Liberal Student Union of Germany

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The Liberal Student Union of Germany (LSD) was the official university association of the FDP from 1950 to 1969 . In 1955, about 25 university groups belonged to the LSD; in 1965 there were 40 with a total of about 1,000 members.

Founded in order to " achieve the realization of the idea of ​​freedom in all areas of human life ", the LSD adopted programs in the 1950s, among other things, for the "new regulation of the legal and economic position of young academics" (1954) and for university reform (1956) and on "Student Citizenship Education" (1958). (all printed in: documents on university reform, see literature)

The first substantive differences with the FDP emerged at the end of the 1950s. Since 1960, the LSD delegate assemblies have regularly called for a social-liberal coalition in Bonn, but the party leadership under its then chairman Erich Mende rejected it just as reliably. In 1961, the year of the Bundestag election , the Munich university groups called for the election of the SPD for the first time because its new party program was the only one in Germany “ that provides a framework for a modern and socially oriented, non-nationalist liberalism ”. At that time, however, the FDP leadership shied away from taking drastic measures against their rebellious student association, especially since a free democratic student association (FDS), of all things, was offered as a potential successor , which in turn had emerged from the remnants of the right-wing banned Federation of National Students (BNS).

In the years that followed, tensions intensified when local LSD groups, together with the Social Democratic University Association, actively supported the SPD voter initiatives of the writer Günter Grass on several occasions , and SPD members were repeatedly elected to the federal executive committee. In 1964 the Supreme Agreement on mutual support was concluded with other left-wing student associations , at the end of the 1960s the LSD then became part of the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) and finally broke off all relations with the FDP in August 1969 because “ political cooperation between the two organizations did has not been possible for a long time ". The party had previously been insulted in LSD leaflets as the "appendage of the authoritarian state" and its exponents as "reactionary bastards".

After the student movement subsided, the LSD disintegrated and thus suffered a fate similar to that of the originally SPD-related SDS . As the official successor organization, the Liberal University Association was founded in May 1972 after two years of preparation . In contrast to this, the Social Liberal University Association (SLH), which was initially more right-wing liberal , emerged from the German Student Union founded in the late 1960s . In 1987 the SLH merged with the JuLi university groups , the Liberal Student Initiative (LSI) and various independent local university groups to form the Federal Association of Liberal University Groups (LHG), which has since taken on the role of the official FDP student association.

Intertwined with the LSD are the members of the organizations that were created later in the joint senior citizens' association , the Association of Liberal Academics .

literature

  • Volker Erhard u. a. (Ed.): For freedom and democracy. Contributions to the history of the Liberal Student Union of Germany (LSD) , Jena / Quedlinburg 2001.
  • Gerd Langguth : Protest movement. Development, decline, renaissance - The New Left since 1968 , Cologne 1983, p. 192.
  • Rolf Neuhaus (edit.): Documents on the University Reform 1945–1959 , Wiesbaden 1959, pp. 579–607.

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