Commune I

Memorial plaque on the house at Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse 54A in Berlin-Charlottenburg

The commune I (also: commune 1; K1 ) was a politically motivated residential community in the Federal Republic of Germany . It was founded on January 1, 1967 in West Berlin and finally dissolved in November 1969.

Commune I emerged from the extra-parliamentary opposition of the student movement . It was intended as a counter-model to the bourgeois nuclear family, as a reaction to a society that the commune regarded as very conservative.

From February 19, 1967, it was first in the vacant apartment of the writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger at Fregestraße 19 (until the beginning of March 1967) and in the studio apartment of the writer Uwe Johnson , who was staying in New York , at Niedstraße 14 in the Berlin district of Friedenau . After Enzensberger's return from a long study trip to Moscow , his apartment was abandoned.Instead, the Communards briefly occupied Johnson's main apartment at Stierstrasse 3, lived for a few months in the corner house at Stuttgarter Platz / Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse in Charlottenburg and then moved to the final Apartment on the second floor of the rear building at Stephanstrasse 60 in Berlin's Stephankiez .

Emergence

Members of the Munich Subversive Action (such as Dieter Kunzelmann ) and the Berlin SDS (such as Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl ) thought about how to break away from ideas that are perceived as stuffy and petty-bourgeois.

Dieter Kunzelmann had the idea of founding a commune . It was decided to try a life of "passionate self-interest". Kunzelmann soon moved to Berlin. There was a first local authority working group in the SDS that pursued the following ideas:

• Fascism arises from the small family . It is the smallest cell of the state from whose suppressive character all institutions are derived.
• Man and woman lived in dependence on each other, so that neither of the two could develop freely into human beings.
• This cell (i.e. the nuclear family) must be smashed.

When this theory was then to be implemented in the practice of a life as a “commune”, many SDS members jumped, including Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl, who did not want to give up living with their wives and their other old living conditions. In the end, on February 19, 1967, nine men and women as well as a child moved into the vacant apartment of Hans Magnus Enzensberger and the studio apartment of the writer Uwe Johnson in Friedenau (see above). They called themselves "Commune I".

Communards from the very beginning were Dagrun Enzensberger (divorced wife of Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and their then nine-year-old daughter Tanaquil, Ulrich Enzensberger (brother of Hans Magnus Enzensberger), Volker Gebbert, Hans-Joachim Hameister, Dieter Kunzelmann , Detlef Michel (until March 25th 1967), Dorothea Ridder ("the iron Dorothee"), Dagmar Seehuber and Fritz Teufel . Rainer Langhans only joined in March 1967. At times other people also lived in the premises of Commune I, such as B. Dagmar von Doetinchem and Gertrud Hemmer ("Agathe").

The Communards first tried to tell each other their own biographical identity in order to then break precisely such old securities. The Communards were very different. The roles that everyone played were correspondingly different. Kunzelmann was the " Patriarch " and let others feel this too. His definition of the goals of the commune was based on his time as a " situationist " and in "subversive action". He was therefore in favor of the abolition of all securities, including financial ones, which is why he despised scholarships , for example . He wanted to abolish every property, every private sphere. And he was against the performance, but for the fun or pleasure principle. Everyone should and could do what he / she wanted as long as it was done in front of everyone.

Langhans, Teufel and the others wore long hair, pearl necklaces, army coats or Mao suits at the instigation of the commune women . Soon they were getting paid for their interviews and photos. In the hallway of her apartment there was a clear sign: “First sheet metal, then speak”.

The first phase: grotesque provocation

Commune I was known throughout its existence for its grotesque actions, which always vacillated between real satire and provocation . These actions became models for the spontaneous movement and other left-wing scenes.

The "pudding assassination"

Because domestic commune life was too one-sided for them, the communards turned internal experience into actions.

The first action was to be the attack on the US Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey , later known as the “pudding attack” , who was visiting Berlin. On the evening of April 2, 1967, the Communards met around twenty others they knew from demonstrations at Johnson's apartment. Kunzelmann presented his plan to throw smoke bombs in the direction of the Vice President on the occasion of the state visit . Except for Langhans, none of the external parties wanted to participate: the risk of a bloodbath by US security forces seemed too great.

