Social policy and alternative politics

The economic miracle, the consumer wave and the commitment to the West were not approved of unconditionaly in Hamburg or elsewhere. Massive criticism provoked the resolution of the German lower House of Parliament to equip the newly founded federal Armed Forces with nuclear weapons. 100.000 people gathered on the Rathausmarkt to demonstrate against the resolution together with the Mayor Brauer. Doubts on the politics of the ruling nurtured the affair of the magazine Spiegel in 1962, where the editorial offices were occupied by the police and the editors arrested for alleged betrayal of secrets.

With the call for social reformation the extra parliamentary opposition (APO) formed at the university. The handing over of the rectorship on the 9th of November 1967 came to the spectacular unveiling of the banner „Under the talars – stink of a 1000 years“. Severe clashes between demonstrators and the police occured in April 1968 in front of the Springer publishing house whose newspapers were given a share of the blame for the assassination attempt on the leader of the students Rudi Dutschke.

With the established parties of Hamburg and in the senate, who, except for the years of the conservative bloc of citizens (1953-1957), was put up by the SPD since 1946, criticism on the ruling political conditions was judged differently. When in 1971 nationwide the decree“ excluding members of extremist organizations from civil-service employment“ was set up against political rights and especially leftists of the civil service as a official disbarment from all civil service professions, Hamburg was the first state to enforce this law.

Out of the left wing student and critical environmental movement political groups were formed in the 1970´s, which participated in citizen elections as the „colourful list – defend yourself“ and „green environmental protection list“ and successfully entered the borough assembly Eimsbüttel in 1978. The green alternative list founded in 1982 was able to enter the city parliament for the first time, but was, at that time, characterized by severe inner differences between environmentalists, social and so- called Realos, their aim made the spectrum of alternative future programs for Hamburg clear.


Hamburg in the 20th. century (2)
-    Winter food shortages, refugee misery, black market trading
-    From occupied city to federal state
-    The modern metropolis
-    The exhileration of the consumer Society
-    The ups and downs of the Economic Miracle
-    Social policy and alternative politics
-    The limits of growth
-    Cultural city Hamburg
-    At the end of the Millennium

Hamburg in the 20th. century (1)