developments in 1991 in detail in the article; Here only briefly: The ex-Maoists who had become “anti-Germans” attacked the peace movement against the Second Gulf War; The main accusation then as now: anti-Semitism. Here too, “Entebbe” was instrumentalized. In April 1991, Matthias Küntzel claimed in a sweeping blow against the radical left ("Israel, the German Left and the KB") that it was only the "process in Entebbe that was reminiscent of Nazi selection practices" that had triggered a discussion process that finally and for the first time addressed "left-wing anti-Semitism."

In December 1991, looking back at the murder of their comrade Gerd Albartus, the RZ would certainly have had reasons for self-criticism: their clumsy anti-imperialism of the 1970s, their affirmation of the embassy occupation and shooting of hostages in Stockholm against left-wing criticism in the first Revolutionary Rage, their collaboration with Carlos in the kidnapping of the OPEC ministers in December 1975 - that would have been immediately obvious, because it was Carlos who had shot Gerd Albartus. Would have, would have - instead they laid a false trail ("a group from the Palestinian resistance"), focused on the "Entebbe action" without further justification and, by equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, joined the anti-German general attack against the revolutionary left as a whole.

The declaration “Gerd Albartus is dead” did not even protect his own comrades against accusations of anti-Semitism. With HJ Klein's claims, she even went one better and interpreted the "plane hijacking to Entebbe as an exemplary act in which 'left' turned head-on into 'anti-Semitic'" (Markus Mohr "Legends of Entebbe", in particular the chapter "The Revolutionary Cells in the Decade of Great Upheaval").

Historical and political reappraisal versus instrumentalization

Ten years later, Klaus Viehmann and Stefan Wisniewski attempted to politically criticize "Entebbe" and the development of the RZ during an event tour in 2001. They pointed out an interesting point: In December 1983, the RZ declared in its statement “War – Crisis – Peace Movement. In danger and extreme need, the middle path brings death" reflects on the fact that their idea of ​​"anchoring in social movements" does not work and: "the 3rd world can no longer be understood as a subject". Instead, you have to anchor yourself in the local class composition! »The new social movements ... are increasingly running across the class question, superimposing social content and in some cases developing to the right. As the exclusive reference point for a revolutionary practice, they become questionable. ... The underclasses ... develop forms of resistance that are fundamentally different from those of the new social movements (and) no longer have anything to do with traditional campaign politics. A left that refers to the underclasses must rethink the course and organizational forms of its own resistance...”. At the event, Klaus Viehmann criticized the fact that the opposite happened shortly afterwards: the “narrowing down to the refugee question” was a turning away from the class question and “armed reformism”. This ultimately led to the dissolution.

The declaration “Gerd Albartus is dead” was exactly in line with this line: We have overcome our old, anti-Semitic anti-imperialism with the “new anti-imperialism” (refugees as a revolutionary subject). This “new anti-imperialism” abdicated exactly when it was needed! The Albartus Declaration was a disguised declaration of dissolution at a time when the German state was massively tightening its stance towards refugees. Enno Schwall, the RZ's spokesman for its refugee campaign at the end of the 1980s, said in an interview after the attacks on the sunflower house in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, which he lived within sight of at the time: "The cops wanted to keep the conflict simmering; this riot is promoted by state policy.« (Wildcat 60, supplement pp. 18 and 20).

The Albartus Declaration no longer wants to know anything about the role of the state. She had an impressive career, especially in anti-German circles. During the Gaza War, it was quoted many times and even reprinted to mark criticism of Israel's actions as "anti-Semitic," and with the quote from it "where two ethnic communities lay claim to the same piece of land, there are no revolutionary solutions" to downgrade the State of Israel to an ethnic community. This RZ explanation is also sometimes used in state-financed left-wing bashing. As part of the “Action Weeks against Anti-Semitism”. At the end of last year in Bremen there was a lecture by an expert on “Islamic anti-Semitism” and the event “Holocaust revisited. Caricatures and comics after October 7, 2023” offered a reading workshop: “Gerd Albartus is dead. Re-reading an old debate”.

Since 1991, serious historians have come to different conclusions regarding Entebbe. For example, Freia Anders and Alexander Sedlmaier "Entebbe Company", in: Yearbook for Anti-Semitism Research Vol. 22, 2013. Their essay can still be considered the current state of research today. Inspired by this, Markus Mohr published the first anthology on “Entebbe” in German ten years ago, “Legends about Entebbe. An act of air piracy and its dimensions in the political discussion", Münster 2016. If you want to look into the matter in more detail, this volume is recommended!

Recently also the Protestant historian Robert Wolff, who wrote his dissertation on the revolutionary cells: Robert Wolff "Blind spots, stories, myths - New perspectives on the plane hijacking after Entebbe in 1976", Quarterly for Contemporary History 3/2023, p. 540.

Completely unimpressed by this, Thomas Kram, who claims to be one of the authors of the “Gerd Albartus” paper, gave another interview to the taz on the 50th anniversary of Entebbe. Here he once again uses the empty phrase about the “new understanding of anti-imperialism” (refugees) and in the final paragraph refers positively to the Bremen “Action Weeks against Anti-Semitism”: “At the end of 2025 I read the invitation to a workshop entitled “Re-reading an old debate”. The RZ text on the death of Gerd Albartus should be discussed together. It was about today's current topics such as anti-imperialism, Palestine solidarity, the relationship to national liberation movements and anti-Semitism on the left. The historical experiences of the RZ, the critical questioning in the text from 1991, can certainly contribute a few arguments. Perhaps they offer some guidance in the discursive tangle that I have perceived since the Hamas massacre on October 7th and the retaliatory measures taken by the Israeli state.

With this, someone with definitional power is saying that the 1991 declaration was not misused by anti-Germans, but that it was intended in exactly the same way. By the “discursive tangle” he may be referring to himself, because he speaks almost like Wadepuhl (“retaliatory measures by the Israeli state”).

Here people are trying to close the lid – see also “Who owns the story? New edition of 'The Grapes of Wrath' affected by publication ban." One can only hope for objection from qualified sources that the RZ deserve a better end than being swallowed up in the anti-German soup.

Today the radical left no longer has the ability to mobilize. It is no longer even capable of opposing wars. If you remember that 50,000 people demonstrated against the war against the Second Gulf War in Berlin in January 1991 and at the same time over 200,000 people demonstrated against the war in Bonn's Hofgarten, and around half a million people demonstrated against the war in Berlin in 2003 against the Third Iraq War... then you might have an idea of ​​how low we have sunk. In order to get out of this again, we have to work through and correct the wrong strategic decisions in the past!

https://kontrapolis.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/wildcatb.gif"> loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="width="150" height="150" alt="wildcatb.gif" style="display:inline-block" />

happens on October 1st, 2026

web address: https://kontrapolis.info/18720/author/group: Wildcat #116Topics: repressionfeed date: Wednesday, October 7, 2026 - 09:53