ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: FROM RED TO GREEN IN ... - Isioma

1970s, offshoots of the New Left in the form of extremely radical antiparliamentary
cells known as K-groups thrived in the island city. West Berlin
was also the birthplace of several terrorist groups, including the RAF and the
June 2 Movement, which attacked the West German state using force of arms.
Finally, West Berlin’s geopolitical position as an outpost in the Cold War also
meant that confrontations between East and West, between pro- and anti-
Communists, but also between Germans and Allied forces emerged with
particular intensity there. 5
This also meant West Berlin radicals were much more
aware of developments in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc than their West
Berlin’s general population. Christoph Klessmann, “1968-Studentenrevolte oder
Kulturrevolution,” in Revolution in Deutschland? 1789-1989, ed. Manfred Hettling
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1991), 91. According to Thomas Fichter
and Siegward Lönnendonker, “the Berlin students were the locomotive of the
revolt” [Die Berliner Studenten waren die Lokomotive der Revolte.] Tilman
Fichter and Siegward Lönnendonker, Kleine Geschichte des SDS (Berlin: Rotbuch
Verlag, 1977), 85. For an examination of the central role played by West Berlin
and especially the Free University as the place where the unrest began, see Ernst
Richert, Die Radikale Linke. Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag,
1969), 108-112. This is not to downplay the importance of the Left in other West
German cities, especially Frankfurt. There, the student movement and its legacy
have been exceptionally well-documented in the volumes by Wolfgang
Kraushaar. See Wolfgang Kraushaar, ed., Frankfurter Schule und
Studentenbewegung von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail 1946-1995, 3 vols.
(Hamburg: Rogner and Bernhard, 1998).
5
These factors also helped make West Berlin into a center of the European
alternative movement. See Roland Wünsch, Das Ende der Alternative: Die Grünen
in der Wiedervereinigung (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1995), 29 nn. 99.
5