Rudi Dutschke
Born	Alfred Willi Rudi Dutschke (1940-03-07)March 7, 1940 Schönefeld, German Reich
Died	December 24, 1979(1979-12-24) (aged 39) Århus, Denmark
Cause of death	drowned because of epileptic seizure while in the bathtub
Residence	Berlin, Germany
Nationality	German
Known for	Spokesperson of the German student movement
Home town	Luckenwalde, East Germany
Spouse	Gretchen Klotz (1966–79)
Children	3

Alfred Willi Rudi Dutschke (March 7, 1940 – December 24, 1979) was the most prominent spokesperson of the German student movement of the 1960s. He advocated 'a long march through the institutions' of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery.^[1] This was an idea he took up from his interpretation of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt school of cultural Marxism.^[2] In the 1970s he followed through on this idea by joining the nascent Green movement.

His grave in Berlin-Dahlem

In 1968, he survived an assassination attempt committed by Josef Bachmann, living for another 12 years until related health problems caused his death. Radical students blamed an anti-student campaign in the papers of the Axel Springer publishing empire for the assassination attempt. This led to attempts to blockade the distribution of Springer newspapers all over Germany, which in turn led to major street battles in many German cities.^[3]

Early life[link]

Dutschke was born in Schönefeld, (Dahme-Spreewald, Brandenburg), in the German Reich. He attended school in and graduated from the Gymnasium there, but because he refused to join the army of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and convinced many of his fellow students to refuse as well, he was prevented from attending university in the GDR. He fled to West Berlin in August 1961, just one day before the Berlin Wall was built. He studied sociology at the Free University of Berlin under Richard Löwenthal and Klaus Meschkat where he became acquainted with alternative views of Marxism.

Dutschke joined the German SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (which was not the same as the SDS in the USA, but quite similar in goals) in 1965 and from that time on the SDS became the center of the student movement, growing very rapidly and organizing demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.

He married the American Gretchen Klotz (de) in 1966. They had three children. Dutschke's third child, 1980-born Rudi-Marek Dutschke (often known as just Marek Dutschke) was born after his father's death. He is a politician of the German Green Party^[4] as well as Dean's Office staffer of the Hertie School of Governance^[5] today. His older siblings are Hosea-Che Dutschke (named after the Old Testament minor prophet Hosea and Che Guevara) and their sister Polly-Nicole, both born in 1968.

Political views[link]

Influenced by critical theory, Rosa Luxemburg, and critical Marxists and informed through his collaboration with fellow students from Africa and Latin America, Dutschke developed a theory and code of practice of social change via the practice of developing democracy in the process of revolutionizing society, collaborating with foreign students^[6]

Dutschke also advocated that the transformation of Western societies should go hand in hand with Third World liberation movements and with democratization in communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. His socialism had strongly Christian roots; he called Jesus Christ the "greatest revolutionary", and in Easter 1963, he wrote that "Jesus is risen. The decisive revolution in world history has happened — a revolution of all-conquering love. If people would fully receive this revealed love into their own existence, into the reality of the 'now', then the logic of insanity could no longer continue."^[7]

Benno Ohnesorg's death in 1967 at the hands of German police pushed some in the student movement toward increasingly extremist violence and the formation of the Red Army Faction. The violence against Dutschke further radicalised parts of the student movement into committing several bombings and murders. Dutschke rejected this direction and feared that it would harm or cause the dissolution of the student movement. Instead he advocated a 'long march through the institutions' of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery.^[1] The meaning of Dutschke's idea of a 'long march through the institutions' is in fact highly contested: most historians^[8] of '68 in West Germany understand it to mean advocating setting up an alternative society and recreating the institutions which were seen by Dutschke as beyond reform in their current state. It is highly unlikely Dutschke would have promoted change from within the parliamentary and judicial system, which were populated by former Nazis and political conservatives. This is made clear in the SDS reaction to the Kiesinger-led CDU-SPD grand coalition and the authoritarian Emergency Laws they passed.

Memorial plate for Rudi Dutschke at Kurfürstendamm and Joachim-Friedrich Straße in Berlin, Germany

Shooting and later life[link]

On April 11, 1968, Dutschke was shot in the head by Josef Bachmann. After the attempted assassination, Dutschke and his family went to the United Kingdom in the hope that he could recuperate there. He was accepted at Cambridge University to finish his degree in 1969, but in 1971 the Tory government under Edward Heath expelled him and his family as an "undesirable alien" who had engaged in "subversive activity", causing a political storm in London. They then moved to Århus, Denmark, after professor Johannes Sløk had offered him a job at the University of Aarhus which made it possible for Dutschke to gain a Danish residence permit.

