TITLE:
Memory and Protest in the West German Peace Movement of 1960s
AUTHORS:
Emilia Salvanou
KEYWORDS:
Cultural Memory, Historical Culture, Protest Movements, Postwar, 1960s, West Germany
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.12 No.3,
July
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: When thinking
the West German 1960s, the focus is often on the student movement and its radicalization
after 1968. Nevertheless, the 1960s was a period of continuous political fermentation
in country, that evolved connected to social and protest movements. This paper explores
the role memory and historical culture had in these movements, especially to the
extent that it was connected to recent, Nazi, past. It raises the argument that
historical and memory culture shaped the environment within which protest movements
evolved and at the same time was a main component of the political contestation
they were part of. In order to do so, the paper will trace the process of memory
work, especially as far as the conceptualization of the recent past was considered.
More specifically, it will do so by examining the journal Informationen zur Abrüstung, which was published by the peace
movement that developed in the political and cultural environment of the extra-parliamentary
left, and focusing on the its references to the past, their contextualization and
the meanings attributed to them.