DEUTSCHLAND IM HERBST (GERMANY IN AUTUMN)
Year: 1978
Duration: 119’
A collective film composed of contributions from different filmmakers: Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alf Brustellin, Bernhard Sinkel, Katja Rupé, Hans Peter Cloos, Edgar Reitz, Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Maximiliane Mainka, Peter Schubert.
With Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Helmut Griem, Katja Rupé, Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf
Production: Theo Hinz, Eberhard Junkersdorf
The movie covers two months in 1977 during which a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF–Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the original leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three prominent leaders of the RAF—Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ersslin, and Jean-Carl Raspe—all committed suicide in prison.
It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that they were murdered by the State. The movie has several vignettes, including an extended set of scenes with the famous directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff, as well as the poet Heinrich Böll. Other scenes include documentary footage of the joint funeral of Baader, Ersslin, and Raspe.
This is a zero-print, i.e. the director’s cut by Alexander Kluge and his chief editor Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus.