Paradoxes of democratization: social-liberal reformism, education and citizenship in West Germany after 1968

ABSTRACT

Historians largely agree that the social-liberal reforms in the Federal Republic of Germany constituted a major contribution to transforming the country into a more participatory democracy around 1970. Responding to the demands of protesting youth, so this narrative goes, the coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party engaged in a flurry of reforms all aimed at equalizing access to an active and engaged democratic citizenship. By taking a closer look at how these social-liberal reformers addressed young people through school reforms, this article instead emphasizes the paradoxical legacy of these reforms, which has thus far been neglected in the historiography. This article thus probes the connection among the federal, regional and local initiatives to use schools to engage young people in the democratic process, with a particular focus on the markedly different reforms in the West German state of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) and in West Berlin. Through these reforms, policymakers and experts not only attempted to offer youth more opportunities for active participation, but also to control carefully how they made use of their citizenship. Moreover, these educational reforms exposed the fissures inherent in a class-based and multi-ethnic West German democracy. Although social-liberal reformers intended to equalize access to democratic citizenship, they nonetheless also reified cultural and political hierarchies between the middle and lower classes, as well as between ethnic Germans and immigrant children. Ultimately, these endeavours shaped West German democracy largely through their unintended consequences. While in NRW, these reforms contributed to the rise of a liberal-conservative opposition, in West Berlin, these policies gave rise to a Left-alternative movement that each defined democratic citizenship in their own ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Democracy
• citizenship
• West Germany
• social democracy
• liberalism
• education

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the European Review of History as well as Till Kössler, Anne Otto and Sandra Wenk for valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Marcel Fürstenau, “Auf zu neuen Ufern, Deutschland!,” Deutsche Welle, November 24, 2021, https://www.dw.com/de/meinung-auf-zu-neuen-ufern-deutschland/a-59923306 (accessed May 10, 2022); “Johannes Vogel und Kevin Kühnert: Auf der Suche nach Nähe,” Die Zeit, March 3, 2021; and “Brandt’s Aufbruch,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 4, 2019.

2. Jarausch, After Hitler, 147–56, 173–9; Faulenbach, Das sozialdemokratische Jahrzehnt, 181–241, 770–2; Schildt and Schmidt, “Einleitung”; and Hughes, Embracing Democracy, 103–29.

3. Herbert, Geschichte Deutschlands, 876–81. Other scholars argue that visions of participatory citizenship gave way to more moderate models in the mid-1970s as terrorism began to challenge state authority and a conservative opposition emerged. See Knoch, Bürgersinn mit Weltgefühl.

4. Nolte, “Beyond Resilience, Beyond Redemption”; and van Rahden, Demokratie.

5. Recent studies predominantly focus on national debates or examine relatively similar Länder case studies (see Levsen, Autorität und Demokratie and Puaca, Learning Democracy). For a comparative perspective, see also Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children.

6. Recent historiography includes Nonn, Geschichte Nordrhein-Westfalens and Krause, Bringing Cold War Democracy. The reforms studied in this paper have only gained marginal attention, whereas the bulk of the literature has studied the controversies over citizenship education in the state of Hesse (see, for example, Gass-Bolm, Das Gymnasium, 307–13).

7. For this methodology, see Schumann, “Introduction” and Wagner and Kössler, “Moulding Democratic Citizens”. In order to shed light both on the perspectives of policymakers and experts, as well as of pupils, teachers and parents, this article draws on the archive of federal parliament (PA DBT), the archives of state parliaments of NRW (AL NW) and West Berlin (BAB), the NRW state archives in Duisburg and Detmold (LA NW and LA OWL), the Berlin State Archive (LAB), the archive of the Research Library for the History of Education Berlin (BBF), and the Materialien zur Analyse von Opposition online databank (www.mao-projekt.de, MAO).

8. Bauerkämper, Jarausch and Payk, Demokratiewunder; van Rahden, Demokratie, 25–41; Hentges, Staat und politische Bildung; Wagner, “Das Mitbürgerliche”; and Levsen, Autorität und Demokratie, 66–75, 87–92, 102–41, 232–45.

