HI136 The History of Germany Lecture 16

1. HI136 The History of GermanyLecture 16 1968

2. Background of Social Change • The protests of 1968 reflected an ongoing process of social change, not just in Germany but in the whole of the western world. • Increased prosperity and living standards. • Demographic change: “Baby Boom” generation comes of age. • Expansion of Higher Education to serve the needs of a changing economy. • Increased secularisation in the West after the war. • Changing moral and social attitudes: • More liberal attitudes towards sex and sexuality • Changing attitudes towards marriage and the family

3. Anti-Authoritarianism • By the 1960s increasing resistance to the authoritarian social conservatism of the Adenauer era. • Intellectual opposition – resisted ‘petit-bourgeois’ values of the Adenauer era. • Marxism & ‘Critical Theory’ – Frankfurt School argued that society is not based on eternal laws, but is made by people and can be altered by them. • The theorists is not merely an observer, but also a social actor. Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)

4. Anti-Authoritarianism • ‘OhneMich’ movement opposed military service & German military contribution to NATO. • 1958: atomic artillery to be stationed in Federal Republic led to first small-scale public demonstrations. • Material prosperity brought its own problems: growth in prosperity & youth culture, but also resistance to consumerism. • Herbert Marcuse warned of late-industrial capitalism creating ‘one-dimensional man’, alienated by consumerism & ‘latent authoritarianism’ of liberal state. Fight Atomic ‘Death March’, 1958

5. Why 1968? • Student unrest part of an international trend in the 1960s. • Growing opposition to materialism & values of parents generation, US involvement in the Vietnam War & ongoing Cold War all factors. • But also specifically German grievances: • Expansion of Higher Education leads to overcrowding and calls for University reform. • Increased frustration with older generations’ failure to face up to Nazi past. • CDU/SPD ‘Grand Coalition’ (1965-69) leads to formation of Ausserparlamentarische Opposition (APO) in Dec. 1966 to a give a voice to libertarian left.

6. Student Politics Left: SDS poster: ‘Everyone’s talking about the weather. Not us.’ • Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund (German Socialist Students Union, SDS) began as student section of the SPD in 1946, but increasingly became more radical. • Growing influence of Situationism, which preached ‘enlightenment through action’. • Calls for greater student democracy in running universities (‘Under the gowns the musty smell of a thousand years’). • Boycotting of ‘Nazified’ teaching personnel. • The Free University of Berlin a radical hotspot. • Feb. 1966: SDS holds first large-scale anti-war demonstration. • June 1966: First ‘teach-ins’ and ‘sit-ins’ in protest at university authorities ban on holding political discussions in university buildings. Rudi Dutschke, addressing students at the Free University of Berlin

7. The Ohensborg Shooting • BennoOhensborg shot dead by police during demonstrations against the visit of the Shah of Persia to Berlin in June1967. • Created an ‘us and them’ mentality amongst the young, who saw themselves as a persecuted minority. • Politicised hundreds of thousands of young people and led to calls to defy the ban on protests and organise anti-government ‘actions’. Memorial to Benno Ohensborg, Deutsche Oper, Berlin

8. Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979) • Born in East Germany. • Denied a place at university after refusing to serve in the East German Army. • Escaped to West Berlin in August 1961. • Studied at the Free University of Berlin, where he came into contact with alternative Marxist ideas and Situationism. • Advocated the ‘Long March Through the Institutions’ = radical social change affected gradually through infiltration of established order. • After assassination attempt in 1968 lived in UK and Denmark.

9. The Revolt Continues • Attempts at better organisation of the SDS after influx of members only leads to factionalism. • Establishment of ‘Critical University’ offering courses in subjects relevant to the student movement’s political platform. • Feb. 1968: International Vietnam Congress held in West Berlin – 20,000 protesters from around the world protest against the war. • 3 days later 80,000 people participate in a state-sponsored counter-demonstration. Clashes between protesters and students leave 35 people injured. • 11 April 1968: Attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke sparked 5 days of street fighting during which 400 injured and thousands arrested.

10. The End of the Student Movement • Attempts to form a common front with the Trade Union movement against the Emergency Powers Law fail. • Intensification of the struggle within the universities ultimately go nowhere and attempts to carry the message beyond campuses meet with disappointing response from workers. • Lack of support (and often open hostility) from the wider population left the student radicals isolated. • No clear ideological direction or coherent plan for achieving their aims in the student movement. • Failure of revolts elsewhere (and particularly in Paris) and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August further blows to the radicals. • Riven by in-fighting, the student movement began to dissolve and the SDS was formally disbanded in March 1970.

11. Terrorism • The Red Army Faction (RAF) or Baader-Meinhof Gang formed by former student radicals frustrated by the failure of the mainstream student movement to change German society. • Aim to unmask latent authoritarianism of state by provoking police overreaction. • Targeted symbols of capitalism, such as bankers, as well as former NSDAP members, but also US military. • Founder generation leaders all in prison by 1972. • 1977: RAF & the Palestinian Liberation Organization hijacking Lufthansa plane in Mogadishu foiled by special forces. • RAF leadership commit suicide in prison shortly afterwards. • Anti-terrorist laws increase police powers & require job applicants to undergo political scrutiny.

12. Conclusion • The protest movement of the 1960s vital stage in the maturation process of West German democracy, leading to more public debate and political participation. • It has been argued that the explosion of student protests of 1968 were an inevitable consequence of the development of post-war Germany. • Much criticism of the ’68 generation’ and it has been argues that they achieved little. • But the participation of former student radicals in Gerhard Schröder’s Red-Green coalition arguably the fruition of Dutschke’s call for a ‘Long March through the instituions’.