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22.
BERLIN FREE UNIVERSITY. Kritische Universität: Sommer 68 - Berichte und Programm. Berlin: Asta der Freien Universität Berlin, Politische Abteilung, 1968.
8vo. Stapled wrps., 121pp. + fold-out sheet. Contains a provisional list of courses with detailed texts (in German) describing them, along with further texts on student protest and ‘Critical Universities’ in Hamburg and Nijmegen (both of which were modelled on Berlin). The centre pages list more than 30 working groups, around 15 of which were continued in the 1968 summer semester.
Each course was created with the intention of implementing the idea of the ‘Critical University’, or ‘counter-university’, a concept of permanent university criticism, practical study reform and the broadening and intensification of political practice. Titles of courses listed include “Herbert Marcuse and Theology”, “Sexuality and Domination”, “Sexuality and the Consciousness Industry”, “Psychosomatic Medicine”, and “Kafka - Seminar”.
The Berlin Free University was established during the Berlin Blockade by a group of students and academics in December 1948, and named in reference to West Berlin’s status as part of the “free world” as opposed to the “unfree” East Berlin. By the following year it had registered almost 5000 students, many of them (until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961) from the Soviet sector. Later, it became a focal point for the German student movement - in June 1966, 3000 students staged a sit-in to demand involvement in the reform process of universities - and widespread political protests following the state visit by the Shah of Iran in 1967 and the attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke in April 1968. The founding conference of the ‘Critical University’ took place in the main assembly hall on November 1, 1967.
Contemporary ownership name of (English translator of Situationist texts) Paul Sieveking (and his Cambridge college) to upper wrapper. A worn copy. Good only.
