International Vietnam Congress

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Demonstration call (gummed note approx. 7 × 10 cm in size)

The International Vietnam Congress (also known as the International Vietnam Conference) took place on February 17 and 18, 1968 in the Auditorium Maximum of the TU Berlin in West Berlin and was an important event of the German student movement of the 1960s with around 5000 participants and 44 delegations from 14 countries. Years .

The organizers of the event were the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) from West Berlin and the Brussels Conference , a loose association of various left-wing youth organizations from Western Europe; Rudi Dutschke and Karl Dietrich Wolff are considered to be the main actors .

The central theme was the resistance to the US- led Vietnam War in particular and Western imperialism in general, the congress also served to strengthen the international contacts of the SDS.

The conference ended with a declaration of solidarity with the Vietnamese FNL (Viet Cong) and a subsequent demonstration with around 12,000 participants.

Background and preparation

Against since 1965 performed with an open American participation Vietnam War, a worldwide, supported particularly by student protest movement in which a developed neo-Marxist primed anti-imperialism with anti-Americanism combined, and this seemingly paradoxical that one of American protest culture had borrowed in forms.

In West Germany, the "Vietnam - Analysis of an Example" congress, organized by Rudi Dutschke and the SDS and led by Herbert Marcuse as the main speaker, took place at the University of Frankfurt as early as 1966 , in which around 2,200 students and trade unionists took part. In the final declaration of the Frankfurt Congress it was said that the intervention policy of the USA not only threatens the existence of the Vietnamese people, but also contradicts the vital interests of the great majority of the population in the USA and the countries allied with them.

After Benno Ohnesorg was shot at the demonstration against the Shah on June 2, 1967 in West Berlin, the student movement became radicalized. The protests reached a climax in early 1968, partly because of the impending adoption of the emergency laws. At the same time, the decisive Tet offensive began in Vietnam at the end of January .

The Vietnam War became a major issue in student politics. The Berlin SDS therefore decided to organize a larger event in the city on the subject. West Berlin was on the one hand the center of the German student movement, on the other hand the city, which was divided by the Cold War, was deliberately chosen as the location of the conference as an " intersection and provocation at the same time" . After a rejection by the Free University of Berlin , the TU agreed to provide the appropriate premises. In order to emphasize the internationality of the event, the Brussels conference , according to its own statements, "an amalgamation of various left-socialist and left-communist youth organizations from Western Europe" became the official organizer.

Course of the congress

Audimax of the TU Berlin at the International Vietnam Congress

The start of the congress on Saturday, February 17th, was preceded by a campaign by the press, especially by the Springer newspapers; The West Berlin Senate also opposed the Vietnam Conference.

The congress took place in the Audimax, in several neighboring lecture halls and in the corridors of the Technical University. With (depending on the estimate) 3000 to 6000 participants, the building was very overcrowded. About 3000 of the participants came from West Germany and the West. The Free German Youth of the GDR , which supported the congress, had promised to simplify the transit for participants arriving by car (waiver of road tolls and accelerated clearance), which, however, only worked to a limited extent due to the lack of consultation with the GDR customs officials.

The main auditorium was decorated in the colors of the Viet Cong (blue, red, yellow), behind the speaker's platform hung a red and blue flag with a yellow star on which the inscription: “For the victory of the Vietnamese revolution. It is the duty of every revolutionary to make the revolution ”(this slogan is a quote attributed to Che Guevara ). Another poster expressed the organizers' militancy : "What is open to us is not so much the weapon of criticism as armed criticism!"

The conference was divided into three parts:

  • Forum I: The Vietnamese Revolution
  • Forum II: The Vietnamese Revolution and the Revolution in the Third World
  • Forum III: The anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle in the capitalist countries .

