Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz (born Gretchen Klotz, March 3, 1942 Oak Park, Illinois) is a German-American activist, and author. In

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

and

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

in 1960s she was active with her husband

Rudi Dutschke Alfred Willi Rudolf "Rudi" 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 West German Socialist Stu ...

in the Socialist Students Union (SDS) and the Federal Republic's broader “extra-parliamentary opposition” (APO).

Life

Gretchen Klotz was born in conservative, suburban

Oak Park, Illinois Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...

. She majored in philosophy at Wheaton College where she first participated in student demonstrations. During a semester studying German at the Goethe Institute, Munich, she met Dutschke, a charismatic figure among radical students in West Berlin. In March 1965 she moved to Germany and married him while taking up studies at

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

. Following an assassination attempt on her husband in April 1968, she, and the first of their three children, moved with him to

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, England, and then Aarhus, Denmark. Six years after Rudi Dutschke's death in 1979 from complications arising from his injuries in 1968, she moved back to the United States, returning to Berlin in 2009. She has published memoirs and reflections on the her, and Rudi Dutschke's, experience of the "anti-authoritarian" student movement in 1960s which, she believes, "changed Germany".

Works

* ''Rudi Dutschke. Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben. Eine Biographie.'' Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln 1996, . * als Hrsg.: ''Rudi Dutschke: Jeder hat sein Leben ganz zu leben. Die Tagebücher 1963–1979.'' Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln 2003, . * ''1968. Worauf wir stolz sein dürfen''. Kursbuch Kulturstiftung gGmbH, Hamburg 2018, .

References

External links

1942 births Living people People from Oak Park, Illinois American activists American writers American women writers 21st-century American women {{US-writer-stub