German-Israeli study groups
The German-Israeli Study Groups (DIS) were non-party university associations and part of the West German student movement of the 1960s . They campaigned for the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel and the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism . The German-Israeli study group at the Free University of Berlin initially published the journal discussion , in the current problems of German-Israeli , on behalf of the Federal Association of German-Israeli Study Groups (BDIS) on its own, starting with the third year of issue 3 / July 1961 Relationshipsand the German society were debated. There were large personal overlaps with the Socialist German Student Union .
history
The first German-Israeli study group (DIS) was founded in 1957 at the Free University of Berlin at the instigation of the Protestant theologian and Christian socialist Helmut Gollwitzer . The initially strongly of Protestant religiosity dominated grouping aimed primarily at reconciliation between Germans and Jews after the horrors of the Holocaust from which are obtained by an unconditional solidarity with the State of Israel and the political struggle against the persistence of anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic of Germany reached wanted to. German-Israeli study groups also formed outside of Berlin, which is why a central federal association (BDIS) was founded on May 25, 1961.
The German-Israeli Society (DIG), founded in 1966, developed from the German-Israeli study groups , which, in contrast to the DIS, still exists today. The Protestant theologian Rolf Rendtorff acted as a liaison between the two groups . He traveled to the State of Israel for the first time with a DIS group in 1963.
From the mid-1960s, the BDIS came under the influence of the New Left . Authors like Siegward Lönnendonker criticized Christian philosemitism in the discussion and instead called for critical solidarity with the Zionist state. After the central requirement of the DIS was fulfilled with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the FRG and Israel in 1965, the study groups fell into an existential crisis. When, as a result of the Six Day War in 1967, the West German conservatives , above all the hated Springer press , increasingly took the side for Israel, a strong anti-Zionist mood arose in the SDS , which began to rub off on the German-Israeli study groups.
With the radicalization of the student movement in 1969, the anti-Zionist line, which was represented by Eike Geisel among others , gained the upper hand in the BDIS. Out of supposed anti-imperialism , the federal association has now taken over the radical anti-Israel position of Fatah . However, the paradoxical construction of anti-Zionist German-Israeli study groups could not be sustained for long. The last edition of the discussion appeared in December 1971. The federal association and the local groups finally dissolved in a gradual process and without a formal resolution.
literature
- Martin W. Kloke : Israel and the German Left. To the story of a difficult relationship. Frankfurt am Main 1990.
- Ernst Vogt: Israel criticism from the left. Documentation of a development. Wuppertal 1976.
Individual evidence
- ^ Gerhard Gronauer: The State of Israel in West German Protestantism. Perceptions in church and journalism from 1948 to 1972 (AKIZ.B57). Göttingen 2013, p. 181f.