Humanistic student union
The Humanist Student Union (HSU) was a non-party political student association in the German Federal Republic of the 1960s. In its "high phase" it had around 1000 members nationwide.
history
The first local HSU group was founded on July 4, 1962 in Marburg as a university branch of the civil rights association Humanist Union . Like this, the HSU saw itself as a cross-party collection movement with the aim of creating a counter-public to the prevailing Christian-conservative mood of the late Adenauer era. In particular, the HSU campaigned for the “liberation of people from the fetters of authoritarian and clerical ties”. The "spiritual tutelage" by state and church should give way to the principle of personal responsibility and self-realization of the individual. By 1964, nine local groups had formed at German universities, which joined together to form a federal association.
In the same year, the HSU agreed with other left-wing student associations (including the Socialist German Student Union , Social Democratic University Association , Liberal Student Union of Germany ) the so-called Supreme Agreement on mutual support in student parliaments and AStA elections. On this basis, the HSU was soon represented as a representative of the non-party, moderate left at all larger universities in the former Federal Republic, often a sought-after coalition partner and also provided some AStA chairmen. The Marburg AStA boss Christoph Ehmann became chairman of the Association of German Student Associations (VDS) in 1968 . At that time, Klaus Kreppel , political advisor to the Frankfurt AStA and co-initiator of the universities' manifesto against the emergency laws , was federal chairman of the HSU. However, after the student unrest of 1967/68 and the political polarization that went with it, the HSU quickly lost its importance. It intensified its self-dissolution process by moving away from the HU postulates of freedom of ideology and the " open society " with a libertarian utopia of socialism . Thus - as the Frankfurter Rundschau regretted at the time - the non-socialist left “no longer had a home”.
The former members of the HSU include the former FDP and later SPD politician Ingrid Matthäus-Maier and the television journalist Ulrich Wickert .
HSU federal chairwoman
1962–64 Joachim Kahl (Marburg, Protestant theology)
1964–66 Hermann Josef Schmidt (Freiburg, philosophy)
1966–67 Ulf Homann (Berlin)
1967–68 Klaus Kreppel (Frankfurt / M., Catholic theology)
1968–70 Michael Grupp (Freiburg)
literature
- Stefan Hemler: How the '68 revolt ate one of its liberal children. A short history of the Humanistic Student Union, told using Munich as an example. In: Operations 155 (2001), pp. 49-61.
- Klaus Kreppel: Left Liberalism. The example of the Humanist Student Union. In: Richard Faber ; Erhard Stölting (ed.): The imagination of power? 1968 - Attempt to take stock. Berlin 2002 ISBN 3-8257-0250-2 , pp. 82-106.
- Tabea M. Esch: Free Church in the Free State. Contributions to historical theology. Vol. 157. Tübingen 2011. ISBN 978-3-16-150617-8 , p. 196 ff. Google Books
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolf-Gunter Brügmann: The non-socialist left no longer has a home. Balance of the Frankfurt Delegate Assembly of the Humanistic Student Union. In: Frankfurter Rundschau No. 180 of August 6, 1968, p. 3.