Police files indicate that the planned attack was announced by an undercover agent of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, because on April 5, 1967, officers from Department I (Political Police) arrested eleven students on the grounds that they had met under conspiratorial circumstances Attacks against the life or health of the American Vice President Hubert Humphrey are planned using bombs, plastic bags filled with unknown chemicals or other dangerous instruments such as stones, etc.

Those arrested included a. around Ulrich Enzensberger , Volker Gebbert, Klaus Gilgenmann , Hans-Joachim Hameister, Wulf Krause, Dieter Kunzelmann, Rainer Langhans and Fritz Teufel. The Bild-Zeitung headlined: "Assassination attempt on Humphrey" and Die Zeit : "Eleven little Oswalds ". Even the New York Times reported on the "dangerous" plan of eight Communards to attack their vice-president with pudding, yogurt and flour, so that Uwe Johnson commissioned his friend and neighbor Günter Grass to remove these students from his apartment. The Communards were released from custody the very next day, gave their first press conference and from then on were called "Horror Communards" in the Axel Springer Verlag newspapers .

The commune moved into an old apartment on Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße on Stuttgarter Platz in Charlottenburg and later to Moabit at Stephanstraße 60. There was hardly a week in which Commune I did not perform a satirical provocation somewhere in Berlin that made the headlines in the press made. The commune climbed to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church to throw hundreds of Mao Bibles down from above.

The Shah's visit and the K1 photo

Fritz Teufel was arrested during the demonstration on June 2, 1967 in West Berlin against the state visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the anniversary of Benno Ohnesorg's death ) and charged with violating the peace . He was not released until December 1967 after he and many students went on hunger strike with him . But the street has long been celebrating the most high-spirited parties: “Freedom for Fritz Teufel!” Or “ Moabit drives the devil out!”.

Thomas Hesterberg's famous K1 photo was taken while Teufel was absent: the naked back in front of the wall. Motto: “ The private is political! “On a poster by Peter Deiters with this photo it says:

“The real heroes are the masses. We ourselves are often naive to the point of being ridiculous. Those who have not understood this will not be able to acquire even the minimal knowledge. "

- Mao

The mirror published the photo retouched (without male genitals).

The letter ballet

Despite a ban on demonstrations, eight students gathered on June 10, 1967 for an action on the Kurfürstendamm that was directed against the ruling mayor Heinrich Albertz . For the so-called letter ballet , they wore white T-shirts with a letter on the front and back. From the front was the writing ALBERTZ! to read, RELEASE from behind. During the campaign, which was shown in the Tagesschau, Gudrun Ensslin wore the shirt with the exclamation mark and N. Ensslin met Andreas Baader during the campaign .

Polithappening at a state funeral

When the former SPD politician and Nazi opponent Paul Löbe was honored with a state ceremony on August 9, 1967 in the Schöneberg Town Hall in West Berlin, a satirical second memorial service in the form of a happening also took place on John F. Kennedy Platz. This was organized by the municipality I. The demonstrators demanded u. a. the release of the arrested Fritz Teufel . Hans Magnus Enzensberger remembered in 2014 that he “got into it that day. They made some kind of costumes and nailed together a coffin in which they wanted to carry the Berlin judiciary to their grave. ”Nobody knew“ who this Löbe actually was ”. The later RAF terrorist Andreas Baader , Ulrich Enzensberger , Rainer Langhans , who later unmasked as an agent for the protection of the constitution, Peter Urbach , who provided the coffin, and others carried the same with the inscription "SENAT" on the town hall forecourt, in the coffin lay Communard Dieter Kunzelmann and threw leaflets into the crowd: “You want to celebrate Paul Löbe through the chimney today. [...] We want to bury a few smart corpses that are slowly stinking to heaven ”, listing the members of the Berlin Senate at the time. Although 24 of the demonstrators were arrested, those involved Baader, Ulrich Enzensberger and Gudrun Ensslin escaped. Peter Schneider describes the happening as an "unforgettable spectacle", he calls the content of the leaflet a "terrible text", which represents one of the several "derailments" of Commune I.

