Gabriele Rollnik

Gabriele Rollnik (born 1950) is a German former terrorist.

She became a member of the 2 June Movement, which had been named after the date, in 1967, on which the student Benno Ohnesorg was fatally shot by a policeman in West Berlin during a demonstration against a visit by the Shah of Iran.

Asked later about her radicalisation, she indicated that she had been impressed by news reports of student protests including the May 1968 events in France, which she had learned about from the television in the family home, where in most respects she found her adolescent life "monochrome and really dull" ("...erschien mir das Leben ziemlich langweilig und eintönig.")

In 1970 Rollnik moved to West Berlin to study for a degree in Sociology at the Free University.

Through her political involvement, and influenced by extremist feminism, she decided to join the Trotskyite International Marxist Group.

Back in 1971/72 Meyer had been a founder member of the left-wing anarchist 2 June Movement.

Having Meyer in her home placed Rollnik in direct contact with what was rapidly becoming a serious terrorist organisation.

Meanwhile, she started looking after Meyer, organising identity papers for him.

The two became lovers.

Rollnik found that she wanted to "meet the others" and "join in properly" ("Ich [wollte] die anderen kennenlernen. Ich wollte richtig mitmachen.").

From 1973 she was also active in groups identified as part of the emerging new feminist movement.

During her final year she began to work on a dissertation concerning the "compatibility of family and working life", but shortly before she was due to graduate she dropped out of university and took a job as an assembly worker in a Telefunken (radio and television) factory, in order to politicise fellow workers.

While she was still working at Telefunken, Rollnik received an unannounced visit from a girl friend who appeared with a man in tow.

Her friend asked if she would let Till Meyer use her apartment.

Meyer had recently escaped from prison, just a few weeks before his scheduled release at the end of a three year jail term; he feared further criminal charges because he knew the authorities had found a new prosecution witness.

By this time the movement's most pressing priority, following a wave of arrests in 1973/74, was to liberate the "older and more experienced" comrades from jail.

She learned how to fake documents, to crack locks, to shoot: she learned the skills necessary to be able to operate on the wrong side of the law and to be able to "carry out actions".

But it was also "fun" ( es machte ihr aber auch „Spaß“").

Rollnik participated in the planning and implementation of the Peter Lorenz kidnapping.

Gabriele Rollnik joined the 2 June Movement shortly after this, still in 1974.

Decades later, when it was all over, serious journalists conducted thoughtful interviews to try and understand how and why Rollnik had become involved in terrorism.

She appeared to have gained in self-confidence from the sense of belonging to something that she found worthwhile.

Lorenz was a candidate in the West Berlin mayoral elections who was kidnapped three days before the first round of the election on 27 February 1975.

Her practical involvement included renting a retail premises at Schenkendorfstraße 7 where she opened a "second-hand shop", the basement of which became the "People's Prison" in which Lorenz was held while unsuspecting customers sought out the bargains overhead, and comrades conducted successful negotiations with the authorities for the release of five imprisoned group members.

(Lorenz was released unharmed on 2 March 1975, a few hours before the second round of the election in which he had been unable to participate. ) A few months later, on 13 September 1975, Gabriele Rollnik was arrested in Berlin.

Most of the terrorist suspects arrested were taken to Stammheim jail on the northside of Stuttgart, but Rollnik was one of four detained in the Lehrter Straße women's prison in West Berlin where conditions were less onerous.

On 7 July 1976 the four women managed to escape through a window in the prison library from the women's prison in West Berlin.

Those involved, along with Rollnik, were Monika Berberich, Juliane Plambeck and Inge Viett.

Berberich, a qualified lawyer, was a member of the Red Army Faction, while the other three all came from the 2 June Movement.

To an outsider, the two groups were broadly similar both in their ideals and in their methods, but at this stage they were still separate and on occasion saw one another as rival organisations.

In a trial that took place only four years later it was stated that by the time the four had made it across the roofs to their get-away car, they had overpowered their guards: implements used in the escape had included the tube from a roll of toilet tissues, three bed springs tied together and a fire arm or fire arm replica.

After that escape Rollnik lived unregistered "below the radar", mostly in Germany.

In the wake of the successful Lorenz kidnapping the group needed funds in order to rebuild their organisation and devise new strategies.

Plans were set in hand for another kidnapping, this time with the objective of ransoming the victim for money.

In order to reduce the risk of getting caught up in the growing number of police searches in West Germany, the kidnapping was to take place in Vienna, where the famously rich textiles magnate Walter Palmers was kidnapped on 9 November 1977.

His captors held him for around 100 hours after which, in return for a payment of 30.5 Million schillings, he was set free.

She was sentenced to a fifteen-year jail term in 1981 and released on 14 September 1992 (pre-conviction detention between 1978 and 1981 being taken into account).

Gabriele Rollnik was born and grew up in Dortmund.

A source describes her family as "well-to-do".

Her father was a policeman.