Breast assassination

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The so-called bust attack is a topless protest by three female students on April 22, 1969 in lecture hall VI of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , the aim of which was the philosophy professor Theodor W. Adorno . Ulrich Greiner interprets the incident as part of the shame destruction campaign of the 1968 movement , which led to the fact that nowadays similar political actions like those of the Femen still attract attention, but are no longer perceived as scandalous.

procedure

"Whoever lets dear Adorno rule, will keep capitalism for life", wrote a student at the beginning of the lecture of philosophy professor Theodor W. Adorno Introduction to Dialectical Thinking on the blackboard. Another fellow student called on Adorno to self- criticize, referring to the evacuation of his institute for social research , which Adorno had initiated with the help of the police and which had been occupied a few weeks earlier by students led by Hans-Jürgen Krahl . The Sociology base group distributed leaflets with the inscription "Adorno as an institution is dead!" The professor, in turn, responded to the commotion by giving the audience the ultimatum to decide within the next five minutes whether the lecture should take place or not. Three students came forward and surrounded the professor, baring their breasts and trying to sprinkle rose and tulip blossoms on his head. As a result, Adorno left the lecture hall with a raised briefcase in general amusement. It was Adorno's last public appearance before his unexpected death a few months later, when he died on August 6, 1969 while on vacation in Switzerland.

actors

Hannah Weitemeier was among the participating students . Alfred von Meysenbug , a member of the leather jacket faction in the Socialist German Student Union , who is responsible for organizing the action, took a photo of the irritated Adornos with his three “assassins”. The later ZDF historian Guido Knopp , who studied politics and history in Frankfurt, was an uninvolved eyewitness.

There are various assumptions about the motivation for the protest, ranging from disappointment at Adorno's evacuation of the occupied Institute for Social Research by the police on January 31, 1969, to a purely feminist criticism of the philosopher, who was perceived as a patriarch .

reception

Adorno himself was very angry about the incident. In a Spiegel interview almost two weeks later, he said:

“Especially with me, who has always opposed any kind of erotic repression and against sex taboos! To mock me and to incite three girls dressed up as hippies on me! I found that disgusting. The amusement effect that you achieve with it was basically the reaction of the philistine, the hihi! giggles when he sees a girl with bare breasts. Of course this nonsense was calculated. "

- Theodor W. Adorno : Der Spiegel, No. 19/1969, p. 206

The central actors were rather embarrassed after the action. One of the women involved regretted that Adorno's picture had been stained. A happening was planned, a fun and carefree act. They were surprised at the extent that the whole thing assumed. Alfred von Meysenbug later assessed the event as insignificant and felt annoyed by the sustained attention that this piece of contemporary history received. He prohibited the repeated publication of his photo.

Robert Gernhardt's parody Das Assentat or A Prank by Pat and Doris or A Wilhelm Busch Paraphrase describes the so-called "breast attack" on the philosopher a good 30 years later:

“All of this happened a long time ago, but
it's not the past.
The bosom assassination gave
Dem Prof the rest -: The
philosopher died that same year , but
Pat and Doris are still there. "

- Robert Gernhardt : Im Glück und elsewhere: Gedichte, S. Fischer: Frankfurt aM, 2002, p. 214

In particular, on the anniversaries of the breast attack, articles that remind of the breast attack appear again and again. Even if Adorno's biographers today agree that his heart failure in connection with a mountain hike caused his death, the question is regularly raised whether the event could have contributed to the philosopher's subsequent heart attack .

See also

literature

  • Dieter Brumm, Ernst Elitz: Don't be afraid of the ivory tower - mirror talk with the Frankfurt social philosopher Professor Theodor W. Adorno . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19/1969 , May 5, 1969, ISSN  2195-1349 , pp. 204–209 ( spiegel.de [PDF; 370 kB ; accessed on August 30, 2019]).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anne Lemhöfer: Lecture hall VI - bust in the room for ideas. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. April 30, 2008, accessed August 24, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Ulrich Greiner: Loss of Shame - From the change in the culture of feeling . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2014, ISBN 978-3-498-02524-3 , Chapter II Loss of Shame, 1. The bosom attack in 1969 - The shame destruction campaign of the respectful sixties - Review of the old morality ( online in the Google book search [accessed on August 31, 2019 ]).
  3. ↑ a b Heide Oestreich: The "breast attack" on Adorno: Six breasts for Teddy. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur. July 31, 2019, accessed August 31, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The transcendental homeless - Hans-Jürgen Krahl . In: Journal for the history of ideas . tape 2 , no. 3 , 2008, ISSN  1863-8937 , p. 19 , doi : 10.17104 / 1863-8937-2008-3-5 ( zig.de [PDF]).
  5. ↑ Ulrich Greiner: And, do the pants fit? - How the old culture of shame has evolved into a new culture of embarrassment. In: The time . No. 11/2014 , March 6, 2014, ISSN  0174-4909 ( zeit.de [accessed on August 31, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Rudolf Walther: The rhetoric of suspicion. In: TAZ. August 6, 2019, accessed August 31, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Tanja Stelzer: The imposition of the meat. In: Der Tagesspiegel. December 7, 2003, accessed August 30, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Guido Knopp: My story . C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-570-10321-0 , "You have to join us!" 1968 and the consequences, p. 26 ( randomhouse.de [PDF]).
  9. ↑ a b Sascha Zoske: Breast attack on Adorno: Naked horror . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 21, 2019, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed August 24, 2019]).
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: Heart attack of the philosopher: dispute over "breast assassination" on Theodor W. Adorno . August 14, 2009 ( welt.de [accessed August 24, 2019]).