14 Facts About Bommi Baumann

Michael "Bommi" Baumann was a German author and former militant.

Bommi Baumann was arrested in London in 1981 and following a prison term lived in Berlin.

Michael Bommi Baumann was born on August 25,1947, to an apolitical mother and a father who had been a Nazi.

Bommi Baumann later commented that he became dissatisfied with the mindless world of work and television he saw around him.

In 1964, Bommi Baumann started to engage with the counterculture and to hang out at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church where dropouts would drink wine and take the stimulant Captagon or the cough medicine Romilar for psychoactive effects.

Bommi Baumann began to visit Kommune 1 and was radicalised by the police shooting of Benno Ohnesorg on 2 June 1967.

Bommi Baumann was living with Georg von Rauch and Thomas Weissbecker in the Wielandkommune and they decided to become urban guerillas, forming a group called the Zentralrat der umherschweifenden Haschrebellen.

Bommi Baumann participated in the riots and attacks against the Springer Media headquarters on the Easter weekend of 1968 after the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke.

The name was inspired by the date of the death of Ohnesorg and Bommi Baumann later commented it was supposed to show that the state had initiated the violence.

In December 1971, Bommi Baumann was with Georg von Rauch in Schoneberg and after a confrontation with the police, Rauch was shot dead.

Whilst still on the run Bommi Baumann was interviewed by a journalist in Rome in 1980, who commented that he was dressed as a punk and hiding in plain sight.

Bommi Baumann was arrested in a squat in Hackney, London in February 1981.

Beyond that, 165 pages of interrogation records existed on Bommi Baumann, who had been arrested by the Stasi whilst on the run in 1973.

Bommi Baumann stated that nine out of ten people he knew when he was a user were now dead.