Wolfgang Kraushaar. Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition,
HIS Verlag, 2005. 300 S. EUR 20.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-936096-53-8.
Reviewed by Karrin Hanshew (Department of History, Michigan State University)
Published on H-German (September, 2007)
A Chronicle of Antisemitism and the New Left
German New Left. He begins his search with the observation that the late 1960s marked not only a moment of organizational dissolution and political disorientation, but also a time of new beginnings, when new
actors, previously on the fringes of university-centered
actions, stepped to the fore and refocused the lens of
New Left politics in West Germany away from Vietnam
and onto the growing conflict in the Middle East. Disappointed and outraged by Israel’s territorial expansion
following the Six Days War, members of the radical Left
launched a campaign against the young Jewish state that,
in Kraushaar’s estimation, ruptured the thin veneer of
postwar philosemitism. Members of both the liberal and
radical Left seconded Gerhard Zwerenz in the belief that
“there are no left-wing antisemites!” and remained stubbornly deaf to traditional anti-Jewish sentiments resurfacing in anti-imperialist critiques of Israel and calls for
Palestinian liberation. The author shows how this uncritical pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel position reached its extreme when a handful of German students armed themselves in solidarity with Palestinian militants and Jews
once again became acceptable objects of German aggression.
The November Revolution, Hitler’s failed Beer Hall
Putsch, Kristallnacht, and the opening of the Berlin Wall
have made the ninth of November a notoriously conflicted day of national commemoration. With his book
on the unsuccessful bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Berlin on November 9, 1969, Wolfgang
Kraushaar draws our attention to another such moment–
one largely overlooked by scholars and popular memory alike. The attack, the first to be carried out by a
group of self-proclaimed “urban guerillas,” was planned
to coincide with the annual commemoration of Kristallnacht. In what has already proven a controversial thesis,
Kraushaar argues that such an attack could only have
been conceived and carried out by a new generation of
Germans who, despite professions to the contrary, had
failed to break fully with the antisemitism of their parents. Kraushaar uses the bomb plot, above all, to suggest
the very impossibility of a “clean” break, be it generational or political, with regard to antisemitism in (any)
postwar Germany. He convincingly shows how the New
Left’s insistence that antisemitism was a problem limited
to the political Right was not only naive or delusional
but also dangerous: it directly facilitated the Left’s own
latent and manifest antisemitism.
Despite the centrality of the theme to the work,
Kraushaar largely confines his discussion of the New
Left and antisemitism to his final chapters in favor of
providing an in-depth glimpse of the New Left scene
and a “whodunit” crime story. Tying a number of narrative strands together are the life and actions of one
man: Dieter Kunzelmann. One-time member of SPUR,
Subversive Action, and Kommune I, Kunzelmann finally
Drawing on published sources as well as interviews
and archival materials from the files of the Sozialistisches Anwaltskollektiv and the GDR’s Ministry of State
Security, Kraushaar seeks to reconstruct the “scene”
and actors behind the bomb plot and thereby understand what made a German attack on Jews–and Jewish survivors–conceivable among a subset of the West
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led his fellow Hash Rebels in the formation of the Tupamaros West-Berlin (TWB), West Germany’s first urban guerilla group. After returning to Berlin from the
training camps of the militant Palestinian group AlFatah in early November 1969, Kunzelmann and company launched a series of attacks on the city. The bombing of the Jewish Community Center was the group’s first
act, intended both to proclaim the guerillas’ existence and
to call other members of the radical Left to action. It is
here that Kraushaar offers one of his more provocative
conclusions: namely, that antisemitism was a constitutive aspect of West German terrorism.
tributes to the color of Kraushaar’s work consistently undermines its scholarship. Aside from missing and incomplete citations, Kraushaar’s analysis is overshadowed by
at times painful levels of detail (how important is it, for
example, that the tape accompanying the bomb plot was
recorded in BETA format? ) and a text riddled with information “dumps” that, however interesting, serve no
clear purpose. This also holds true for the pages of nearly
uninterrupted interview transcripts. While Kraushaar’s
interviews with key actors involved in the plot represent a significant contribution, his uncritical handling of
the testimonies–most notably that of Fichter–diminishes
what should be the book’s indisputable strength. All of
this is simply indicative of a general failure on the author’s part to control his wealth of sources within a clear
analytic framework. While withholding the identity of
the would-be bombers until the very end maintains a certain enjoyable suspense, the same strategy, when applied
to the book’s argument, creates disorientation and disgruntlement.
As Kraushaar moves from what made the attack on
the Jewish Community Center conceivable to what made
it materially possible, he also sheds light on the German
government’s sinister role in instigating and arming violent action. Specifically, he leaves little doubt that the
bomb planted in the basement of the Jewish center came
to the West Berlin guerillas by way of Peter Urbach, an
undercover agent who gained the trust of Kunzelmann
early on and was well known among APO activists for his
access to weapons and eager violence. Though the government connection to the guerillas has been suspected
for a long time, Kraushaar is able to provide new evidence
about the government’s role in tipping the scales in favor
of terrorism’s eventual outbreak. Arguably more crucial
to the mystery surrounding the November 9 attack is the
identity of the long unknown bomber, a question that
Kraushaar conclusively answers. In an interview with
the author, Albert Fichter confessed to the crime and described the events leading up to it. Fichter explained his
action with heavy drug use, a traumatic experience in
a kibbutz, and the uncritical philosemitism of postwar
German society in an account that does much to blur
the distinction between victim and perpetrator. Though
Kraushaar does not dismiss Fichter’s role in the bomb
plot, his sympathies are clear: he is unabashed in the conviction that responsibility for the November 9 attack rests
firmly on Kunzelmann–as the provocateur extraordinaire
who planned the bomb assault and then emotionally and
physically coerced others into carrying it out.
Though Kraushaar’s moral outrage over the Left’s
blind tolerance of antisemitism is unmistakable, he issues
no sweeping condemnation. Kraushaar’s goal is not to
tar and feather the persons or politics of the New Left. Instead, he presents his readers with a winding, circuitous
story, in which political rationales provide little comfort–
or justification–for the actions of a few (be they urban
guerrillas or undercover agents). Moreover, his narrative
reveals the tolerance of larger circles (whether the APO
or the newly elected SPD-FDP government) to have been
questionable at best.
In the end, little doubt remains that Kraushaar has
succeeded where others–including a specially commissioned police force–failed. While every reader can evaluate for themselves Kraushaar’s speculations on a possible “order” originating with Al-Fatah, the evidence he
presents on Fichter’s role as the bomber and Kunzelmann’s as ringleader and mastermind is enough to put
this particular case to rest. And the controversies he dug
up along the way will certainly prove rich fodder for further research on antisemitism, the New Left, and West
German terrorism.
This is a book whose many strengths are simultaneously a source of weakness, for the material that con-
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Citation: Karrin Hanshew. Review of Kraushaar, Wolfgang, Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus. H-German,
H-Net Reviews. September, 2007.
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