In 1968 I saw Daniel Cohn-Bendit on tv and decided straight away who I would marry. The man of my dreams would have to be a red-head, Jewish, European-born and educated, politically left wing and a great Bridge player. In 1969, I met my now-husband Joe who was a red-head, Jewish, European and great at Bridge. Only in politics could Joe have been more active – much more active!
Now let us look at 1968, as described by David Del Testa* and Sean O’Hagan*. Paris was the place where political action and utopian fantasy came together in the most spectacular fashion. The 1968 protesters initially comprised a few student activists at the Nanterre University in Paris. Protests began against the lack of facilities on their bleak suburban campus. Extraordinarily, the authorities called the French riot police to quell the small demonstration, and suddenly politicised students joined the rebels.
They had a leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (b1945). Born in Monatuban in southern France, he was the son of German citizens who had fled the Nazi machine before WW2 started. He moved to Germany with his parents in 1958 and attended high school near Frankfurt. Cohn-Bendit took out German citizenship, then returned to France in 1966 to study sociology at the Nanterre University.
Cohn-Bendit was soon called Danny the Red by the media, a reference to his ginger hair as much as his politics. Cohn-Bendit's grin and non-dogmatic radicalism made him the antithesis of dour theoretical Marxists.
After another sit-in at Nanterre, they closed the university and ordered Cohn-Bendit to appear before a disciplinary board. Thus the protests shifted to the centre of Paris where media crews were already assembling to cover the imminent Vietnam peace talks. The students were now becoming an embarrassment to President De Gaulle. He sent police into the Sorbonne to arrest 600 students and ordered the university’s closure.
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Anti-Vietnam War protests
Images of frantic battles in the Vietnam war were quickly broadcast to the USA, a nation who were not used to seeing their soldiers killing civilians. The carpet bombing, napalm and American massacres of Vietnamese families shocked, then angered viewers. In late 1967-1968, c30 colleges a month were protesting with sit-ins and street marches.
In Germany a strong anti-Vietnam war movement had grown on campuses in 1967. By April 1968, highly organised rioting started in Berlin, following the attempted assassination of left-winger Rudi Dutschke. Students and activists directed their ire at the right-wing Springer Press organisation in Berlin, laying siege.
In Poland the government closed down eight university departments in Warsaw, and imprisoned 1,000 students after protests against state censorship. In Italy the University of Rome was shut down for two weeks after violent demonstrations against police brutality. In Spain students marched against the Fascist regime of General Franco, so he closed Madrid University for a month. In Brasil protesters were killed during marches against the military junta. In France, just as the Nanterre protests gathered momentum, thousands marched against the war in Paris. Then 10,000 German protesters gathered in West Berlin. Worst of all, Soviet troops rumbled into Czechoslovakia, abruptly ending the brief Prague spring of reforms.
By then, the spirit of 1968 had dimmed in France, too. To the astonishment of both students and government, the French trade unions had called for a general strike for more pay and better conditions. France ground to a halt to the horror of the beleaguered President De Gaulle. It looked as if France would undergo another revolution, but the unlikely alliance of students and workers did not last. Cohn-Bendit himself admitted that the workers and the students were never properly together.
After the May Riots, Cohn-Bendit’s political opponents took advantage of his German passport and had him expelled from France as a seditious alien. He became active in Frankfurt instead.
That youthful unplanned idealism, carried for a while by a surprising momentum, quickly faded. 1968 ended with De Gaulle still in power, President Nixon was now president and the Vietnam war escalating. In Mexico hundreds of young people in the student movement were slaughtered by the Olympic Battalion in Tlatelolco Square in Oct 1968.
The youth revolution might have been over, but 1968 remained the epicentre modern protest and the dawn of a new geopolitical order. It was also the beginning of the many struggles that followed, especially Women's Liberation. Cohn-Bendit, hero of May 1968, is now a Green Party leader in the European parliament.
*See Government Leaders, Military Rulers and Political Activists by David Del Testa and Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian, Jan 2008.
Now let us look at 1968, as described by David Del Testa* and Sean O’Hagan*. Paris was the place where political action and utopian fantasy came together in the most spectacular fashion. The 1968 protesters initially comprised a few student activists at the Nanterre University in Paris. Protests began against the lack of facilities on their bleak suburban campus. Extraordinarily, the authorities called the French riot police to quell the small demonstration, and suddenly politicised students joined the rebels.
They had a leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (b1945). Born in Monatuban in southern France, he was the son of German citizens who had fled the Nazi machine before WW2 started. He moved to Germany with his parents in 1958 and attended high school near Frankfurt. Cohn-Bendit took out German citizenship, then returned to France in 1966 to study sociology at the Nanterre University.
Cohn-Bendit was soon called Danny the Red by the media, a reference to his ginger hair as much as his politics. Cohn-Bendit's grin and non-dogmatic radicalism made him the antithesis of dour theoretical Marxists.
After another sit-in at Nanterre, they closed the university and ordered Cohn-Bendit to appear before a disciplinary board. Thus the protests shifted to the centre of Paris where media crews were already assembling to cover the imminent Vietnam peace talks. The students were now becoming an embarrassment to President De Gaulle. He sent police into the Sorbonne to arrest 600 students and ordered the university’s closure.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Paris demonstration, May 1968
It ended in near-revolution. The government banned all demonstrations in May when Cohn-Bendit was due to be disciplined. Yet 1,000 students accompanied their leader to the Sorbonne, where they passed through French riot police armed with shields and clubs. The media followed.
