The Other ‘68

In the German collective memory, Sixty-Eight involved young male students in big cities like Berlin and Frankfurt and, hovering in the background, was a generational conflict that fed on the dispute over how to deal with the Nazi past. Rudi Dutschke, the Students for Democratic Society and the Berlin Commune I were the main players. But is this really the whole story? In her brilliantly argued study, Christina von Hodenberg shows that Sixty-Eight was also female, it happened outside the big cities, the Nazi past was not the main driving force and parents had a greater understanding of their children’s concerns than it might seem in retrospect. By taking a closer look beneath the surface, The Other ‘68 provides the first true social history of this important moment in student activism and contemporary German history.