On this day in 1976, Ulrike Meinhof, journalist, revolutionary, and co-founder of the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion), was murdered in Stammheim Prison.
Ulrike was found hanged in her cell in the maximum-security Stammheim prison. The then West German government, led by Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, quickly dismissed the case as suicide by hanging, but an International Investigatory Commission into Ulrike Meinhof's death, formed immediately after her death, determined in 1978 that Meinhof had been brutally raped and strangled.
Ulrike's murder marked the beginning of the "final solution" against the militants of the Red Army Faction, long announced and advocated by the ruling bodies of the Federal Republic of Germany. Just over a year later, on October 18, 1977, RAF militants Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in prison. On November 11 of the same year, Ingrid Schubert was found dead.
Ulrike's death sparked protests around the world and clashes with police in Paris, Rome, Milan, Venice, Copenhagen, Berlin, Munich, and several cities in West Germany. In Frankfurt, the Armed Forces Recreation Facility at the US Rhein-Main Air Base was blown up.