Storm and Silence

A firsthand account of a life defined by political idealism and its aftermath.
Storm and Silence is the autobiography of Astrid Proll, a founding member of the Red Army Faction and later photojournalist. It is the only memoir from inside the RAF’s founding circle, and almost certainly the last. Proll’s early days with Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof mostly consisted of going to marches, hanging out, traveling, and philosophizing. On a vacation in Palermo, bored, the group officially named themselves The Red Army Faction. What followed were training camps with the PLO in Jordan, months of clandestine life under false identities, bank robberies, and a nationwide manhunt. Recognized by a gas station attendant from a wanted poster, Proll was arrested and placed in solitary confinement—the first prisoner held in West Germany’s “dead wing.” The isolation drove her to madness. By 1973, the court had declared Proll unfit to stand trial and temporarily released her. 
She fled to Italy and then to London. For five years she lived as Anna Puttick—“Anna the Spanner,” a car mechanic squatting in Hackney among feminists, anarchists, and radicals who had no idea who she was. When she was rearrested in September 1978, the Friends of Astrid Proll campaign rallied the British left and won her freedom. She never went back to the RAF. Instead, she became picture editor at Tempo, and over the next twenty years, helped define the visual language of post-Wall Berlin—commissioning early work from Wolfgang Tillmans and Juergen Teller. Storm and Silence is her account of it all: radicalization, the underground, solitary confinement, a second life in London, and the long aftermath.