German Students And Authority

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31657, 18 April 1968, Page 8

German Students And Authority

West Berlin, where the tension and restiveness created by the division of Germany are greatest, is fertile ground for student protest against university and public authority. Student unrest spread swiftly through Germany after the fatal shooting last June of a Berlin student, Benno Ohensorg, by a policeman when students demonstrated against the visit by the Shah of Persia. Until then German students had not been very active as a political group. Official reaction to the shooting incensed thousands of students, who appear to have had some reason to complain, both of police brutality to demonstrators and of official attempts to obscure the facts of the original incident Since then most students appear to have supported, if not taken part in, demonstrations, often violent and bloody affairs The few extreme Left-wing students have been joined spontaneously by a great wave of moderates. The demonstrators have espoused a variety of seemingly unconnected causes: and the tougher the authorities have been in suppressing protests the stronger the student movements have become. Now, it is not too much to say that the unrest and the violence challenge the prevailing order in Germany. Because any challenge to authority in Germany evokes fears for the stability of the whole system in the minds of all but the young, people who do not take the students’ protests seriously view their recourse to violence with alarm. Attempts to brand the Socialist Students’ Federation and its membership of fewer than 2000 led by Rudi Dutschke as Communist do not make much sense. Dutschke, an impassioned, self-styled revolutionary, admires Mao Tse-tung; other students find inspiration in Tito, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh. Dutschke himself claims to be a Christian and professes contempt for conventional Communists. Munich students recently applauded the demonstrations by Warsaw students against the Polish regime. West German trade unions condemned the students* anti-Vietnam demonstration in Berlin last February. A counterdemonstration, 10 times larger, was organised by the Mayor of Berlin. Disturbed as they are by the students’ militancy, many Germans are even more fearful of the reaction of the Right wing and of the authorities who are tempted to resort to repressive measures against a movement that baffles them and seems to threaten the customary orderliness of German affairs.

German youth has been more critical and more demanding than the older generation and is impatient or uncomprehending when it meets the ghosts of Germany’s recent past Young Socialists are dismayed by the results of the coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. The attempted assassination of Dutschke, however meaningless in the broader context of German politics—even student politics—has stirred up the impatience and propensity for violence latent among many students; and this in turn has provoked authority into harsh action born of fear and incomprehension. One of the dangers of the conflict is the isolation of the students from the rest of the German citizens—an isolation attributed by the students to the hostility of the newspapers controlled by Axel Springer. The isolation of any group in Germany, whether it be the students today or the Jews in the past, must arouse fears for the well-being of a country in which democracy has not vet passed the test of an orderly exchange of political power. The search for scapegoats and the ruthless wielding of reactionary power spell serious danger. Neither side in the present disorders has shown the temperance that would avert this danger.