Ulrike Meinhof
The co-founder of the radical Red Army Faction (RAF) in the 1970s, Ulrike Meinhof was a political hard-liner who has long been a source of fascination and mystery in her native Germany. She started off in the fairly innocuous role of writer at leftist magazine Konkret but some time later she left and joined an armed revolutionary struggle against the government of Germany, which at that point was one of the world's richest democracies.
In May 1970, Meinhof helped free RAF leader Andreas Baader from detention (he was imprisoned for setting fire to two stores) under the guise of running an interview with him. Around this point, she transformed from peace activist to someone who believed "...there may be shooting" to achieve change. Later in 1970, she and other RAF members traveled to Jordan, where they were educated in guerilla tactics including shooting with Kalashnikovs, throwing hand grenades and robbing of banks. On return to Germany, they went underground and instituted a two-year campaign of bank robberies and bombings.
Meinhof's foster mother sent her a open letter pleading with her to "give up", but to no avail. In June 1972, Meinhof was arrested in a house where she was hiding, and four years later she was found hanged in an alleged suicide - though many contend it was a political assassination.