Rudi Dutschke bridged Critical Theory and direct-action student politics.

Evidence

Dutschke, a sociology student at the Free University, had been a conscientious objector to military service when he was an active member of the Protestant Church in East Germany. As a result, he had not been able to study in the East, and fled to West Berlin just before the Berlin Wall went up. In 1964 he had been involved in the Subversive Action' group, in which literary figures influenced by Critical Theory had joined with students interested in analysis based on economic history, to form cells in various West German cities and become politically active through direct action. At the beginning of 1965, together with other Berlin members of Subversive Action’, he switched to the SDS in order to set up an activist faction within it and give the SDS as a whole a new anti-authoritarian and activist character. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2616

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Subversive Action’ group shows the Frankfurt School’s theory migrating into direct political practice, a key strand in this institutional history. — connects to: Marcuse’s American popularity carried Critical Theory into the New Left — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 93

Broader Connections

• Marcuse’s American popularity carried Critical Theory into the New Left #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 93