Rudi Dutschke

Rudi Dutschke , Alfred Willi Rudolf Dutschke (born with Schönefeld close to Luckenwalde on March 7th, 1940, died with Aarhus, Denmark on December 24th, 1979) was a sociologist Marxist German. He is the most known representative of the West German movement studying in 1968. He then formed part of the founding members of the party " the Greens " ( Die Grünen ) in Germany. Dutschke was married with Gretchen Klotz with which it had 3 children: Polly, Hosea-Che and Rudi-Marek. He died of the continuations of an attack which had caused serious wounds with the brain to him.

Biography

Youth and studies

Rudi Dutschle, fourth wire of a postal worker passes his childhood in GDR. It is active in the parochial movement of the young people of Luckenwalde, where it acquires a formation " nun-socialiste". High level sportsman (Decathlon) it wants initially to become sports correspondent and between thus in the FDJ (communist youth organization) in 1956.

The Insurrection of Budapest in 1956 is for Dutschke the occasion to forge a political conscience. It takes the party of a democratic Socialisme, which would be equidistant of the USSR and the United States of America. He clashes then with the SED (East-German Communist party) and notes, in spite of the official discourse antifascist of the ideology of State, the omnipresence of the old structures and mentalities, in the east as in the west.

He engages publicly in 1957 against the militarization of the East-German company and for freedom to move. He refuses to make the military service (formerly voluntary) in the NVA (national popular army) and encourages others to make in the same way. He passes the Abitur (baccalaureat) in 1958. Because of its activism antimilitarist, the administration of GDR does not let it make the sporting studies which it had wished. It then makes a commercial formation in an industrial co-operative of Lückenwald.

Dutschke passes then regularly to West Berlin, where it passes by again the Abitur of FRG to the Askanisches Gymnasium of Berlin . In parallel, he writes sporting reports, inter alia for B.Z. of the editions of Axel Springer ( Axel-Springer-Verlag ). In 1961, right before the construction of the wall, he moves in West Berlin to study sociology, philosophy and the history with the Freie Universität . He remains there registers until obtaining a doctorate in 1973.

Dutschke starts with studying the Existentialisme Heidegger and of Sartre, but it is interested quickly also in the Marxism and the history of the labor movement. It reads the first writings of Karl Marx, of works of the Marxist philosophers of history Georg Lukács and Ernst Bloch, as well as authors belonging to the Théorie criticizes (Theodor W. Adorno, max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse). Inspired by the meeting of the coed in theology étasunienne Gretchen Kloth - which will become his wife -, it reads also theological works like those of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Its socialism of Christian inspiration is transformed then into a Marxist socialism of inspiration. Nevertheless, it continues to insist on the free will of the individual vis-a-vis the social determinisms.

Student movement

During its studies, Dutschke engages actively in the policy. It publishes the review Anschlag (“posts”, or: “attack”), whose main themes are the critic of capitalism, the problems of the third world and the new shapes of political organization. Because of his orientation known as “actionnist”, this review passed for “anarchist” within the Mouvement of the socialist German students (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS)).

In 1962, Dutschke founds with Bernd Rabehl a Berliner section of the Subversive Aktion of Munich, which asserts Internationale situationnist. In 1964, this section is integrated in the Berliner section of the SDS. This same year, Dutschkee is elected member of the political Council of the SDS, of which it marks - with others - thereafter the political orientation.

From 1966, Dutschke organizes within the SDS of many demonstrations against the university reform, against the great coalition (CDU/SPD), against the laws of state of emergency ( Notstandsgesetze ) and against the war of Vietnam. In full rise, the student movement then bound these subjects to the critic of the repression of the past national-Socialist, and was conceived like part of the Opposition extra-member of Parliament ( ausserparlamentarische Opposition , APO).

