AntiAuthoritarian Politics in the Federal Republic

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Anti-Authoritarian Politics in the Federal
Republic

• HI136 History of Germany

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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
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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
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Spiegel Affair, 1962

• The affair tested limits of freedom of the press
• News magazine Spiegel had reported the
  Bundeswehrs limited readiness for conflict with
  Russians
• Spiegel offices were occupied by police, Augstein
  arrested, as well as the articles 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
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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 Hitlers 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)
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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 USAs 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

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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
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Student politics
Socialist German Students League Everyones
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 Dutschkes
  call for a reform of the establishment by
  infiltration from from within

Rudi Dutschke, leader of Extra-Parliamentary
Opposition
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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
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Terrorism

• Splinter groups from student movement (Ensslin)
• Urban guerrilla tactics copied from Latin America
  (Marighellas 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
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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
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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
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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

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