In the late 1970s , the municipal district of Stammheim was centre stage to one of the most controversial periods of German post-war history . Stammheim Prison , built from 1959 to 1963 , came to be the place of incarceration for Ulrike Meinhof , Andreas Baader , Gudrun Ensslin , and Jan-Carl Raspe , members of a communist terrorist organization known as the Red Army Faction , during their trial at the Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart in 1975 . Several attempts were made by the organization to free the terrorists during the " German Autumn " of 1977 that culminated in such events as the kidnap and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 . When it became clear , after many attempts to free the inmates including the smuggling of three weapons into the prison by their lawyer , that the terrorists could not escape and that they would receive Life sentencing , the terrorists killed themselves in April 1977 in an event remembered locally as the " '' Todesnacht von Stammheim '' , " " Night of Death at Stammheim . " The trauma of the early 1970s was quickly left behind , starting in 1974 in Germany with the 1974 FIFA World Cup and the opening of the Stuttgart S-Bahn on 1 October 1978 with a scheduled three routes . from 17 to 19 June 1983 , ten European heads of state and representatives from the European Union met in Stuttgart for a summit and there made the Solemn Declaration on European Union . In 1986 , the European Athletics Championships of that year were held in the Mercedes-Benz Arena . Mikhail Gorbachev , while on a trip to West Germany to offer a spot for a West German astronaut in a Soviet space mission , visited Stuttgart 14 June 1989 and was the honored guest of a sumptuous reception held at the Stuttgart
kidnap and murder
Kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer
Stuttgart