Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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Third World liberation movements also existed. 'One, two, many Vietnams'
was the slogan, and they all claimed to fight for justice and freedom.8
The immediate concern in West Germany, however, was local. The
universities had been established in the aftermath of World War Two and
not attended to since then as other priori ties such as the Cold War,
restoration of the country, and the economy called for more attention. 9
A major problem with higher education in the sixties was
overcrowding. In 1960 there were 291,000 students, in 1965 384,000 and
in 1966 over 400,000. The government did not reform the university
structures in 1966, but limited the number of students for sane studies,
and introduced time limits on the length of study.10
Apart from massive overcrowding which caused problems with lack of
teaching facilities, there were also increasing student-staff ratios as
staff were not increased. This was further encumbered by outdated
elitist staff attitudes towards the students, whereby the Ordinarius
professors were completely sovereign wi thin their deparments as to who
was promoted, who received academic positions, and who was accepted for
doctorates. Everyone was dependent upon the Ordinarius, who were
beholden to no one. The staff were not ready for the general
intellectual decline of the students, which presumably occurred with
growing student numbers.11
The students fel t that in democratic states uni versi ty consumers
should have a say in their education, and demanded more democracy in
university administration. The students objected to the bureaucratic
reforms which they saw as a means of producing "functional elites and
ideologically conformist experts."12
Few outside of the Sozialdernokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD ,
Social Democratic Party) sponsored student group, the Sozialistischer
8 Langguth, 19; Willibald Karl, "Students and the Youth Movement in
Germany: Attempt at a Structural Comparison" Journal of Contemporary
History 15 (1) 1970, 113-127, 113; Hans Martin Bock, Geschichte des
'linken' Radikalismus in Deutschland: Ein Versuch (Frankfurt a.M.:
Edition Suhrkamp, 1976), 196; Hans Josef Horchem, "Fuenfzehn Jahre
Terrorismus in der Bundesrepublik" Aus Politik lIDd Zeitgeschichte 31
January 1987, 3-15, 3; Fridrich Mager, Ulrich Spinnarke, Was wollen die
Studenten? (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Bucherei, 1967), 30.
9 William David Graf, The German Left Since 1945: Socialism and
Social Democracy in the German Federal Republic, ( Cambridge: The
Oleander Press, 1976), 260.
10 ibid., 261; Uwe Schlicht, Van Burschenschafter bis zum Sponti:
Studentische Opposition gestern lIDd heute (West Berlin: Colloquium
Verlag, 1980), 69-70.
11 Corrado (1983), 303-4.
12 Schlicht, 91; Rob Burns, Wilfried van der Will, Protest and
Democracy in West Germany: Extra-Parliamentary Opposition and the
Democratic Agenda (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1988), 104.