The "Arson Trial"

After a fire in the À l'innovation department store in Brussels on May 22, 1967, in which more than 300 people were killed, Municipality 1 distributed a leaflet with the heading “When are the Berlin department stores burning?” It said:

“Our Belgian friends have finally got the hang of involving the population in the hustle and bustle of Vietnam : they set fire to a department store, two hundred satisfied citizens end their exciting lives, and Brussels becomes Hanoi . [...] If there's a fire somewhere in the near future, if a barracks blows up somewhere, if the grandstand collapses somewhere in a stadium , please don't be surprised. "

On May 24, 1967, Commune 1 had another leaflet followed under the title “Why are you burning, consumer?”, Which read:

“As much as we sympathize with the pain of the bereaved in Brussels, we who are open to the new can, as long as the right measure is not exceeded, the bold and unconventional that, despite all the human tragedy, is stuck in the Brussels department store fire Admiration does not fail. "

Devil and Langhans were then due to incitement to arson accused. However, experts and writers denied intellectual arson and criticized a "petty-bourgeois political judiciary " that threatened committed young people with imprisonment because of a satirical action. Teufel and Langhans were acquitted and described the process in the later cult book Klau mich . After the acquittal in March 1968, sympathizers from around K1 suggested that we should get serious about the department store fires. Shortly afterwards, the department store arson followed on April 2, 1968 by what would later become the Red Army faction .

Reactions

The hedonistic attitude towards life of the K1 residents, who only did what they found good, polarized not only the bourgeoisie, but also the political left.

The SDS soon got caught up in the provocative goings-on of the K1. The provocative K1 leaflets signed with SDS (“Water cannons are paper tigers”) were a thorn in her side. Among other things, the Communards were also accused of having no political interest, but merely indulging in selfishness. In May 1967 the SDS therefore excluded the “revolutionary rioters” ( BZ ).

Klaus Hartung wrote in Die ZEIT : "Hardly any political theory was more successful than that according to which revolutionaries must revolutionize themselves, according to which there will be no change in society without changing everyday life."

For those who think differently, the municipality developed into a kind of contact point for problems of all kinds. Requests for help were received every day. The house was literally besieged by friends and groupies who especially worshiped Langhans and devils. He was expelled from the K1 because of the female rush caused by the devil in particular. He moved to a Munich commune and later belonged to the “ June 2nd Movement ”.

The second phase: sex, drugs and Uschi Obermaier

At the end of the 1960s, the social climate changed. In the late summer of 1968, Kommune I moved to an abandoned factory at Stephanstrasse 60 to reorient itself. In the second commune phase, sex, music and drugs were in the foreground.

On September 21, 1968, the municipality went to the Essener Songtagen , the first underground festival in Germany. It was there that Langhans fell in love with Uschi Obermaier , a photo model from Munich . She lived there with the Amon Düül Music Commune , but soon moved into the factory, where Communards lived together in a dormitory. Obermaier and Langhans were soon seen in the press as "the most beautiful couple of the APO " and willingly gave information about their relationship under the motto "politicization of the private".

The visitors, including Jutta Winkelmann and Gisela Getty , suddenly came from all over the world; among them the legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix . Obermaier fell in love with him.

Obermaier's fees as a model grew, she played a major role in the cult film The Red Sun by Rudolf Thome and posed for covers and posters. According to rumors, the Illustrierte Stern is said to have paid her the sum of 20,000 D-Marks for a report and the nude photos of her  .

The end of commune I

At some point the K1's energy was used up. Kunzelmann became more and more dependent on heroin . The second communard was put outside the door (everyone else, it is said, left by themselves). Every now and then the Munich Women's Commune appeared.

In November 1969, rockers attacked those who remained and devastated the rooms. This made the remaining residents lose faith in the future of Commune I and dissolve it.