The police charged, leaving students unconscious on the cobbled street. The students regrouped and fought back around the Sorbonne, overturning cars and building barricades for hours. These were people who knew nothing of revolution; there was no organisation, no planning.
As news of the uprising spread, young people from all over Paris arrived to support the students. Petrol bombs and Molotov cocktails lit up the streets as night fell. 600+ protesters were injured in one day and about half as many police. The rioting continued for another week and images of the clashes with police were everywhere.
On the streets of Paris in those few weeks, people from different backgrounds came out in support of the students. Groups of Parisians gathered around the barricades to organise and agitate. Posters appeared across the Left Bank and beyond. The two main Parisian art schools combined to form the Atelier Populaire, producing hundreds of silk-screened images in an impressive outpouring of political graphic art. The real 1968 represented liberation and a sense of community. Order and authority were challenged.
Cohn-Bendit, who would soon receive a deportation order from the French government for his involvement, had gone from "local student activist" to "international figurehead for revolution". In just three weeks Danny the Red was famous all over the world. And in my heart.
The catalyst for Danny the Red’s fame in 1968 was TV. Two technological innovations transformed news broadcasts: a] use of cheap, reusable videotape, instead of film; and b] same-day broadcasts. While the Left argued over the meaning of the unrest, Cohn-Bendit did not care about its meaning. But he did care that images of rebellion were quickly disseminated.
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The police charged, leaving students unconscious on the cobbled street. The students regrouped and fought back around the Sorbonne, overturning cars and building barricades for hours. These were people who knew nothing of revolution; there was no organisation, no planning.
As news of the uprising spread, young people from all over Paris arrived to support the students. Petrol bombs and Molotov cocktails lit up the streets as night fell. 600+ protesters were injured in one day and about half as many police. The rioting continued for another week and images of the clashes with police were everywhere.
On the streets of Paris in those few weeks, people from different backgrounds came out in support of the students. Groups of Parisians gathered around the barricades to organise and agitate. Posters appeared across the Left Bank and beyond. The two main Parisian art schools combined to form the Atelier Populaire, producing hundreds of silk-screened images in an impressive outpouring of political graphic art. The real 1968 represented liberation and a sense of community. Order and authority were challenged.
Cohn-Bendit, who would soon receive a deportation order from the French government for his involvement, had gone from "local student activist" to "international figurehead for revolution". In just three weeks Danny the Red was famous all over the world. And in my heart.
The catalyst for Danny the Red’s fame in 1968 was TV. Two technological innovations transformed news broadcasts: a] use of cheap, reusable videotape, instead of film; and b] same-day broadcasts. While the Left argued over the meaning of the unrest, Cohn-Bendit did not care about its meaning. But he did care that images of rebellion were quickly disseminated.
Cohn-Bendit asks for silence, so poet Louis Aragon can talk to students on a megaphone
Photo credit:Blind Flaneur
Anti-Vietnam War protests
Images of frantic battles in the Vietnam war were quickly broadcast to the USA, a nation who were not used to seeing their soldiers killing civilians. The carpet bombing, napalm and American massacres of Vietnamese families shocked, then angered viewers. In late 1967-1968, c30 colleges a month were protesting with sit-ins and street marches.
In Germany a strong anti-Vietnam war movement had grown on campuses in 1967. By April 1968, highly organised rioting started in Berlin, following the attempted assassination of left-winger Rudi Dutschke. Students and activists directed their ire at the right-wing Springer Press organisation in Berlin, laying siege.
In Poland the government closed down eight university departments in Warsaw, and imprisoned 1,000 students after protests against state censorship. In Italy the University of Rome was shut down for two weeks after violent demonstrations against police brutality. In Spain students marched against the Fascist regime of General Franco, so he closed Madrid University for a month. In Brasil protesters were killed during marches against the military junta. In France, just as the Nanterre protests gathered momentum, thousands marched against the war in Paris. Then 10,000 German protesters gathered in West Berlin. Worst of all, Soviet troops rumbled into Czechoslovakia, abruptly ending the brief Prague spring of reforms.
By then, the spirit of 1968 had dimmed in France, too. To the astonishment of both students and government, the French trade unions had called for a general strike for more pay and better conditions. France ground to a halt to the horror of the beleaguered President De Gaulle. It looked as if France would undergo another revolution, but the unlikely alliance of students and workers did not last. Cohn-Bendit himself admitted that the workers and the students were never properly together.
After the May Riots, Cohn-Bendit’s political opponents took advantage of his German passport and had him expelled from France as a seditious alien. He became active in Frankfurt instead.
That youthful unplanned idealism, carried for a while by a surprising momentum, quickly faded. 1968 ended with De Gaulle still in power, President Nixon was now president and the Vietnam war escalating. In Mexico hundreds of young people in the student movement were slaughtered by the Olympic Battalion in Tlatelolco Square in Oct 1968.
The youth revolution might have been over, but 1968 remained the epicentre modern protest and the dawn of a new geopolitical order. It was also the beginning of the many struggles that followed, especially Women's Liberation. Cohn-Bendit, hero of May 1968, is now a Green Party leader in the European parliament.
*See Government Leaders, Military Rulers and Political Activists by David Del Testa and Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian, Jan 2008.