4. The Escalation of 1967-68

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About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the events that led to the escalation and radicalisation of the German student movement in the years 1967-68, focusing in particular on: (i) the figure of the Shah of Persia, and the protests prompted by his state visit to Germany in 1967; (ii) the impact of the fatal shooting by a German police officer of the 26-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg, and the acquittal of the shooter later that year; (iii) the radicalisation of certain sections of the movement, including figures such as Gudrun Ensslin; and (iv) the impact of the shooting of Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968.

Course

In this course, Dr Hanno Balz (University of Cambridge) explores the West German student movement between 1966-69. In the first module, we think about the growth of protest movements in Germany in the 1960s, especially following the formation in 1966 of the 'grand coalition' between the SPD and CDU. In the second module, we think about the impact of Germany's Nazi past on the German stuent movement, before turning in the third module to consider the international context – the Cuban Revolution (1953-59), the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), the Vietnam War (1955-75), and so on. In the fourth module, we trace the escalation and radicalisation of the student movement through two shootings – that of Benno Ohnesorg in June 1967 and that of Rudi Dutschke in April 1968 – before turning in the fifth and final module to consider the growth of the women's liberation movement out of the German student movement, and the fragmentation of the movement from the late 1960s onwards

Lecturer

Dr Hanno Balz is DAAD Lecturer in Modern German and European History at the University of Cambridge. He has published extensively on the history of the "Red Army Faction" West-German militant group and the legal, intellectual, and political reverberations in West German society that came along with challenging the state. He works more broadly on European social movements from the 1960s to the 1980s as well as on the history of Nazi rule and the Shoah.