9. Levsen, Autorität und Demokratie, 190–1; Mrozek, Jugend, Pop, Kultur; and specifically on 1968, see von Hodenberg, Das andere Achtundsechzig, 45–101.

10. “Stenographischer Bericht der 196. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags (5. Wahlperiode),” November 15, 1968, 10557–10587, 10566 (quotation) PA DBT; for Brandt, see “Stenographischer Bericht der 5. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestages (6. Wahlperiode),” October 28, 1969, 20, PA DBT. For the wider context, see Mambour, Zwischen Politik und Pädagogik, 64–83; and Frei, 1968. For curricula and textbook reform, see Rohstock, “Antikörper zur Atombombe” and Gass-Bolm, Das Gymnasium, 294–307.

11. See, for instance, “Stenographischer Bericht der 196. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags (5. Wahlperiode),” November 15, 1968, 10557–10587, PA DBT; and “Aufgaben der politischen Bildung in der gegenwärtigen Lage,” undated (September 1967), LAB B Rep. 015 Nr. 443.

12. These transformations are summarized in Arbeitsgruppe am Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungforschung, Das Bildungswesen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Gass-Bolm, Das Gymnasium, 292–7; and Rudloff, “Bildungspolitik.”

13. “Protokoll der Bund-Länder-Besprechung am 17.02.1970 im Bundesministerium des Inneren über die Intensivierung der politischen Bildung im Bereich von Schule und Hochschule,” March 4, 1970, LA NW 353 Nr. 66.

14. Rosenbach, Der Parlamentarische Rat, 111–14. See also Richter, Demokratie, 55–6.

15. For this group, see “Sollen Teenager wählen?,” in Die Zeit, January 14, 1966; and Jesse, Wahlrecht, 325–41.

16. “Drucksache V/3009, Antrag der Fraktion der FDP: Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Herabsetzung des Wahlalters,” June 14, 1968 and “Stenographischer Bericht der 196. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags (5. Wahlperiode),” November 15, 1968, 10587–10598, 10587 (quotation), both in PA DBT.

17. “Stenographischer Bericht der 15. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags (6. Wahlperiode),” November 18, 1969, 556; “Stenographischer Bericht der 60. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags (6. Wahlperiode),” June 18, 1970, both in PA DBT. My interpretation is in line with Nolte, Was ist Demokratie, 351.

18. For Christian Democratic ideas, see, for instance, Richtlinien für den Unterricht.

19. “Schülerzeitung”; “Schülermitverwaltung.”

20. Schörken, “Zum theoretischen Hintergund.”

21. Kultusminister des Landes NRW, Richtlinien für politischen Unterricht, 10–24. See also idem., “Nur ein Mädchen.”

22. Kultusminister des Landes NRW, Richtlinien für politischen Unterricht, 10–24. See also Gagel, “Sicherung vor Anpassungsdidaktik.”

23. Schörken, “Zur Tauglichkeit von Identitätskonzepten.” More broadly, on group dynamics in post-1945 West Germany, see Tändler, Das therapeutische Jahrzehnt, 363–83.

24. Memorandum “Bezirks-und Landes-SMV unter der politischen Kontrolle der Kultusbürokratie,” September 9 & 10, 1972, MAO, www.mao-projekt.de/BRD/NRW/SMV/NRW_Oberschulen_SMV-Press.shtml (accessed May 10, 2022).

25. On West Berlin, see Puaca, Learning Democracy and Krause, Bringing Cold War Democracy. While School Senator Carl-Heinz Evers in principle defended the right of pupils to have ‘unorthodox’ views (see his “Antwort auf die Kleine Anfrage Nr. 61 vom 12.07.1967,” July 19, 1967, LA B Rep. 015, no. 317), high-ranking school administrators condemned leftist educationalists, students and pupils (see, for instance, letter from Demokratischer Klub to secondary school teachers and school inspectors, August 24, 1967, LA B Rep. 015, no. 317).

