The Tupamaros West-Berlin (TW) were a small German

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

organization which carried out a series of bombings and arsons at the end of the 1960s. In 1969

Dieter Kunzelmann Dieter Kunzelmann (14 July 1939 – 14 May 2018) was a German left-wing terrorist. In the early 1960s he was a member of the Situationist-inspired artists' group Gruppe SPUR. He was one of the founders of Kommune 1 in 1967. At the end of th ...

, Georg von Rauch, and a few others traveled to Jordan to train at a

Fatah Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...

camp, forming the Tupamaros on their return to Germany. The group took their name from the Uruguayan

Tupamaros The Tupamaros – National Liberation Movement ( es, Movimiento de Liberación Nacional – Tupamaros, MLN-T), widely known as Tupamaros, was a Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. The MLN-T is inextricab ...

. The TW had a core membership of about 15 people. Their first action was an attempted bombing of

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

Jewish Community Centre A Jewish Community Center or a Jewish Community Centre (JCC) is a general recreational, social clubs, social, and Fraternal and service organizations, fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities. JCCs promote Jewish ...

on November 9, 1969 (the anniversary of

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

); the bomb, supplied by the undercover government agent Peter Urbach, failed to explode. Translated into English by Sign and Sight. This was followed in the fall of 1969 by a number of bombings and arsons targeting police, judges, and US and Israeli targets.Kundnani 97 The TW claimed responsibility for these attacks under a variety of different names in order to exaggerate the size of their movement. The group was led by Kunzelmann and von Rauch, and dissolved after the former was arrested in 1970 and the latter was killed by police in 1971. Its core members then formed the Movement 2 June, while some others joined the

Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (RAF, ; , ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (, , active 1970–1998), was a West German far-left Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla group founded in 1970. The ...

The Jewish Community Centre bombing

Historian Wolfgang Kraushaar's 2005 book on the Tupamaros' attempted bombing of the West Berlin Jewish Community Centre set off a debate on

antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

in the

German student movement The West German student movement or sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany was a social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968; participants in the movement would later come to be known as 68ers. T ...

. The bombing was allegedly planned by Kunzelmann and the bomb itself planted by Albert Fichter, brother of the

Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund The Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund — the Socialist German Students' Union or Socialist German Students' League — was founded in 1946 in Hamburg, Germany, as the collegiate branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the ...

's then-chairman Tilman Fichter. On the date of the attempted bombing more than 200 people had gathered in the community center to commemorate Kristallnacht.

The Tupamaros Munich

Around the time of the TW's creation

Fritz Teufel Fritz Teufel (17 June 1943 – 6 July 2010) was a prominent figure in the West German political left of the 1960s. One of the founders of Kommune 1, Teufel cultivated a theatrical, humorous public image—encapsulated in his idea of the "Spaßgue ...

formed a similar group in Munich, the Tupamaros Munich (TM).

Brigitte Mohnhaupt Brigitte Margret Ida Mohnhaupt (born 24 June 1949) is a German convicted former terrorist associated with the second generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF) members. She was also part of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK). From 1971 until 1 ...

, later an important figure in the second generation of the RAF, was a member.

References

{{Authority control Antisemitism in Germany Außerparlamentarische Opposition Far-left politics in Germany Left-wing militant groups in Germany Terrorism in Germany 1969 establishments in Germany 1971 disestablishments in Germany Politics of Berlin 20th-century attacks on synagogues and Jewish communal organizations Communist terrorism 1960s in West Berlin Left-wing antisemitism