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Rudi Dutschke: Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben
German
- GenresBiography
511 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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June 27, 2010Spannend! Eindringliche Beschreibung einer schillernden Figur der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte! Und so ganz "nebenbei" auch eine faszinierende Beschreibung der damaligen Verhältnisse in Westdeutschland. Und erschreckend, wie sehr speziell Ende der 60er und in den 70ern die Grundsätze der Demokratie mit politischen Füßen getreten worden sind (Radikalenerlass, Versammlungsverbote, politisch geduldete Medienhetze etc.).
Etwas Wehmut ob des damaligen "bürgerlichen Engagements" und der vielfältigen politischen Aktivitäten außerhalb der Parteienlandschaft befällt einen beim Lesen allerdings auch - heute wäre all das wohl nur ein virtuelles Spiel im Web 2.0: lediglich fiktives Theoretisieren und Null reale Aktion...
Etwas Wehmut ob des damaligen "bürgerlichen Engagements" und der vielfältigen politischen Aktivitäten außerhalb der Parteienlandschaft befällt einen beim Lesen allerdings auch - heute wäre all das wohl nur ein virtuelles Spiel im Web 2.0: lediglich fiktives Theoretisieren und Null reale Aktion...
June 10, 2021
Dynamiken sozialer Bewegungen, Diskussion und Interpretation kommunistischer Theorien und Praxis, die Gründung der Grünen Partei und was ein aktives politisches Leben bedeuten kann: Die Biografie von Gretchen Dutschke über ihren Mann hält vieles bereit.
Definitiv lesenswert und lehrreich. Leider hat mich dieses Buch selten in seinen Bann gezogen und gefesselt.
Definitiv lesenswert und lehrreich. Leider hat mich dieses Buch selten in seinen Bann gezogen und gefesselt.
May 20, 2023
This biography of West Berlin student leader Rudi Dutschke was written by his widow, the American Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz, who still lives in Berlin today. It's great! I wish I had read it sooner.
Dutschke was the figurehead of the youth radicalization in the years before 1968. He was shot in the head by a right-wing terrorist on April 11, 1968 — a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King —, and almost died. It took him months to learn to walk and speak again. He subsequently left West Berlin and West Germany. He tried to settle in Cambridge, but was expelled from the UK as an undesirable alien, and then lived in Aarhus in Denmark. On Christmas Eve in 1979, he had a seizure in the bathtub and died — the assassin's bullet did indeed kill Dutschke, but with an 11-year delay.
I had assumed that Dutschke's activity in the last decade of his life was minimal. In fact, he was constantly traveling to West Berlin, West Germany, and other parts of Europe, speaking at hundreds of events and writing constantly. He even managed to visit East Germany a few times, where his family still lived.
Dutschke was such an idiosyncratic thinker: he defined himself as a Marxist socialist, but remained an observant protestant Christian as well. While he stressed the need for organization, he was only sporadically involved in organizations himself. By the end of his life, in the emerging Green Party, he was fighting for communists ("sectarians") to be excluded and for conservative bourgeois figures to be included.
He was just 39 when he died. On the 50th anniversary of his death, the city of Berlin put a plaque at the site of the shooting. The murderers of this revolutionary leader now try to present him as a saintly reformer. Dutschke's kids aren't helping either: the three of them, while defending their father's memory, are all social democrats and Greens.
The author has a profound understanding of Dutschke's personality but also his complex and contradictory philosophical ideas. The two of them thought and discussed a lot about the tensions in their relationship, and so we get a really intimate look at a public figure. This is worth a read to understand 1968 in West Germany — its potential and also its limits.
Dutschke was the figurehead of the youth radicalization in the years before 1968. He was shot in the head by a right-wing terrorist on April 11, 1968 — a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King —, and almost died. It took him months to learn to walk and speak again. He subsequently left West Berlin and West Germany. He tried to settle in Cambridge, but was expelled from the UK as an undesirable alien, and then lived in Aarhus in Denmark. On Christmas Eve in 1979, he had a seizure in the bathtub and died — the assassin's bullet did indeed kill Dutschke, but with an 11-year delay.
I had assumed that Dutschke's activity in the last decade of his life was minimal. In fact, he was constantly traveling to West Berlin, West Germany, and other parts of Europe, speaking at hundreds of events and writing constantly. He even managed to visit East Germany a few times, where his family still lived.
Dutschke was such an idiosyncratic thinker: he defined himself as a Marxist socialist, but remained an observant protestant Christian as well. While he stressed the need for organization, he was only sporadically involved in organizations himself. By the end of his life, in the emerging Green Party, he was fighting for communists ("sectarians") to be excluded and for conservative bourgeois figures to be included.
He was just 39 when he died. On the 50th anniversary of his death, the city of Berlin put a plaque at the site of the shooting. The murderers of this revolutionary leader now try to present him as a saintly reformer. Dutschke's kids aren't helping either: the three of them, while defending their father's memory, are all social democrats and Greens.
The author has a profound understanding of Dutschke's personality but also his complex and contradictory philosophical ideas. The two of them thought and discussed a lot about the tensions in their relationship, and so we get a really intimate look at a public figure. This is worth a read to understand 1968 in West Germany — its potential and also its limits.
October 5, 2023
Eindrücklich nahe Beschreibung der Wellen in denen Soziale Bewegungen verlaufen, dem Irren und Anstrengen zu Veränderung, und dem Ringen mit der Frage wie wir leben wollen.
February 16, 2016
After having read Schneider's book about the German 68's, I decided to give Gretchen Dutschke's biography of her husband, Rudi Dutschke, a go as well as you can't get any more inside than that.
Beside being a great read for a historian this book is also very interesting from a political theory perspective. It deals with everything from Habermas to Marx and a lot in between and Gretchen's interpretation adds an additional layer to the narrative and the understanding of Rudi's motives. A really really good read.
Beside being a great read for a historian this book is also very interesting from a political theory perspective. It deals with everything from Habermas to Marx and a lot in between and Gretchen's interpretation adds an additional layer to the narrative and the understanding of Rudi's motives. A really really good read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews