The Other '68ers Student Protest and Christian Democracy in West Germany

This is a history of 1968 written from a new perspective-that of center-right student activists in West Germany. Based on oral history interviews and new archival sources, it examines the ideas, experiences, and repertoires of center-right students in this age of protest. Writing these activists back into the history of 1968 and its afterlives -including student protest, cultural revolt, internationalism, debates about left-wing violence and the terror of the Red Army Faction, the memory wars of the 1980s and beyond - reveals that this was a broader, more versatile, and, ultimately, more consequential phenomenon than the traditionally narrower focus on a left-wing minority allows.

Other '68ers demonstrates that we need a more nuanced history of the 1968 generation and of generational conflict during these years. Student activists comprised individuals from across the political spectrum, who often had very different ideas about what kind of a society they envisaged and how to address the shortcomings of West German democracy. 1968 was a moment of intense political conflict, but it also played out within the student body and nurtured contrasting identities.

This book shows that the center-right involvement in 1968 had real consequences. Many of the protagonists of this book would go on to pursue high-profile political careers and leave their mark on West German political culturey. Other '68ers therefore sheds fresh light on how West Germany's center-right dealt with the crisis of hegemony and political identity it experienced in the wake of 1968, how it coped with generational change, how it transformed and modernized after losing power at the national level for the first time in 1969, and how it managed to re-emerge so successfully in the 1980s.

Anna von der Goltz, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University, USA

Anna von der Goltz teaches German and European History in Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and Department of History. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2007 and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and at the University of Cambridge. Her first book Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford University Press, 2009) won the Wiener Library's Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. She has published widely on 1968 in Germany and beyond. Originally from the northern German city of Bremen, she lives in Washington, D.C..