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West German student movement
The West German student movement (German: Westdeutsche Studentenbewegung), sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany (German: 1968 Bewegung in Westdeutschland), was a left-wing social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as 68ers. The movement was characterized by the protesting students' rejection of traditionalism and of German political authority which included many former Nazi officials. Student unrest had started in 1967 when student Benno Ohnesorg was fatally shot by a policeman during a protest against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. The movement is considered to have formally started after the attempted assassination of student activist leader Rudi Dutschke, which sparked various protests across West Germany and gave rise to public opposition. The movement created lasting changes in German culture.
The Spiegel affair of 1962, in which journalists were arrested and detained for reporting on the strength of the West German military, worried some in West Germany that there was a return of authoritarian government. In the fallout of the affair, the suddenly-unpopular Christian Democratic Union formed a political coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), known as the grand coalition.
Critics were disappointed with the parliament's appointment of Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor of West Germany, as he had participated in the Nazi Party during the Nazi regime.
Social movements grew as younger people became disillusioned with the political establishment, worrying it was reminiscent of Germany's Nazi past. West Berlin became a center for these movements since many left leaning people would take residence in West Berlin to avoid the military draft that was in effect in the rest of West Germany.
These social movements were also becoming popular among the youth of West Germany. The movements included the opposition to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, opposition to consumer culture, liberation for the third world, and criticisms of middle class moral values. Some were embracing communal lifestyles and sexual liberation. All these various social movements and the non-parliamentary organizations that hoped to spearhead them, grouped together as the Außerparlamentarische Opposition. The more leftist wing of the SDP in the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS; Socialist German Students' Union) split from the party line and joined the Außerparlamentarische Opposition.
In 1965, Rudi Dutschke was elected to the political council of the West Berlin SDS. With Michael Vester, SDS vice-president and international secretary, Dutschke imported ideas from the American SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and New Left, such as direct action and civil disobedience. Drawing inspiration from Herbert Marcuse, Dutschke sought to build a coalition of marginalized identity groups to be a vanguard for socialism in Europe. Finding that Germany had no population group with revolutionary potential comparable to America's Black power movement, Dutschke sought to mold Germany's student movements into seeing themselves as an oppressed minority. His plan for accomplishing this was to provoke violent confrontations with government authorities. He wrote in 1965, "Authorized demonstrations must be guided into illegality. Confrontation with state power is essential and must be sought out."
The West German parliament had proposed to expand government powers in the Emergency Laws, as well as to reform universities. On 22 June 1966, 3,000 students from the Free University of Berlin staged a sit-in to demand involvement in the reform process of universities, included democratic management of colleges.
Echoing Marcuse, Rudi Dutschke considered the politically complacent working classes to be a lost cause when it came to revolutionary agitation. Instead, he hoped to build a coalition between Western intelligentsia and third world communist revolutionaries. To that end, Dutschke organized the event "Vietnam – Analysis of an Example" (German: Vietnam – Analyse eines Exempels) at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research with Marcuse as the headline speaker. SDS president Walmot Falkenburg privately requested that Marcuse emphasize solidarity with the Vietnamese on the basis of traditional Marxist concerns with labor and material interests, which would have been a rebuke of Dutschke and his associates in the West Berlin SDS chapter. Unsurprisingly, Marcuse did the opposite in a speech emphasizing "solidarity of sentiment". The event was followed by street demonstrations which led to the arrests of Dutschke, his wife, and 84 others.
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West German student movement
The West German student movement (German: Westdeutsche Studentenbewegung), sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany (German: 1968 Bewegung in Westdeutschland), was a left-wing social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as 68ers. The movement was characterized by the protesting students' rejection of traditionalism and of German political authority which included many former Nazi officials. Student unrest had started in 1967 when student Benno Ohnesorg was fatally shot by a policeman during a protest against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. The movement is considered to have formally started after the attempted assassination of student activist leader Rudi Dutschke, which sparked various protests across West Germany and gave rise to public opposition. The movement created lasting changes in German culture.
The Spiegel affair of 1962, in which journalists were arrested and detained for reporting on the strength of the West German military, worried some in West Germany that there was a return of authoritarian government. In the fallout of the affair, the suddenly-unpopular Christian Democratic Union formed a political coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), known as the grand coalition.
Critics were disappointed with the parliament's appointment of Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor of West Germany, as he had participated in the Nazi Party during the Nazi regime.
Social movements grew as younger people became disillusioned with the political establishment, worrying it was reminiscent of Germany's Nazi past. West Berlin became a center for these movements since many left leaning people would take residence in West Berlin to avoid the military draft that was in effect in the rest of West Germany.
These social movements were also becoming popular among the youth of West Germany. The movements included the opposition to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, opposition to consumer culture, liberation for the third world, and criticisms of middle class moral values. Some were embracing communal lifestyles and sexual liberation. All these various social movements and the non-parliamentary organizations that hoped to spearhead them, grouped together as the Außerparlamentarische Opposition. The more leftist wing of the SDP in the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS; Socialist German Students' Union) split from the party line and joined the Außerparlamentarische Opposition.
In 1965, Rudi Dutschke was elected to the political council of the West Berlin SDS. With Michael Vester, SDS vice-president and international secretary, Dutschke imported ideas from the American SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and New Left, such as direct action and civil disobedience. Drawing inspiration from Herbert Marcuse, Dutschke sought to build a coalition of marginalized identity groups to be a vanguard for socialism in Europe. Finding that Germany had no population group with revolutionary potential comparable to America's Black power movement, Dutschke sought to mold Germany's student movements into seeing themselves as an oppressed minority. His plan for accomplishing this was to provoke violent confrontations with government authorities. He wrote in 1965, "Authorized demonstrations must be guided into illegality. Confrontation with state power is essential and must be sought out."
The West German parliament had proposed to expand government powers in the Emergency Laws, as well as to reform universities. On 22 June 1966, 3,000 students from the Free University of Berlin staged a sit-in to demand involvement in the reform process of universities, included democratic management of colleges.
Echoing Marcuse, Rudi Dutschke considered the politically complacent working classes to be a lost cause when it came to revolutionary agitation. Instead, he hoped to build a coalition between Western intelligentsia and third world communist revolutionaries. To that end, Dutschke organized the event "Vietnam – Analysis of an Example" (German: Vietnam – Analyse eines Exempels) at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research with Marcuse as the headline speaker. SDS president Walmot Falkenburg privately requested that Marcuse emphasize solidarity with the Vietnamese on the basis of traditional Marxist concerns with labor and material interests, which would have been a rebuke of Dutschke and his associates in the West Berlin SDS chapter. Unsurprisingly, Marcuse did the opposite in a speech emphasizing "solidarity of sentiment". The event was followed by street demonstrations which led to the arrests of Dutschke, his wife, and 84 others.