WEST GERMANY: Spectacle in Stuttgart

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The most sensational, costly and politically explosive trial in West German history opened in Stuttgart last week. Four self-styled urban guerrillas, each handcuffed to a policeman, were ushered into a custom-built, top-security courthouse. There they faced charges on five counts of murder (including those of four U.S. servicemen), 54 counts of attempted murder and multiple counts of bank robbery, arson, bombing, forgery and grand larceny. After the recent murder of West Berlin Supreme Court Judge Giinter von Drenkmann, the kidnaping of Berlin Opposition Leader Peter Lorenz, the bombing of the West German embassy in Stockholm and the Shootout between terrorists and police in Cologne three weeks ago, authorities were taking no chances. Even the five higher-court judges who are hearing the case (there is no jury) were armed with pistols and had undergone training in target shooting.

Roaming Anarchists. The sources of all this concern are hard-core members of a group of anarchists who call themselves the "Red Army Faction," but are popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. On trial are Ringleader Andreas Baader, 32, an art school dropout; Ulrike Meinhof, 40, a former journalist; Gudrun Ensslin, 34, a former teacher; and Jan-Carl Raspe, 30, sociologist. A fifth defendant, Holger Meins, died in prison last November after a two-month hunger strike. All are middle-class revolutionaries who emerged from the 1968 student rebellions in Germany determined to destroy "the System." In the two years from the founding of the Baader-Meinhof gang in 1970 to their arrest in June 1972, they roamed the country stealing cars, robbing banks and bombing police stations, newspaper offices and U.S. military facilities.

Rumors were rife that the gang's supporters would go to extreme lengths to disrupt the trial. A Stockholm newspaper received a letter threatening "unusual actions," including an attack upon Stuttgart with rockets, flamethrowers and mustard gas, if amnesty was not granted. Since two quarts of the deadly gas had mysteriously disappeared from a North German army post a few days earlier, the government sent urgent instructions to all West German hospitals and private doctors on how to treat mustard-gas burns. Authorities were also alarmed when one of the defense lawyers representing the terrorists disappeared shortly before the opening of the trial. Defense Lawyer Siegfried Haag left a note saying that he was "going underground to carry out important tasks in the battle against imperialism."

To tighten security, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt banned nonofficial visitors from government headquarters in Bonn last week and ordered that an armored car guard the chancellery building day and night. The concrete and steel Stuttgart courthouse is encircled by concentric chain link, barbed-wire and wooden fences. A steel net has been strung across the roof to keep off explosives and prevent helicopter rescue attempts. Hidden cameras monitor every inch of the floodlit complex, and more than 500 policemen share the guard duty. Roadblocks manned by submachine-gun-carrying police seal off the entrances to unauthorized visitors.