Putzgruppe
Putzgruppe (Cleaning Squad) was a German left-wing militant group, that emerged from the German student movement and was active in the 1970s. It participated in riots against the police in Frankfurt.
According to Daniel Cohn-Bendit, they tried "to use helmets, to protect themselves against the state power, which sought trouble". The group was the militant branch of a left-wing political organisation called "Revolutionärer Kampf" (Revolutionary Fight). The future German foreign minister Joschka Fischer was known to be the head of this group.[1][2] The term Putzgruppe became popular in Germany in 2000, when the trial against Hans-Joachim Klein, a former member of the group, begun. He joined the terrorist Revolutionary Cells in 1974.[3]
The groups usual area of operation was the violent defense of occupied buildings against eviction by the police.[4] In 2001 Joschka Fischer gave an interview to the German magazine Stern, in which he said that they threw stones.[5]