BERLIN (JTA) — One of Germany’s most notorious postwar antisemitic agitators has died at 89.

Horst Mahler, who founded the German left-wing terrorist group Red Army Faction in 1970 and later championed neo-Nazis, died in a Berlin hospital on Sunday, according to his attorney, Jan Dollwetzel. Dollwetzel confirmed a statement from the far-right party Die Heimat, or The Homeland, which was formerly the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany.

Mahler spent much of his adult life in and out of jail. Initially, it was his left-wing extremism that landed him behind bars. But he made a dramatic about-face in the 1990s and remained a committed right-wing extremist to the end.

Mahler was born in 1936 in what is now Poland. The family moved to Berlin after World War II. His father, a dentist, committed suicide in 1949, reportedly suffering from depression. Mahler studied law and became active in the 1960s West German student movement, representing left-wing activists. Among his clients was Beate Klarsfeld, the famed Nazi hunter, who faced charges stemming from her aggressive activism against German officials with a Nazi past.

He co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970 with the now-infamous Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof, helping them organize bank robberies and terrorist training, and helping plan Baader’s escape from jail. Mahler was arrested that same year and served 10 years in prison, during which time he distanced himself from the left-extremist scene. He was able to reestablish his credentials as a lawyer with help from........

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