Exberliner Issue 171 May 2018

DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY
with our democratic ideals, he just couldn’t cope and refused
to continue his seminar. He retired soon after and died five
months later. So in a way he was one of the victims of the
whole movement. At one point my Doktormutter [doctoral
supervisor] refused to speak to me for three months because
I had voted along student lines and not with professors as a
representative in the university governing body. Although I
was her assistant! [Laughs]
In May 1968 my wife and I were still in Berlin taking part in
numerous demonstrations. However, that is the point when
the Extra-parliamentary Opposition (APO) and the radicalisation
began, which we thought was wrong. So we were happy
to be able to get away to the States in August 1968. When
I returned in 1970, everything had become very politicised.
There were various factions competing against each other,
fighting each other: the Albanian Maoists, the Trotskyists, the
Chinese Maoists. In my view, it became more and more irrational.
I increasingly distanced myself. It was endless fights
among sectarian groups over leadership. In 1970, my professor
told me she would offer me an assistantship. Then I got a
telephone call: ‘This is Genosse [Comrade] Paul. We hear you
are up for an assistantship. Would you be willing to present
yourself to the student body?’ He invited me to a meeting on
a Sunday night in a huge downtown Berlin apartment. It was
arranged like a tribunal. There were four ‘comrades’ sitting
in the front of the room. They interviewed the candidates for
the research positions two at a time. The only question they
were asked was, ‘In case of controversy between students
and professors, who would you vote with?’ Of course both
of them knew what they had to say. The first one said, ‘Of
course with the students.’ But then he had second thoughts,
and added something like, ‘Well, it would depend on the
topic.’ That was the end of him. The other guy got the job.
When I refused to take part in this tribunal, comrade Paul
said ‘Then you’re not getting the job.’ [Luckily for Fluck it
turned out his employment offer was connected to a special
grant and was therefore exempt from the student veto over
academic appointments. He could take up the job.]
Looking back and despite the radical turn it later took, I
believe that the student movement helped make the German
university become a democratic place. Today’s students
are still active in their own way: their political engagement
has mostly shifted from class conflict to diversity issues.
More importantly, the 1968 movement played a huge role in
democratising Germany. When I grew up, Germany was still
an authoritarian country in many ways. The next generation
threw this overboard. I’d grown up as a German ashamed of
Germany. When abroad and asked where I was from, I’d just
say I was “European”. When I see the path of development
Germany has since taken, I am mainly proud. — EJ
From Marxist to feminist
Frigga Haug
Born in 1937, Haug had already been an active Marxist
militant for years when the 1968 student movement broke
in Berlin. Converted to feminism after she experienced the
‘trap’ of motherhood in a small town near Cologne, she ran
back to Berlin and would soon dedicate her energy to the
socialist women’s movement. At 80, Haug is one of Germany’s
foremost feminist intellectuals and regularly speaks
at conferences.
I was in the SDS [Socialist German Student
League] and co-founded the Marxist
magazine Das Argument in 1959 [she’s
still an editor for the publication to this
day]. We covered all the topics of the time, which also
became the questions of the 1968 movement: sexuality,
author-ity and family, education, Poland, the war in
Algeria, fascism, antisemitism, etc. At first, we thought
the 1968ers’ demeanour wasn’t genuine politics – it
was more like a disruption. We were working on analyses
of capitalist society, but more and more people
started going to big assemblies where everyone yelled
over each other and whoever had charisma could take
over. We were completely overwhelmed by the movement,
but were also part of it. Das Argument became
the mouthpiece of the 1968 movement. The print run
jumped from 700 to 18,000.
I was a Marxist before I was a feminist. But it was
women from the SDS who were at the frontlines of
the women's revolt. Media made it look like women
in the SDS were limited to typing flyers and making
coffee. That’s a total myth – I was in the SDS from the
beginning and I never typed a flyer or made coffee.
That said, women and women’s issues were never
recognised as such in the movement and there was a
grand total of seven women in SDS at the time. That’s
when I joined the Action Committee for the Liberation
of Women, which was
just forming, in January or
February 1968.
“The men in the
‘68 movement
tolerated us...
but the women’s
movement was
often called ‘petty
bourgeois’ and
'marginal'.”
Women take action
We questioned all the morals
of the petty bourgeois:
prudery, pettiness and
taboos. We talked about the
power of mass media. Axel
Springer, the king of the Bild
newspaper, was our enemy
number one. We studied how
the press creates submissive
citizens. We believed that
the situation of women was
primarily a result of deficiencies
in education, and we wanted to counter that with
a a “political literacy” campaign. Our slogan from the
socialist Frauenbund (women’s league) was: “Everyone
should know everything!” I would say that men in the
1968 movement tolerated us but didn’t actively support
the women’s organisation. The women’s movement
was often called “petty bourgeois” or “marginal” and
not taken seriously.
In Das Argument we had been studying Marx’s
Grundrisse and Das Kapital, and I took that with me
into the Action Committee. One wing of the movement
wanted to organise a kindergarten teachers’
strike. They believed that from an early age children
were raised to be authoritarian personalities, so they
needed an alternative perspective and way of life. But
I had just escaped from a year trapped at home with
a baby – I didn’t just want to talk about mothers and
children. I wanted to study the big picture: How do
women end up in a situation where, as soon as they
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