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

‘1968’ has been widely cited as a source and time of important social and
cultural change. 50
The nature of this change, however, has been intensely
debated. What did the protest movement mean for West German society and
culture? Was it a force for modernization? Was it a revolution? What does the
AL tell us about the consequences of participation in the protest movement?
How did participants’ involvement shape their subsequent political or
professional career? Their political outlook? Where did their Long March
through the institutions lead them?
Again, Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey has been at the forefront of attempts to
evaluate the meaning and significance of ‘1968.’ As she notes, however, it is
difficult to determine the influence of social movements like the New Left. While
50
Readers interested in 1968 from an international perspective are referred
to the volume edited by Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, 1968:
The World Transformed (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute and
Cambridge University Press, 1998). For an examination of 1968 and its historical
meaning in international comparative perspective, see the volume edited by
Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, “1968.” For a comparison of the events of 1968 in
Germany and France which is exemplary in its systematic use of conceptual tools
for the analysis of social movements, thus facilitating cross-national
comparisons, see Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, “1968 in Deutschland und Frankreich:
ein Vergleich,” in 1968- Ein europäisches Jahr?, ed. Etienne Francois and others
(Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1997). Ronald Fraser et al provide
another example of recent attempts to study the 1968 revolts from an
international comparative perspective, “based on the memories of over three
hundred people who took part in the student movements.” Ronald Fraser and
others, eds., 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 2.
Pavel Richter in “Die APO in der BRD,” in Neunzehnhundertachtundsechzig (1968):
Vom Ereignis zum Gegenstand der Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), gives a succinct account of the
developments leading up to and culminating in the student protest of 1967-1968.
This is probably the best, most compact account of FRG-wide developments
written from a historical perspective.
31