Editing West Germany (section)

===Reforms during the 1960s===
[[Konrad Adenauer]] was 73 years old when he became chancellor in 1949, and for this reason he was initially reckoned as a caretaker. However, he ruled for 14 years. The grand statesman of German postwar politics had to be dragged—almost literally—out of office in 1963.<ref>William Glenn Gray, "Adenauer, Erhard, and the Uses of Prosperity." ''[[German Politics and Society]]'' 25.2 (2007): 86–103.</ref>

{{Main|Spiegel affair}}
In October 1962 the weekly news magazine {{lang|de|[[Der Spiegel]]}} published an analysis of the West German military defence. The conclusion was that there were several weaknesses in the system. Ten days after publication, the offices of {{lang|de|Der Spiegel}} in Hamburg were raided by the police and quantities of documents were seized. Chancellor Adenauer proclaimed in the {{lang|de|Bundestag}} that the article was tantamount to high treason and that the authors would be prosecuted. The editor/owner of the magazine, [[Rudolf Augstein]] spent some time in jail before the public outcry over the breaking of laws on freedom of the press became too loud to be ignored. The FDP members of Adenauer's cabinet resigned from the government, demanding the resignation of [[Franz Josef Strauss]], Defence Minister, who had decidedly overstepped his competence during the crisis. Adenauer was still wounded by his brief run for president, and this episode damaged his reputation even further. He announced that he would step down in the fall of 1963. His successor was to be Ludwig Erhard.<ref>Alfred C. Mierzejewski, ''Ludwig Erhard: A Biography'' (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2005) p 179. [https://www.questia.com/library/120073119/ludwig-erhard-a-biography Online] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200412065325/https://www.questia.com/library/120073119/ludwig-erhard-a-biography |date=12 April 2020}}</ref>

In the early 1960s, the rate of economic growth slowed down significantly. In 1962 growth rate was 4.7% and the following year, 2.0%. After a brief recovery, the growth rate slowed again into a recession, with no growth in 1967.

A new coalition was formed to deal with this problem. Erhard stepped down in 1966 and was succeeded by [[Kurt Georg Kiesinger]]. He led a [[grand coalition]] between West Germany's two largest parties, the CDU/CSU and the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democratic Party]] (SPD). This was important for the introduction of new [[German Emergency Acts|emergency acts]]: the grand coalition gave the ruling parties the two-thirds majority of votes required for their ratification. These controversial acts allowed basic constitutional rights such as [[freedom of movement]] to be limited in case of a state of emergency.

[[File:Rudi.jpg|upright|thumb|[[Rudi Dutschke]], student leader]]
During the time leading up to the passing of the laws, there was fierce opposition to them, above all by the [[Free Democratic Party (Germany)|Free Democratic Party]], the rising [[West German student movement]], a group calling itself {{lang|de|Notstand der Demokratie}} ("Democracy in Crisis") and members of the Campaign against Nuclear Armament. A key event in the development of open democratic debate occurred in 1967, when the [[List of monarchs of Persia|Shah of Iran]], [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi]], visited West Berlin. Several thousand demonstrators gathered outside the Opera House where he was to attend a special performance. Supporters of the Shah (later known as {{lang|de|Jubelperser}}), armed with staves and bricks attacked the protesters while the police stood by and watched. A demonstration in the centre was being forcibly dispersed when a bystander named [[Killing of Benno Ohnesorg|Benno Ohnesorg]] was shot in the head and killed by a plainclothes policeman. (It has now been established that the policeman, Kurras, was a paid spy of the East German security forces.) Protest demonstrations continued, and calls for more active opposition by some groups of students were made, which was declared by the press, especially the [[Tabloid journalism|tabloid]] {{lang|de|[[Bild]]-Zeitung}} newspaper, as a massive disruption to life in Berlin, in a massive campaign against the protesters. Protests against the [[Vietnam War|US intervention in Vietnam]], mingled with anger over the vigour with which demonstrations were repressed led to mounting militance among the students at the universities in Berlin. One of the most prominent campaigners was a young man from East Germany called [[Rudi Dutschke]] who also criticised the forms of capitalism that were to be seen in West Berlin. Just before Easter 1968, a young man tried to kill Dutschke as he bicycled to the student union, seriously injuring him. All over West Germany, thousands demonstrated against the Springer newspapers which were seen as the prime cause of the violence against students. Trucks carrying newspapers were set on fire and windows in office buildings broken.<ref name="Kraushaar">Wolfgang Kraushaar, ''Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung'', vol. 2 ''Dokumente'', Rogner und Bernhard, 1998 Dokument Nr. 193, p. 356</ref>

