Dr. Frank's What's-it

The Case of the Missing

The Case of the Missing Baader-Meinhof Brains

Here's more on the story of Ulrike Meinhof's brain that I noted a few days ago.

One of Meinhof's twin daughters then traced her mother's brain to a formaldehyde jar held at the University of Magdeburg. She sued for custody of the brain, with the intention of burying it with the rest of the mortal remains of the terrorist whom official Germany once feared like Osama bin Laden.

The court decided to put an end to the macabre affair. Meinhof's daughter will be allowed to retrieve the brain. During the litigation, however, the authorities admitted that three more terrorist brains were still making the rounds. They also belonged to members of the Baader-Meinhof gang, also called Red Army Faction, who committed suicide in the same Stuttgart prison a year after Meinhof.

“I retired in 1988, and I know they were still in Tübingen then,“ Jürgen Pfeiffer, the neuropathologist who examined Meinhof's brain at Tübingen University, told SWR radio.

Although a university spokesman said the brains were gone and nobody knew where they were, Pfeiffer said that “brains don't just disappear.“