Accompanied by shouts of Ho Chi Minh and red flags, Karl Dietrich Wolff opened the congress as SDS federal chairman at around 1 p.m. Together with him on the podium sat Klaus Meschkat (chairman of the Republican Club ), Johannes Agnoli (FU assistant) and Reiner Wethekam (chairman of the TU student council) and Rudi Dutschke . Dutschke, who was at the height of his popularity, was regarded as the tireless and omnipresent main actor of the conference and directed much of the discussion. He gave a speech that resembled an "end of time vision" through demands and declarations of war against the entire western society . Hans-Jürgen Krahl , a leading member of the Frankfurt SDS, called for NATO to be broken up .

The Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli , who had part-financed the congress, spoke on behalf of the international participants. According to the organizers, a total of 44 delegations from 14 countries took part. Important foreign participants were Alain Krivine and Daniel Bensaïd (both Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire ) as well as Daniel Cohn-Bendit ( Liaison d'Etudiants Anarchistes ) from France, Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn ( New Left Review and Vietnam Solidarity Campaign ) from the United Kingdom and Bernardine Dohrn ( Students for a Democratic Society ) from the USA.

Other speakers included Peter Weiss , Erich Fried , Ernest Mandel , Gaston Salvatore and Bahman Nirumand .

More than 15,000 people attended the final demonstration. Dutschke called on them to smash NATO, and he invited the American soldiers stationed in West Berlin to desert en masse . Originally he wanted to lead the demonstration to Berlin-Lichterfelde and occupy the McNair barracks there. Since the American armed forces had announced that they would use the firearm in this case, he decided not to do so after talks with Günter Grass , Regional Bishop Kurt Scharf and Heinrich Albertz .

requirements

One of the theses published in the final declaration was: "Today US imperialism is trying to incorporate the Western European metropolises into its policy of colonial counterrevolution via NATO ." They professed their solidarity with the Vietnamese revolution, which is considered part of the socialist Considered world revolution .

literature

  • Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey: The 68 movement: Germany, Western Europe, USA , Munich: Beck, 2001 ISBN 3-406-47983-9
  • Michael Ludwig Müller: Berlin 1968: the other perspective , Berlin: Berlin-Story-Verl. 2008
  • Nicole Dombrowski: The international Vietnam Congress 1968 in the light of the press , Munich: GRIN Verlag GmbH, 2007
  • Tilman P. Fichter and Siegward Lönnendonker: History of the SDS 1946-1970 . With a foreword by Klaus Meschkat and part of a picture by Klaus Mehner †, Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-8498-1259-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Philipp Gassert : Anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism around 1968: Protests against US foreign policy . In: Gerrit Dworok and Christoph Weißmann (eds.): 1968 and the 68er. Events, effects and controversies in the Federal Republic . Böhlau, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21016-8 , pp. 153–170, here pp. 159 and 164 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  2. ^ Education server Hessen: Congress "Vietnam - Analysis of an example" at the University of Frankfurt - May 22, 1966/44 years  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / dms.bildung.hessen.de  
  3. ↑ Bernd Rabehl : Feindblick, The SDS in the crosshairs of the "Cold War". Berlin 2000, p. 57
  4. ^ Philipp Gassert: Anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism around 1968: Protests against US foreign policy . In: Gerrit Dworok and Christoph Weißmann (eds.): 1968 and the 68er. Events, effects and controversies in the Federal Republic . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21016-8 , pp. 153–170, here p. 166 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  5. ^ Michael Ludwig Müller: Berlin 1968. The other perspective . Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2008, pp. 195/96
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar : Frankfurt School and Student Movement , Volume 1, p. 298
  7. ↑ Thomas P. Becker and Ute Schröder (eds.): Student protests of the sixties. Archive Guide - Chronicle - Bibliography. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2000, p. 175.
  8. ↑ Jacques Schuster : Heinrich Albertz. The man who lived several lives. A biography. Fest, Berlin 1997, p. 253 ff .; Petra Terhoeven: German autumn in Europe. Left-wing terrorism in the 1970s as a transnational phenomenon . Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-85558-6 , p. 113 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  9. ↑ The Final Declaration of the International Vietnam Conference on 17/18. February 1968 in West Berlin