Everybody Talks About the Weather . . . We Don't: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof Review

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Everybody Talks About the Weather . . . We Don't: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof Review"Everybody Talks About the Weather" is an excellent addition to the tiny canon of English Language books about the Baader-Meinhof era that gripped Europe in the late 60s and 1970s. Meinhof, the former star journalist turned left-wing terrorist, has never had an English-language book devoted to her until now.
Karin Bauer, the editor, has constructed an extremely informative work; part of it is composed of an extensive biographic sketch of Meinhof, firmly placing her writings in context. The bulk of the book are translations of 25 or so of her most famous editorial columns from the magazine konkret; editorials written throughout the 60s, prior to her decision to become a terrorist. The book also features an introduction by Nobel-winner Elfriede Jelinek, as well as an afterword by Meinhof's daughter.
It's quite impossible to separate Meinhof the columnist from Meinhof the terrorist; though it is important to make the effort. These columns were written by a politically aware intellectual, mother, and wife, who travelled freely in bourgeois society. They were not written by the most wanted women in Germany, who's face was featured on every lampost and bakery window. Clues to Meinhof's ultimate decision to go underground are everywhere; but these essays were not a progression of arguments towards fighting a global armed revolution. They were penetrating and insightful critiques of a German society that had failed to address it's own latent fascism in the era of the "Economic Miracle."
"Everybody Talks about the Weather" also makes clear something that is often lost when discussing Meinhof: she was an effective, compelling writer. Her writings are infused with a volatile mix of anger and Revolutionary optimism. There is also an ever-present undercurrent of an almost quaint smugness born of an absolute conviction that her worldview was the correct one. Meinhof's observations are typically penetrating and exact. More often than not she provides the instant analysis of events that will eventually become the conventional analysis in years to come. For example, in her essay about the arrests of members of Kommune I in their supposed plan to "bomb" visiting American Vice President Hubert Humphrey with pudding, Meinhof clearly recognized the media opportunties generated by their public demonstrations and the future danger to civil liberties of the coming Emergency Laws. All this at a time when most leftists viewed Kommune I's efforts as a fun "happening" and most on the right viewed it as simply out-of-control youth. Meinhof alone seemed to understand their significance.
"Everybody Talks about the Weather" offers much insight for people interested in one of western society's most important public intellectuals of the last 50 years.Everybody Talks About the Weather . . . We Don't: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof OverviewNo other figure embodies revolutionary politics and radical chic quite like Ulrike Meinhof, who formed, with Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang, notorious for its bombings and kidnappings of the wealthy in the 1970s. But in the years leading up to her leap into the fray, Meinhof was known throughout Europe as a respected journalist, who informed and entertained her loyal readers with monthly magazine columns.What impels someone to abandon middle-class privilege for the sake of revolution? In the 1960s, Meinhof began to see the world in increasingly stark terms: the United States was emerging as an unstoppable superpower, massacring a tiny country overseas despite increasingly popular dissent at home; and Germany appeared to be run by former Nazis. Never before translated into English, Meinhof's writings show a woman increasingly engaged in the major political events and social currents of her time. In her introduction, Karin Bauer tells Meinhof's mesmerizing life story and her political coming-of-age; Nobel Prize–winning author Elfriede Jelinek provides a thoughtful reflection on Meinhof's tragic failure to be heard; and Meinhof 's daughter—a relentless critic of her mother and of the Left—contributes an afterword that shows how Meinhof's ghost still haunts us today.

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