Rudi Dutschke Commemorated

Forty years ago this month the radical student leader Rudi Dutschke was  shot in the head by a crazed right-wing fanatic.  Many Germans applauded, but the students took to the streets and violent demonstrations erupted.  Today, after a four year campaign by the Tageszeitung, a street in Berlin has been named after Rudi Dutschke.  It happens to cross a street named after Dutschke’s nemesis, the late newspaper publisher Axel Springer (Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse has the right-of-way). Many believed it was the hate-filled attacks on Dutschke in Springer’s Bild-Zeitung that motivated his would-be assassin.

Rudi Dutschke was certainly a charismatic figure.  You can watch some great footage of him in this ZDF television documentary (1968 – Mythos und Wahrheit) on the student revolt of 1968. On the other hand, what specific ideas and proposals was he advocating?  Here it gets a bit fuzzy, and I have to agree with Lord Dahrendorf’s assessment of Dutschke which he articulated in a recent interview in taz (Dahrendorf actually debated Dutschke at a demo in Freiburg in 1968):

Seien wir ehrlich: Er war ein konfuser Kopf, der keine bleibenden
Gedanken hinterlassen hat. Worauf man heute zurückblickt, ist die
Person: ein anständiger, ehrlicher und vertrauenswürdiger Mann. Aber
ich wüsste niemand, der sagen würde: Das war Dutschkes Idee, die müssen
wir jetzt verfolgen. Die Diskussion war schlimm damals, er brachte all
diese Schlagworte, maoistische Versatzstücke, aber was er eigentlich
denkt, war nicht leicht festzustellen. (Let’s be honest: he was a very confused guy who didn’t leave behind any lasting ideas. Looking back, I found him to be a forthright, honorable and honest person. But no one today says: "That was Dutschke’s idea; we need to implement it. " The level of discussion was pretty bad back then. He tossed out all these slogans and Maoist fragments. But it was impossible to tell what he was really thinking.)

But love him or hate him – Dutschke embodied the spirit of 1968 like no other individual, so it is appropriate that a street in Berlin bears his name. 

Do we need a Rudi-Dutschke Street in America? Dutschke was Germany’s most vocal critic of America’s war in Vietnam. But he married an American, Gretchen Klotz, and had three children with her.  She lives today just outside Boston.