Communist High School Students Association

The Communist High School Students 'Association (KOV) was founded on October 7, 1972 as the high school students' association of the Communist Party of Germany in West Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The founding of the KOV was preceded by a lengthy parliamentary group work by the KPD and the Communist Student Association (KSV) as the High School Students Commission (OSK) in what was then the " Central Council of West Berlin High School Students ". This was founded in the summer of 1970 after the strike by thousands of schoolchildren against the policy of austerity of the West Berlin SPD Senate.

The "OSK theses" of the KPD / AO (RPK, No. 138) formed the political basis of the work of the high school students' commission. In May 1973 the central management of the KOV published the action program of the KOV. It presented the development of class struggles in the Federal Republic of Germany in connection with the worsening living conditions of the working class and called for the struggle against imperialism and militarism.

The action program formulated the tasks of the KOV as "the fight against capitalist education, against bourgeois ideology, against political oppression and disenfranchisement and for independent student representatives". “In the struggle on the side of the working class”, the KOV set itself the goal of “re-educating the students to make them their own a truly proletarian point of view”.

Organizationally, the KOV was managed at the federal level by the "Central Management", headed by a secretariat. Regional committees in the individual federal states led the work of the various cells as basic organizations at the individual schools.

The members were communist cadres who had subordinated themselves to the primacy of politics : “Communist cadres must be willing to fight for communism all their lives, be determined not to shy away from sacrifices and overcome all difficulties to achieve victory ... "

The sympathizers were trained at sympathizers meetings of the respective KOV cell and included in the political work of the KOV cell or the respective KOV representation on site.

For the 'proletarian revolution' striven for by the parent organization KPD, the function of the KOV consisted on the one hand in neutralizing the 'petty-bourgeois' high school students, viewed as an 'alliance class', and on the other hand in the provision of cadres who could be transplanted almost anywhere due to their résumé . If they broke off the grammar school prematurely, which for the KOV, like almost all student organizations of the K groups, was the almost exclusive source of membership, or even finished it with a high school diploma, they were still able to agitate the 'working youth' in the large companies as apprentices, but to cause a stir in the Bundeswehr cells of the Communist Youth Association.

Local groups of the KOV beyond West Berlin, where the OSK of the KSV was able to win over the majority faction of the Central Council of West Berlin high school students, arose in many cases , especially in 1972 through the Vietnam committees , especially in smaller provincial towns, and later became part of the KOV - Structures incorporated. The sympathetic groups often called themselves, if they had specific names at all, mostly communist high school students (KO) with city names, i.e. KOF like KO Frankfurt, KO / H like KO / Hamburg (approx. 35 members), KO / G like KO / Göttingen ( probably around 15 members), KO S / M like KO Schaumburg / Minden, KO / M for KO Munich etc.

In 1974 the KOV was represented in 22 locations in different federal states; However, he probably had his greatest influence at various West Berlin high schools and the schools of the second educational path, the PA Silbermann School and the Berlin College in West Berlin.

The KOV was also important at individual grammar schools. a. - in Baden-Wuerttemberg, especially at the Wiesloch high school, but also temporarily in Öhringen and Villingen and other places, - in some cities in Bavaria, be it locally sometimes more or less dominant in the north, as u. a. in Coburg, Erlangen Naila, Kulmbach and Hof or as a strong opposition to the red school front in the south, - at the Frankfurt Wöhlergymnasium, - in Lower Saxony, as in Braunschweig, Hanover, Helmstedt, Schöningen or Wolfenbüttel ( initiative of socialist pupils ), - in Rhineland- Palatinate especially in the Birkenfeld / Mainz area - and also in North Rhine-Westphalia, where he presumably not only provided numerous of the first local 'proletarian' cadres for the originally West Berlin KPD / structural organization in Rhine / Ruhr, but later also tried to establish the district-wide and To occupy national student councils , especially against the Socialist German Workers' Youth (SDAJ) and was able to win over some of their supporters.

One of the first KOV cells in North Rhine-Westphalia was the cell at the Lessing Gymnasium in Düsseldorf. In addition to Düsseldorf, where the KOV was probably able to recruit the majority in the Central Council of Düsseldorf students , Solingen, Warendorf and Münster, Dortmund is also to be seen as an important center of the KOV in North Rhine-Westphalia. The work of the groups at the then Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium (GSG) Dortmund (today comprehensive school) and at the Leibniz-Gymnasium (LG) Dortmund can be read on the web using numerous public and internal documents.

The KOV published the magazine ' Schulkampf' , which had previously been published by the OSK of the KSV, as its central organ, at times with regional supplements, which was discontinued in 1975. At cell level, school magazines from the individual basic organizations such as B. " Red Compass " at the PA Silbermann School in West Berlin, " Red Megaphone " at the Gropius School in West Berlin, " Red College Mirror " at the Berlin College and " Der Wecker " at the Düsseldorf Lessing- High school.

In North Rhine-Westphalia the KOV led the fight against the School Participation Act (SMWG) and School Administration Act (SVG), for progressive student representation and against the political disciplining of progressive teachers and students.

Members and friends of the KOV actively supported the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people and - together with the League against Imperialism - of the oppressed peoples of the world in numerous Vietnam committees .

In the autumn of 1975 the KOV was dissolved; Communist work among students was continued by the Communist Youth Association of Germany of the KPD (“Students, organize yourselves in main school cells of the KJV!”, central organ of the KJVD Kämpfende Jugend of March 5, 1975, No. 5 p. 4).

Related organizations

literature

Selected speeches, essays and resolutions of the KPD organizational structure, Berlin 1971
Rote Presse-Korrespondenz (RPK), No. 138
Communist High School Students Association (KOV), action program, Dortmund 1973
Fighting Youth, Central Organ of the KJVD, Cologne, March 5, 1975, No. 5

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ (Action Program, p. 3)
↑ (Action Program, p. 72)

[1] (Action Program, p. 3)

[2] (Action Program, p. 72)