Klaus Rainer Röhl

Klaus Rainer Röhl (born 1 December 1928 in Trockenhütte, Free City of Danzig) 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. Röhl had been a secret Communist since 1951, and the magazine survived due to funding from the Communist East German regime. 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.

Articles in konkret openly advocated sex with minors. 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.

As a consequence of the radicalization in the late 1960s, and subsequent leftist terrorism, he turned away from Marxism and gave his magazine a more moderate tone. This led to a power struggle between Röhl and those who supported the use of violence against the government (particularly his former wife), and his home in Hamburg was attacked in 1969 by Ulrike Meinhof and some konkret staff members. In June 1970, after Ulrike's command, Monica Berberich and Marianne X. took Röhl and Ulrike's daughters from Holtkamps' house (where Ulrike's sister, Wienke had hidden the children), in order to transfer them in Gibellina commune in Sicily where other left-wing families and communists lived. According to Jutta Ditfurth, Ulrike's biographer, Ulrike believed she would win the children custody case from Röhl which meant that Wienke would take kid's custody. Finally journalist Stefan Aust, a long-time friend of Röhl abducted the children after Peter Homan misinformed him that Ulrike was about to send children to a Jordanian boarding house where other children of refugees used to live. By that time Klaus Rainer Röhl was on holiday in Italy. Aust delivered him the girls in an apartment near to Plaza Navona. Röhl and his daughters lived under constant police protection for some time, fearing a supposed attack or abduction by RAF members. Röhl was also supporting BKA's investigation providing information about Meinhof's past, places where she could be hiding etc.

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