Dutschke reentered the German political scene after protests against the building of nuclear power plants activated a new movement in the mid-1970s. He also began working with dissidents opposing the Communist governments in East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, including Robert Havemann, Wolf Biermann, Mihailo Petkovic, Milan Horáček, Adam Michnik, Ota Šik and more.

Because of brain damage sustained in the assassination attempt, Rudi Dutschke continued to suffer health problems. He died on 24 December 1979 in Århus, Denmark. He had an epileptic seizure while in the bathtub and drowned.^{[citation needed]}

Works[link]

• Dutschke, Rudi (1980) (in German), Mein langer Marsch: Reden, Schriften und Tagebücher aus zwanzig Jahren, Hamburg, DE: Rowohlt .
• Dutschke, Rudi (2003), Dutschke, Gretchen, ed. (in German), Jeder hat sein Leben ganz zu leben (diaries), Köln, DE: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, ISBN 3-462-03224-0  (1963–1979).
• Dutschke, Rudi (Summer 1982), "It Is Not Easy to Walk Upright", TELOS (New York: Telos Press) (52) .

Bibliography[link]

• Dutschke, Gretchen (1996) (in German), Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben (biography), Köln, DE: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, ISBN 3-462-02573-2 .

References in literature and music[link]

The song "Rot" by Markus Henrik features a mention of Dutschke, who can also be seen in the music video of the same. The song uses Dutschke as a reminder of political activism in Germany in the 60s and 70s.

There's also a^[9] Finnish song about Rudi Dutschke, by Eero Ojanen. It's based on lyrics by Wolf Biermann.

The song Drei Kugeln auf Rudi Dutschke by Wolf Biermann.

Dutschke appears as Prussian nobleman-turned anarchist Count Rudolf von Dutschke in the novel Warlord of the Air, the first part of Michael Moorcock's alternate history/steampunk trilogy A Nomad of the Time Streams. Revolutionary socialist Count von Dutschke is close friends with a very aged Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (whom he fondly relates to as "Uncle Vladimir") in Moorcock's alternate 1973 where the October Revolution never took place. In Harry Mulisch's novel The Discovery of Heaven Dutschke makes a cameo appearance at a "political and musical happening" in a chapter titled "The Demons."

Was portrayed by Sebastian Blomberg in the 2008 film Der Baader Meinhof Komplex.

See also[link]

• Kommune 1
• Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rudi Dutschke

• Rudi Dutschke in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• (in German) Dutschke, Rudi (biography), DE: German Historic Museum, http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/DutschkeRudi/ .

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2008)

Wolf Biermann
Wolf Biermann, 2008
Background information
Birth name	Karl Wolf Biermann
Born	(1936-11-15) 15 November 1936 (age 75) Hamburg, Germany
Genres	Folk music, political ballads
Occupations	singer-songwriter, poet, and dissident
Years active	1960–present
Labels	Broadside Records

Karl Wolf Biermann (born 15 November 1936) is a German singer-songwriter and former East German dissident.

Early life[link]

Biermann was born in Hamburg, Germany. His mother, Emma (née Dietrich), was a Communist Party activist, and his father, Dagobert Biermann, worked on the Hamburg docks. Biermann's father was Jewish and a member of the German Resistance.^[1]

Biermann was one of the few children of workers who attended the Heinrich-Hertz-Gymnasium (high school) in Hamburg. After the Second World War, in 1953, he became a member of the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ) and in 1950^[2] 1953, he represented the Federal Republic of Germany at the FDJ's first national meeting.

East Germany[link]

On finishing school at the age of 17, Biermann decided to emigrate from West to East Germany where he believed he could live out his Communist ideals. He was helped in this move by Margot Honecker who knew him from their youth. Until 1955 he lived at a boarding school near Schwerin. Then he began studying political economics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. From 1957 to 1959 he was an assistant director at the Berliner Ensemble. At university he changed courses to study philosophy and mathematics.

In 1960 Biermann met composer Hanns Eisler, who adopted the young artist as a protégé. Eisler used his influence with the East German cultural elite to promote the songwriter's career, but his death in 1962 deprived Biermann of his mentor and protector. In 1961 Biermann formed the Arbeiter- und Studententheater (Workers' and Students' Theater). It produced a show called Berliner Brautgang documenting the building of the Berlin wall that was shut down by the authorities in 1963. Although a committed communist, Biermann's nonconformist views soon alarmed the East German establishment. In 1963 he was refused membership in the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). Two years later, publicly denounced as a 'class traitor', he was forbidden to publish his music or perform in public. To break this isolation, artists like Joan Baez and many others visited him at his home during the World Youth Festival in 1973. Karsten D. Voigt, chairman of the West German Socialdemocratic Youth (Juso) protested against the suppression of the freedom of opinion and information by the state security.

