Anti-Authoritarian Politics in the Federal Republic

1. Anti-Authoritarian Politics in the Federal Republic HI136 History of Germany

2. Authoritarian legacies of the 1950s • Compromises over denazification (1951 Adenauer suspended proceedings & rehabilitated some former National Socialists; Federal cabinets included several former NSDAP members); many ‘sixty-eighters’ engaging in remedial denazification – is this a post-fascist phenomenon? • Materialism: ‘economic miracle’ supposedly distracted from democratic engagement; Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse warned of late-industrial capitalism creating ‘one-dimensional man’, alienated by consumerism & ‘latent authoritarianism’ of liberal state • Generation gaps: post-1945 baby boomers suspicious of the parental generation ‘Kanzlerdemokratie’ Herbert Marcuse, philosopher of anti-capitalism

3. Antinuclear Politics • Rearmament debate from 1950 already unpopular in opinion polls • Peace politics in 1950s hampered by communist connotations • Bundeswehr banned from weapons of mass destruction (ABC weapons) • 1958 atomic artillery to be stationed in Federal Republic; first small-scale public demonstrations • 1970s: oil crisis of 1973 prompted greater use of atomic power stations, leading to protests at Wyhl & Brokdorf • Intermediate Nuclear Forces: early 1980s both Warsaw Pact (SS20s) and NATO (Cruise & Pershing IIs) station medium-range missiles in Germany • ‘Hot autumn’ of 1983: 400,000 gather in Bonn to protest against INFs Fight Atomic Death march, 1958 Peace demonstration, Bonn, 1983 against intermediate nuclear missiles

4. Spiegel Affair, 1962 • The affair tested limits of freedom of the press • News magazine Spiegel had reported the Bundeswehr’s limited readiness for conflict with Russians • Spiegel offices were occupied by police, Augstein arrested, as well as the article’s author • Strauss, Christian Socialist defence minister, lost his job after lying about his involvement in arrests; Adenauer himself only lasted to 1963 • Popular demonstrations began to free Augstein; beginnings of widespread protest culture? Franz Josef Strauss, defence minister Rudolf Augstein, editor of Spiegel, being arrested by Federal police

5. Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) • Grand Coalition of 1966-69: absence of a legitimate parliamentary opposition? • Emergency Laws (1967-68): to cater for national emergency (e.g. Soviet invasion), but interpreted by left as new ‘Enabling Law’ (cf Hitler’s 1933 law) • Ausserparlamentarische Opposition (APO) set up in Dec. 1966 as umbrella for libertarian left Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU chancellor) and Willy Brandt (SPD vice-chancellor)

6. Vietnam • New Left students saw themselves as a fifth column for the decolonising developing world in the ‘first world’ • West Germany was one of the USA’s main military bases & thus an easy target for demonstrations (against Amerikahaus cultural centres) or the bombing of troop bases • Bombing of North Vietnam used as justification for early arson attacks • Internationalism of New Left movement

7. Political violence I • Political violence becomes political when it is aimed against the state, or to bring pressure on the state & is not simply criminal violence • Violence can often escalate from property violence (smashing up cars or shops) to personal violence against human beings • Property violence: premises of newspapers run by Axel Springer attacked • Personal violence: Ohnesorg killing by police in 1967 justified counter-violence in many radicals’ minds • Dutschke assassination attempt: April 1968 a far-right vigilante tried to shoot Dutschke Benno Ohnsorg succumbs to a police bullet on 2 June 1967 during a demonstration against visit by Shah of Iran

8. Student politics Socialist German Students’ League: ‘Everyone’s talking about the weather.Not us.’ • Expansion of university sector in mid-1960s led to • Free University of Berlin radical hotspot (West Berlin exempt from conscription) • SDS had split from SPD for its leftism & anti-nuclear stance • Calls for greater student democracy in running universities (‘Under the gowns the musty smell of a thousand years’) • Boycotting of ‘Nazified’ teaching personnel • Extra-campus politics – calls to link up with workers, but problem of GDR • ‘Long march through the institutions’: Dutschke’s call for a reform of the establishment by infiltration from from within Rudi Dutschke, leader of Extra-Parliamentary Opposition

9. Communitarian politics • The personal is political • Wohngemeinschaft (WG), living community • Berlin & Hamburg offer squatted accommodation • Kommune I: community suspending private relations • Fritz Teufel & Rainer Langhans engage in prankster politics (flour-bombing visiting politicians, releasing mice in court) • Potential split from ‘politicos’ by hedonistic subculture seeking personal enlightenment Kommune I pose for camera Fritz Teufel & Rainer Langhans, enfants terribles of Kommune I

10. Terrorism • Splinter groups from student movement (Ensslin) • Urban guerrilla tactics copied from Latin America (Marighella’s writings) • Meinhof began as radical journalist & playwright, & dabbled with underground communist party in 1960s • 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 Ulrike Meinhof, intellectual leader of the RAF Gudrun Ensslin & Andreas Baader

11. 1977: crisis year • RAF/Palestinian Liberation Organisation joint hijacking of Lufthansa airliner in Mogadishu foiled by special forces • Baader & other RAF leaders committed suicide in cells same night • Schleyer hostage executed in reprisal soon afterwards • State counter-measures: data protection; national police anti-terrorist centre; job bans (‘Berufsverbote’) in 1972 for radical applying for government jobs (including teachers, postal workers) Hanns-Martin Schleyer, business leader & hostage Police RAF wanted poster

12. Greens • Participatory, single-interest politics • Political scandals of mainstream parties (Flick sleaze affair) • Ecology (extension of Frankfurt airport; air pollution killing forestation) • Nuclear powerstations • Stationing of intermediate missiles • Fundamentalists (‘Fundis’) versus Realists (‘Realos’) over control of parliamentary faction • Greens capable of acting as coalition pivot instead of Liberal FDP ‘The Greens’ (note absence of word ‘party’ Petra Kelly, prominent leader

13. Green breakthroughs • Greens started as regional party (Hamburg, Bremen, Hessen) • 1983 surmounted 5% hurdle at national level • 1990 only returned to Bundestag with East German dissident alliance (Buendnis ’90) • 1998 formed ‘red-green’ coalition with SPD, including Joschka Fischer as foreign minister • 2005 Greens ousted by CDU-SPD Grand Coalition