Rote Hilfe provides legal aid through seven Bavarian branches

The Rote Hilfe, a legal-aid association for left-wing and far-left defendants and convicted offenders, advises people facing investigations and can cover legal costs in Bavaria, where it has seven local branches, BR reports.

The association says it advises people facing investigations, summonses and house searches, and may pay lawyers’ fees and court costs. It also supports people at trials, conducts public campaigns and holds events about legal rights at demonstrations and during contact with police. It has local branches in Augsburg, Landshut, Munich, Nuremberg-Fürth-Erlangen, Passau, Regensburg and Würzburg, but no Bavarian state-level branch.

The association has drawn attention in connection with Elif Eralp, a Left Party politician seeking to become Berlin’s mayor after an election victory. Eralp was a member of Rote Hilfe for several years. The group is criticised for its links to left-wing extremism and is monitored by the domestic intelligence service.

Extremism researcher Hendrik Hansen of the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences in Berlin says the association’s legal support is conditional. He says it supports left-wing extremist offenders who refuse to cooperate with security authorities, decline to give statements and do not distance themselves from left-wing extremist positions. Hansen argues that the group is not providing charitable assistance but is deliberately supporting people who commit left-wing extremist crimes.

Bavaria’s Interior Ministry describes Rote Hilfe as the largest and one of the most important organisations in left-wing extremism. It says the group’s primary activity is supporting left-wing extremist offenders and that its work shows it not only approves of violence as a means of political conflict but supports it.

The association’s membership has grown in recent years. Germany’s domestic intelligence service put its membership at 16,500 in 2025, up from about 14,400 in 2024. Rote Hilfe says it has more than 22,000 members.

In Bavaria, Rote Hilfe is among the groups supporting Hanna S., an art student from Nuremberg who was sentenced to five years in prison by the Munich Higher Regional Court in September 2025. The court convicted her of causing grievous bodily harm and belonging to a criminal organisation. It found that she took part in two attacks in Budapest in 2023 on three people suspected of being far-right extremists. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said the victims suffered head injuries and that one of the injuries could have been fatal.

Rote Hilfe said it stood in solidarity with Hanna and other anti-fascists facing state persecution. In a statement, it called the verdict a “state offensive against anti-fascists” and said a “Hungarian-German manhunt against anti-fascists” had been under way since the Budapest attacks.