Even members of a left-wing extremist club sometimes long for entertainment: “A striking number” of readers of the Rote Hilfe membership newspaper want a “children’s and/or puzzle page”. This is what it says in the current issue of the magazine “Die Rote Hilfe”. The “comrades from the editorial collective” therefore want to take on the reader’s request “actually soon”.
Reading the newspaper is also interesting without the mystery: it offers an overview of the activities of the association, which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified as a “proven left-wing extremist effort”. The Berlin mayoral candidate Elif Eralp (Left) was a member until last year. This was confirmed on Tuesday by research by the F.A.Z. became known.
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In the “Money here” section of the members’ newspaper we learn that the Rote Hilfe board paid out more than 200,000 euros to “comrades” between April and July 2026. The association's solvency is likely to have increased in recent years: The Office for the Protection of the Constitution assumes that the number of members will have increased from 14,400 to 16,500 between 2024 and 2025.
Maja T. and Daniela Klette are figureheads of the Red Aid
According to the member newspaper, activists who protested in February in front of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court against the criminal sentence against the left-wing extremist Maja T. benefited from this. T. was sentenced to eight years in prison in Hungary for attacks on suspected right-wing extremists. On Wednesday, a Hungarian appeals court reduced the prison sentence to seven years. For years, Rote Hilfe has portrayed T. as a victim of arbitrary justice and an upstanding anti-fascist. For her supporters in Düsseldorf, the association paid the fine that they had to pay because of their protests in the courtroom.
Another case in the members' newspaper leads to Daniela Klette. Red Aid has also repeatedly campaigned for the former RAF terrorist. After an activist visited her in prison in Vechta, the federal prosecutor's office asked him to be questioned as a witness about RAF activities in the 1990s. According to the members' newspaper, he read out a "sharply attacking statement and otherwise remained silent." He received more than 1,500 euros from Red Aid, presumably for his legal fees.
Supporting RAF-affiliated circles has been an important part of Rote Hilfe's activities for decades. The club was founded in 1975 during the RAF's heyday. After Klette was sentenced to 13 years in prison in May of this year, board member Hartmut Brückner spoke of a “prime example of political justice, which is carrying out a general reckoning with militant left-wing commitment and with militant political movements of the last century”. The verdict is not yet final.
The association wants to prevent left-wing extremist activists from making police statements
In total, the board approved 182 applications for support between April and July 2026. The applicants received at least part of their fines, court costs or legal fees reimbursed. The association also covers costs for “public relations work” if a local Rote Hilfe group is involved. The board rejected three applications because there was “no political activity in the spirit of Red Aid”. The political reliability of the applicants is the decisive criterion for receiving support.
The association wants to ensure that left-wing extremist activists stick to their stance and do not cooperate with the police. The board may reject an application for support if the applicant makes a statement or asks for an apology in criminal proceedings. Red Aid representatives repeatedly refer to court proceedings as “emotional justice” or “class justice”. Rule-of-law procedures are thus delegitimized.
There is generally no social means test with Red Aid. On Tuesday, Elif Eralp justified joining the club when she was a student by saying that she wanted to support “the fact that people who are committed to left-wing and social issues have legal support, even if they themselves do not have the necessary financial resources.” Eralp explained her resignation last year “because of partly different political views”. Eralp left an inquiry from the F.A.Z. as to what the differences were unanswered on Wednesday.
In terms of content, the work of Rote Hilfe has hardly changed in recent years: for years, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the association as a “proven left-wing extremist effort”. Elif Eralp was also a member of parliament from 2021 to 2025. It is difficult to imagine that she could have missed the support of the Red Aid for RAF terrorists during this time: you could read about it regularly, and not just in the members' newspaper.
What was the Red Aid doing in the capital?
The Berlin local group of the Red Aid did not hide its sympathies either: after Klette's arrest in 2024, it warned that the police would persecute “our left-wing and solidarity-based comrades and structures of all movements”. “Before Daniela’s arrest,” there had already been efforts to “locate Burkhard and Volker.” The group is referring to the former RAF terrorists Burkhard Garweg and Volker Staub. They are said to have committed robberies with burdock in order to finance their living.
In order to hinder the police's search for the two men, the local group called for "not to make any statements to the police, public prosecutor's office or court," "regardless of whether as an accused or a witness." The group protested against Klette's arrest at a demonstration in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Eralp's home district.
In 2023, the local group published a statement from the Federal Executive Board of the Red Aid, which denounced the manhunt for the left-wing extremist Johann G. As a suspected part of the so-called Hammer Gang, G. currently has to answer before the Dresden Higher Regional Court. He is accused of being involved in eight attacks on suspected right-wing extremists. In two cases the charges are based on attempted murder. The Red Aid described the search for him in 2023 as part of a “hunt for anti-fascists”.
SPD awaits explanation from Eralp
On Wednesday, it still didn't look like the SPD and the Greens would cause Elif Eralp any major problems because of her former membership in the Red Aid. The Green parliamentary group leader Werner Graf did not want to comment when asked by the F.A.Z., the SPD state chairman Steffen Krach told the AFP news agency on Wednesday evening: “We will address this.” He expects Eralp to give the reasons for both her membership and her withdrawal from Rote Hilfe. Graf and Krach will speak to Eralp together for the first time on Thursday about a new government.
The SPD's domestic policy spokesman in the Berlin House of Representatives, Martin Matz, does not believe that Eralp's former Red Aid membership will cause trouble in the talks: "Ms. Eralp left the Red Aid just in time. I don't see any further need for clarification about her membership. However, I see a significant need for clarification on the question of why Berlin left-wing branches officially act in an alliance with PFLP representatives," said Matz F.A.Z. on Wednesday.
He is alluding to a cooperation between the left-wing working group “Palestine Solidarity”, the Left Party associations in Neukölln and Wedding and the “United Palestinian National Committee”, which is classified as extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Matz is of the opinion that Eralp should also have stopped this cooperation before the election.
The Berlin CDU does not want to let Eralp's potential coalition partners get away with it so easily: "The Greens and the SPD have to answer what they want to impose on Berlin and Germany. They are faced with the question of whether they want to make a woman the governing mayor who, until shortly before she became the top candidate, was a member of an association that was classified as extremist and who financially supported extremist criminals and terrorists with her contributions," said CDU parliamentary group leader Stefan Evers to the F.A.Z.
