In early 1968, Gudrun Ensslin leaves Bernward Vesper and moves in with her seven-month-old son Felix to Andreas Baader. Shortly thereafter, two department stores in Frankfurt are set on fire; Baader, Ensslin, and Thorwald Proll are arrested as suspected arsonists, while Felix is with Vesper. The story of the RAF begins to unfold. In no other document does one get so close to its origins as in the letters published here for the first time in full, exchanged between Vesper and Ensslin until their conditional release and escape in mid-1969. After all the glorifications and pathologizations, dramatizations, and interpretations, there is now the opportunity to form one's own judgment based on the original, to impartially explore the epochal and the banal, myth and history, and to discover a grand, tragic love letter novel that was also a reality.