Deprivation of citizenship[link]

In 1976 the SED Politbüro decided to strip Biermann of his citizenship while he was on an officially authorized tour in West Germany. It later turned out that the Politbüro had decided to do so before the first concert in Cologne, even though this concert was used as the official justification afterwards. Biermann's exile provoked protests by leading East German intellectuals, including novelist Christa Wolf. In 1977 he was joined in West Germany by his wife at the time, East German actress Eva-Maria Hagen and her daughter Catharina (Nina Hagen).

Return to the west[link]

Now living in the West, Biermann continued his musical career, criticizing East Germany's Stalinist policies. He was able to perform publicly again in East Germany in late 1989 during the Wende or peaceful revolution that eventually toppled the Communist government. In 1998 he received a German national prize. He supported the 1999 NATO Kosovo War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.^[3]

He lives in Hamburg and in France. He is the father of ten children, three of them with his wife Pamela Biermann.

Selected works[link]

• Wolf Biermann zu Gast bei Wolfgang Neuss (LP, 1965)
• Wolf Biermann: "Chauseestraße 131" (LP, 1969): recorded in his home in East Berlin, published in the West. Possessing home-recording charm, one can hear the noises from the streets. The German texts are very sarcastic, ironic and to the point. This LP was recorded with a recorder smuggled in from West Germany and the title of the album was his address at the time, letting the political police know exactly who and where he was at the time.
• Wolf Biermann: "aah-ja!" (LP, 1974)

References[link]

Some of this article is translated from the German article of 21 January 2006.

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Wolf Biermann: Bio, excerpts, interviews and articles in the archives of the Prague Writers' Festival
• Biermann Interview
• Biography in German
• Wolf Biermann singing Hasta Siempre
• The ghosts are leaving the shadows on "The Life of the others", a film about the Stasi, the East German Secret Police. Biermann comments on its closeness to reality.

Helmut Gollwitzer (29 December 1908 – 17 October 1993) was a Protestant (Lutheran) theologian and author.

Gollwitzer's grave in Berlin

Born in Pappenheim, Bavaria, Gollwitzer studied Protestant theology in Munich, Erlangen, Jena and Bonn (1928–1932); he later completed a doctorate under Karl Barth in Basel (1937), writing on the understanding of the eucharist in Martin Luther and John Calvin.

During the period of the Nazi regime in Germany, Gollwitzer was a well-known member of the Confessing Church movement which resisted the regime's attempt to control the churches. He took over as the pastor of the congregation at Berlin-Dahlem after the arrest of Martin Niemöller.^[1]

During World War II, Gollwitzer served as a medic at the Eastern Front, and was a Prisoner of War in the Soviet Union from 1945-1949. He wrote a book about his experience of being a POW which became a bestseller in Germany in 1950 (Unwilling Journey: A Diary from Russia); the then President of West Germany, Theodor Heuss, called it "a great historical document".

Gollwitzer was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Bonn (1950–1957), and then as professor of Protestant theology at the Free University of Berlin; he retired in 1975. He had been Karl Barth's first choice as his successor in Basel, but the University authorities turned him down due to what they called 'his unclear attitude to the Soviet Union'.

Known as a close friend of Rudi Dutschke, whose wife studied with Gollwitzer, and a pastor to Ulrike Meinhof, he was prominently involved in the political debates ensuing in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gollwitzer was a well-known opponent of nuclear weapons,^[2] the US engagement in Vietnam and the arms race, as well as a staunch critic of capitalism.

Helmut Gollwitzer died in Berlin on 17 October 1993.

Quotes[link]

• "Socialists may be Christians, but Christians must be socialists."

Footnotes[link]

1. ^ Details about Gollwitzer's work at Dahlem Parish as shown in the exhibition Auf dem Weg zur mündigen Gemeinde (German)
2. ^ Gollwitzer holding the keynote speech at a Kampf dem Atomtod rally in 1955

External links[link]

• "Why am I a Christian Socialist?" (Better translation: Why am I, as a Christian, a Socialist?)
• Werner Raupp (1998). Bautz, Traugott. ed (in German). Gollwitzer, Helmut (Hans). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). 14. Herzberg. cols. 1035–1057. ISBN 3-88309-073-5. http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/g/Gollwitzer.shtml. 

Literature[link]

• Gollwitzer, H 1953. Unwilling Journey: A Diary from Russia. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press.
• Gollwitzer, H 1956. Dying We Live: The Final Messages and Records of the Resistance. New York: Pantheon.
• Gollwitzer, H 1965. The Demands of Freedom: Papers by a Christian in West Germany. New York: Harper & Row.
• Gollwitzer, H 1965. The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith. London: SCM.
• Gollwitzer, H 1970. The Christian Faith and the Marxist Criticism of Religion. New York: Scribner.
• Gollwitzer, H 1970. The Rich Christians and Poor Lazarus. New York: Macmillan.
• Gollwitzer, H 1982. An Introduction to Protestant Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.