HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Außerparlamentarische Opposition (
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
for ''
extra-parliamentary opposition An extra-parliamentary opposition, also referred to as simply extra-parliamentary or extraparliamentary, is a political movement opposed to a ruling government or political party that chooses not to engage in elections. Many social movements could ...
'', commonly known as the APO), was a political
protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration, or remonstrance) is a public act of objection, disapproval or dissent against political advantage. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate ...
movement in
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
during the latter half of the 1960s and early 1970s, forming a central part of the
German student movement The West German student movement (), sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany (), was a left-wing social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as ...
. Its membership consisted mostly of young people disillusioned with the
grand coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political party, political parties of opposing political spectrum, political ideologies unite in a coalition government. Causes of a grand coali ...
(''Große Koalition'') of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany ( , SPD ) is a social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together w ...
(SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since the coalition controlled 95 percent of the
Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...
, the APO provided a more effective outlet for student dissent. Its most prominent member and unofficial spokesman was
Rudi Dutschke Alfred Willi Rudolf Dutschke (; 7 March 1940 – 24 December 1979) was a German sociologist and political activist who, until severely injured by an assassin in 1968, was a leading charismatic figure within the Socialist Students Union (SDS) in ...
.


Classification

As opposed to APO, there was also opposition from other parties that, although they are represented in parliament, do not participate in the formation of the government. Small parties receive too few votes in an election to reenter the parliament. For example, in the past the Free Democratic Party (FDP) has often not been represented in Länderparlamente (federal state governments), but they are not classified as APO.


APO in Germany

APO in Germany called primarily for the constitutional freedom of opinion, the press and assembly to convey its demands publicly. New political currents usually begin outside the parliament and usually creep over the Länderparlamente into the German Bundestag (federal parliament) or even into the Bundesregierung Deutschlands (the German federal government). For example, the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
entered into a coalition with the SPD (the social democratic party in Germany) in 1998, it remained in government until 2005.


