Freie Universitat Berlin

The Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin) is one of the most important centers of education and science in Germany.

History

2007: One of the 9 best universities in Germany

Since 2007, it has been among the top nine German universities. One of the most international universities in Europe.

1968: The University is the centre of Germany's protest movement

Government reclaims leeway after World War II defeat

After the defeat in World War II, the German authorities won back freedom of hand step by step, which allowed them to arm themselves, restrict the rights of inconvenient journalists and change the constitution - but there remained one forbidden zone, there was no move even at the level of parliamentary debates. In the mid-1950s, the phrase "emergency law" first surfaced - and the discussion around it dragged on for years. Collective memory suggested a completely hopeless and terrible here: a similar law in March 1933 allowed Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler to make a terrorist dictatorship out of any, but still a parliamentary republic.

The transfer of higher power from the legislative to the executive branch, restriction of personal rights and freedoms, censorship, uncontrolled wiretapping of phones, perlustration of private correspondence, the possibility of detention on simple suspicion, and so on - different versions of the law appeared in parliamentary debates, and it was rejected by different parties in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1963, 1965 and, finally, in 1967. Of course, as presumptive grounds for introducing a state of emergency, the authors of the bill preferred to cite politically neutral earthquakes, fires and floods - nothing helped.

Meanwhile, a generation has already studied at universities that did not remember any war and dictatorship at all - and it turned out to be no more accommodating and gullible. Students of the 1967 model, about whom television sociology spoke so positively, perceived state power not as a "lesser evil," but as a global hindrance - but the society surrounding them, conservative and apolitical, as a direct inheritance of the old dictatorship.

Rudy Dutschke is a student protest leader and his concept of a "long march"

"Do not believe anyone over 30" is the slogan of the entire German youth movement of the 1960s.

The protagonist of the protest year of 1968 was almost on the verge of this age limit. Rudy Dutschke was born in the spring of 1940 - in the part of Germany that, after surrender, will become socialist. By 1961, he had moved to demilitarized West Berlin because he was a committed pacifist and Marxist - remaining a committed Marxist at the time was generally much easier in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe. In addition, he was an outstanding speaker - and an obvious leader. By the second half of the 1960s, Dutschke had a place as an assistant at one of the departments of the Free University - the main center of all politicized youth in Germany, which by this time was universally called the extra-parliamentary opposition (APO - Ausserparlamentarische Opposition), recognizing it as a political force, albeit a street one.

The forms of her activity were diverse - from academic student clubs that fundamentally study the history of the labor movement and revolutionary Maoist circles to, at first glance, generally apolitical, "cheerful guerilla." But in any case, their demands already went beyond domestic political reforms - these were the requirements of public reorganization.

Rudy Dutschke's speech at the International Congress Against the Vietnam War. Berlin, February 1968

The extra-parliamentary opposition - in the 1960s in Germany is almost synonymous with the entire protest movement. It is finally formed after the coming to power of the large coalition of the SPD/CDU/CSU in 1966 - due to the actual absence of opposition within parliament. The main forms of activity are discussions, demonstrations, congresses; the main topics are protest against the law on the state of emergency, against the Vietnam War, support for liberation movements in third world countries, criticism of imperialism.

Unlike the French student opposition, which is supported by trade unions and young workers, APO in Germany effectively remains a university and near-university political phenomenon.

By the beginning of 1968, youth protests ceased to be an internal political affair of any individual country, and the German student opposition, led by Dutschke, was already waging a protracted war with the press and public opinion. Photos of a dark-haired man with bright eyes and an asymmetric low-faced face walked the front pages of newspapers, accompanied by terrifying quotes.

Society frightened itself with the same ghosts: while the opposition shouted about the danger of a new fascism, respectable newspapers and television channels frightened the audience in the image of a new impotent Fuhrer, behind which there are uncontrollable crowds. Only he was going to lead them this time into communism.

In fairness: Dutschke was not at all insane - he was a temperamental idealist and a well-educated Marxist theorist with a rather pragmatic view of reality. Unlike many of his protest colleagues, he did not expect to wake up in another country one fine morning.

