Few Events in the Second Half of the twentieth century have been as influential (or, according to a different viewpoint, overhyped) as the global cultural revolutions of the late 1960s. Mark Kurlansky declared that “1968 rocked the world,” while, for West Germany, Wolfgang Kraushaar declared that “1968” was “the year that changed everything.” The German “1968,” one should note, signifies the German student movement, the constituent and most active part of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO, Extraparliamentary Opposition) that emerged in response to the formation of the grand coalition between the conservative and social democratic parties in 1966. It lasted just three years in West Germany (mirroring the duration of the grand coalition), with a “hot phase” from June 1967 to the autumn of 1968. In this brief period, a student was shot dead by a policeman at a demonstration against the visit of the Shah of Persia in West Berlin and students mobilized against the monopoly of the Springer press, organized an international conference on the Vietnam War, and sought to prevent the introduction of new Notstandsgesetze (emergency laws). Following the assassination attempt on the student leader Rudi Dutschke and the subsequent Osterunruhen (Easter riots), the passing of the emergency laws, and the Warsaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the movement fell apart. As such, it differs in duration and intensity from the shorter French “May” or the longer “sixties” (which include the Civil Rights Movement, the Free Speech Movement and the “Summer of Love”) in the United States. But while “1968” has different connotations in countries of the Western world, the similarities with and interrelations between these protest movements are so strong that the events are now often regarded as the first global rebellion.

Despite these similarities, the West German student movement arguably has a unique composition and afterlife. Termed by its intellectual leaders as “antiauthoritarian,” it challenged authoritarian structures and practices, initially at universities, but increasingly in every institution from family to schools and factories. onceived as fundamental critique against a system widely perceived by the left-wing activists at the time as representing the unreconstructed forces that had led to Fascism and World War II the West German version of “1968” was burdened with more complex issues to rebel against and a greater ideological challenge than in other Western countries.