26. Senator für Schulwesen, Rahmenpläne, chapter AI, 6–7 (quotations), chapter AV4, 1–3 and chapter AV5, 1–2.

27. See “Ausführungsvorschriften über Schülerzeitschriften.” The affair around the school newspaper Roter Turm even made its way into the West Berlin parliament (see memorandum regarding “Große Anfrage der CDU-Fraktion über Schülerzeitung,” July 10, 1967, LA B Rep. 015 no. 317).

28. Senator für Schulwesen, Rahmenpläne, chapter AI, 8; and “Kein Verbot für Beatles – Mähne,” Tagesspiegel, April 26, 1968.

29. Senator für Schulwesen, Rahmenpläne, chapter AI, 8 and chapter AV4, 3.

30. For the leftist conception of school parliaments, see Preuss-Lausitz, “Wege zur demokratischen Schule.” For the Senate response, see “Schulverfassung” and Schöfer and Bartsch, “Auf dem Weg.” On Left-alternative educational ideas, see, for instance, van Rahden, Demokratie, 103–27.

31. Kaßner, “Ansätze zur Theorie,” 65.

32. Kaßner, Matußek and Preuss-Lausitz, “Bedingungen von Gesellschaftslehre,” 133.

33. For a summary, see Matußek and Rathenow, “Berlin.” West Berlin’s leading school official sharply condemned a curriculum for anti-capitalist citizenship (see Bath, Emanzipation als Erziehungsziel, 72–3).

34. For the Extremist Act and the case of NRW, see Rigoll, Staatsschutz in Westdeutschland, 335–70, 397–407; and for the West Berlin numbers, see “Stellungnahme des Landesvorstands.”

35. One of the best introductions to this network is Brüggemann, Bildung oder Indoktrination? For the protest, see, for instance, “Sendungsprotokoll ZDF-Magazin,” February 6, 1974, LA NW 353, Nr. 69; Höffner, “Für Christen besetztes Gebiet”; Eberhard Wagemann, “Ansprache zum Neujahrempfang,” January 11, 1974, LA NW 353, Nr. 67; “Evertz kündigt Kampagne gegen Rahmenrichtlinien an,” November 21, 1973, LA NW 353, Nr. 67; Klaus Gebauer, “Rote Fahnen an den Toren der Paradiese,” Vorwärts, May 2, 1974.

36. Quotation by Wolfgang Brüggemann (CDU) in “Protokoll der 92. Sitzung des Landtags NRW (7. Wahlperiode),” January 23, 1974, 3659, AL NRW.

37. Quotation by economist Klaus-Dieter Ziehmann, in Gerschler, “Reaktionen der Öffentlichkeit,” 108.

38. See the chronology in “Absolut narrensicher,” Der Spiegel (November 18, 1974), 60–3. For Hesse, see Gass-Bolm, Das Gymnasium, 307–13.

39. Kultusminister des Landes NRW, Richtlinien für den Politik-Unterricht, 10, 21.

40. For the schools, see, for example “So nicht, Herr Girgensohn,” Zoff: Bonner Schülerzeitung no. 13 (1976): 18, BBF, Prolabor collection, folder 116. On the response of teachers, see memorandum “Erfahrungsbericht über die Einführung des Politik-Unterrichts,” June 7, 1978–11, LA NW 842, Nr. 674; ‘Typisch Frau.’ Verhaltenserwartungen gegenüber der Frau in unserer Gesellschaft: Eine Unterrichtsreihe im Politik-Unterricht einer neunten Klasse, Paderborn, March 1978, LA OWL, D 8, Nr. 353. For the numbers, see Wolfgang Sander, “Politik-Unterricht in der Sekundarstufe I an Realschulen und Gymnasien des Landes NRW (Schuljahr 1977/78),” 7, LA NW 842, Nr. 674.

