The 68ers : Germany

In the mid-1960s there began a period of radical change in society, not only in the Federal Republic of Germany but also in all the other countries of the West. The student revolts of 1968 marked an sharp radicalization of criticism of the “silence of the fathers” on the subject of the National Socialist crimes. Aestheticizing tendencies in literature were branded as attempts to obscure the social and economic causes of an economic structure which was perceived as unjust.

Many authors became social and political activists - while at the same time refusing to allow themselves to be appropriated for political purposes. Symptomatic of this trend was the decided opposition of many writers to the Vietnam War and their support for the new “Ostpolitik” (policy on the East), which sought to overcome the confrontation between East and West. Just as typical, however, was the search for a new role and new forms of literature. The thesis of the “death of literature” (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and Peter Weiss’s “Die Asthetik des Widerstandes” were a radical expression of these new reflections.

Likewise part of this political literature was the documentary theater (Rolf Hochhuth: “The Deputy”, 1963; Heinar Klipphardt: “In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer”, 1964), which in terms of content and intent was linked with the genre of partisan reporting (Gunter Wallraff: “Ihr da oben - wir da unten”, 1973) and the literature of the working world.