APO in the 1960s

The student movement began to gain strength and momentum in the middle of the 1960s in West Germany. The student movement is often used synonymously with APO, since it was at the time the most prominent form of extraparliamentary opposition in Germany. The student movement reached its peak in 1967 and 1968, especially in towns with universities. The most cited form of student-led APO was headed by the
Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund The Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund — the Socialist German Students' Union or Socialist German Students' League — was founded in 1946 in Hamburg, Germany, as the collegiate branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the ...
(the socialist German student group). According to social democratic historian Heinrich August Winkler, major factors that formed the backdrop of this movement were criticism of the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
and the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, students' anti-authoritarian rebellion against their parents' generation, criticism of professors' dominance of universities and continuity of the societal relations of power, especially the continuity in the civil service since the Nazi era, and the criticism of the centre-left SPD by those to the left of the SPD. The APO was formed through the opposition mounting against the "
grand coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political party, political parties of opposing political spectrum, political ideologies unite in a coalition government. Causes of a grand coali ...
" government in power since 1966, which united the CDU and the SPD under the Chancellor
Kurt Georg Kiesinger Kurt Georg Kiesinger (; 6 April 1904 – 9 March 1988) was a German politician who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 to 21 October 1969. Before he became Chancellor he served as Minister-President of Baden-Württembe ...
(CDU) and its proposed
German Emergency Acts The German Emergency Acts (') were passed on 30 May 1968 at the time of the ''Grand coalition, First Grand Coalition'' between the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. It was the 17th constitutional amen ...
(emergency laws), which would maximise governmental control in case of a public dispute, allowing them to restrict civil rights such as privacy and freedom of movement. With 49 seats in parliament, the FDP was the only opposing party in the parliament at the time; the rest were in extraparliamentary opposition. This weakened the opposition, the Bundestag strengthened the APO in Germany. The APO demanded a democratization of university politics. A motto of the student movement protesting against the old-fashioned nature of higher education institutions was "Unter den Talaren – Muff von 1000 Jahren" ("under the university gowns, the musty smell of a thousand years"), which also referred to
Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
, who had called his regime a rule for a thousand years. The APO criticised society's repression of the crimes of
National Socialism Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequ ...
through its parents' generation, only interested in economic recovery. Thus, it joined worldwide protests against the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
and showed solidarity with the guerrilla fighters campaigning in
North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; ; VNDCCH), was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty fully recognized in 1954 Geneva Conference, 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it o ...
against the actions of the US. Among other protagonists, the movement idolised Cuban guerilla fighter
Che Guevara Ernesto "Che" Guevara (14th May 1928 – 9 October 1967) was an Argentines, Argentine Communist revolution, Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and Military theory, military theorist. A majo ...
and the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party
Ho Chi Minh (born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), colloquially known as Uncle Ho () among other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and politician who served as the founder and first President of Vietnam, president of the ...
. "Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh" was often chanted at demonstrations towards the end of the 1960s. Soon student movement took part in discussions about society and criticised society, demanding fundamental changes in society towards a socialist revolutionary ideal. New forms of communal life were tried, as well as new forms of protests and political actions. In particular, life in the Kommune I (Commune 1) had begun, spurred on by the words of Fritz Teufel, Dieter Kunzelmann and Rainer Langhans. Its members were often prosecuted, which caused a platform for further protests. The APO also found support and theoretical guidance from intellectuals and philosophers such as
Ernst Bloch Ernst Simon Bloch (; ; July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977; pseudonyms: Karl Jahraus, Jakob Knerz) was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinker ...
,
Theodor W. Adorno Theodor W. Adorno ( ; ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, musicologist, and social theorist. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has com ...
,
Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse ( ; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German–American philosopher, social critic, and Political philosophy, political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at ...
and
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...
. On the whole, the West German APO consisted of young people, mostly students, who could hardly gain a foothold in workforce. A few analysts of the time, such as Jutta Ditfurth, spoke out against these assumptions and embraced the workforce, including them in the political movement. In France, the case was somewhat different. Their solidarity was found between the unions and the student activists, which led to a near-revolutionary situation and much disruption, street fighting and mass strikes in May 1968, culminating in a state crisis. One of the protagonists of the German and French APO, activist and later Green Party politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit was refused reentry into France on the initiative of president
Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...
. Further members of the APO were Joseph "Joschka" Fischer (German foreign minister from 1998 to 2005) and Matthias Beltz, who became a famous
kabarett Kabarett (; from French ''cabaret'' = tavern) is satirical revue, a form of cabaret which was developed in France by Rodolphe Salis in 1881 as the ''cabaret artistique''. It was named Le Chat Noir and was centered on political events and satire. ...
ist in the 1980s and the 1990s.


Intensified conflict

A watershed in the history of the West German APO commenced on 2 June 1967, during demonstrations against the official visit of the Iranian Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980) was the last List of monarchs of Iran, Shah of Iran, ruling from 1941 to 1979. He succeeded his father Reza Shah and ruled the Imperial State of Iran until he was overthrown by the ...
when student
Benno Ohnesorg Benno Ohnesorg (; 15 October 1940 – 2 June 1967)Böttcher, Dirk (2002). "Ohnesorg, Benno" (in German), in: Hannoversches biographisches Lexikon: von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart'. Hannover: Schlütersche. p. 275. was a West German u ...
was shot by a policeman. Ohnesorg was attending his first-ever political demonstration, and his death left his pregnant girlfriend to fend for herself. The student movement radicalised itself, became more militant and focused its attention on the Springer Press, namely the '' Bild Zeitung'' (the German equivalent of the British publication ''
The Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot Plasma (physics), plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as ...
''), which greatly opposed the student movement to the general public. Less than a year after the death of Benno Ohnesorg, a young worker named Josef Bachmann attempted to assassinate Rudi Dutschke, one of the most prominent leaders of the student movement; Bachmann shot Dutschke three times at close range, hitting him once in the head. Dutschke suffered health problems from the shooting for the rest of his life, including an epileptic condition that caused his death by an accidental drowning in 1979.Interview: Remembering student-movement firebrand Rudi Dutschke
ouisa Schaefer interview with Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz, Dutschke's widow(24 December 2009). ''Deutsche Welle''. Retrieved 2015-12-12. After 1969, the APO, in its then-current form, played no further role in West Germany, although there was further extraparliamentary opposition.
New social movements The term new social movements (NSMs) is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora of new movements that have come up in various Western world, western societies roughly since the mid-1960s (i.e. in a post-industrial economy ...
in the 1970s affected political and social areas, which had already been addressed in part by the student movement. Environmental protection and nuclear power became the latest themes focused on by former APO activists.


