Students’ Rebellion May Close Free University

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31994, 22 May 1969, Page 9

Students’ Rebellion May Close Free University

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WEST BERLIN. May 21. West Berlin’s free University, once hailed as a bulwark against Communism, but now branded as a hotbed of West Germany’s revolutionary student movement, faces the possibility of being closed this summer. Its rebellious, Left-wing students are determined to continue their fight against the city’s Establishment within and outside the university, with the long-term aim of setting up their “unrepressive peoples’ university.” But the more radical their demands and actions, the more resolved and tough is the reaction they provoke. This month, 22 of their leaders were suspended from the university for one or two years, having been held responsible for violent protests, faculty occupations, and strikes.

The students’ reaction was no less sharp: they locked out by force professors and teachers who. they said, were involved in the suspensions. Picket lines and barricades now block the entrances of half a dozen institutes, and professors

trying to enter the buildings are chased away over the campus. “Suspend the denunciators” is the students’ present war-cry. Lists with the names of those professors held responsible for the suspen-

sions have gone up on walls and campus trees. Socialist slogans, including “Down with capitalism,” in huge red and black letters decorate the facades of university buildings. Lorry-loads of riot police are often called to watch over conferences and lectures: police patrols equipped with walkie-talkies walk up and down the campus. Fears are growing that the West Berlin City Government is considering closing the university if the situation does not improve. Several professors are said to have asked for this.

The students were warned at the beginning of the summer term against continuing their rebellion, which earlier this year virtually paralysed the university because half of its 15,000 students were on strike.

Though only a few thousand students are believed to support Left-wing or Socialist ideals-Mhe majority seem rather indifferent—they control most of the faculties. Some of them even organise their own lectures, with strong emphasis on the Socialist theories that were banned from the university’s first post-war years. The tense atmosphere on the campus is in sharp contrast to its beautiful sur-> roundings. The Free Uni-| iversity is in the city’s most! expensive residential areas) in the American sector districts of Dahlein and Zehlen-) dorf, and is surrounded by! parks and gardens. The university was founded with American funds in 1948, during the Soviet Union’s blockade of Berlin’s land access routes, when students opposed to Communism were sent down from East Berlin’s Humboldt University for political reasons.

After years of taking part in demonstrations against the Communists, the students began protesting against the war in Vietnam and the formation of the Grand Coalition Government in 1966. This started the ascendancy of the extreme Left-wing Socialist Student League among the students. After years of disappointment over the treatment of their calls for reforms, they do not want those now offered.

The city government and most of the other State governments have worked out draft laws for a reformed university. The West Berlin draft is already hotly opposed by the students, particularly as the Social Democratic Party, which holds an absolute majority in West Berlin, has approved plans to abolish the students’ parliament and its autonomous working committees.