In the wakes of these demonstrations, in which the question of America's role in Vietnam began to play a bigger role, came a desire among the students to find out more about the role of the parent-generation in the Nazi era. The proceedings of the [[Nuremberg trials|War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg]] had been widely publicised in Germany but until a new generation of teachers, educated with the findings of historical studies, could begin to reveal the truth about the war and the crimes committed in the name of the German people, one courageous attorney, [[Fritz Bauer]] patiently gathered evidence on the guards of the [[Auschwitz concentration camp|{{lang|de|Auschwitz|nocat=y}} concentration camp]] and [[Frankfurt Auschwitz trials|about twenty were put on trial in Frankfurt]] in 1963. Daily newspaper reports and visits by school classes to the proceedings revealed to the German public the nature of the concentration camp system and it became evident that [[The Holocaust|the {{lang|he-Latn|Shoah|nocat=y}}]] was of vastly greater dimensions than the German population had believed. (The term "Holocaust" for the systematic mass-murder of Jews first came into use in 1979, when a 1978 [[Holocaust (miniseries)|American mini-series with that name]] was shown on West German television.) The processes set in motion by the Auschwitz trial reverberated decades later.

The calling in question of the actions and policies of government led to a new climate of debate. The issues of emancipation, colonialism, environmentalism and grass roots democracy were discussed at all levels of society. In 1979 the environmental party, the Greens, reached the 5% limit required to obtain parliamentary seats in the [[Bremen (state)|Free Hanseatic City of Bremen]] provincial election. Also of great significance was the steady growth of a [[Feminism in Germany|feminist movement]] in which women demonstrated for equal rights. Until 1977, a married woman had to have the permission of her husband if she wanted to take on a job or open a bank account.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cornelius Grebe |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-531-91924-9 |title=Reconciliation Policy in Germany 1998–2008, Construing the 'Problem' of the Incompatibility of Paid Employment and Care Work |publisher=Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften |year=2010 |isbn=978-3-531-91924-9 |page=92 |doi=10.1007/978-3-531-91924-9 |quote=However, the 1977 reform of marriage and family law by Social Democrats and Liberals formally gave women the right to take up employment without their spouses' permission. This marked the legal end of the 'housewife marriage' and a transition to the ideal of 'marriage in partnership'. |access-date=18 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170416053908/http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-531-91924-9 |archive-date=16 April 2017 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Further reforms in 1979 to parental rights law gave equal legal rights to the mother and the father, abolishing the legal authority of the father.<ref>''Comparative Law: Historical Development of the Civil Law Tradition in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia'', by John Henry Merryman, David Scott Clark, John Owen Haley, p. 542</ref> Parallel to this, a gay movement began to grow in the larger cities, especially in West Berlin, where homosexuality had been widely accepted during the twenties in the Weimar Republic.

[[File:RAF-Logo.svg|thumb|upright|Logo of the [[Red Army Faction]]]]

Anger over the treatment of demonstrators following the death of Benno Ohnesorg and the attack on Rudi Dutschke, coupled with growing frustration over the lack of success in achieving their aims led to growing militance among students and their supporters. In May 1968, three young people set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt; they were brought to trial and made very clear to the court that they regarded their action as a legitimate act in what they described as the "struggle against imperialism".<ref name="Kraushaar" /> The student movement began to split into different factions, ranging from the unattached liberals to the [[Maoism|Maoists]] and supporters of direct action in every form—the anarchists. Several groups set as their objective the aim of radicalising the industrial workers and taking an example from activities in Italy of the [[Red Brigades]] ({{lang|de|Brigate Rosse}}), many students went to work in the factories, but with little or no success. The most notorious of the underground groups was the [[Red Army Faction]] which began by making bank raids to finance their activities and eventually went underground having killed a number of policemen, several bystanders and eventually two prominent West Germans, whom they had taken captive in order to force the release of prisoners sympathetic to their ideas. In the 1990s attacks were still being committed under the name "RAF". The last action took place in 1993 and the group announced it was giving up its activities in 1998. Evidence that the groups had been infiltrated by German Intelligence undercover agents has since emerged, partly through the insistence of the son of one of their prominent victims, the State Counsel [[Siegfried Buback]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Denso |first=Christian |date=13 August 2011 |title=RAF: Gefangen in der Geschichte |url=http://www.zeit.de/2011/32/Buback-Tragoedie |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130508122346/http://www.zeit.de/2011/32/Buback-Tragoedie |archive-date=8 May 2013 |access-date=25 May 2013 |work=[[Die Zeit]]}}</ref>