The polemical tone of the above quotations is unmistakable. The slightly world-weary cadences of the established writer Frisch contrast sharply with the self-confident assertiveness of the young Peter Handke, but both were responding to the pressures brought about by the growing politicisation of literature in the 1960s, particularly inWest Germany. The decade had opened with the controversial trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem (1961), and was dominated by the harrowing Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963-5) and the powerful documentary theatre of Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Weiss and Heinar Kipphardt. The decade was to be even more politicised by increasing opposition to the Vietnam War, the formation of the Auβerparlamentarische Opposition (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition) in the face of the threat to West German democracy posed by the CDU-SPD 'Grand Coalition' of 1966, and the rapid escalation of the anti-authoritarian student movement inWest German universities. It is therefore perhaps understandable that at this critical moment all social activity, including literature and art, should have been seen in starkly political terms.