International news and research institute

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The International News and Research Institute (INFI) was founded in 1968 as a result of the nationwide Vietnam Congress organized by Rudi Dutschke , Gaston Salvatore and other members of the SDS ( Socialist German Student Union ) .

It existed from April 1968 to March 1969 as an independent institution and was financed from funds left over from the Vietnam Congress. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli contributed his library to the international labor movement. This library consisted of reprints and new editions worth more than DM 30,000. The offices of the INFI were located at Kurfürstendamm 52 and not, as was falsely rumored, in the rooms of the SDS center at Kurfürstendamm 140 in Berlin. From March 1969 the remaining INFI groups moved to the premises of the RPK ( Rote Presse Korrespondenz ) founded at the end of February 1969 , located at Eislebener Strasse 14, also in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The INFI acted as one of the founding groups of the RPK . From December 1969, it was no longer listed in the imprint.

The INFI was designed as an institute to support emancipation and liberation movements in the Third World. Working groups were formed on Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, Palestine, Greece and others. For Greece, which experienced a military coup the year before, an “Analysis of Greece - History and Structure of the Junta, Possible Forms of Resistance” was drawn up and published. The political scientist Gerd Langguth claims that the institute was conceived as a “center for the combination of legal and illegal work” and “should make the illegality of small groups possible”. This objective, if it ever existed, has apparently never been put into practice.

There is only sparse literature on both the role intended for the INFI and its specific tasks. In addition to Dutschke and Salvatore, the INFI also included Wolfgang Schwiedrzik , Horst Kurnitzky , who was involved in the Latin America working group, and the Vietnam specialist Jürgen Horlemann . Schwiedrzik headed the Africa working group, Horlemann the Southeast Asia working group. Horlemann managed to bring Christian Semler and Peter Neitzke , two leading SDS members, to the institute. The three and Schwiedrzik formed the founding core of the later KPD / AO , a Maoist-oriented cadre party. This group also acquired the valuable INFI library. The later member of the central council of roaming hash rebels , Georg von Rauch , is said to have worked in the INFI's Italy working group. The claim that Michael 'Bommi' Baumann was also active in the INFI cannot be substantiated; However, it can be proven that Günter Langer temporarily acted as editor of the “undogmatic” weekly postil Agit 883 a year later . The reference that the INFI had planned the unsuccessful bomb attack on the then US President Richard Nixon is unfounded.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Wolfgang Kraushaar : Rudi Dutschke and the armed struggle, Rudi Dutschke, Andreas Baader and the RAF, Hamburger Edition Verlagsges. mbH, 2005, p. 27
  2. ↑ Gerd Langguth : Propaganda de fact, in: German history (n) Propaganda de fact. FAZ , November 14, 2006, archived from the original on May 30, 2015 .;
  3. ↑ Günter Langer : The Berlin Blues - Tupamaros and wandering hash rebels between madness and understanding , in: Che Shah Shit - The sixties. Years between Cocktail and Molotov. Berlin (West) 1984 (editors: E. Siepmann, I. Lusk, J. Holtfreter, M. Schmidt, G. Dietz) Elefanten Press, p. 196 u. 199
  4. ↑ Eric de Bear: Interview with Günter Langer on the work of the INFI in 1968 , June 2, 2010