Movement of 1968

German student movement
Part of the Protests of 1968
May 1968 student protest at the Architecture Building at Berlin Institute of Technology, protesting the adoption of the German Emergency Acts.
Location	West Germany
Caused by	Perceived authoritarianism Student poverty

The German student movement (also called 68er-Bewegung, movement of 1968, or soixante-huitaires) was a protest movement that took place during the late 1960s in West Germany. It was largely a reaction against the perceived authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the West German government and other Western governments, and the poor living conditions of students. A wave of protests—some violent—swept West Germany, fueled by violent over-reaction by the police and encouraged by contemporary protest movements across the world. Following more than a century of conservatism among German students, the German student movement also marked a significant major shift to the left and radicalization of student activism.

In 1966, for the first time in fifteen years, the German economy went into a slight recession and the FDP finally withdrew from the Second Erhard cabinet (Ludwig Erhard's CDU/CSU/FDP coalition government) in late October 1966. With the forming of the CDU/CSU/SPD coalition government under Kurt Georg Kiesinger (the first Grand coalition), the FDP (having 50 of 518 Bundestag seats) was the only voice of the opposition within the Bundestag. This led some students to conclude that this encouraged authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes in government and therefore justified and indeed necessitated the transfer of opposition from parliament to bodies outside it (→ Außerparlamentarische Opposition). At the same time, the shock of realizing that the Wirtschaftswunder could not last forever led many in the student body, influenced by Marxist economic theory, to believe that the economic wealth of the nation, instead of improving the standard of living of the working class, would destroy it and lead to an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor.