Germany's New Left Revolt

...The German revolt, for example, involves few hippies and no lsd...

...The whole question of employing violence is now being seriously debated, however, even within sds...

...Right or wrong, the German student revolt is not merely leading the authorities to take repressive action, it is also having an enlivening influence on democracy in Germany...

...But it would be a mistake to exaggerate the chances of neo-Nazism in Germany in spite of the npd's relatively strong showing (9.8 per cent of the total vote) in the Baden-Wurttemberg state elections last week...

...But this orientation could change under the impact of revisionist revolts in Eastern Europe...

...Often, in fact, their fathers occupy high government positions...

...The German revolt calls itself "the anti-authoritarian camp...

...One important factor threatens the chances for a better accord between the demonstrators and the general public: fear that the students will endanger the highly vulnerable security position of West Berlin...

...Whereas 68 per cent of the population (including 61 per cent in the 17-24 age group) thinks the function of an opposition party is to "support the government," this view is rejected by 73 per cent of the university students...

...Authoritarian residues of the past are still strongly manifest in the structures of certain institutions here —in schools, universities, government and business administrations?but even more so in the values, attitudes, expectations and social behavior of all sorts of people...

...The overwhelming majority of student activists, on the other hand, might well feel challenged to share in a Berlin resistance effort—although the readiness of these students to compromise in eventual negotiations with the Communists would probably still remain strong...

...What effect is the student revolt having on the German people and politics...

...While it broke out on several campuses at about the same time, it has been most aggressive and successful in the highly volatile political atmosphere of West Berlin...

...They trade ideas, subculture styles, and especially the techniques for a strategy of provocations that can force the Establishment to show its repressive face...

...The student rebellion not only spread rapidly in this country, it quickly crossed a threshold of anger and violence that American student rebels—with such issues as race and Vietnam to increase their bitterness —took years to reach...

...But a sharp polarization of forces under a more authoritarian government is not at all inevitable...

...First, in 1960-61, the spd severed connections with sds, its student organization, and expelled any party member who did not leave it...

...Thus there are both similarities and important differences between the New Left revolt in Germany and in other highly industrialized countries...

...In any event, the New Leftists here are trying to make a total break with the present and the past...

...As for the essential character of the rebellion, that remains amHarold Hurwitz, an American sociologist and author, has lived in West Germany for over 20 years...

...Indeed student revolts, including those in Warsaw and Prague, are dedicated to revealing and combatting the "authoritarianism" of their respective systems...

...Unless there is a genuine economic depression or political catastrophe, it is more likely that the cdu will be the real benefactor of continued student revolt and violence...

...In a masochistic way, student radicals try to provoke violence against themselves (and exclaim: "We are Germany's Jews today") to show they do not belong to the abhorred environment...

...In short, the student protest movement in Germany is challenging a rather rigid social system and an underdeveloped—as yet untested?political one ("formal democracy...

...The National Democratic Party (npd) has probably benefited from the students' actions...

...biguous...

...If radical reform goes far enough, the student rebels and the general population may both deKURT GEORG KIESINGER velop democratic values that could help them to understand each other...

...They even imagine, with great exaggeration, that the Nazi past is manifesting itself again in their own political and personal encounter with what they believe is an authoritarian society and a nearly totalitarian state...

...others who have lost hope in it want a Ratesystem of councils...

...As in other student movements, the attention of the German New Left is currently fixed upon revolutionary activities in developing countries, on Maoist and Cas-troite theories of action...

...The use of force in political controversies actually finds less approval by students (17 per cent) than by the younger generation (28 per cent) or the general population (23 per cent...

...The German sds is itself a loosely organized collection of revolutionary Socialists, some in the Marxist tradition, others with an anarcho-syndicalist orientation that is unique in the history of German Left-wing movements...

...The student revolt has turned certain matters that demand radical resolution into burning issues...

...Immediately after Dutschke was critically wounded, they called for violence against Axel Springer's newspaper concern, accusing it of creating an atmosphere of calumny against students that makes persecution and lynch-justice possible...

...Consequently, the student revolt has provided cause for reflection by the older generation: about the possibility of revolutionary change within democratic systems...

...ho are sincerely trying to be democrats but lack the conditioning of a culture where democratic traditions prevail...

