Utopia or Auschwitz:
Germany's 1968 Generation and the Holocaust
One thing separated the left-wing students who demonstrated on the
streets of West Berlin and Frankfurt in 1968 from their counterparts
elsewhere around the world. The young Germans who became known as the
1968 generation or the Achtundsechziger had grown up knowing that
their parents were responsible for Nazism and in particular for the
Holocaust. Germany's 1968 generation did not merely dream of a better
world as some of their revolutionary contemporaries in other
countries did; they felt compelled to act to save Germany from
itself. It was an all-or-nothing choice: Utopia or Auschwitz.
However, although many in the West German student movement imagined
their struggle against capitalism as a kind of ex post facto
resistance against Nazism, they also had a tendency to relativise the
Holocaust. Others, meanwhile, wanted to draw a line under the Nazi
past. In fact, despite the anti-fascist rhetoric of the
Achtundsechziger, there were also nationalist and anti-Semitic
currents in the West German New Left that grew out of the student
movement. In short, the 1968 generation had a deeply ambivalent
relationship with the Nazi past.
Utopia or Auschwitz explores these contradictory currents as it
traces the political journey of Germany's 1968 generation, via the
left-wing terrorism of the seventies and the Social Democrats and
Greens in the eighties, to political power in the nineties in the
form of the first-ever "red-green" government in Germany. It examines
the "red-green" government's foreign policy, in particular its
response to the Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq crises, which reflected
the 1968 generation's ambivalent relationship with the Nazi past.
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Former editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel plans new weekly magazine
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/oct/13/stefan-aust-new-weekly-magazine
Influential German journalist and author Stefan Aust announces plans
to launch publication next year
Mercedes Bunz
13 October 2009
The former editor-in-chief of the German political weekly Der Spiegel
has announced plans for a new weekly magazine. Stefan Aust, 63, is
one of Germany's most influential journalists - he headed Der Spiegel
from 1994 until 2008, when he was ousted from the office due to his
supposed lack of innovation. He is the author of several books,
including The Baader-Meinhof Complex, which was made into a
successful film last year.
Aust, a postwar expert, revealed his plans during the launch of Hans
Kundnani's book, Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany's 1968 generation and
the Holocaust, in London. The journalist talked confidently about the
project, which is obviously in a very concrete test phase. He
described the new magazine he is working on as a mix of the German
weeklies Der Stern and Der Spiegel, and professed to have been
inspired by the Guardian, which he reads daily. On Monday it was
revealed that the longtime political editor of Der Spiegel, Caroline
Schmidt, is joining Aust's company, Agenda Media. Last month
Christian Krug, former editor-in-chief of Max, also joined the
company, which is currently developing new media projects for German
WAZ-Gruppe.
Plans for the new magazine, which Aust said wryly would be "more
independent than Der Spiegel", will be finalised at the beginning of
next year. It is likely to be launched with a rather small
circulation. While the former editor-in-chief didn't mention anything
about its online-version, but a media convergence combining it with
documentary DVDs might be discussed - he has a long journalistic
history in television.
The announcement came at an interesting time for the German
publishing industry, which is seeing Aust's competition weakened by
falling advertising revenue.
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