The March 23rd 1966, it marries Gretchen Klotz. In May, it contributes to the preparation of the federal congress Vietnam with Frankfurt on the Hand during which intervened of the professors of the Nouvelle Left (inter alia Herbert Marcuse, Oskar Negt) and even of the traditional left apart from the SPD (Franck Deppe, Wolfgang Abendroth). This year there, Dutschke wanted to pass a doctorate with a work on Lukács under the tutorat of the professor Hans-Joachim Lieber, the vice-chancellor of the time of the free University of Berlin. But its contract of assistant is not prolonged and Dutschke puts its academic career on side.

The June 2nd 1967, studying it Benno Ohnesorg is killed by the police force at the time of a demonstration against the Schah of Iran: Dutschke and the SDS calls at the federal level with sit-ins to require the explanation of the circumstances of death. Moreover, they ask the withdrawal of the persons in charge of these acts of repression and the expropriation of the editor Axel Springer of which they return the writings corresponsables of these police burs. This vision of the things is for the first time mentioned in media drawn up like the Spiegel, the Frankfurter Rundschau and Die Zeit. However few professors, except his friend Helmut Gollwitzer are solidarized with Dutschke.

Attack

The April 11th 1968, Dutschke is challenged in front of the office of the SDS by a young collaborator Josef Bachmann who draws three times above to him. The wounds with the brain are mortals and Dutschke survives only with difficulty after an operation of several hours. Today, a commemorative plaque is visible with number 141 of the Kurfürstendamm , the place of the attack. The motivations of Bachmann never were completely cleared up; one found on him a photograph of Dutschke extracted from a newspaper as well as a specimen of the Nationalzeitung and one thus supposed that this attack had been financed by the Extrême right-hand side.

Many students made responsible the press for Axel Springer which since months was baited against Dutschke and the protests coeds. The Bild-Zeitung for example for several days had called with the firm repression of the agitators. At the time of the demonstrations which followed, of the incidents very violent ones burst, more the violent ones of the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, during which the building of the editor Axel Springer was attacked and the trucks of delivery of its newspapers were fired.

Dutschke had to follow a therapy of several months to find the use of the word and memory. After having recovered its means, it remained to leave 1969 in Suisse, then in Italy and with the the United Kingdom. At the beginning of 1969, an expulsion has constrained it to take refuge, him and its family, in Ireland. However, it quickly could go back to the United Kingdom, where it started into 1970 of the studies to the Université of Cambridge. During the British change of government in 1970, its residence permit was not renewed. Dutschke thus left to the Denmark, where it occupied an use of Conférencier at the university of Aarhus.

Bachmann was condemned to 7 years of prison for attempted murder. Dutschke contacted its written attacker to explain to him why it did not have personal resentment in its connection and to try to convince it of the accuracy of a socialist engagement. Bachmann committed suicide in prison on February 24th, 1970. Dutschke regretted not having more frequently written to him: “the fight for the release has just started; unfortunately, Bachmann will not be able to take part in it any more…”

Last years

From 1972, Dutschke traverses the Federal republic again. He then seeks to multiply the meetings with trade unionists and democrats, of which Gustav Heinemann of which the goal is to work with the reunification of Germany antimilistarist and not aligned. The January 14th 1973, it pronounces, for the first time after the attack, a public speech at the time of a demonstration against the war of Vietnam with Bonn. In July 1973, it goes several times to East Berlin and returns visit to Wolf Biermann, with which it is dependant of friendship. It contacts other dissidents of the SED like Robert Havemann and later Rudolf Bahro. In 1974, it publishes its Thèse and profits during one year from a purse from the Foundation from German research ( Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft ) (DFG) at the free University of Berlin. In February, Dutschke directs a public debate whose topic is Soljenitsine and the left , during which he decides for the Human rights in Soviet Union and in the block of the Eastern European countries. Since 1976, he was member of the socialist Bureau a nondogmatic group of left , born from the decomposition of the SDS. Within this framework it militates for the construction of a party which would link the initiatives green-alternatives and the groups of left other than the Communists. In 1977, it collaborates in various newspapers of left and fact of the conferences at the University of Groningen to the Netherlands. He undertakes voyages during which he exposes his theses on the studied movement, takes part in the international court Bertrand Russell against the professional Interdiction ( BerufsVerbot ) in the East and demonstrations monsters of the antinuclear movement with Wyhl amndt Kaiserstuhl, Bonn and Brokdorf. When Bahro is condemned to eight years of detention in GDR, Dutschke organizes in November 1978, a congress of solidarity in Western Berlin. In 1979, it is on the list of the Greens with Bremen and takes an active part in the electoral campaign. After the entry of the Greens in the municipal council of Bremen, he is elected delegated to the Congress founder of the Party of the Greens.

