Globe riot

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Demonstration on August 22, 1968 at the globe provisional facility
Sit-in of young people in the Globus provisional facility on August 22, 1968

The confrontation between young demonstrators and the police that took place in Zurich on June 29, 1968 is named as a globe riot . These riots are directly related to the Europe-wide youth riots in the summer of 1968 and were the prelude to the 1968 movement in Switzerland. The reason for the disputes was the demand for the establishment of an autonomous youth center in the temporary building of the Magazines zum Globus department store on the Papierwerd area.

backgrounds

The former temporary globe on the Limmat in the center of Zurich (2016)

The globe riot can only be understood in the context of the worldwide youth revolts of the 68s . It joins a long chain of student unrest and other political movements across Europe such as the student unrest in Germany , the Paris May or the Prague Spring .

The youth riots in Zurich were preceded by the guest performance of the Rolling Stones on April 14, 1967 and the concert by Jimi Hendrix on May 31, 1968 in the Hallenstadion , both of which ended in riots with the city ​​police . The clashes between the police and young people in Oerlikon are regarded as the prelude to the globe riot, because the police acted very brutally from the young people's point of view, which was even confirmed by an article in the bourgeois Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) that appeared the following day . The consistently tough crackdown on the part of the police followed the bourgeois conviction at the time that the “agitated” young people were controlled by the communist Eastern Bloc and that for this reason the movement had to be nipped in the bud.

The direct cause of the Globus riot, however, was a demonstration in Zurich on June 29, 1968, which was directed against the decision of the Zurich City Council not to make the then vacant temporary building of the “Globus” department store near Zurich's main train station available for an autonomous youth center but to rent elsewhere. The demonstration was intended to make the city council aware of the concerns of the young people. The leaflet, which was distributed and sent out by the organizing committee a few days before the demonstration, said, "Building materials, wood, slats, poles, boards, nails, hammers, etc." to the demonstration in front of the Globus provisional facility. The leaflet was sent across Switzerland to hundreds of people who had taken part in a raffle for tickets to the Jimi Hendrix concert by the newspaper Blick . The addresses came into the hands of the organizing committee through the collaboration between the concert organizer Hans Ruedi Jaggi and the PdA member Roland Gretler . The call for a demonstration was written by Yves Bebié, editor at the Tages-Anzeiger. The organizing committee then announced that this request was meant to be fun, but in view of the previous incidents and the tense situation, the police expected outbreaks of violence and positioned themselves around the “temporary globe” on the station quay before the demonstration began. The police command observed the situation on site from the balcony of the "Du Nord" building.

course

As the crowd of around 2,000 people gathered soon filled the street in front of the makeshift globe, the police from the balcony of the neighboring house "Du Nord" used megaphones to call on the demonstrators to clear the street and the adjacent tram route for traffic. The Zurich tram was practically paralyzed by the demonstration, as the square at the station bridge is a bottleneck in the tram network, where numerous lines cross. The demonstration committee saw an escalation of the situation and asked the demonstrators to move to the Sechseläuten meadow near Bellevue in order to build a “symbolic old people's home for the youth”.

When some of the young people had already evacuated the square, but the square remained blocked, the police began to hose down the demonstrators with fire hoses. When the crowd threw bottles and stones from the construction site of the Shop-Ville at the police officers, the police attacked the crowd with clubs. The fighting between groups of demonstrators and the police took place on Bahnhofplatz, on the Bahnhofbrücke and on Bellevue. The clashes in downtown Zurich dragged on into the morning hours of June 30th. The police arrested numerous people who were locked in the basement of the Globus makeshift facility, while the injured police officers were treated on the ground floor. The police officers' pent-up anger was released against the people held in the basement, who were grossly mistreated in camera.

