the "first generation", which consisted of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and others;
* the "second generation", after the majority of the first generation was arrested in 1972.
* the "third generation", which existed in the 1980s and 1990s up to 1998, after the first generation died in Stammheim maximum security prison in 1977.

On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the submachine-gun