Anti-‐Nuclear Activism in the Rhine Valley A

“Today the Fish, Tomorrow Us:” Anti-Nuclear Activism in the Rhine Valley and Beyond, 1970-1979 Stephen Milder A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill, 2012 Approved by: Dr. Konrad Jarausch Dr. Miles Fletcher Dr. Lawrence Goodwyn Dr. Karen Hagemann Dr. Holger Moroff Dr. Donald Reid ©2012 Stephen Milder ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT STEPHEN MILDER: “Today the Fish, Tomorrow Us:” Anti-Nuclear Activism in the Rhine Valley and Beyond, 1970-1979 (under the direction of Konrad H. Jarausch) My dissertation analyZes the growth and development of the anti-nuclear movement in Western Europe during the 1970s. The primary focus of my research is a series of anti-reactor protests that spanned the Rhine River, connecting rural villages in German Baden, the French Alsace, and Northwest SwitZerland. I seek to explain how these grassroots protests influenced public opinion about nuclear energy far from the Rhine Valley and spawned national anti-nuclear movements. I argue that democracy matters played a key role in grassroots protesters’ coalescence around the issue of nuclear energy and the growth of their movement beyond the local level. After politicians repeatedly dismissed their constituents’ concerns about the proposed “nuclearization” of the Rhine, local people created a trans-national “imagined community” as an alternative to the state, and national governments that they considered dysfunctional. Thus the association of nuclear energy with democracy matters achieved by local protesters in the Rhine Valley, many of whom were conservative farmers, was a key step towards the rise of mass anti-nuclear movements and the emergence of environmental values in Western Europe during the 1970s. iii Preface The initial inspiration for this project came during the year I spent as a high school exchange student in rural Franconia. The cooling towers of the Grafenrheinfeld nuclear reactor—and the long trail of steam that they emitted— were a constant presence in Sulzheim, the village where I lived. My host mother refused to let the reactor worry her, however. “It’s best to live so close,” she told me without any hint of sarcasm, “that way we’ll go nice and quick if anything ever happens.” In SulZheim, like many of the surrounding villages, the massive reactor was little more than an ever present reminder that the town of Grafenrheinfeld had become quite prosperous on account of the taxes it collected from the plant’s operator. Like my host mother and our neighbors, I learned to live with the reactor. I just didn’t think about it much at all. Instead, something else captured my attention in Germany. In 1998, the year before I came to Franconia, the Green party had entered in the German government for the first time as the junior partner to the Social Democrats. I’d never heard of the Green party before, but in the summer of 2000 when I returned to the States, I found out that there was in fact a US Green party, and that Ralph Nader was running for president on the Green ticket. The discrepancy between the German Greens, who were playing a prominent role in government, and their American counterparts, who were only acknowledged in order to be dismissed as spoilers in the tight 2000 election, intrigued me. Everyone iv seemed to attribute the vast gulf between the two parties’ roles to the drastic differences between the two countries’ electoral systems. But I wanted to understand this difference better. Why did Germany have a Green party in the first place, I wondered. The more I learned about German politics, the more I realiZed that though it was undoubtedly much easier for a new party to enter the Bundestag than the House of Representatives, it was certainly no mean feat to establish a new party and to overcome the Federal Republic’s so-called 5% hurdle. Understanding how the first new party to enter the Bundestag in three decades came to be interested me in the anti-nuclear movement, as one of the key “new social movements” from which the Green “movement party” had supposedly emerged. Yet my study of the anti-nuclear movement revealed to me that it was not just “environmental concerns” that motivated grassroots anti-reactor activism during the early 1970s. Everywhere I looked, I found people who were worried not just concerned about nuclear energy or even the environment more generally, but about a whole host of larger issues. These worries ranged from material matters to fears about the future of the German genetic heritage, but a great many of them were connected to matters of democracy. Thus, this project has in many ways come full circle, reuniting my interests in the differences between German and American democracy and my experiences as an exchange student in the shadow of the Grafenrheinfeld reactor. I owe a great debt to the many remarkable people who have helped me to find my way over the course of this long journey. Three teachers, Valerie Rousse, v Linda Cole, and Patricia Sullivan, launched me on this path even before I ever set foot in Germany or considered studying history. Andy Markovits, who guided my first attempt to research the Greens and to answer my questions about their idea of democracy, showed me that such research could be done, told me how to do it, and put me in contact with key Greens. Moreover, Andy has remained a friend and mentor over the many years since we first met in Cambridge. Through good luck (and sometimes even a little planning) our paths have crossed everywhere from Bloomington to Vienna over the past decade. Here at the University of North Carolina, I have been fortunate to encounter a number of people passionate about the values that have motivated my research. From my comrades in SDS and in the struggle to preserve the UNC system, to a handful of colleagues in the history department, these friends have helped me to better understand the movement I am studying and motivated me to stay active outside of the library. In particular, Alex and Adrianne Jacobs, Ben Carroll and Ana- Maria Reichenbach, and Philipp Stelzel have provided both friendship and inspiration throughout my time at Chapel Hill. I could not have carried out my research in Europe without the generosity of Susann Minter, Kurt, Edeltraud, Maxx, and Anna Werner, Geli, Jones, and Meli Thurn, as well as Dominik Thurn and Nicole Brenner. They housed Jamie and I time and again on our trips to Germany and provided remarkable warmth and friendship. Christof Mauch, who supervised my work in Munich, provided intellectual support through the Rachel Carson Center and personal support by opening up his home to us. We will not soon forget the delicious Thanksgiving dinner we enjoyed with his vi family in Tutzing. In a practical sense, my research simply would not have been possible without the generous support of the DAAD, the Fulbright Program, UNC’s Center for European Studies, and the history department’s Mowry fund, which financed my research trips to Germany, SwitZerland, and France. A host of archivists not only helped me to find the collections I needed, they also made my research enjoyable and shared my excitement about this project. Robert Camp and Christoph Becker-Schaum at the Böll Foundation’s Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis in Berlin have aided me countless times since my first research trip to Germany in the summer of 2003. The entire staff of that archive has made each trip to the Eldenaerstraße seem like a visit to old friends. Wolfgang Hertle at the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung guided me through collections at several different archives in the Hanseatic city and helped me to better understand the graswurzel groups over several meals during a short stay in Hamburg that I wish could have been much longer. The assistance of Volkmar Vogt at the Archiv Soziale Bewegungen in Freiburg was absolutely essential to this project. Not only did Volkmar help me to locate important sources, keep the archive open for me on days it was scheduled to be closed, and scan documents for me after I was back in North Carolina—he also introduced me to the activists who are at the absolute center of this research. By far the most exciting and meaningful aspect of my time in Europe was the opportunity to speak with the people about whom I have written. Walter Mossmann gave me invaluable insights and facilitated meetings with many other activists. Günter Sacherer and Ute Friedrich opened their home to me and have vii remained in close contact ever since my visit to Oberrotweil in early 2010. Countless others went out of their way to tell me their stories, to share documents with me, and to introduce me to further contacts who helped me to grasp the contours of the movement I was investigating. I simply could not have understood the Rhenish anti-nuclear movement without the kindness and assistance of these amaZing people. After I returned from Europe, Evan Torner and other members of the graduate students’ writing group based in the German Department at the University of Massachusetts probably saved me from giving up on this project during a difficult year in Brattleboro, Vermont. The group welcomed me with open arms and helped to shape my dissertation in the early stages of writing. Patrick Tobin, Matt Feminella, and Emma Woelk formed the core of an incredibly productive writing group here in North Carolina. They continued to provide immensely valuable feedback despite my rising stress level and deadlines that seemed to jump ever closer.

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