Republican Club

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Letterhead Republican Club eV Berlin
Wielandstrasse 27–28 in Berlin-Charlottenburg (Photo: 2014)

The Republican Club (RC) was a left-wing association in West Berlin that is part of the extra-parliamentary opposition (APO). Its communication and action center was in Berlin's Wielandstrasse 27 (near Kurfürstendamm ) and was founded in 1967 by Johannes Agnoli , William Borm , Ossip K. Flechtheim , Hans Magnus Enzensberger , Wilfried Gottschalch , Ekkehart Krippendorff , Klaus Meschkat , Marianne Regensburger , Nikolausann, Wolfgang Neuss , Lothar Pinkall and Manfred Rexin founded.

Based on the Berlin model, similar associations were founded in many other places in the Federal Republic of Germany, some of which were also named Club Voltaire after Voltaire , an influential French philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment .

History and political significance

The nucleus of the RC Berlin was the “November Society”, which was founded on November 26, 1966, the day the grand coalition was formed , in Berlin by members of the “old clubs”, a loose group of older SDS members . On the one hand, they envisaged the establishment of a new party in the event that the SPD were to split as a result of the grand coalition. On the other hand, they feared that the SDS would transform itself into an anarchist student association under the influence of the anti-authoritarian faction around Commune I. The members of the "November Society" founded the Republican Club on April 30, 1967.

At the inaugural meeting on April 30, 1967 in the club rooms, around 200 formal members were present. The Berlin RC had about 800 members in May 1968. The following were elected to the board: Klaus Meschkat as chairman (SDS), Lothar Pinkall (IG Metall), Marianne Regensburger (editor at the radio station RIAS Berlin), Wilfried Gottschalch, Ekkehart Krippendorff , Nikolaus Neumann, Knut Nevermann (SPD), lawyer Horst Mahler (SDS ), and Bernhard Blanke (SDS) as managing director.

The formation of the “ Grand Coalition ” (SPD / CDU) expanded the APO and the critical movement at the universities. With the founding of the RCs, a broader social base emerged. “The clubs are informal centers in which the theories and strategies that guide the actions must first be developed,” wrote Oskar Negt . They should see themselves as anti-bureaucratic forms of organization for imparting theory and practice. Models of council democracy and direct democracy were discussed and attempts were made to apply them in the RCs.

Paving stone and badge "Expropriated Springer", 1969 (Childhood and Youth Collection of the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation )
Demonstration for deserters in Berlin in 1969

The West Berlin RC became known through campaigns such as B. expropriated Springer (idea: Walter Barthel 1967) or for West German deserters in West Berlin (1969). A campaign consisted of publication activities, actions (e.g. sit-ins or demonstrations), press work and discussions ( teach-ins ).

In 1967, the Berlin International of Military Service Opponents relocated its advice for conscientious objectors and deserters to the rooms of the RC. The content of the RC campaign was that “the arrest of Bundeswehr deserters in West Berlin on the basis of West German arrest warrants” was illegal. Demonstrations and other protests were organized in which u. a. Window panes were thrown in on Kurfürstendamm or incendiary devices were thrown at Schöneberg Town Hall . Another action was organized "In loan uniform to the Revier", namely it was forbidden to wear West German military uniforms in West Berlin. From this it was also deduced that deserters were free in West Berlin. The success was, as the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau reported in August 1969, that conscripts can no longer be called up in Berlin. The conscription law of the Federal Republic was not legally valid in West Berlin until German unification .

The SDS-affiliated feminist women's group, the Action Council for the Liberation of Women, has also been using the club rooms for their frequent meetings since 1968. Today this is considered to be the nucleus of the second wave of the women's movement in West Germany and its demands were suddenly made known within the student movement through the tomato throw by SDS activist Sigrid Rüger at the SDS delegates' conference in September 1968 and the subsequent reporting by Stern and Spiegel .

In 1968 the RC had, in preparation for the winter campaign: 50 years of counterrevolution , enough eight working groups were set up:

  1. The role of the SPD and the trade union in the labor movement over the past 50 years
  2. The revolutionary situation of 1918/19
  3. Agitation and propaganda with the groups, vocational training and democratization of the school
  4. Situation of employees and technical intelligence - automation
  5. International experiences of the labor movement, possibly including the socialist countries
  6. The role of industry and industry associations
  7. Church and Revolution
  8. Trade union working group with the groups to come to terms with the discussion on co-determination from 1918 to 1968; Situation of works councils in society

The Republican Club in West Berlin played an important role in the debates and discussions of the 1968 movement . B. in November 1968 at the battle on Tegeler Weg .

Following the example of the RC in West Berlin, similar associations were founded in other parts of the Federal Republic. The Berliner Extra service reported 1968 42 addresses named in Republican Club , some wore instead Republican named Voltaire .

In 1970 there was - with the transition of the student movement into the “ K-group movement” - a kind of self-dissolution of the Republican Club and, as it were, the “Socialist Center” in Stephanstrasse in Berlin-Moabit as a follow-up facility . With this new center, in which some of the student 'red cells', the BUG-Info (Berlin Undogmatic Groups), IDK (and others) were active, the RC de facto no longer existed. The association RC (eV) continued to exist - without activity and should not be confused with the Republican Club - Neues Österreich, which had existed in Vienna since 1986 .

