INVITATION
Regarding Terror: The RAF-Exhibition

Political Modernity in Germany – Susceptible to the Lure of Totalitarianism?
Panel discussion relating to the RAF-Exhibition

Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung in cooperation with KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Tuesday, May 10, 2005
7.30 p.m.

Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung, Hackesche Hoefe, Rosenthalerstr. 40/41, 10178 Berlin

with
Goetz Aly, author, Berlin
Gerd Koenen, author, Frankfurt/M.
Katharina Rutschky, author, Berlin
Hans-Christian Stroebele, member of the Bundestag for Buendnis 90/ Die Gruenen
Moderation: Ralf Fuecks, director of the Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung

Has the lure of totalitarianism been present throughout the era of political modernity in Germany? Social scientists have repeatedly pointed out the existence of a connection between the society and culture of modernity on the one hand and the formation of a specific type of “bourgeois coldness” (Adorno) on the other. While especially the modern political era has devised many instruments to prevent and domesticate coercion, an accumulation of institutional and collective restraints has been discernible at the same time. Two conflicting views fuel the debate surrounding the historical role of the German student revolts: on the one hand the assertion that the latter was totalitarian in tendency, and on the other hand a converse interpretation according to which the student movement acted as a catalyst which placed (West) German society in contact with western political modernity, and therefore advanced post-War Germany’s break with the National Socialist past. What place should political terrorism from the 1970s onward be assigned within the context of this discussion? Was it a case of misguided individuals or the continuation of the “lure of terrorism”? Did the RAF represent a rupture with a basically libertarian and anti-authoritarian movement, or did it carry forward with terrorist means the already ambiguous dynamic of the student protests?



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Further information:

Markus Müller I Maike Cruse
t: ++49 30 24 34 59 41 / 42
press@kw-berlin.de