The day before Nöel of the year 1979, Dutschke drowns at his place in its bath-tub, at the time of, an after-effect epileptic fit of the attack. It is solemnly buried the January 3rd 1980 with the Cemetery Saint-Anne of Berlin-Dahlem. Approximately 6.000 people accompany the procession; Helmut Gollwitzer makes a speech. Three months after are born his/her son Rudi Marek.

Ideas

General information

Dutschke regarded since its youth as a democratic Socialist antiautoritaire. Then during its studies, he became Marxist revolutionist, claiming of the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács. Like him, he denounced the libertarians, the too frequent lapse of memory of the traditions of the labor movement, reformism as much as the Stalinisme. The objective of Dutschke was the total release of the men of the war, the hunger, inhumanity and handling by means of a world Révolution . With this radical Utopie, it joined again with the Christian socialism of its youth, even if it did not believe then any more in one transcendent God. In 1978, he declares at a meeting with Martin Niemöller: I am a Socialist who is located in the Christian tradition. I am proud of this tradition. I see the Christianisme like a specific expression of the hopes and dreams of humanity . The bond between these two traditions is expressed through the friendship of a whole life with Helmut Gollwitzer and also in the double name of its first wire Hosea-Che which refer at the same time to the biblical prophets Hosea and with the Argentinian revolutionist Che Guevara.

Economic analysis

Dutschke tried to apply the Critique political economy of Marx to time present and also to develop it. He considered the social system and economic the Federal Republic of Germany as started from a world capitalism complexes which penetrates all the sectors of life and oppresses the paid population.

The proletariat makes certainly take part the market economy in the relative prosperity of the advanced industrialized countries, thus amalgamates it however in capitalism and misleads it on the effective power struggles. The Representative democracy and the Parlementarisme are thus for Dutschke the expression of a 'repressive tolerance (Herbert Marcuse) which mask the exploitation of the workers and protect the privileges from having. He does not think that these structures can be reformed; they should rather be changed in a differentiated international revolutionary process which it describes as long walk by the institutions . As a Federal republic, Dutschke expects, after the end of the Economic miracle, at one period of stagnation. The maintenance by the Subsidy of nonprofitable sectors like agriculture and mining industry will not be in the future any more financially possible. Massive suppressions of employment are thus foreseeable which will lead to crises structural of capitalism and will force the State with interventions increasingly more massive in the economy which will lead to a integral state control . The State will direct the economy in its totality all while maintaining formally the private property. Such a State is stable only while resorting to the force against the victims not agreeing of this structural crisis. Dutschke sees in technological advance a base for fundamental changes of the company: the Automation, the increasing use of the Computer S and the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes make work paid less and less essential. Ansi of the working time will be released, which could be used against the system. For this inversion necessary, the prone revolutionist is however lacking in the Federal republic. Basing on Marcuse), ( the unidimensional man ), Dutschke believes in a gigantic system of handling which manufactures a new suffering of the masses which are not even able any more to revolt . The German proletarians lived plugged in a distorts conscience and could not thus directly any more perceive violence structural of the capitalist State . A self-management of its interests, its needs, its desires thus became historically impossible .

On the German unit

Dice the period of its youth in GDR, Dutschke regarded the division of Germany as a Anachronisme, since the two German States should initially surmount the heritage of Fascism. August 14th, 1961, Dutschke attacked the Berlin Wall and was stopped for that in Western Berlin.