The Long March is one of the best-known strategic initiatives of the New Left, proclaimed in 1967 by Rudy Dutschke. Dutschke calls on protesters to abandon pure confrontation with society and parliamentary democracy, and instead use existing institutions and mechanisms to their advantage. This appeal is very popular with a large part of the student movement, which sees no prospects in radical, violent forms of protest, realizing that they lead to isolation.

There is an important contradiction in the interpretation of the "long march." Dutschke understands it rather as a kind of gradual raider seizure of bourgeois institutions in order to transform them. And most of his followers, as it turns out later, believe that promotion within the established social hierarchy is an end in itself - "what cannot be changed must be led."

Many leaders of 1968 later really turn out to be influential politicians, intellectuals, largely determining the content and tone of public discussions in Germany and at the beginning of the 21st century. From the wording about the "long march" a rather large and important part of modern German politics was born. But in 1968, the average man - the "reader of newspapers" pragmatism Dutschke frightened almost more than his idealism.

Authorities and newspapers provoke an attempt on Dutschke

Newspapers were not shy in expressions - and, in general, they spoke in plain text. "We cannot leave all the dirty work to the police," wrote Bild, the main enemy of the opposition, on February 7, 1968. In the same article, under the photo of Dutschke, there was a caption: "Let's stop the terror of the new Reds." It was, of course, not the only newspaper and not the only photo - and not the only call.

On April 11, 1968, handyman Joseph Bachman watched Rudy Dutschke next to the student club on Kurfürstendamm and shouted "communist pig!" shot him three times from a revolver. Two bullets hit the head, one in the shoulder. Dutschke survived, but the bullets that hit his head damaged vital centers, he failed to fully recover.

Reporters and police at the scene of the assassination attempt on Rudy Dutschke. Berlin, Kurfürstendamm, 11 April 1968

In the pocket of Bachman, who was arrested the same day, was another newspaper with five photos of Dutschke and the caption: "Stop red Rudy!"

Two hours after the assassination attempt on Duchke, 2,000 people sat in the university audience, who gathered only to decide where to go - to the residence of the burgomaster or to the concern of Springer. Let's go to Springer. Demonstrators carried "Bild schiesst mit" - "Bild shoots too."

There were already 350 police officers around the editorial building; journalists who did not have time to leave the building barricaded the doors with tables. Students burned cars that transported the circulation of Springer newspapers to kiosks - this was the beginning.

Retroactively, it became known that the first "Molotov cocktails" - Molotov cocktails - were brought to the editorial office of Springer by a provocateur agent of the West German special services.

Easter riots

It was in the pre-Easter week - and everything further went down in history as "Easter riots."

A day after the shots in Duchka, a massive youth riot began in 27 German cities - there were no such speeches in Germany after the revolutionary 1918. The civilians who turned on the TV received the very frightening picture of the rebellion under the red banners that they were threatened with in recent months.

The spectre of communism has reached its historic homeland. All this was mixed with similar paintings from Paris, Washington and other world capitals.

Berlin, 1968. Protesters hold a cross against police water cannons.

21,000 police officers after almost two weeks of continuous fighting coped with the most acute phase of the rebellion, but during this time the country changed radically: the generational conflict turned out to be a civil war, in which all means were good for the next ten years.

Dutschke was taken out of Germany, he lived for another 11 years in England and Denmark and died from the consequences of his wound in 1979.

Enactment of emergency laws and radicalisation of German youth

Immediately after the Easter recess, parliament returned the draft emergency laws to the agenda. May 30, 1968 they were adopted. The Allied Control Council waived its veto on such an occasion. The entire faction of the Liberal Democratic Party and about one fifth of the faction of the Social Democrats voted against. Later, three judges of the Constitutional Court of Germany made a sharply condemning comment, one of whom was a participant in the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944. The law amended 28 of the 145 articles of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany - in case of war, coup or natural disaster.

Two - very substantial - concessions were made to the ominous shadow of 1933. Firstly, the executive authorities, which received huge powers under the new laws in the event of an emergency, did not have the right to amend the Constitution. Secondly, the citizen was guaranteed the right to resist the authorities - if he came to the reasonable conclusion that these very bodies set as their goal a change in the state system.

The adoption of new laws for many years made the German youth movement the most radical and most massive in Western Europe.

But neither in this decade, still called "lead time," nor later have emergency laws ever been applied.