...The latter are extremely radical but at the same time maintain liberal views that correspond with those of many moderate activists outside the organization...

...This move, which angered many liberal intellectuals and Socialist workers, accounted in part for the emergence of a German New Left and the stepped up student revolt in 1967...

...Apparently Germany's young generation is, at least in part, more deeply or easily alienated...

...the violent reaction of enraged students to the attempted assassination on April 11 of Rudi Dutschke, best-known leader of Germany's Leftist student revolt, by a Nazi-influenced youth—these recent events have raised vital questions here...

...And the birth of the German student revolt was aided on two occasions by the Social Democratic Party (spd) limiting access to authority for dissonant groups...

...While agreeing with the German sds on the effectiveness of provocations, they pursue this strategy in the hope of putting life and meaning into "formal democracy...

...Surveys conducted in the first months of 1968 show that only 4 per cent of the university students believe Germany needs a leader who can govern with "a strong hand," compared to 25 per cent of the general population...

...The constitution of the Federal Republic emphasizes that political parties are the "carriers of the public," and there is a tendency to consider the party system as the sole legitimate domain for relating the will of the people to the decision-making process...

...Nevertheless, were Ulbricht to launch a full-fledged Berlin crisis, probably only a few hundred of the most radical students would support a Communist effort directly, and these would not lend themselves to strict discipline...

...Accelerating steadily for nearly two years, the revolt is now spreading beyond university campuses into secondary schools and the trade union and civil service organizations...

...The general population, too, has been demonstrating increasing sympathy for the problems of students and for their political rights as citizens...

...The legitimacy of organized interest groups is grudgingly conceded, but little thought has been given to protest movements that seek to change the system of government or of society...

...If the cdu regains an absolute majority under these circumstances, it might build a more authoritarian government to repress with a firmer hand those dissenters who practice civil disobedience...

...The impact the student protest movement has had on German public opinion and politics, though, is no less uncertain than the character of the revolt itself...

...Then, by forming a "great coalition" government with the Christian Democratic Union (cdu) in December 1966, the spd deprived the West German Parliament of an effective opposition party (the Free Democrats are too weak to play that role...

...Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California, has pointed out that confrontation politics generally results where students and other groups lack legitimate channels of communication with authority...

...It is led by young Socialists —often self-styled revolutionaries?v...

...Since East German reform is improbable for the near future in light of the Ulbricht regime's reaction to events in Czechoslovakia, it may be more pertinent to ask what radical students would do if Ulbricht once again began to harass West Berlin...

...The thinking and propaganda of the German rebels tend to be highly abstract and ideological...

...Although they advocate a "cultural revolution," they have not made a cult of "community living" or tried to set an example to others by practicing a "new way of life...

...Some student leaders want to make the parliamentary system work...

...They justify these actions by declaring they are intended to "enlighten" others, yet it often seems that their overriding concern is to reveal the worst in other people—to encourage repressive measures and thereby "expose" the government's allegedly totalitarian nature...

...Unlike Britain's Pop generation, too, the German students see themselves primarily as a political movement...

...While Nazism and its defeat were not a direct formative experience for those belonging to this generation (their hands were not "burned"), the past does remain a burden...

...What is more, because Germany cannot recall an historical experience where radical reform has had revolutionary consequences for the system, the concepts of "reform" and of "revolution" appear to be mutually exclusive alternatives...

...In response to the student activists, the spd's program shifted a little to the left, though without giving the party's Left-wing more influence in its governing bodies...

...What does it portend for the future of Federal Republic democracy and the security of West Berlin...

...If a move toward cultural and political freedom began in East Germany, West German students and intellectuals would identify closely with that cause—certainly far more closely than with Mao, Castro or the Vietcong...

...That would further alienate many Liberals and Socialists, a trend already anticipated at the last spd congress...

...If anything its members are unusually wary of manipulation, in personal as well as in political relationships...

...Springer printing plants were beseiged and the delivery of his newspapers stopped in several cities...

...direct democracy...

...The most convincing arguments used by students opposing this action were that "it would turn the whole population violently against us," and "Berlin will need West Germany for years to come...

...Under the influence of their revolt, students in West Berlin have a far more optimistic—and less realistic —view than most Berliners about the viability of this city and the reliability of Western Allied guarantees...

