SRDF – leaflet distribution

Campaigns

Leaflets were also written in divisible groups on specific occasions out. 20 of 26 in total spread across four events and data: the 3.5. five leaflets, on 24.5. four leaflets on the 30.5.-1.6. six leaflets and on the 5th-five 07.06.1967.

The events to which the Communards related, were the ballot FU, the department store fire in Brussels and the German reports, the visit of the Shah in Berlin and the beginning of the process against hell/Langhans because of the warehouse fire leaflets. The two leaflets of 28.6. can be added to those of early July are still, they belong to the same thematic field. Likewise, the two profiles that. To the 13.7 seem to have arisen and the leaflet 25 with the release of Fritz the Devil was celebrated for the Ku’damm happening.

These groupings are amazing, but they are reasonably plausible justifiable. Firstly, the leaflets have been produced relatively clear on the events in question out. Try going over the threshold of perception, what usually happens mainly through support and frequency. The technical limits are met has brought the Communards apparently the idea instead of several editions of a leaflet produce the same real options. However, in order they arrived at the same time a further quality shift their leafleting: Leaflets were reinforced by the proximity in which they were distributed, embedded in a reference structure, which was supported by the numbering. Who no. 8, had also Nos. 7 and no. 9 had to get. The leaflet recipients were so excited to move from passive to active reading acquisition and completion. Failing that fact, then such a group thus achieves an enormous effect. The technical Handicap generates synergies that go beyond the pure effect Edition magnifications. However, the group is at the same time primarily on media and public response and not a sustainable political influence.

The provocation – An example

On 24 May 1967, the Commune I spread on the FU campus four leaflets, the leaflets 6 to 9, the famous Warenhausbrandfluglätter. Topic: Reporting on the fire of the Brussels department store “A L’Innovation” on May 22, in which about 300 people were killed. The Berlin Springer press had speculated about a possible terrorist background of the fire, and even if the Communards not had their own functioning information network, which would have allowed them to correct such speculation, they were convinced that such speculation only been hysterical located Berlin media landscape owed. The disgrace to the planned assassination of the Commune I on Vice President Humphrey early April 1967, therefore, had not cared for cooling in the media. The alleged bomb plot that had been given a big of the Berlin press and had an international echo, shrank within a few days to a happening with smoke generator and pudding that does not even want to pursue the Berlin judiciary, later to be very helpful partner of themselves Police and policy has been established.

Thus, the municipality responded to a Berlin media phenomenon, not the fire itself. And they responded that the speculation had itself a connection between department store fire and the student protests made against the Vietnam War. Now you dont like it, as then and now usually declare cynically that the community I called the fire in their leaflets as a “new form of demonstrations,” as “Großhappening” (no. 6) that the “performance of American industry” and have demonstrated “advertising” (no. 7). “A burning department store with burning people gave for the first time in a major European city that crackling Viet Nam feeling (of being there and mitzubrennen), we still have yet to miss in Berlin.”

Some preliminary remarks

The Commune probably belongs to the central stocks of collective memory, at least of the German left. Your media presence in the late sixties, their happenings and eventually their provocative leaflets show up to the present action. Especially her photos belong to the general picture inventory of German cultural history. Names like Rainer Langhans, Fritz Teufel and Dieter Kunzelmann known to date.

Its real significance of the community, however, I gained another area that has not necessarily to do with their contribution to the West German picture reservoir. You may be controversial to this day, the effects of the years 67 to 69 may be critically evaluated, regardless of the Commune I was but one of the most important factors in the circulation of social habitus forms. The provocations that brought them to the path for many years, the reactions they provoked, the opportunities they pointed out, have led to the radical transformation of German society in the following decades contributed decisively. It belongs to the social factors that massively the inviolability of the subject demanded in a social context that emphasized his experience and his ability to self-realization drove forward. At the same time the German society owes her, also, that the legitimization processes of social institutions have been continued.

But not enough So anti-capitalist, the municipality is I also occurred, but at the same time it is also an agent of the medial penetration of society and the expansion of the consumer society was. The Commune I have used for some sovereign the media for their own purposes, it has the aestheticization of the self, not least driven the resolution of socially patterned habit forming and thus the ratio of subjects to cultural, leisure and fashion industry redefined. The marketing has responded in part with tools and techniques that have been developed by the community with I – and very quickly. Fast any event, as the political elites of the Federal Republic. This leads to the memorable fact that on the one hand, the German society, driven by the leisure industry and the social middle class to deformalized habitual and revolutionized it. On the other hand leads the intensification of the conflict between students, Except Parliamentary opposition and government institutions and a part of the mass media to the hard confrontation with a militant become relatively small group consisting until well into the 1980s and the political discourses influenced.

However, a little faded, that the community I existed only a relatively short time, also was a very fragile social structure and political terms for a very violent kick barely made its appearance. The community I as definable social group consisted almost three years from 1 January 1967 until the violent break-up in early November 1969. The name of the founder-Communards: Fritz Teufel, Volker Gebbert, Dagmar Seehuber, Dagrun E. Kristensen, Hans-Joachim Hameister, Rainer Langhans, Dorothea Ridder, Dieter Kunzelmann, Karl Pawla, Antje Krüger and Ulrich Enzensberger. Its most important print media were the – partly famous – leaflets.