Resources on the German APO

[caramelpence]

I just thought I'd draw people's attention to this resource that has recently emerged on the internet but doesn't seem to have attracted much publicity yet:

mao-projekt. de/

It's an extensive project on the German extra-parliamentary opposition in the 1960s and the organizations that came out of the student movement. The best resources and those I'm most familiar with are those relating to the Maoist organizations (or 'K-Gruppen' as they were known in Germany, referring to the fact that they all began with the letter 'K') and particularly the KPD/ML, which was the first Maoist organization to be founded in Germany and was actually the only one that was founded by the Maoist opposition within the underground KPD, rather than emerging out of the student movement. The project has the full set of back issues of Roter Morgen, the newspaper of the KPD/ML from during the Cultural Revolution, and the issues from 1976 are currently in the process of being completed:

mao-projekt. de/BRD/VLB/Roter_Morgen.shtml
mao-projekt. de/BRD/VLB/Roter_Morgen_2.shtml

The entire project is in German but thankfully the publications of the Maoists were not too complex in their language, so second-language German speakers should also be able to make use of the resources.

This is a particularly interesting issue, as its corresponding insert is concerned with strategy against the superpowers, and gives you an idea of how German Maoists took up the 'Three Worlds Theory' and used it to articulate a very nationalist and anti-Soviet set of politics:

mao-projekt. de/BRD/VLB/Roter_Morgen/RM_1975_33.shtml

I've inserted breaks in the links because I haven't reached 25 posts yet.

[Juergen Schroeder]

Hello Caramelpence,
thks for mentioning our mao-projekt, but I think you go wrong about the Aust-KPD/ML being linked to the old-KPD in a stronger extent than other of the German groups.

It was only Aust that really stuck to his group, all the few other old comrades broke away even before the foundation of the KPD/ML (like the Heuzeroths had their FSP/ML and lather their own independent family KPD/ML-Kreisverband Siegen-Olpe), Dickhut and his two, three friends plus Ackermann broke away mid-1970 - so Ernst Aust was the only old member being influential in the party. As for Hamburg I knew the comrades very well, and yes, there was another old lady, but there was no group of old comrades that would have had any significant impact on the ideology of the party. The membership of the KPD/ML was coming from the youth movement just like with all the other groups.

The only groups we had in Germany around 1970 with a significant influence of old members were the Brandlerist Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik and its offsplit Gruppe Arbeiterstimme (both still active) as well as some members of the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International being hidden inside the social democrats.

Oh yes and we also had a bunch (even unable to group itself :tt2:) of Impossibilists ('Der Mahnruf'). All the rest of the German leftist movement (besides some left social democrats) was originating from the 1968 movement.

[caramelpence]

Thanks for your post Juergen Schroeder - I'm guessing you're associated with the project, so let me thank you for setting it up, it's a fantastic academic resource. I'm also guessing you're speaking from first-hand experience when it comes to the relationship between the KPD and the K-Gruppen! I take what you say, I only got the impression that the KPD/ML had a slightly closer relationship with the KPD from the secondary literature, such as Benicke's paper Von Adorno zu Mao and Kuehn's Stalins Enkel, Maos Soehne.

[Juergen Schroeder]

Hello Caramelpence,
I am speaking from only a little of first hand experience but from talking to some hundreds of people while I was working in the Berlin APO-archives - which still is the primary basis for our mao-projekt website, which yes I am not only associated but one of its' two main authors since 1983 :).

And yes, I 've been reading most of the material from the APO-archive. And old comrades always were put to the front from every group to show their alleged roots in the old KPD - still they were weak for each and every of them except those small groups named above.

As for Kuehn's book, just forget it, it is crap or let's say: he writes very well on a subject he has *no* knowledge about at all :p - this is a general problem of the subject since ever... just look at Kuehns all so convincing though obviously unlogical statement, that the KPD/ML was more proletarian than the rest of the groups because they never published any factory reports in their newspaper 'Roter Morgen' - as *he* claims :lol:.

Benicke's book is a bit better. Michael Steffens Trueffelschwein about the Kommunistischer Bund is a pretty good study, I'd say.