In its biography of Dutschke, generally rejected by the specialists, Bernd Rabehl in his/her former comrade of fight the representative of a national revolution tried to see. Gretchen Klotz vigorously contradicted it: Rudi wanted to remove the obedience of the characteristics of a German identity. It fought for Germany antiautoritaire, democratic and linked in a world antiautoritaire, democratic and socialist. It was not a national-revolutionist but a Socialist internationalist who, contrary to others, had understood that it is politically false to be unaware of the national question. He sought something completely again which is freed from the authoritative and national-chauvinistic German past. That which interprets the ideas of Rudi differently falsifies them .

On terrorism

Marxist antiautoritaire, Dutschke kept away from all the concepts likely to generate an insulation of the population and a delay of his awakening. He also faced of an eye criticizes with individual terror founded, after the decomposition of the SDS in 1970, by various groups of the radical left such as the Tupamaros of Western Berlin or the Red Army Fraction ( Rote Armee Fraktion RAF ). November 9th, 1974, Holger Meins, member of the RAF dies in prison of an hunger strike. At the time of its burial, Dutschke raises the fist and declares: Holger, the combat continues! .

After the murder of Günter von Drenkmann, it reacts in a letter addressed to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel in which it declares: " Holger the combat continues! That means for me that the fight of exploited and of humiliated for their social release constitutes the single base of our political action as a Socialist and communist revolutionists. The assassination of a president of room antifascist and social democrat must however be included/understood like murder in the German tradition reactionary. The class struggle is a process of training. Terror handicaps however each process of training of oppressed and humiliated the ". Later on, in a private letter of February 1st, 1975 addressed to the representative of the SPD to the the Bundestag Freimut Duve, Dutschke explains why its intervention with funerals of Meins is certainly psychologically comprehensible but politically however too not very considered . The April 7th 1977, the day of the murder of federal prosecuting attorney Siegfried Buback, it notes in its diary: the cut of continuity on the left in the SDS has consequences mortals which become perceptible. What to make? The socialist party becomes increasingly more essential! . He then regards the creation of a party to the left of the SPD as an alternative necessary to terrorism. During the German autumn of 1977, one reproached many intellectuals for having created the feeder layer mental of the RAF. In the newspaper Die Zeit of the September 16th, Dutschke turns over the reproach to the dominant parties and warns against the consequences of terror: individual terror leads to the despotism and not to socialism. However, the Stuttgarter Zeitung of the September 24th shows it to be personally a precusrsor of RAF: It is well Rudi Dutschke which had required that the concept urban guerilla warfare be developed in this country and that the war in the metropolises imperialists is caused.

Dutschke rétorqué that the attack against him generated " a mental, political and psychosocial climate of inhumanity " (August 2nd 1978) and it still underlined in December 1978: individual terror is hostile the masses and to antihumanist. Each small initiative citizen, each politico-social movement of young people, women, unemployed, each movement of class struggle is hundred times worthier and qualitatively different from the most spectacular action from individual terror.

On parliamentarism

Dutschke resolutely rejected into the years 1960 the representative democracy: the Parliament does not guarantee the popular representation. In a maintenance on television, on December 3rd, 1967, he explains: I consider that the existing parliamentary system is useless: we do not have in our Parliament of representatives who express the interests of our population, truths interests of our population. Admittedly they can ask now: Which truths interests? But the requirements are well there. Even at the Parliament. Requirement of reunification, guarantee of the work stations, guarantee of public finances, given in order of the economy, these are requirements that the Parliament must meet. But that it cannot realize it that if it starts a critical dialog with the population. Today, separation is total between the representatives at the Parliament and the people held in minority . To surmount this gap between controlling and controlled, Dutchke decided in favor of a République of the Councils which he wanted to develop in an exemplary way in Western Berlin.

External bonds

„Zu Protokoll - Interview of Rudi Dutschke by Günter Graus (1967)

Short biographies:

Biography
Radio allemande of Berlin: to remember Rudi Dutschke

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