Relationship to the GDR

Due to the work of several unofficial employees (IM) of the Ministry for State Security in the founding phase of the RC, Hubertus Knabe , among others, represented the thesis in his book "Die Unterwanderte Republik" that the RC as a whole was influenced or even controlled by the GDR . In fact, however, the relationship between the RC and the GDR was rather negative; in particular, they refused to approach the SEW , the West Berlin offshoot of the SED . You and the GDR were seen as an obstacle to the intended new beginning of a left movement. Recent research based on files from both the BStU and the estates of prominent members confirm that the State Security was active in West Berlin and also in the RC. Contrary to popular belief, it was not aimed at radicalization, but rather at moderating the extra-parliamentary opposition in order to be able to control it in the form of a party under the influence of SEW. This strategy failed, however, and attempts to influence it remained unsuccessful. The politicization of the student movement and the emergence of the APO is therefore a development that was not brought into West Berlin from the outside, but was based on internal dissatisfaction.

Publications

Several publications have emerged from the work of the Republican Club:

  • Peter Brockmeier (ed.): Capitalism and freedom of the press: Am Beisp. Springer. Ed. On behalf of d. Republican. Clubs, Berlin. Frankfurt a. M.: European Publishing House 1969.
  • Do the unions fail in the company ?: Working materials for the internal company. Action Republican Club, Union Working Group, 1968
  • November 9, 1918: Materials on the initial situation d. November Revolution . Republican Club, working group "The revolutionary situation v. 1918/19", 1968
  • Berlin, economy and politics, healthy at the core ?: Submitted by the Berlin working group in the Republican. Club, West Berlin. Republican Club <Berlin, West> / Berlin Working Group, 1968
  • Expropriate Springer? / [Ed .:] Press work group d. Republican. Clubs eV, West Berlin. Republican Club <Berlin, West> / Press Working Group, 1967

literature

  • The transformation of Johannes Agnoli . Self-information - an interview (1990), in: Barbara Görres Agnoli: Johannes Agnoli , a biographical sketch, Hamburg 2004, pp. 79-104
  • Michael Hewener: The West Berliners Neue Linke and the Stasi - The fight for the "Republican Club". In: Work - Movement - History , Issue I / 2017, pp. 22–44.
  • Oskar Negt : Politics as Protest. Speeches and essays on the anti-authoritarian movement, Frankfurt / M. 1971
  • Hans Manfred Bock : History of the 'left radicalism' in Germany. An attempt to Frankfurt / M. 1976
  • Documents from the RC online: https://www.mao-projekt.de/BRD/ORG/RC/RC_Linkliste.shtml

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.glasnost.de/hist/apo/rc1.html
  2. ↑ Klaus Mlynek , Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) And a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , pp. 611f.
  3. ^ Tilman Fichter , Siegward Lönnendonker : Brief history of the SDS . Rotbuch – Verlag 1977, ISBN 3-88022-174-X , pp. 92, 102, 178
  4. ^ Hans Manfred Bock: History of the 'left radicalism' in Germany. An attempt, Frankfurt / Main 1976, p. 214
  5. ↑ Documentation FU Berlin - Free University Berlin 1948 - 1973 - University in Transition (Part IV 1964 - 1967 - The Crisis) No. 15/73 Editor: Press Office of the Free University of Berlin on behalf of the President of the Free University of Berlin, June 1975, p. 159 Call for founding of the RC
  6. ^ Oskar Negt: Politics as Protest. Speeches and essays on the anti-authoritarian movement, Frankfurt / M. 1971, p. 131
  7. ↑ expropriate Springer? / [Ed .:] Press work group d. Republican. Clubs eV, West Berlin. Republican Club <Berlin, West> / Press Working Group, 1967
  8. ↑ Wolfram Beyer (Ed.): Internationale der Kriegsdienstgegner /innen, 1947 - 2017, Contributions to History, Lich 2017, p. 12f
  9. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel, July 4, 1969
  10. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel, July 29, 1969
  11. ↑ Die Welt August 31, 1969
  12. ↑ Die Zeit, July 11, 1969
  13. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau, August 14, 1969
  14. ↑ See Horst Mahler , Ulrich K. Preuß , Deserteurs-Kollektiv: Big Lift or Freedom for Deserters - with an elaboration by the Association of Conscientious Objectors in Frankfurt and a chronology of the events in Berlin ; Edition Voltaire Berlin 1969
  15. ↑ Helke Sander in: Ute Kätzel (Ed.): Die 68erinnen. Portrait of a rebellious generation of women. Ulrike Helmer Verlag , Königstein / Taunus 2008, ISBN 978-3-89741-274-3 . P. 166.
  16. ↑ Ilse Lenz : The new women's movement in Germany. Farewell to the small difference. Selected sources. 2nd updated edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften , Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17436-5 , p. 57.
  17. ↑ BERLINER EXTRA-DIENST 60-II, July 27, 1968, p. 3, http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/1968/remember68_17.html
  18. ↑ http://www.infopartisan.net/archive/1967/266799.html
  19. ↑ BERLINER EXTRA-DIENST 80-II, October 5, 1968, p. 8, http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/1968/remember68_22.html
  20. ↑ http://www.ur.dadaweb.de/dada-p/P0000824.shtml
  21. ^ The Transformation of Johannes Agnoli Self-Disclosure - an Interview (1990), in: Barbara Görres Agnoli: Johannes Agnoli, a biographical sketch, Hamburg 2004, p. 86
  22. ↑ See Michael Hewener: The West Berlin New Left and the Stasi - The Struggle for the "Republican Club". In: Work - Movement - History , Issue I / 2017, pp. 22–441.