Gudrun Enslin and Andreas Baader were a kind of progenitors of German terrorism; the arson they set on a department store in Frankfurt in 1968 became a signal for direct action. Both of them left their life partners and their children to embark on a path that two years later would lead them to the creation of the RAF (Red Army Faction). What internal conflicts this was accompanied by is revealed for the first time in this book - with the help of personal testimonies and stories of participants in the events of that time; the figures, frozen and turned into icons, here again find their own voice and living face. Bernward Vesper, the son of the Nazi poet Willi Vesper, engaged for many years to Gudrun Enslin and the father of her child, was the unfortunate third in this story. Gerd Koenen's book "Vesper, Ensslin, Baader" is part of the modern history of the Federal Republic and at the same time an extreme love story, rooted in the very heart of the German family novel.