Dutschke Street - zgberlin

Kreuzberg-Friedrichshein to vote over street for shot student leader

By Marek Dutschke

Imagine what it would be like if someone wanted to name a prominent street in the middle of Berlin after the father you never met, because he died before you were born. Well, on January 21st every citizen of the Berlin district of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshein is called upon to decide whether my father, Rudi Dutschke, will have a street named after him.

During the late sixties Rudi Dutschke polarized West Berlin and even 26 years after his death he is still a controversial figure. In the late sixties he became the charismatic leader of Germany's student movement, where his ideas for an alternative societal and political system, was a provocation to the established powers.

After WWII the two divided German states were countries left in ruin from 13 dark years of Nazism. Germans had little experience with human rights and participatory democracy. In the minds of many Germans, an authoritarian way of thinking was still ever present. The allied victors and the new German leadership neglected to address this problem, because everyone was poor, some had nothing to eat and the cold war was about to begin.

Rudi Dutschke grew up in the Soviet sector of Germany, in a town called Luckenwalde which lies south of Berlin. His father Alfred had been a soldier in the Wehrmacht and was captured by the Russians and did not return from captivity till 1948, at which point he became a mailman. As a child he was strongly influenced through his connection to the Christian community in Luckenwalde. As a teenager he truly believed that Germans should never carry a weapon again and his idealistic stance on the rearmament of the East German army, Nationale Volksarmee, got him into trouble.

Rudi Dutschke was planning to study sports journalism in Leipzig after receiving his Abitur (general qualification for university entrance), but then school officials pressured him to go to the army. He decided not to follow their threats and even held a public speech in the school auditorium in front of the whole school, where he told his classmates not to join the army either. These Christian and pacifistic tendencies led to his grades being downgraded and not being allowed to enter sports journalism studies in Leipzig.

Rudi Dutschke then left the GDR and moved to West Berlin, where he had to reacquire his Abitur (general qualification for university entrance). Shortly after his relocation to West Berlin on August 13th 1961, the “Wall” was built and he was cut off from his Luckenwalder roots and more importantly his family. He did not see his mother again till 1967.

This period was a drastic separation and departure from everything Rudi Dutschke had known and was combined with living in West Berlin and its impressions of a capitalistic consumer oriented system, while beginning his studies in Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin. In the GDR censored Marxist-Leninist teachings were ever present, but in West Berlin he was able to find uncensored Marxist readings. In the world of the leftist Philosophers Marx, Lenin, Mao, Bakunin, Luckacs, Bloch and Marcuse he found a new home.

Rudi Dutschke read philosophy books all day long and quickly became one of the leading theorists within the student body. Early on he joined a more action oriented group called “Subversiven Aktion”, where they put up illegal posters and organized “Sit-ins”. It was not till 1964 that several members of the “Subversiven Aktion”, including Rudi Dutschke, joined the German Socialist Student Alliance (SDS), where they became the Anti-Authoritarian Wing of the SDS.

The student movement gained in numbers all through the sixties as there was a great unrest, because of societal repression of individual liberties. This manifested itself in persecution of women who had an abortion, unmarried couples were not allowed to live together nor purchase condoms. Not to mention that many former Nazis had influential leadership positions, Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger just to name one. The student rebellion and the SDS, which became the leading force of the student movement, demanded a change. They provoked the majority of the population by growing long hair, wearing jeans, smoking weed and listening to the Rolling Stones proposing, as well as proposing an alternative to US capitalism and Soviet Communism.

Yet, the regular Joes of Berlin did not understand why the students were so rebellious. Some viewed the students as the “fifth column” of the Soviet Union, while others viewed them as ungrateful and spoiled troublemakers. The situation escalated on June 2cd, 1967 after the student Benno Ohnesorg, who had been protesting against the Shah of Iran, was shot and killed by a trigger happy policeman. This led to large demonstrations and a dangerously explosive situation. Particularly, the newspapers belonging to Axel Springer (Bild Zeitung, Berliner Morgenpost, die Welt) were guilty of pouring oil into the fire. They reported the day after the shooting that a policeman had been stabbed, which never happened, and did not report on the dead student. They printed caricatures, where on the one had they showed a SA Nazi member in 1938 breaking a window of a Jewish store and on the other they showed a member of the SDS breaking a window of a “Berliner Morgenpost” paper stand. This dangerous situation exploded on April 11th 1968.

An assassination attempt against Rudi Dutschke brought a new level of violence to the streets of Berlin. A young man named Joseph Bachmann shot Rudi Dutschke three times and fled the scene of the crime. In the aftermath the students organized themselves on the Technical University Campus and then as a group marched to the seat of the Axel Springer newspapers, which lies in the Kochstrasse, the same street that the citizens of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain are voting upon to change the name into Rudi-Dutschkestrasse.

Rudi Dutschke survived the assassination attempt and lived another 11 years till the effects from the three bullets ended his life tragically on Christmas eve 1979, four months before I was born. It was 25 years after his death that the leftist newspaper “taz” whose building is also in the Kochstrasse proposed to change the street name. The socialist party (PDS) and the Greens/Alliance 90 agreed to support the proposal and with their combined votes had a majority of the local parliament to force the name change.

After the local parliament in Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain voted to the change the street name, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) decided to try and prevent the change by forcing a referendum, because they argued that Rudi Dutschke had been a troublemaker. They were able to collect over 4000 signatures, thus forcing the referendum.

My family and I see the street naming as a try to learn from the mistakes of history. The possible Rudi-Dutschkestrasse would run past the building of the newspapers that in the sixties was the strongest opponent of the student movement. Even more fascinating is the aspect there is already an Axel-Springerstrasse around the corner and if the vote turns out to be positive for the Dutschkestrasse, then these two names would come full circle. I am of the strong opinion that Rudi Dutschke deserves this street. His desire to make Germany a more liberal, democratic and egalitarian place is a deed that demands respect. I hope that next Sunday, January 21st, the citizens of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshein will give him that respect.

My name is Marek Dutschke. I was born April 16th, 1980 in Arhus, Denmark. I grew up in Boston and Hamburg and attended the University of Massachusetts from 1999-2003. After graduating from college, I received a Fulbright Scholarship to research right wing radicalism in rural Eastern Germany. Upon the completion of my research, I worked in the German Bundestag, the Federal Foreign Office, and the European Union Parliament. I am currently working as a programme officer in the Dean's Office of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.