HI136 The History of Germany - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

HI136 The History of GermanyLecture 16

1968Slide2

Background of Social ChangeThe 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 familySlide3

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)Slide4

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’, 1958Slide5

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.Slide6

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 the

weather. Not us.’

Rudi

Dutschke

, addressing

students at

the Free University of BerlinSlide7

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, BerlinSlide8

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.Slide9

The Revolt ContinuesAttempts 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.Slide10

The End of the Student MovementAttempts 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.Slide11

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.Slide12

ConclusionThe 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

Schr

öder’s

Red-Green coalition arguably the fruition of Dutschke’s call for a ‘Long March through the

instituions

’.