Tupamaros West-Berlin

The Tupamaros West-Berlin (TW) were a small German Marxist organization which carried out a series of bombings and arsons at the end of the 1960s.^[1] In 1969 Dieter Kunzelmann, Georg von Rauch, and a few others traveled to Jordan to train at a Fatah camp, forming the Tupamaros on their return to Germany.^[2][3] The group took their name from the Uruguayan Tupamaros. The TW had a core membership of about 15 people.^[3]

The target of the West Berlin Tupamaros' first attempted bombing, West Berlin's (then) Jewish Community Center.

Their first action was an attempted bombing of West Berlin's Jewish Community Centre on 9 November 1969 (the anniversary of Kristallnacht); the bomb, supplied by the undercover government agent Peter Urbach, failed to explode.^[4][5] This was followed in the fall of 1969 by a number of bombings and arsons targeting police, judges, and US and Israeli targets.^[6] The TW claimed responsibility for these attacks under a variety of different names in order to exaggerate the size of their movement.^[6]

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.^[3] Its core members then formed the Movement 2 June, while some others joined the Red Army Faction.^[3][7]

The Jewish Community Centre bombing attempt

Historian Wolfgang Kraushaar's 2005 book on the Tupamaros' attempted bombing of the West Berlin Jewish Community Centre set off a debate on antisemitism in the German student movement.^[4][8] The bombing was allegedly planned by Kunzelmann and the bomb itself planted by Albert Fichter, brother of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund's then-chairman Tilman Fichter.^[4] On the date of the attempted bombing more than 200 people had gathered in the community center to commemorate Kristallnacht.^[4]

The Tupamaros Munich

Around the time of the TW's creation Fritz Teufel formed a similar group in Munich, the Tupamaros Munich (TM).^[6] Brigitte Mohnhaupt, later an important figure in the second generation of the RAF, was a member.^[9]