Seminar Questions:

• Why did protests brake out in West Germany in the 1960s (and not sooner or later)?

• What role did the past play in protest movement?

• How serious was the challenge of terrorism in West Germany?
• Why did the GDR not experience a similar wave of youth protests?
• How did East German state and society develop in the 1970s and 80s?
• How did relations between the two German states change in the 1970s and 80s?

Reading List:

Required Reading:

• Ute Poiger, 'Generations: The Revolutions of the 1960s' in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (OUP, 2011)
• Andreas W. Daum, 'The Two Germanies in the International World', Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (OUP, 2011)

Primary Sources:

• The "Sit-In" as a Means for Reforming the University (June 22, 1966)
• Ulrike Meinhof Calls for a Move from Protest to Resistance (May 1968)
• The 'Radicals Decree' (January 28, 1972)
• 'Two States, One Nation' (Speech by Willy Brandt, October 28, 1969)
• The Basic Treaty (December 21, 1972)
• A Participant Looks Back at the Unrest in East Germany in 1968 (Retrospective Account, 2003)
• The Definition of East German Identity in the Final GDR Constitution (October 7, 1974)

Further Reading:

1968 and all That:

• Timothy Scott Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Anti-Authoritarian Revolt, 1962-1978 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
• H. Bude, 'The German Kriegskinder: origins and impact of the generation of 1968.' In: Roseman, M. (ed.) Generations in conflict: youth revolt and generation formation in Germany 1770-1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Ch.14, pp. 290-305.
• Daniel Bensard, "Transnational memories : 1968 in recent German fiction" in Ingo Cornils and Sarah Waters (eds.), Memories of 1968 (2010)
• Daniel A. Gordon, "Hitler's children? : the German 1968 movement in the shadow of the Nazi past" in Ingo Cornils and Sarah Waters (eds.), Memories of 1968 (2010)
• Carola Fink, Ptemptemphilipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Ronald Fraser et al, 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (Chatto & Windus, 1988).
• Steve Giles & Maike Oergel (eds.), Counter-cultures in Germany and Central Europe : from Sturm und Drang to Baader-Meinhof (OUP, 2003)
• Gerd-Rainer Horn, The spirit of '68 : rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956-1976 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Katharina Karcher, Sisters in Arms? Female Participation in Leftist Political Violence in the Federal Republic of Germany Since 1970 (PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, 2013)
• Martin Klimke, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
• Uta G. Poiger, 'Generations: The ‘Revolutions’ of the 1960s' in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (OUP, 2012)
• Nick Thomas, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A Social History of Dissent and Democracy (Berg, 2003)
• Dorothee Wierling, 'Generations and Generational Conflicts in East and West Germany in Christopher Klessmann (ed.), The divided past : rewriting post-war German history (Berg, 2001), pp. 69-90

Terrorism in West Germany:

• Stefan Aust, The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008) easy, somewhat descriptive, and long journalist book about the RAF (also as a 2009 eponymous movie)
• Sarah Colvin, Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence, and Identity (London: Camden House, 2009)
• Larry Frohman, 'Datenschutz, the Defense of Law, and the Debate over Precautionary Surveillance:The Reform of Police Law and the Changing Parameters of State Action in West Germany', German Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2015), pp. 307-327
• Robert Hager, "Baader-Meinhof Complexities: Ideology and the 'Root Causes' of Terrorism", Democracy and Security, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2011), pp. 57-65
• Karrin Hanshew, "‘Sympathy for the Devil?’ The West German Left and the Challenge of Terrorism," Contemporary European History (21, 4 2012): 511-53
• Karrin Hanshew, Terror and Democracy in West Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
• Ulrike Meinhof, Everybody Talks About the Weather...We Don't: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof, ed. by Karin Bauer (New York: Seven Stories, 2008)
• Leith Passmore, "The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction", German History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2009), pp. 32-59

Development and Decline in the GDR:

• Peter C. Caldwell; Karrin Hanshew, Germany since 1945 (Bloomsbury, 2018), Chapters 5 and 8
• Stefan WolleDavid Burnett, The Ideal World of Dictatorship: Daily Life and Party Rule in the GDR, 1971-89 (Links Christoph Verlag, 2019)
• Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany , 1945-1989 (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 41-72
• Hester Vaizey, Born in the GDR: Life in the Shadow of the Wall (OUP, 2014)