AGIT printer
The AGIT printers were a self-governing company in the 1970s that saw themselves as part of the undogmatic left.
Among other things, they printed the Info Berlin Undogmatic Groups ( Info BUG ) in West Berlin and supported left-wing projects and groups through low prices. In general, the intention was to enable left-wing political printed matter. Traditional companies often refused to print such publications.
The Info BUG was a weekly radical left-wing magazine that published reports, dates, actions and the like. The RAF issue was also dealt with. The publication had a supraregional distribution and was created by changing editorial groups. The sheet was printed by "agit druck kollektiv" using an offset printing process . The magazine and its staff soon became the target of law enforcement. In April 1975 the magazine was confiscated for the first time at some sales outlets . In February 1977 criminal proceedings followed for denigrating the state and its symbols , on October 17, 1977 the first arrests of four printers by the state security on charges of "supporting a terrorist organization" followed. Pretrial detention lasted up to nine months. The Agit printers were sentenced to 9 to 13 months' imprisonment without parole. The Federal Court of Justice later confirmed the sentence, which for the first time not only brought the persons responsible for a publication under press law, but also the technical manufacturers.
further reading
- Ernst Piper: The indictment of the Agit printer in Berlin. In: Jury, German Advisory Board and Secretariat of the 3rd International Russell Tribunal (Ed.): 3rd International Russell Tribunal. On the situation of human rights in the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 3. Reports, documents, negotiations of the 2nd session / Part 1: Censorship. Rotbuch Verlag , Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-88022-205-3 , pp. 120–128.
- Johannes Riemann: The trial against the Agit printer and § 88a StGB. In: Jury, German Advisory Board and Secretariat of the 3rd International Russell Tribunal (Ed.): 3rd International Russell Tribunal. On the situation of human rights in the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 3. Reports, documents, negotiations of the 2nd session / Part 1: Censorship. Rotbuch Verlag, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-88022-205-3 , pp. 129-136.
- The lawsuit against the agit printer . In: Aesthetics & Communication , Berlin, No. 33, 1978.
- Committee for the liberation of the Agit printer (ed.): Trial against 4 printers. Self-published (print: Agit-Druck), Berlin 1978.
- Agit-Druck GmbH (Hrsg.): The verdict from the Agit process. With comments by Walter Jens , Ernst Piper, Wilm Schmidt-Pabst. Self-published, Berlin undated [1979]
- Solidarity can become a weapon. ... - Information on the trial against Fantasia-Druck and ivk ; Stuttgart 1979, can be ordered from the Archive of Social Movements ( Memento from 23 August 2006 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Brief information about the INFO BUG . In the database of German-speaking anarchism (DadA)
- "New Left, Student Movement, Extra-Parliamentary Opposition in Germany Collection" . In the IISG (Amsterdam). See under Berlin: Agit collective to prepare the Soz. Mass organization . Since its foundation, the IISG has also documented current social and political developments (...) The protest movements of the sixties were of course included in this collective profile.