Rudi Dutschke

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Lore & Background

Born on 7 March 1940 in Schönefeld near Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, Dutschke was raised and educated in Communist East Germany, obtaining his high-school diploma in 1958 and apprenticing as an industrial salesman. He joined the regime-directed Free German Youth in 1956 but also engaged in the barely tolerated youth organisation of the East German Protestant Church, where he developed the courage to refuse compulsory service in the National People's Army. On 10 August 1961, three days before the Berlin Wall began closing passage, he registered as a refugee in West Berlin. On 14 August, he and friends used a rope to try to tear down a section of the newly-laid barbed wire and threw leaflets over it into East Berlin. In 1964, his group Subversive Action entered the SDS, and Dutschke was elected to its political council in 1965. He argued for confrontations with authorities to expose the authoritarian character of representative democracy. In April 1965 he traveled with an SDS group to the Soviet Union, where his hosts classified him as a Trotskyite. On 23 March 1966, he privately married American theology student Gretchen Klotz; they had three children together. In the 1970s, he styled himself a patriotic socialist and called for a bloc-free path to German reunification. Shortly before his death on 24 December 1979 from complications of his 1968 injuries, he was elected as a delegate to the founding congress of the Greens.

Reader's Guide

Dutschke's significance lies in his role as a leading charismatic figure of the West German student movement and his efforts to fuse Christian and Marxist ideas into a democratic socialism that opposed both Eastern bloc communism and Western social democracy. His advocacy of direct democracy and extra-parliamentary opposition influenced the New Left in Germany. He joined Moscow- and Beijing-oriented communists in hailing Third World national liberation struggles as fronts in a socialist world revolution. His later turn to patriotic socialism and engagement with the "national question" marked a controversial shift among former allies. His election to the founding congress of the Greens shortly before his death linked the 1960s protest movement to the emerging environmental and social-justice party. His legacy remains tied to the debates over the limits of parliamentary democracy and the possibilities of grassroots political organization.

Did You Know?

• Dutschke was born in Schönefeld near Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, the fourth son of a postal clerk.
• On 14 August 1961, Dutschke and friends used a rope to try to tear down a section of the newly-laid barbed wire that became the Berlin Wall, and threw leaflets over it into East Berlin.
• In April 1965, Dutschke traveled with an SDS group to the Soviet Union, where his hosts classified him as a Trotskyite.
• He privately married American theology student Gretchen Klotz on 23 March 1966; they had three children together.
• Shortly before his death in 1979, Dutschke was elected as a delegate to the founding congress of the Greens.