Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 31, Number 2 (Summer 2025)
Review of Anna von der Goltz, The Other ‘68ers: Student Protest and Christian Democracy in West Germany. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 330.
By Michael O’Sullivan, Marist University
This impactful monograph traces the role of politically right-of-center students in West Germany during the youthful protests of the late 1960s and the left-wing political violence during the 1970s. Anna von der Goltz deserves praise for a source base that includes extensive oral history interviews, pamphlets, posters, speeches, newspaper reports, and correspondence as well as a fluidly written narrative that captures the reader from start to finish. She reframes how the protest activities of the 1968 generation should be researched and taught. This book not only expands the historical narrative by including right-leaning activists, it also convincingly complicates how generation can be used as a concept for historical analysis.
The primary argument of the book is that conservative student activists, and especially leaders of the Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten (Association of Christian Democratic Students or RCDS), were not only present during the 68er generation’s protests but were meaningful actors that shaped many of the era’s signature events. The photographs and opening anecdotes to each chapter alone convincingly prove this point. The cover photo shows a famous debate in Freiburg between the older liberal academic Ralf Dahrendorf and young Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentbund (SDS) figurehead Rudi Dutschke. Lurking in the margins of the photo are young Christian Democrats, Meinhard Ade and Ignaz Bender, who helped organize the event and participated in the debate. Von der Goltz emphasizes how these two students are rarely recognized and sometimes even cropped out of this famous photo to illustrate how the primary subjects of her inquiry have been overlooked. The presence of Ade and Bender at the debate is nonetheless significant. On the one hand, they positioned themselves against their generational spokesperson, Dutschke, and spoke out against left-wing radicalism. On the other hand, their willingness to dialogue with left-wing students and their embrace of the liberal Dahrendorf distinguished them from the older generations of Christian Democrats. Another chapter opens by revealing that the RCDS had organized the visit of the South Vietnamese ambassador in 1966, which Rudi Dutschke and the SDS interrupted, to intentionally draw national attention to the New Left’s unpopular protest tactics. Additionally, the fifth chapter opens with a description of when RCDS chair Gerd Langguth held his ground, condemning the constitutional threat posed by the Marxist Student Association Spartakus while being pelted by cheese curds in 1972. Such examples highlight the often-forgotten role of the right in these moments of protest and illustrates how young Christan Democrats initiated dialogue about reform in the 1960s, imitated many of the theatrical tactics of their left-wing adversaries, and eventually condemned the far-left’s militant turn in the 1970s.
This book does more than re-introduce Christian Democrats to the history of the student protest movement; it also deconstructs the very notion of examining this era through the lens of generation. The Other ‘68ers uses the members of the RCDS to affirm how other scholars have questioned the stereotypes present in so many commemorations of the protests. By highlighting how the “other 68ers” were both similar to and different from the left-wing 68ers, von der Goltz critiques narratives about generational conflict over the Nazi past that motivated student protest. She also questions the period as one of unfettered left-wing hegemony; undermines notions that socio-economic conditions made protest inevitable; and downplays claims that the protests led to a liberalization of West German politics and culture.
Perhaps the most useful analytical frame of the book is its use of “generational unit” as a tool for looking at this small but influential group of center-right activists. Von der Goltz explores how the RCDS related to the more famous generational unit on the left. Students on the left and the right had a surprising amount in common. Initially both units agreed on the need for reform of the university system as well as a political renewal of the republic itself. Both left and right differed from their elders in how they approached the birth control pill, pre-marital sex, fashion, hairstyles, and flamboyant political tactics. Yet they also engaged in intergenerational conflict that would shape West Germany’s future. They disagreed on cultural norms, including communal living, drugs, music, and the extent to which sexual promiscuity that should be the norm. They diverged politically over whether West Germany was in danger of becoming authoritarian, support for left-wing anti-colonial movements abroad, and the use of political violence within West Germany. Such tensions re-emerged in how both left and right remembered their activist years during the 1990s, culminating in a critical discourse about Joschka Fischer and other members of the Red-Green coalition that had been part of left-wing protests. This emphasis on the era’s inter-generational relationships rather than its generational conflict makes this book compelling.
