How It All Began by Michael ‘Bommi’ Baumann, first English edition

Good condition. Pre-owned vintage paperback with some foxing and fading. Please review all original photographs for the condition of this copy.

Bommi Baumann’s autobiographical account reflects on his involvement in West Berlin’s June 2nd Movement and his subsequent departure from armed political struggle. This copy is the 1977 first English edition of the memoir originally published as Wie Alles Anfing. The days of the Red Army Faction and Bader-Meinhof are relived here.

• Author: Michael (Bommi) Baumann
• Publisher: Pulp Press
• Published: 1977
• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• Pages: 121
• ISBN: 9780889780453

• Go back to the days of the Baader Meinhof gang, the RAF and the June 2 group This is an English Language First edition of Bommi Baumann's memoir

  How It All Began is the personal testimony of Michael "Bommi" Baumann, a man who, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, was a member of the June 2nd Movement, one of the most spectacular urban guerrilla organizations in West Berlin.

  Of this book, Baumann said: "Others should understand why people take the road of armed struggle, how they come to it, how the seeds are planted, and what the emotions behind it are, what kind of considerations and psychic preconditions are needed to overcome the fear involved."

  But Baumann, ultimately, had to make a choice. He renounced violence when he left the June 2nd Movement in 1972.

  Security police seized the original German edition, Wie Alles Anfing, when it appeared in 1975. The resulting trial and publicity raised an international outcry and the book ended up being republished in German and translated into six languages.

  In an age when public protests—against corporate greed, against free trade agreements, and for social justice—are becoming more frequent and more violent, How It All Began provides a fascinating glimpse into the thinking behind urban struggle, and the consequences of action.

  As Baumann himself said, "Violence is a perfectly adequate means, I never had any hangups about it."

  The first English version of How It All Began was published by Arsenal in 1977 

  Bommi Baumann was a leading member of the June 2nd Movement, one of the most active urban guerrilla groups in West Berlin. From a low-income, unstable family background, Baumann left the movement and the urban guerrilla struggle in 1972 and went underground to write this book. He was arrested in London in 1981 and there has been no word from him since.