With the cycle of photo-paintings entitled "18 October 1977" (1988), Gerhard Richter takes as his subject the story and demise of the West German Red Army Faction (also known as the BaaderMeinhof Group). The choice of recent historical subject matter, the largescale format and the direct representation of death appear to revive a tradition of monumental figuration whose primary aim was to celebrate grand political actions: the genre of history painting. However, a closer look at the fifteen greyscale canvases prompts us to ask whether this tradition is the best way to comprehend 18 October 1977, and indeed, whether the cycle represents history at all. This paper argues that, rather than embodying a general postmodern stance against representation, the October cycle points to a historically specific problem, namely how to represent a controversial moment in German history: the death of three RAF members at the Stammheim Prison.