Most useful for the readers of this publication are the book’s contributions to the history of Christian Democracy. This age cohort began its youthful activities at odds with their elders within the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) due to their attraction to the less formal political rhetoric of the time and their calls for reform within the party and the country. By the 1970s, activists within the RCDS became aligned with the mainstream of the party as they formed a united front against the RAF and other left-wing groups associated with political terrorism. This positioned the men within this group to become influential when the CDU/CSU returned to power under the leadership of Helmut Kohl. While the older Christian Democratic generation called the shots under Kohl, the “other ‘68ers” modernized the messaging of the party and shaped foreign policy. Known as “Kohl’s Kissinger,” Horst Teltschik pushed Kohl to maintain the elements of the foreign policy of the Social Democratic 1970s and prevented a freeze on relations with the GDR. He also led foreign policy efforts with the United States and encouraged Kohl’s aggressive drive for German unification in 1989. Von der Goltz argues that figures from the 1968 generation, such as Teltschik, Wulf Schönbohm, and Peter Radunski, played a leading role in preventing the Kohl government from shifting too far to the right in the 1980s and maintaining a centrist course.
Many scholars of Christianity will be disappointed that this monograph does not devote more attention to the role of religion in the ideological outlook of these Christian Democratic politicians and activists. Von der Goltz often mentions the largely Catholic backgrounds of her historical subjects. She also addresses the secularization of West Germany that accelerated in the late 1950s and differentiated this generation from their elders. The book’s coverage of the support that center-right students articulated for pre-marital sex, the pill, and the abolition of paragraph 175 illustrate how they were culturally similar to their own age cohort and thought little of Christian moral teaching in many aspects of their lives. They even became involved in making birth control more broadly available to women, and would eventually lead the CDU/CSU effort to reach out to women as voters in the 1980s. However, a book that emphasizes the “mental map” of these CDU/CSU members misses an opportunity to complicate postwar secularization. Just as this book problematizes the history of generational conflict and liberalization, it could have also developed a more complex and non-linear approach to secularization. Recent research illustrates the overlapping influence of Catholicism and new social movements of the left; there should also be space to show how both Catholicism and Protestantism remained relevant to Christian Democracy even as formal religious practice waned.[1] In addition the book could have added more context about the unrest within the Catholic Church in West Germany and the mass dissent over the encyclical Humane Vitae in 1968 that affirmed the condemnation of the birth control pill. This book already achieves so much that this shortcoming is likely only pronounced for those who specialize in religious history; perhaps its decision not to probe the entanglement between the secular and the sacred in the 1960s leaves opportunities open for future scholars.
The history of Christian Democratic women from the 1960s to the 1980s is another area where researchers can build on the findings on this monograph. Von der Goltz includes interviews with the women of the RCDS, such as Ingrid Reichart-Dreyer, Maria-Theresia van Schewick, and Ursula Männle. She demonstrates how these women, despite being sidelined by patriarchal men, often criticized not only sexism but also the ways that women’s bodies were portrayed in the political pamphlets of the era. Von der Goltz also shows how women of the right concurred with the left on the desire to legalize abortion but disagreed on how to rally publicly on behalf on repealing paragraph 218. The inclusion of these oral histories demonstrates that Catholic and Protestant women engaged in the student protests of the era; more granular work remains to analyze fully how they pursued power in a movement dominated by men. The recent scholarship of Maria Mitchell on a woman of an earlier age cohort, Maria Meyer-Sevenich, could be a model for a deeper future analysis of the agency of women such as Männle.[2]
This book is essential for all historians of modern Europe. It reorients the history the 1968 generation through its focus on young Christian Democrats. It engages readers with its call for less teleological narratives on liberalization and its problematizing of how 1968 is often commemorated by both left and right. It also illustrates the importance of the student activists to the history of Christian democracy and the era of Helmut Kohl. Beyond its scholarly importance, the book is an engaging narrative filled with original research.
Notes:
[1] Sandra Frühauf, Maria Schubert, and Florian Bock, “Catholic Narratives and Practices and the West German New Social Movements during the 1970s and 1980s,” in Dimiter Daphinoff an Franziska Metzger (eds.), Appropriation as Practice of Memory: Inventions, Uses, and Transformations of Religious Memory (Cologne: Böhlau), 345-376.
[2] Maria Mitchell, “Maria Meyer-Sevenich and the Politics of Emotions, Gender, and Religion in Postwar Germany,” in Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker and Martina Cucchiara (eds.), Women, Religion, and Emotions in Modern Germany and Beyond (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2025), 57-84.
