Between Prague Spring and French May

Abandoning the usual Cold War oriented narrative of postwar European protest and opposition movements, this volume offers an innovative, inter-disciplinary, and comprehensive perspective on two decades of protest and social upheaval in postwar Europe. Itexamines the mutual influences and interactions among dissenters in Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries, and the non-aligned European countries and shows how ideological and political developments in the East and West were interconnected through official state or party channels as well as a variety of private and clandestine contacts. Focusing on issues arising from the cross-cultural transfer of ideas, the adjustments to institutional and political frameworks, and the role of the media in staging protest, the volume examines the romanticized attitude of Western activists to violent liberation movements in the Third World and the idolization of imprisoned RAF members as martyrs among leftwing circles across Western Europe.

Martin Klimke is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at Heidelberg University, Germany. He is the author of The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (2010) and A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany (with Maria Hohn, 2010). He also co-edited 1968. Handbuch zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Studentenbewegung (2007); 1968 in Europe. A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-77 (2008); and Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protest and Collective Identities in West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s (2010).

Jacco Pekelder is Senior Lecturer at the History Department of Utrecht University and Fellow (2010-2011) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar (NIAS). From 2002 to 2007 he was Research Coordinator of the Germany Institute at Amsterdam University (DIA). His publications include Die Niederlande und die DDR: Bildformung und Beziehungen, 1949-1989 (2002) and Sympathie voor de RAF. De Rote Armee Fraktion in Nederland, 1970-1980(2007).

Joachim Scharloth is Professor at Dokkyo University, Tokyo. His research focuses on the history of language, sociolinguistics, social movements, as well as discourse semantics. He is the author of Sprachnormen und Mentalitaten. Sprachbewusstseinsgeschichte in Deutschland im Zeitraum von 1766 und 1785 (2005) and 1968. Eine Kommunikationsgeschichte (2011) and co-editor of 1968. Handbuch zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Studentenbewegung (2007), as well as 1968 in Europe. A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-77 (2008).