41. For the numbers, see Kultusministerium NRW, Hauptschulbericht, Appendix 10; Wolfgang Sander, “Politik-Unterricht in der Sekundarstufe I an Realschulen und Gymnasien des Landes NRW (Schuljahr 1977/78),” 11a (sic), LA NW 842, Nr. 674. On unofficial usage of the curriculum, see Letter of the Principal of the Catholic Hauptschule Köln-Kalk to Girgensohn, November 29, 1976, LA NW 842, Nr. 674. For the conflicting guidelines, see Erfahrungsbericht über die Einführung des Politik-Unterrichts, June 1978, pp. 20–1, LA NW 842 Nr. 674. For the Dortmund example, see letter from Wagener to Girgensohn, October 11, 1976, LA NW 842, Nr. 674.

42. For the Bonn case, see “Dehnbare politische Richtlinen,” Münstersche Zeitung, November 25, 1976. For Bund and Arbeitsgruppe, see Gutjahr-Löser and Knütter, Der Streit um die politische Bildung; Streithofen and Pittrof, Texte für den politischen Unterricht.

43. For the GEW, see GEW Berlin, “Indoktrination auf Gesamtkonferenzen,” undated (c. 1978), LA B Rep. 015 Nr. 745/1 and “Stellungnahme des Landesvorstands.” For pupil protest, see “Der Fall Juliane Ströbele Gregor,” Beskiden-Sturm, no. 11 (1977), unpaginated, BBF, Prolabor collection, folder Bln 052; “Solche Lehrer brauchen wir!,” undated (c. January 1977), LA B 015 Nr. 745/2.

44. For the numbers, see “Bericht zur Reform der gymnasialen Oberstufe,” June 9, 1976, LA B Rep. 006, Nr. 3283. For leftist teaching, see “SPD-Schulrat als Erfüllungsgehilfe der CDU,” Berliner Extra-Dienst, April 6, 1976; letter from Bath to Martin-Buber-Oberschule, March 9, 1978, LA B 015 Nr. 745/2.

45. For these 1960s discourses, see Gass-Bolm, Das Gymnasium, 225–50; and Rudloff, “Bildungspolitik”; Kraul, “Koedukation,” S. 32–5.

46. “Stenographischer Bericht der 5. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestages (6. Wahlperiode),” November 28, 1969, 27, PA DBT.

47. Bath et al., “Die pädagogische Konzeption”; Senator für Schulwesen, Rahmenpläne, chapter AI, 1.

48. Wenk, Hoffnung Hauptschule.

49. “Politikunterricht in der Sekundarstufe I,” January 27, 1972, LA NW 300 Nr. 159.

50. For other circles in education reform, see Kössler and Steuwer, “Kindheit und soziale Ungleichheit.” The long tradition of these prejudices and their role in the history of democracy is one of the themes in Richter, Demokratie.

51. Fluck, “Emanzipation und soziokulturelle Bedingungen,” 94–5. For working-class youth movements the NRW reformers failed to notice, see Andresen, Gebremste Radikalisierung.

52. See Girgensohn’s introduction and the repeated attempts to define the supposed interests of the ‘under-privileged’ in Kultusminister des Landes NRW, Richtlinien für den politischen Unterricht, 5, 7, 23.

53. Compare the different wording in Senator für Schulwesen, Rahmenpläne, chapter AI, 1, chapter AV4, 1–3, chapter AV5, 1 and chapter AV6, 1–3. Gymnasium pupils also had social studies classes in grades 7 to 10.

54. For the numbers and context, see Herbert, Geschichte Deutschlands, 989–96. For NRW and West Berlin, see Thomsen Vierra, Turkish Germans, and Demiriz, “Betreuung, Bildung und Beteiligung.”

55. Herbert, Geschichte Deutschlands, 788–91.

56. Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children, 55–8, 102–3.

57. Thomsen Vierra, Turkish Germans, 122, 127–8; Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children, 136–8; Koch, Gastarbeiterkinder in deutschen Schulen; and Kultusminister des Landes NRW, Richtlinien für den politischen Unterricht, 31.

58. Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin, “Plenarprotokoll 6/4,” April 29, 1971, 18, BAB; “Vorlage zur Kenntnisnahme Nr. 78 über Abschlussbericht des Planungsteams “Eingliederung der ausländischen Arbeitnehmer und ihrer Familien” in Mitteilungen des Präsidenten 39 (1973), BAB; and Jancke, Zur Schulsituation der Kinder. See also Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children, 137–8.

59. Herbert, Geschichte Deutschlands, 990.

60. Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children, 56–8, 93–6, 99–100.

61. Jancke, Zur Schulsituation der Kinder, 11.

62. For these policies, see Jancke, Zur Schulsituation der Kinder; “Kurzprotokoll der 30. Sitzung des Ausschusses für Bildung und Wissenschaft des Deutschen Bundestages,” April 12, 1978, LA B Rep 015, Nr. 746/1.

63. For other education schemes, see Demiriz, “Betreuung, Bildung und Beteiligung.”

64. These tensions are elaborated in Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children, 96–103, 125–33.

65. Schirp, “Politische Bildung in Nordrhein-Westfalen,” 80 (quotation); and Gebauer, “Islamische Tradition.”

66. In 1982, around 50,000 Muslim pupils in NRW attended Hauptschulen, 5800 attended Realschulen and 7800 Gymnasien. These numbers are approximate, based on data in Rosen and Stüwe, Ausländische Mädchen in der Bundesrepublik, 25–6.

67. Zimmer, “Ausländerkinder.”

68. “Konsulatsunterricht ist antidemokratisch”; Lehman, Teaching Migrant Children, 99–100.

69. For NRW, see Wittmann, “Keine soziale Unterschicht schaffen.” The NRW government only established extra classes in 1982 (see Schereon and Schereon, “Gastarbeiter”). For West Berlin, see the memorandum “Der Landeselternausschuss Berlin hat einstimmig beschlossen,” undated (1977), LA B Rep 015, Nr. 746/1; and letter from German-Turkish parents to school official Voß, February 9, 1980, LA B Rep 015, Nr. 746/2.

70. Letter of Petzina to Schörken, January 15, 1972, LA NW 842 Nr. 665.

71. Seifert, Reformoptimismus und Bürgerwut.

72. Slowik, Grossmann and Apel, “Mitbestimmung in Schule und Schulverwaltung.”

73. Schmidt, “Der ‘mündige’ Gesamtschüler – ein Mündel des Kapitals?”

74. See the statistics in Köhler and Lundgreen, Datenhandbuch zur deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, 71.

75. Wagner, “Umkämpfte Werte.”

76. Hughes, Embracing Democracy, 155–63, 170–1; Nachtwey, Germany’s Hidden Crisis, 76–81; and Böhnke, “Ungleiche Verteilung politischer Partizipation.”

77. See, for instance, the middle-class bias in the NRW memorandum “Richtlinien für den Politik-Unterricht (Entwurf für die 3. Auflage),” March 29, 1985, 16, LA NW 526 Nr. 464 and in the Christian Democratic citizenship education schemes in 1980s West Berlin, discussed in Grammes and Kuhn, Politikunterricht in Berlin, 83–90.

78. See only Krüger et al., Bildungsungleichheit revisited.

Additional information

Funding

The author did not receive funding for working on this article.

Notes on contributors

Phillip Wagner

Phillip Wagner is Assistant Professor (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and currently Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on German, European and transatlantic history in its global contexts, dealing with topics such as democracy, education, internationalism and urban history. Recent publications include “Egalisierung von Teilhabe? Sozialliberale Bildungsreformen und die Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Demokratie im Westdeutschland der 1960er bis 1980er-Jahre,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 62 (forthcoming 2022), and “Urban Planning and the Politics of Expert Internationalism, 1920s–1940s,” Journal of World History 31 (2020): 79–110. His current project investigates the ambivalent role of schools in shaping democratic citizenship in the Federal Republic of Germany between the 1940s and the 1990s.