Foreign Front

On 2 June 1967 West Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg was killed by a plain-clothed policeman firing a handgun. It was a crucial moment in the history of the New Left movement in 1960s Germany. Many historians consider the event to have strongly contributed to mass mobilization against the established order, leading to the heydays of the extra-parliamentary protest movement in early 1968. Eventually, the killing of one person led some of the activists to form left-wing terrorist groups, such as the Red Army Faction (aka Baader Meinhof Gang). The Movement of 2 June even used the date as a self-explanatory label: they were merely firing back in self-defence. Dutifully, no scholar who tells the tale, and the story has been told a million times by now, leaves out the fact that Ohnesorg met his sudden end in the messy margins of a demonstration against the Persian Shah Reza Pahlevi. The city’s student movement protested against the Iranian ruler and his wife Farah Dibah visiting West Berlin. Most historians mention that apart from the Shah there were other Iranians, too. Supporters of his regime attacked the demonstrators, striking them with sticks from the banners they had brought.

AKA · Ancient history · Front (military) · Geography · Political science · Politics · Ruler · Terrorism · Wife · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law

• Power is in the Streets’

  Open Access•Luca Provenzano•Contemporary European History•2023

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