On the following Sunday morning, the riot recorded 19 injured demonstrators, 15 injured police officers, 7 injured firefighters and significant property damage. 169 people were arrested, 55 of whom were less than 20 years old. After the detention, several people reported assaults in the form of beatings by police officers during the demonstration and shortly after the arrest. Even during the riots, excessively harsh police actions were reported. Among other things, police officers hit people with canes who had not used any violence against police officers themselves.

consequences

The Swiss press reported very controversial about the globe riot and the behavior of the police. While the bourgeois press praised the police's harsh actions and described the demonstrators as “terrorists”, the social democratic press and “Blick” criticized the police violence. The incidents in the basement of the Globus makeshift were investigated by a chief judge. Of the 56 demonstrators and 42 police officers who were reported in the wake of the riots, 30 demonstrators and one police officer came on trial. The police officer and most of the demonstrators received conditional sentences. 30 police officers were reprimanded and fined.

Numerous public figures sharply criticized the police's actions. 21 people from politics, culture and science, u. a. the well-known author Max Frisch , signed the so-called “Zurich Manifesto”, in which the connections between the globe riot, called “Zurich Night of Violence” in the Manifesto, the world events and the youth's desire for space for personal and social development were. Overall, the Swiss population reacted in two ways to the riots. While the bourgeois parties consistently condemned the violent behavior of the young people and welcomed the harsh actions of the police, the left-wing parties showed solidarity with the young people and criticized the “police violence”. Overall, the riot on the globe can be understood as a culture shock that kicked off major social and political upheavals in Zurich and all of Switzerland. The 1968 movement was known to all walks of life after the globe riot, and there were protests and demonstrations in numerous cities in Switzerland. While intellectuals, including Max Frisch, accused the state of failure, bourgeois circles took the side of the police. The current of the 1968 movement persisted in Zurich for about two years. It also covered the Zurich and Bern student bodies and relied on the extra-parliamentary opposition in Germany and on philosophers such as Herbert Marcuse . The emergence of left-wing terrorism in Germany also marked the end of this movement in Switzerland.

After many years of negotiations, the city of Zurich responded to the request for a youth center. On October 30, 1970, the first self-managed youth center was opened in the “Lindenhofbunker”, where the Urania car park is today. The air raid shelter was literally overrun by young people, with up to 1000 visitors every day. Inevitably, conflicts arose with the police over drugs and runaway children. At the same time there was a spirit of optimism, the Revolutionary Apprentice Organization (RLZ), the home campaign and the Red Aid formed in the bunker . Since the bunker youth did not respond to an ultimatum from the city government, the youth center was closed again in January 1971 after exactly 68 days. The discussions about a youth center continued in Zurich in the following decades and gave rise to the opera house riots in 1980 .

The public discussion of the police's attacks on demonstrators while they were in custody led the police to split the work between different officers in later demonstrations. Since then, the police officers at the front of the demonstration are no longer the same who arrest and take away the demonstrators afterwards, as the emotional burden on the officers is too great and there is a higher risk of retaliation against the demonstrators. In addition, as a result of the experience, the training and equipment of the Zurich police for the security service has been improved. B. the number of injured police officers in later riots fell sharply in comparison.

In the 1970s, some of the activists began to organize themselves politically and to strive for the “long march” through the institutions. They got involved in the trade unions and in new left-wing parties, such as the Progressive Organizations (POCH) and the Revolutionary Marxist League (RML) , which emerged in the wake of the student unrest. Others tried to implement their ideals of society and life in shared apartments and small businesses managed by cooperatives.

