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1968 - West Berlin, 1968 - East Berlin

July 31, 2008

1968 came to stand for an entire generation - a generation that marked a fundamental change in Western an Eastern society.

https://p.dw.com/p/Enmg
Gaston Salvatore and Rudi DutschkeImage: rbb

The students of Germany's universities took to the streets, chanting "Under the academic robes is the niff of a thousand years" and set out to break down the long petrified social structures of German society - in the West. It was a rebellion against the established and the conventional and for greater freedom and equality. On the front lines were the students of the Free University of Berlin.

31.07.2008 DW-TV Im Focus Demo in Westberlin
Demonstration in West Berlin, 1968Image: rbb

The ideals of the older generation were family and career. While bourgeois life in Berlin went on, the students began thoroughly questioning these values. In Germany, too, a gap opened wide between the generations. Using archive and 8-mm film footage, this documentary seeks to re-create the feeling of 1968. In between, eye-witnesses tell how it was back in "the Day".

31.07.2008 DW-TV Im Focus Gaston Salvatore 2008 am Attentatsort auf Rudi Dutschke am Kurfürstendamm
Gaston Salvatore at the scene of the attempt on Rudi Dutschke's life on Kurfürstendamm, 2008Image: rbb

One of them is Gaston Salvatore, at the time a student from Chile and a close friend of student leader Rudi Dutschke. They marched arm in arm in the street protests. And then there's the taxi driver Heinz Peter, who says, "Berlin's taxi drivers have never been lefties."





Broadcasting Times

DW-TV
TUES 02.09.2008 - 18:30 UTC
WED 03.09.2008 - 06:30 UTC
THUR 04.09.2008 - 12:30 UTC

DW-TV USA/LATIN AMERICA
TUES 02.09.2008 - 18:30 UTC
WED 03.09.2008 - 06:30 UTC
THUR 04.09.2008 - 12:30 UTC

1968 - East Berlin

What was going on in East Berlin in 1968? The Berlin Wall had been whitewashed as a protective barrier against Western imperialism, but it couldn't hold back flower power, Herbert Marcuse, Jim Morrison and the sounds of rock 'n' roll. East Germans began discussing and trying out alternative lifestyles, too. There was even an eastern version of Commune 1 in East Berlin.

31.07.2008 DW-TV Im Focus Ostberlin 1968
East Berlin, 1968Image: rbb

Wolf Biermann recorded his now legendary album "Chausseestr. 131" in his own apartment. People felt stifled by a rigid state and restrictions on their freedom at the same time as a fresh breeze was blowing up from the south: The Prague Spring had arrived in Czechoslovakia. Here the winds of change blew even stronger than in the West.

31.07.2008 DW-TV Im Focus Florian Havemann, Ost 68-er
Florian Havemann, member of the 1968-generation in East BerlinImage: rbb

East Germany's answer to "All you need is love" was "Socialism with a human face". But in August of '68, this socialism revealed its true face, when the young men of East Berlin were pressed into service for Moscow's military crackdown on Prague. In the East German regime's ideologically distorted world view, they had already achieved what the demonstrators on the streets of West Berlin were demanding: a new society with new humans living under left-wing ideals.

Broadcasting Times

DW-TV
TUES 09.09.2008 - 18:30 UTC
WED 10.09.2008 - 06:30 UTC
THUR 11.09.2008 - 12:30 UTC

DW-TV USA/LATIN AMERICA
TUES 09.09.2008 - 18:30 UTC
WED 10.09.2008 - 06:30 UTC
THUR 11.09.2008 - 12:30 UTC