HI136 The History of GermanyLecture 16

1968

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

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)

Anti-Authoritarianism• ‘Ohne Mich’ 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

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.

Student Politics• 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.

Left: SDS poster:‘Everyone’s talking about theweather. Not us.’

Rudi Dutschke, addressing students at the Free University of Berlin

The Ohensborg Shooting• Benno Ohensborg 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.