View from the main station to the former Globus provisional facility (2008)

Globe provisional today

The temporary structure was supposed to be torn down after the globe was rebuilt. But since the use of the building or the built-up area has been politically discussed since the riot on the globe and there is disagreement, the temporary arrangement is still in place today. Today it is used as a branch of the Coop store chain and for offices. The rental agreement between the City of Zurich and Coop is open-ended and can be terminated from 2024 with a notice period of 12 months. There were a number of political advances to finally demolish the former temporary structure and use the space for other purposes. The monument preservation commission of the city of Zurich, however, classified the house designed by the architect Karl Egender as worthy of protection.

literature

  • Defense of the protesters . The truth about the globe riot. In: Writings on agitation , No. 2, Zurich 1970.
  • Willi Baer, ​​Carmen Bitsch, Karl-Heinz Dellwo (eds.): Library of Resistance: "Riot" . Laika, Hamburg [June] 2010. ISBN 978-3-942281-73-7 (With the film by Jürg Hassler: "Krawall" , 70 minutes, Switzerland 1970, on DVD).
  • Katharina Bühler: Riots and breaches of the peace in Swiss criminal law . An analysis of the literature and jurisprudence on mass crimes, with special consideration of the judgments on the Zurich “Globuskrawall”. In: Zurich Contributions to Law. New series No. 488 '. Schulthess, Zurich 1976. ISBN 3-7255-1712-6 , (also dissertation at the University of Zurich [1976]).
  • Dominique Wisler. Three New Left groups in search of the revolution. Seismo-Verlag, Zurich 1996. ISBN 3-908239-25-7
  • Angelika Linke, Joachim Scharloth : The Zurich Summer 1968. Between riot, utopia and citizenship. NZZ Libro , Zurich 2008. ISBN 3-03823-409-5 .
  • Elisabeth Joris, Angela Zimmermann, Erika Hebeisen (eds.). Zurich 68. Collective departure into the unknown. Hier + now, Baden 2008. ISBN 978-3-03919-077-5 .
  • Heinz Nigg. We are few, but we are all. Biographies from the 68 generation in Switzerland. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2008. ISBN 978-3-85791-546-8 .
  • Julia Zutavern: Politics of Movement Film (Zürcher Filmstudien 34), Marburg 2015. ISBN 978-3-89472-834-2 .
  • Christian Koller : 50 years ago: The globe riot and its environment , in: Sozialarchiv Info 3 (2018). Pp. 8-21.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SRG SSR Timeline: The youth revolt ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Swiss Radio and Television Corporation , accessed April 17, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ideesuisse.ch
  2. ↑ Tages-Anzeiger, June 23, 2008, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Hannes Nussbauemer: "The riot was a misunderstanding", interview with Roland Gretler. In: Tages-Anzeiger , June 24, 2008, p. 29
  4. ↑ Tages-Anzeiger, June 23, 2008, p. 23.
  5. ^ History of the Canton of Zurich, Vol. 3, 19th and 20th centuries . Zurich 1994, p. 444.
  6. ^ Max Frisch, Diary 1966–1971 , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 160.
  7. ↑ The Zurich Manifesto
  8. ^ Sigmund Widmer: cosmopolitan city and small town . Zurich. Eine Kulturgeschichte, vol. 13, Zurich 1984, p. 46
  9. ^ Elisabeth Joris, Angela Zimmermann, Erika Hebeisen (eds.): Zurich 68. Collective departure into the unknown. S. 219 .
  10. ↑ the globe ruckus on 68.abstractidea.ch accessed 17 April, 2008
  11. ↑ Tages-Anzeiger, June 23, 2008, p. 23.
  12. ↑ Marco Tackenberg: Youth Unrest - 1 The unrest of 1968. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz .
  13. ↑ GR No. 2020/77 directive of the city council of Zurich to the municipal council of March 4, 2020, p.3
  14. ↑ Adi Kälin: Zurich: globe provisional to be canceled . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . February 1, 2018, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed April 16, 2018]).
  15. ↑ Globus Provisional: History of an Eternal Eyesore | NZZ. Retrieved April 16, 2018 .
  16. ^ Controversy over the Globus provisional solution: Juso calls for a self-administered youth center , Limmattalerzeitung, November 1, 2018

Coordinates: 47 ° 22 ′ 36 "  N , 8 ° 32 ′ 32"  E ; CH1903:  683 344  /  247900