Starbuck – Holger Meins

Holger Meins (19511974), a member of the radical Baader Meinhof Gruppe, died after a 66day hunger strike in a German prison. His death has been interpreted in different ways over the years: as murder, suicide, a martyr’s death, a sacrifice or just a pointless fatality. His life also offered plenty of room for interpretation. Apart from a terrorist, Meins was also a painter, filmmaker and photographer. Twentyfive years after his death, Gerd Conradt offers his vision on the life and motives of the man he attended film academy in Berlin with between 1966 in 1968. Conradt, once asked by Meins to join the RAF, wanted to find out what motivated Meins at the time to go underground. To do so, he spoke to contemporaries and friends of Meins: Gretchen Dutschke, Harun Farocki, Wolfgang Petersen, Enlo Edschmidt, Peter Lilienthal, Michael Ballhaus and the Hamburg detective Alfred Klaus. Conradt reaches the conclusion that Meins was one of those people who have to live radically. ‘If I knew who God was, I would also know who I am’, Meins wrote at the age of 20. In the opinion of Conradt, these are not the considerations of a born terrorist. Although in the life of the activist there were also indications of the opposite, like one of his student films: Herstellung eines Molotowcocktails.