Horst Söhnlein is a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 activist and former member of the Baader-Meinhof Group who was convicted of arson in 1968.

On 2 April 1968, along with Andreas Baader

Andreas Baader

Andreas Bernd Baader was one of the first leaders of the German left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction, also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.- Life :...

, Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin

Gudrun Ensslin was a founder of the German militant group Red Army Faction . After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's voluntaristic anarchistic beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF...

 and Thorwald Proll

Thorwald Proll

Thorwald Proll is a writer and was active in the German student movement in the 1960s.On 2 April 1968, along with Andreas Baader, Horst Söhnlein and Gudrun Ensslin, he set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt as a protest against the Vietnam War...

, he set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 as a protest against "the genocide in Vietnam"

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

. All four were arrested two days later.

All four of the defendants were convicted of arson and endangering human life and were sentenced to three years in prison. In June 1969 they were temporarily paroled under an amnesty for political prisoners, but in November of that year, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ordered that they return to custody. Unlike his three confederates, who fled to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, Horst Söhnlein complied with the order.

Sources

• Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Thorwald Proll, Horst Söhnlein: Vor einer solchen Justiz verteidigen wir uns nicht. Schlußwort im Kaufhausbrandprozeß. Mit einem Nachwort von Bernward Vesper und einer Erklärung des SDS
  Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund
  Der Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund was founded 1946 in Hamburg, Germany, as the college organisation of the SPD...
  
   Berlin. Edition Voltaire, Frankfurt am Main und Berlin 1968. (Reihe: Voltaire Flugschrift 27)
• Erklärung der im Kaufhausbrandprozeß angeklagten Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Söhnlein und Thorwald Proll. in: Charlie Kaputt Nr.3, Dezember 1968, Berlin
• Stefan Aust
  Stefan Aust
  Stefan Aust is a German journalist and was the editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel from 1994 to February 2008...
  
  : Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1985, 591 S., ISBN 3-455-08253-X, Erw. und aktualisierte Ausgabe, 2005, 667 S, ISBN 3-455-09516-X
• Thorwald Proll, Daniel Dubbe: Wir kamen vom anderen Stern. Über 1968, Andreas Baader und ein Kaufhaus. Hamburg: Edition Nautilus 2003, 128 S., ISBN 3-89401-420-2