Die Terroristin als alter ego in den “bleiernen Zeiten” und andere umgewandelte Motive in Dea Lohers Zeitstück Leviathan

Abstract

Leviathan is the only literary work which depicts the leading fi gures of the RAF without interpreting their actions through their bloody end and failure. Loher draws on the obvious sources but diverges from them by apparently giving the decision in 1970 to launch an armed struggle against Western governments a political purpose and chance of success which it never had. Like numerous other authors Loher gives her main ‘terrorist’ character (Marie, based on Ulrike Meinhof) an alter ego (her sister Christine) from whose perspective the ethics and effi - cacy of political violence are judged. She follows the structure of Margarethe von Trotta’s fi lm Die bleierne Zeit (1981) which charts the lives of two sisters, based on Gudrun and Christiane Ensslin, who share a set of fundamental political beliefs and objectives, but differing in the methods they chose: one picks up a gun, the other campaigns as a journalist. In Leviathan, neither Christine’s motives for alleviating suffering through her work as a nurse nor her wish to join her sister at the El Fatah training camp in Jordan are politically motivated. This in turn highlights the personal motivation of all the major characters in the play, based on Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Andreas Baader. (JP; in German)