Introduction

This chapter introduces the book’s protagonists and main subject: the other ‘68ers, a group of centre-right activists who had participated in the West German student movement of the late 1960s and 1970s and later commemorated their efforts as a form of democratic resistance against left-wing radicals. It argues that a close examination of the other ‘68ers’ ideas, experiences, repertoires, and remarkable career trajectories enables us to rethink the history of 1968 and its afterlives in important ways. Studying the hitherto neglected role these individuals played at the time, as well as their life paths and long-term impact on West German political culture, opens up new vistas for understanding the history of protest in 1968, the late Federal Republic, and the role that generation played in postwar Germany. The Introduction also discusses the different sources used for this study, including the oral history methodology on which parts of the book are based.

Talking About (My) Generation

This chapter engages with several major themes that have long animated research on the West German 1960s: protesters’ family backgrounds and wartime childhoods; the meaning of the Nazi past to their activism; and intergenerational relations. Like their student peers on the Left, centre-right activists had been raised in a post-genocidal society. Given that, how did they view and engage with Germany’s recent history of mass violence? The chapter highlights the centrality of anti-totalitarianism to their thinking. It also shows that, inspired by the so-called ‘‘45ers’ and nudged by social scientists who routinely portrayed student protest as a symptom of generational conflict, they began to think of themselves as a distinct generational community in the 1960s.

Conclusion

The Conclusion summarizes and expands upon the findings of the book’s six chapters. It offers some overarching comments about how this study helps us to rethink the existing scholarship on 1968 and postwar German history more broadly. It highlights three contributions, in particular: revealing the striking political breadth and versatility of student activism around 1968 and the relational character of activism of the Left and centre-right; the book’s implications for writing histories of generation; and rethinking the long-term effects of 1968 on (West) German society to account for the manifold ways in which these years left their mark on Christian Democracy and the political culture of the late Federal Republic.

The (Ir)Resistible Rise of the Other ‘68ers

The book’s final chapter traces how many of the protagonists of this book became a major public phenomenon around the time that Helmut Kohl was elected Chancellor in 1982. It charts the other ‘68ers’ short ‘march through the institutions’ and assesses their programmatic, strategic, and cultural impact on the CDU from the 1970s into the 1980s. Second, it analyses the role that commemorations of 1968 and generational claims played in their rise to public prominence. It shows that the other ‘68ers helped to shape memories of the student movement in important ways and, from the 1980s into the early 2000s, were key players in the memory wars about how exactly 1968 had transformed West German politics and society.

Between Adenauer and Coca-Cola

This chapter focuses on the experiences of centre-right women and the cultural practices of centre-right students more generally to determine to what extent they participated in the broader cultural moment that was 1968. It examines different forms of cultural expression and everyday aesthetics to investigate whether centre-right activists viewed these as political. It also examines their attitudes towards the evident modernization of sexuality in West Germany in this period. Finally, it puts women’s experiences centre stage. Analysing changing gender roles and centre-right women’s attitudes towards the emerging women’s movement, it seeks to understand why at least some of them thought that emancipation did not have to equal revolution.

Combative Politics

This chapter examines the shift towards a more confrontational form of campus politics in the wake of the dissolution of SDS in 1969/70, one in which concerns about left-wing violence moved centre-stage. It analyses centre-right students’ roles in some of the key debates of the 1970s—the controversy surrounding the ‘Radicals Decree’, the ‘Mescalero Affair’, and students’ alleged support for the terrorism of the RAF. It argues that Christian Democratic students were instrumental in making a scandal of left-wing activism at a time when a left-wing coalition governed the country for the first time since the war. Centre-right students contributed much to the febrile climate of the 1970s, this chapter shows, stoking public hysteria and helping to create a climate of distrust that made left-wing dissent politically suspect. Their conduct highlights that the process of political liberalization in the wake of 1968 was not a linear but rather a winding one.

From Berlin to Saigon and Back

This chapter argues that centre-right activists had a distinct internationalist imagination. In spite of an ever-growing literature on the Global 1960s, we know surprisingly little about how centre-right activists conceived of the global. This chapter broadens—and ultimately hopes to correct—our view of student internationalism around 1968 by showing that the centre-right also looked beyond the borders of the Federal Republic. It explores three areas on their ‘mental map’ in detail: the powerful ways in which the Cold War binary structured the centre-right’s view of the world; the (Western) European ties of conservative and centre-right student groups; and, finally, their campaigns for human rights in the wake of 1968.

Between Engagement and Enmity

This chapter charts the involvement of centre-right students in some of the key moments and debates around student activism from the mid-1960s until the climactic years of the protest movement in 1967/68. It traces their early mobilization in the middle of the decade, shows how they rallied increasingly from 1967 onward to formulate a response to the upsurge in left-wing protest activity, and examines their theoretical efforts and relationship with activists of the Left. The final section introduces a group of Christian Democratic ‘renegades’ whose close engagement with the Left made them rethink their politics in fundamental ways. Looking at some of the key themes and events of these years from the perspective of the centre-right, the chapter demonstrates that centre-right students were there throughout 1968, and not just as passive observers. They were an important part of this political moment and engaged with and participated in the student movement in manifold ways. Writing them back into the history of 1968 reveals that political activism in these years was a much broader, more versatile, and, ultimately, more consequential phenomenon than the traditionally narrower focus on left-wing radicals in much of the literature allows.