Klaus Rainer Röhl

Who is Klaus Rainer Röhl?

Klaus Rainer Röhl is a pre-eminent German journalist and author, best known as founder, owner, publisher and editor-in-chief of konkret, the most influential magazine on the German political left from the 1960s to the early 1970s. He has since become critical of communism and leftist tendencies.

Known as "K2R", he founded the left-wing monthly magazine Studentenkurier in 1955. In 1957, the magazine was renamed konkret and rose to prominence in the 1960s as the primary magazine of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition and the German student movement. He had previously founded a weekly newspaper about and for the Hamburg sex trade, St Pauli Nachrichten. After the Communist Party of Germany was banned as unconstitutional in West Germany in 1956, he became a clandestine member of the then illegal party as an act of support.

He was married to Ulrike Meinhof from 1961 until the spring of 1968, before her descent into left-wing terrorism. Their marriage produced two daughters, Regine and Bettina Röhl, who became an author critical of communism and far-left extremism. Ulrike later co-founded the Red Army Faction, also known as the RAF or the Baader-Meinhof Gang, together with Andreas Baader. His marriage with Ulrike was the second marriage. From his first marriage he also has a daughter Αnja Röhl, who in May 2010 accused him of sexual harassment against her.