Memorial plaque on Stuttgarter Platz

In June 2019, a memorial plaque to Commune I was erected on Stuttgarter Platz.

See also

• Municipality 2

Web links

Commons : Kommune I  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

• Wolfgang Dreßen , Dieter Kunzelmann, Eckhard Siepmann (eds.): Hippopotamus of the infernal jungle. Traces in an unknown city; Situationists - group track - Commune I . Anabas-Verlag, Giessen 1991, ISBN 3-87038-172-8 .
• Ulrich Enzensberger : The years of the Commune I. Berlin 1967–1969 . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-462-03413-8 .
• Tilman Fichter , Siegward Lönnendonker : A short history of the SDS. The Socialist German Student Union from Helmut Schmidt to Rudi Dutschke , 4th revised. and additional ed., Essen, Klartext-Verlag 2007 (first edition Berlin 1977, 2008 as vol. 705 in the publication series of the Federal Agency for Civic Education).
• Christian H. Friday : Knight, Reichsmarschall & revolutionary. From the story of a Berlin country house (with a foreword by Hans Magnus Enzensberger) . edition Friedenauer Brücke, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-9816130-2-5 .
• Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth (Ed.): 1968. A handbook on the cultural and media history of the student movement . Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-02066-6 .
• Rainer Langhans , Fritz Teufel : Steal me. StPO of the commune I. Voltaire edition, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin 1968 (series: Voltaire Handbuch 2), reprints (without the pornographic supplement): Trikont Verlag, Munich 1977; Rixdorfer Verlagsanstalt, Berlin undated
• Christa Ritter , Rainer Langhans: Heart of the revolt. Commune 1 from 1967 to 1969 . Hannibal Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-85445-258-6 .
• Siegward Lönnendonker, Bernd Rabehl , Jochen Staadt : The anti-authoritarian revolt. The Socialist German Student Union after the separation from the SPD , Vol. 1: 1960–1967, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002.
• Peter Szondi : Call for arson. An expert opinion in the Langhans / Teufel trial. in: The month , Berlin, 19th vol., no . 7, 1967, pp. 24-29, also printed in: Peter Szondi: About a "Free (ie free) University". Opinions of a philologist . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973 (series: es 620)
• Rainer Langhans: It's me. The first 68 years. Autobiography. Blumenbar, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-936738-34-6 .
• Rainer Langhans, Christa Ritter (eds.): K1. Picture book of the revolt. Blumenbar, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-936738-39-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrich Enzensberger: The Years of Commune I . S. 105, 108 .
2. ↑ http://www.mao-projekt.de/BRD/ORG/SDS/Anschlaggruppe.shtml Subversive action and attack group
3. ↑ Ulrich Enzensberger: The Years of Commune I . S. 105 .
4. ↑ Ulrich Enzensberger: The Years of Commune I . S. 121 .
5. ↑ Michael Sontheimer: "Of course you can shoot": A short history of the Red Army faction . DVA, Munich 2010.
6. ↑ Farewell to Paul Löbe: State act in the Schöneberg Town Hall: disruptive action of the "Commune" on John F. Kennedy Square . In: Tagesspiegel . August 10, 1967 ( medienarchiv68.de [PDF]). medienarchiv68.de ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2015 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.  
7. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 11, 2018 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. . Page two of the Tagesspiegel from August 10, 1967. 
8. ↑ Let's get away . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 2014, p. 134 ( online ).
9. ^ Klaus Stern, Jörg Herrmann: Andreas Baader. The life of an enemy of the state. 3. Edition. dtv, Munich 2007, p. 86.
10. ^ Peter Schneider (writer): Rebellion and madness. My 68. An autobiographical story. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03976-4 , pp. 199f.
11. ↑ Commune I: Why are you burning, consumer? , Leaflet dated May 24, 1967, accessed on November 11, 2012 from the portal 1000dokumente.de
12. ↑ Markus Wehner : RAF: Bombs from the Fun Gerilja , Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, September 2, 2012
13. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Commune 1 gets a memorial plaque in Charlottenburg