The author stresses the need for parent, school, and community cooperation in any measures undertaken to prevent terrorism. Research on causes of terrorism on an international level is a necessary prerequisite for prevention as well as for rehabilitation efforts. Possible causes include individual predisposition, famly dynamics, educational experiences, and circles of friends. Terrorism surfaces most frequently during individuals' university studies, probably because of students' loosening bonds to their families, the impersonality of German universities, and young students' exposure to extreme ideologies and groups typical of university life. During the same developmental period, the idealistic social attitudes of certain individuals frequently collide with everyday reality and the pragmatic, less-than-idealistic values of industrial society. Key experiences such as arrest or confrontation with the police during a demonstration may precipitate violent terrorist acts. The development of terrorist inclinations is furthered by political ideologies such as anarchism, marxism, and the teachings of Marighella on urban guerrillas. Terrorist groups are attractive because they reduce individual isolation by providing a social support system united by common goals. International terrorist groups have clearly furnished examples for German terrorist operations. In any case, monocausal explanations for the evolution of terrorism are inadequate. Information about terrorists can be obtained from former radicals, terrorists' friends and families, terrorists' letters and publicatons, and comparable goals of groups outside the terrorist movement. Research must combine insights gained through psychology, pedagogy, theology, sociology, political science, and criminology. Research should encompass a number of subprojects, i.e., analysis of individual biographies and of terrorist group dynamics in recruiting and leadership, investigation of social and political conditions conducive to terrorism, ideological and academic roots of terrorism, and international terrorist connections. Diagnosis of causes should make possible effective public relations efforts designed to inform the public about terrorism, to isolate terrorists from sympathizers, and to promote elimination of contributive causes. Study of causes also facilitates development of effective antiterrorism laws. Notes are supplied. --in German.