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She grew up in Tuttlingen as the fourth of seven children in a Protestant pastor's family. Her father, Helmut Ensslin, had studied in Tübingen and was in the "Normannia" fraternity there the fraternity brother of Kurt Rebmann, who later became Federal Prosecutor General, who in this position became Gudrun Ensslin's executive "opponent". In 1960 she graduated from a Catholic school. She then studied English, German and pedagogy at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen from 1960 to 1964 and later at the Free University of Berlin. Meanwhile, in 1963, together with the political writer Bernward Vesper, she founded the small publishing house "Studio for New Literature", which, however, only published publications.
In 1967, their son Felix Robert Ensslin was born from her relationship with Vesper. Like Ulrike Meinhof, Ensslin was a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation. Involved in the student unrest of the late 1960s, Ensslin became increasingly involved in the extra-parliamentary opposition and wrote left-wing agitational writings. After the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer during the Shah of Persia's visit to Berlin on June 2, 1967, she called for "violence against a violent state" in the office of the Socialist German Student Association. Meanwhile, it is believed that she made the acquaintance of Andreas Baader, who had gone underground.
The ideas of both should escalate into militant actions. Their willingness to use violence was directed, on the one hand, against the conservative Axel Springer publishing house, which sharply criticized the student activities, and, on the other hand, against the affluent society. After arsons in department stores on April 2, 1968, Ensslin was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison along with Andreas Baader, Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein. The verdict became final in November 1969, whereupon Ensslin escaped arrest and fled to France with Andreas Baader. In 1970 he returned to the Federal Republic.
This was where she first came into contact with the Hamburg journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who in turn spoke out vehemently against the omnipotence of the state with the left-wing publication "konkret". Further contacts with like-minded people such as Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe arose in the early 1970s. On May 14, 1970, Gudrun Ensslin, together with Ulrike Meinhof, organized the liberation of Andreas Baader, who had now been re-imprisoned, from prison. The Baader liberation is considered the birth of the "Baader-Meinhof Group". After bank robberies, they traveled to Jordan together with Holger Meins, Baader and Meinhof to join Palestinian guerrillas with other sympathizers, who trained them with weapons for their further actions.
In 1972 they returned to Germany again and, as the "Red Army Faction", took responsibility for terrorist attacks in May, which they carried out in Augsburg, Hamburg as well as in Karlsruhe and at the US Army headquarters in Heidelberg, in which four people were killed came. Gudrun Ensslin was arrested in Hamburg on June 7, 1972. Gudrun Ensslin was imprisoned in the high-security wing of the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. The following years of negotiations were conducted in a purpose-built armored building, which was specially built for twelve million DM, right next to the grounds of the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. On April 28, 1977, after almost two years of trial, the RAF prisoners were sentenced to life imprisonment.
On September 5, 1977, the RAF responded to the verdict by kidnapping Hanns-Martin Schleyer, President of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations. The RAF now demanded that the Federal Republic release Baader and eleven other members who were in custody. The demand was that each of them should receive 100,000 DM and be flown out of Germany. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to give in to the demand and made it clear: "The Federal Republic of Germany cannot be blackmailed." On October 13, 1977, four Arab terrorists hijacked the Lufthansa plane "Landshut" on the flight from Mallorca to Frankfurt with a new destination of Mogadishu. There were 82 passengers and 5 crew members on board the "Landshut".
The Arab kidnappers thus joined the RAF and demanded the release of the RAF members imprisoned in Germany. On October 18, 1977, a special unit of the Federal Border Guard succeeded in a spectacular operation to free the hostages on the tarmac of Mogadishu Airport (Somalia). Just a few hours later, Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe committed suicide after years of solitary confinement in the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison. All efforts of the police's attempts to find and free Hanns-Martin Schleyer were unsuccessful. On October 19, 1977, Hanns-Martin Schleyer was found dead in the trunk of a car.
Gudrun Ensslin was buried together with his two fellow prisoners Baader and Raspe in the Dornhaldenfriedhof in Stuttgart.
