From Forvm to Neues Forvm: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the 68ers and the Emigrés in Austria

Abstract

die 68er lieber Marcuse gelesen haben statt [Arthur] Koestler, Mans Sperber und Hannah Arendt,« said Daniel Cohn Bendit in 2005, »das war schlimm, genauso schlimm wie die RAF [Rote Armee Fraktion]!« 1 His comrade Joschka Fischer quietly agreed. Almost four decades after the generational conflict that pitted students against their teachers, the 68ers against leading ØmigrØs, the most thoughtful and successful among the rebels, chastened by political experience, revised their views of the elders, finding instruction in the political books they had previously ignored, or abhorred. Significantly, even as the 68ers' politics changed, the ØmigrØs remained their frame of reference. Cohn-Bendit and Fischer were merely taking a different side in the old fight: The former hero, Herbert Marcuse, now became a villain, and the former villains were now heroes. From beginning to end, the life of the 68ers was bound up with that of the ØmigrØs -whether reviled or admired.The ØmigrØs were the victims, symbolic and real, of the European past, against which the 68ers rebelled. »Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands« (we are all German Jews), chanted the Parisian students, defending Cohn-Bendit against French detractors. Wishing to set the past aright, the 68ers refocused social and academic attention on the ØmigrØs, sought their approval and developed a new * This was originally a Ringvorlesung in the series, »1968 als Ereignis und Symbol,« organized by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Vienna, and given on 24 May 2008 at the University of Vienna. Thanks to Friedrich Stadler and Christoph Limbeck for the organization and for comments and to

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