From the end of the APO to the founding of the Green Party

The APO disbanded itself in 1968, dividing into smaller communist groups known as K-Gruppen, which remained on the political landscape but had no notable influence on West German politics. The "Marsch durch die Institutionen" (march through the institutions) propagated by
Rudi Dutschke Alfred Willi Rudolf Dutschke (; 7 March 1940 – 24 December 1979) was a German sociologist and political activist who, until severely injured by an assassin in 1968, was a leading charismatic figure within the Socialist Students Union (SDS) in ...
was embarked upon, resulting in the formation of the Green Party 11 years later. The idea behind this march was that political structures could be manipulated only from within, so it made more sense for larger groups to disband and for individuals and smaller groups to work more or less independently in their local areas to change the political system of their federal republic. The Green Party was formed to organize and accommodate the
anti-nuclear movement in Germany The anti-nuclear movement in Germany has a long history dating back to the early 1970s when large demonstrations prevented the construction of a nuclear plant at Wyhl. The Wyhl protests were an example of a local community challenging the nuc ...
, the peace movement activists and other new social movements in the 1970s and 1980s, whose founders had previously been very active in the APO. In 1983, the
German Green Party Alliance 90/The Greens (, ), often simply referred to as Greens (, ), is a green political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 by the merger of the Greens (formed in West Germany in 1980) and Alliance 90 (formed in East Germany in 1990). Th ...
was elected into the Bundestag, where it stood for the concept of movement and change, so that its roots and philosophy were seen in new social movements. Within only a few years, the Greens gained much political power and prestige. In the time following the party's founding, there was a divide between the fundamentalists and the realists, which still exists. It was the willingness of the Greens to compromise and adapt that has led to their increased political power. In particular, since they entered into a coalition government with the SPD in 1998 and supported issues targeted by the APO which were in the eyes of many underrepresented such as participation in the
Kosovo War The Kosovo War (; sr-Cyrl-Latn, Косовски рат, Kosovski rat) was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It ...
in 1999 and the Afghan War in 2002.


Radicalised groups

A small number of APO activists such as
Andreas Baader Berndt Andreas Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977) was a West German communist and leader of the far-left terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF), also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group. Life Andreas Baader was born in Mu ...
,
Gudrun Ensslin Gudrun Ensslin (; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a German far-left terrorist and founder of the West German far-left militant group Red Army Faction (, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang). After becoming involved with co-fou ...
, journalist
Ulrike Meinhof Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing militant, journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the repute ...
resorted to arson in department stores and illegal underground work. They collaborated in the "RAF" (German: Rote Armee Fraktion; English: Red Army Faction). This was initially called the "bewaffneten Widerstand" (English: armed opposition), and eventually became the
terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
group known as the Baader-Meinhof Gruppe. Bank robberies, kidnappings and even murders were committed against protagonists of businesses, politics and justice by the RAF, the " Bewegung 2. Juni" (Movement of the 2nd June) and the "Revolutionären Zellen" (Revolutionary Cells) until the 1980s.


See also

*
German student movement The West German student movement (), sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany (), was a left-wing social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ausserparlamentarische Opposition Advocacy groups in Germany