...Techniques of civil disobedience are applied because they seem "appropriate to the present historical situation...

...Its strategy of provocations has aroused public interest and created in the government and Parliament a more far-reaching readiness than formerly existed to reform the authoritarian university system, deal with press monopoly, limit state emergency-power legislation, and redraft the antiquated legal system...

...And unlike the members of the American sds, whose parents are mostly liberals or former Leftists, the adherents of Germany's most radical student organization (the German Socialist Student Union, also called sds) come largely from well-to-do, politically conservative homes...

...Opinion polls last fall and in February showed that on the question of dealing with student demonstrators, West Berliners were more prone to favor fairness and tolerance than to advocate repressive measures...

...Long before Rudi Dutschke was shot, and with incomparably less cause than the advocates of black power have in America, some radical student leaders in Germany were saying that "counterforce" is justified by the force a repressive authority exercises...

...Among the general population, the minority advocating a new "free city" status for West Berlin continues to be negligible (6 per cent), but it is rather large among students (about one-fifth...

...The common denominator is a feeling of alienation from large universities, mass culture, established parties, and Parliaments which in the opinion of the New Leftists everywhere do not function democratically...

...For the "counterviolence" against the Axel Springer concern, sparked by the shooting of Rudi Dutschke, cost the lives of two sympathizers in Munich (a student and a press photographer were killed by flying stones...

...Moreover, sds leaders are never worshiped, and they must be cautious not to reveal "authoritarian weaknesses...

...Yet whatever their common origins and strategies, each student rebellion has unique characteristics and a particular importance for the political life of the country concerned...

...Rudi Dutschke is a masterful demagogue in public meetings, but he has faced constant criticism in sds councils, where he deports himself very modestly...

...Many of the rebel leaders are members of the Social Democratic and Liberal Democratic student organizations...

...Being students, they feel, frees them from psychological manipulation in an otherwise totally manipulated society...

...After the February 18 Vietnam demonstration, 30 per cent of those questioned actually favored giving support to the students "if they are right...

...These young people sense that the older generation has not internalized democratic values at all, and they see themselves, in a somewhat elite fashion, as the true democrats in Germany...

...Stranded in the political arena, sds developed an "underground" pyschology and eventually became the most radical wing of the student revolt...

...People want, above all, to be lett alone, and many would prefer a more authoritarian—not a Nazi or totalitarian—form of government if one were needed to protect them from harassment by "outsiders" on the Left or the extreme Right...

...It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the student revolt has produced more radical reformers than convinced revolutionaries on German campuses...

...Significantly, though, nearly half of this city's 28,000 university students come from the Federal Republic...

...about the role that extra-Parliamentary protest movements, and even civil disobedience, may play in compelling parties and governments to take the action necessary to keep a democratic system dynamic and viable...

...Even in the aggravated atmosphere following the shooting of Rudi Dutschke, the suggestion to blockade Easter traffic on the highway to West Germany—and thus compel the city government to release at once 200 arrested student demonstrators—was rejected by the great majority of young activists...

...This bloodshed showed that the distinction student revolutionaries want to draw between using "violence against objects, but never against persons" cannot be maintained in practice without maximum training and discipline...

...Vilification in many newspapers, police brutality, and the reactions of people to longhaired agitators show that German society has not yet learned to cope with the verbalisms, manners and provocations of deviant minorities...

...Nor have the German rebels so far sought to transcribe their goals and values into a pragmatic program that can appeal to a broad public in the manner of the Dutch "provos" (as anarcho-syndicalists, however, the "provo" leaders are quite as radical as the German New Leftists...

...Few sds members adhere to Leninist principles of discipline or revolutionary organization, nor does sds lend itself to Communist control —a charge, incidentally, Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger's government has never leveled against it...

...The revolt is a self-styled "extra-Parliamentary opposition," a concept political thinkers and practitioners in West Germany have not yet come to grips with...

...Moral indignation is clearly a major source of their motivation, but they have not been preoccupied by the ethical problem of means and ends...

...But despite the elite ethos, the tendency of rebel leaders to manipulate the less sophisticated rank-and-file, and their inability to be explicit about the humanistic and democratic goals being sought, a very strong democratic potential exists in the German student body as well as in its revolt...