Final Post

Part A

http://ge110fayezal.blogspot.com/

The blog drew my attention, because I had never worked with Fayez. The blog is well organized and the posts are presented in properly format. Thus, I would rate his blog as 5, he included many details, which helps the understanding, and I would rate its readability as 5. Comparing his blog to mine, this one is better. It has more information than mine.

http://ge110denisebe.blogspot.com/2014/12/final-post.html

I chose her blog for the same reason I chose Fayez's blog. She seems to be interested in this class, but she could add more information. I would rate the overall as 4, and 3 for the readability, since its lack of information. Compare to my blog it is slightly worse. It has less information than mine.

http://ge110tatianasa.blogspot.com/

Her blog is well organized, it has a nice background and she posted all assignments. It seems that she cares a lot about its appearance, and content. I would rate her blog as 5 for both informative quality and readability. It is better than mine.

Part B   

          

          Taking Intro to German Culture, I found out details about Germany's history that I had no clue. All the entertainment topics such as music, sport, theater, poetry and movie were a delightful surprise, but I kind expected it. However, topics that had a great impact on me are related to the WWII and the RAF. The book “All quiet on the Western Front” was an intense reading, but it showed me the side of the war that I have never thought before. The effects of the war on this generation was horrible, and the dehumanization process showed in the book and movie shocked me. The RAF, an urban guerrilla in Europe, it was a surprise. In South America we had Che Guevara, one important name when we talk about guerrilla. Thus I am familiarized with that. However, after reading some web pages and watch the movie I had only one thought on my mind, ‘They tried to do the “right” thing and they got completely lost on the way". The barbarity of these 2 topics, made my bad misconception opinions about Germany change into a concept of a harmed country, which fights hard to keep all the demons in the past. I didn’t have any issues in this class, I enjoyed the assignments, so I could not point something that could be changed. 

Baader Meinhof

               Die Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970, by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Ulrike Meinhof. They identified themselves as a communist group engaged in armed resistance against what they considered to be a fascist state. However, it was considered by many people as a terrorist group.

Origin

               “They'll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we're up against. This is the Auschwitz generation. You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we haven't. We must arm ourselves!” – Gudrun Ensslin (speaking after the death of Benno Ohnesorg).

After being convicted for burning stores; Baader, Ensslin, Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein were arrested. Few month later of being released, their liberty were contested and their prison were requested. However, Horst Söhnlein was the only one to respond the request. The 3 other ran away to Paris, and Italy after that. Regis Debray helped them to escape, hiding them in his own property. Debray’s friendship with Che Guevara, and his works about urban guerrilla probably influenced Baader and his group.

They returned to Germany, to execute the plan of creating a guerrilla, but Baader was arrested. Meinhof and Ensslin planned to release him. Meinhof had access to Baader, because she was a journalist. By the excuse of writing a book with Baader, she got a meeting with him in an Institute on May 14^th of 1970, Meinhof, Gurund, Astri, Ingrid Schubert, Irene Goergens and Peter Homann executed their plan and Baader escaped with them, and the attack was attributed to Gang Baader-Meinhof. However, in July 2^nd of 1970 the group published an article where it was signed for the first time their official name Rote Armee Fraktion.  

               The RAF lasted for 28 years, and committed numerous operations that resulted in a national crisis. They fight for freedom, but for that they lost their way and killed 34 people including secondary target.. But as any guerrilla in the world, divided public opinion between lovers and haters.