Second Phase: Emergence of an 'Epistemic Community', Mid

chapter 3 Second Phase: Emergence of an ‘Epistemic Community’, Mid-1960s to Early 1970s

1 Social and Political Context

The social and political landscape of the Federal Republic began to change considerably in the mid-1960s. West Germany found itself confronted with an unexpected economic recession for the first time in its history, leading to an (albeit brief) decline in the gross national product and a sudden trip- ling of unemployment to one half million. The first ‘grand coalition’ between the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the SPD, formed in December 1966 and comprising former Nazi Party member Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor and once-exiled resistance fighter Willy Brandt as vice-chancellor and foreign minister, was tasked with conducting efficient crisis management by updat- ing elements of Keynesian economic policy and deploying nevertheless largely defensive state intervention. The ‘Law on Promoting the Stability and Growth of the Economy’ and another on ‘Medium-Term Financial Planning’ were cre- ated by the federal government as instruments for interventionist and cor- rective measures targeting the economic conjuncture. The framework of this approach was provided by the so-called ‘magic square’ and ‘global steering’ policies, which would allegedly strike a balance between growth, price stability, full employment, and foreign trade balances. Things would also begin to shift in foreign policy terms, namely in relations with the Eastern European state-socialist bloc and the GDR in particular following decades of ossification under the Cold War banner. This move would even- tually lead to the foreign policy strategy of ‘change through rapprochement’ between the two German states later pursued by Chancellor Willy Brandt’s social-liberal coalition.The grand coalition also facilitated the establishment of a long-controversial measure which had thus far consistently failed to secure a parliamentary majority: the passing of the so-called ‘Emergency Acts’ (Not- standsgesetze). The SPD’s participation in the governing coalition removed it as a factor of resistance to the Emergency Acts, which was instead carried by a broad extra-parliamentary protest movement known as the Außerparla- mentarische Opposition (APO). The movement found its primary base among some sections of the trade unions, specifically IG Metall, protesting students, and critical intellectuals.This deeper confrontation between opposing concep-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004410169_005 42 chapter 3 tions of the Federal Republic’s future social and political character found its most acute expression in the conflicts provoked by the Emergency Acts. The struggle against the law coincided with the 1968 student movement, which reached its first initial highpoint in the anti-Springer campaign and actions against the Springer media empire following the attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke. The war in Vietnam, anti-colonial liberation movements, and the emergence of neo-fascist forces such as the National Democratic Party (NPD) had a particularly intense mobilising effect on the young oppositional intelligentsia. A renewal of labour struggles would also occur in parallel to other Western European countries, albeit markedly behind the extent and depth of strikes and other actions conducted by blue- and white-collar workers in France, Italy, and Great Britain.1 Nevertheless, events like the spontaneous ‘Septem- ber strikes’ in 1969 facilitated an at least partial leftward shift within the trade unions, expressed in among other things increased strike levels particularly in IG Metall.2 That the ideological straightjacket of the Adenauer era with its authoritarian conformism and government policy of suppressing the country’s Nazi past was beginning to unravel was evidenced by the founding (or ‘re-constitution’) of the German Communist Party (DKP) in 1968, which took the place of the still-illegal KPD and sought to attract sections of the soon-to- collapse student movement and groups of left-wing intelligentsia. This party would go on to play a not-negligible role in the later history of the Marburg School. It is always the case when seemingly unshakable social and political relations surprisingly begin to shift that the work and activity of cultural producers, avant-gardism, and innovative aesthetic processes will be involved – whether by seismographically anticipating the coming changes, radically questioning the status quo, or pushing forward new developments. This was also true of the cultural scene in the Federal Republic at the time, as pop art and neo-Dadaism began to emerge in the visual arts, particularly in the provocative art of Joseph Beuys, ‘New German Cinema’ directors like Ulrich Schamoni, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff challenged audiences, and dramas like Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy or Peter Weiss’s The Investigation about the Auschwitz trials dragged the country’s long-repressed and whitewashed Nazi past onto the theatre stage.3

1 See Albers, Goldschmidt and Oehlke 1971. 2 On this see Schumann, Gerlach, Gschlössl and Millhofer 1971; IMSF 1969. 3 Hochhuth 2006; Weiss 2010.