Bitter Aftertaste

West Germany's leftist students idealize violence as a necessary weapon for revolution against what they consider their country's corrupt and repressive society. After their leader, Rudi Dutschke, was badly wounded by a would-be assassin two weeks ago, the students staged violent and bloody demonstrations in virtually every major city. Last week, bruised and battered from police truncheons, they were having some second thoughts about the efficacy of violence. They had, in fact, found neither violence so romantic nor West German society so weak as they had imagined.

Dispersed & Dismayed. Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger warned the students that violence would be met with counter-measures--and it was. In Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and other German cities where demonstrators tried to blockade the regional printing plants of Publisher Axel Springer, whose papers are critical of the student leftists, police asked them to disperse, then went to work on them with bruising water cannon and truncheons. The students were not used to seeing their own blood flow, and many, moreover, were deeply shocked by the death from rioter-thrown missiles of Associated Press Photographer Klaus Frings, 32, and Munich Student Ruediger Schreck, 27.

To their dismay, the radicals found that the majority of West Germany's 282,000 students, who had joined them in countless nonviolent protests in recent months, wanted to back out when physical violence, to others and to themselves, became the rule. In fact, in Munich, where the two riot deaths occurred, moderate students, carrying banners that read STONES ARE NO ARGUMENTS, demonstrated against the Socialist German Student League, which had stirred up the violence. Confronted with failure on all fronts, the radicals, who constitute a well-organized 10% of the West German student body, withdrew to plot a new approach.

"Matriculated Mob." The man whom the radical students singled out as the symbol of all that is bad in West Germany is a tall, silver-haired publisher who commutes between his six homes in Europe in a private jet, directs his $200 million press empire from atop a glass skyscraper directly alongside the Wall in West Berlin. Springer, 55, is sternly antiCommunist, assertively German, and a strong supporter of the U.S. stand in Viet Nam. He owns 15 magazines and newspapers, including the popular Bild-Zeitung (literally, picture paper), that account for 31% of West Germany's circulation of weekday publications, 88% on Sundays. Reflecting the disdain that most West Germans feel toward the unkempt young radicals, Springer's papers call them "political beatniks," "crazy half-toughs," and "the matriculated mob."

The radical students charge that Springer has manipulated public opinion in order to create a repressive, Fascist-style society in West Germany and an atmosphere of hate against them. Even before the Dutschke incident, the most popular lapel buttons among radical students was Enteignet Springer--Dispossess Springer. In response to the wide-scale attacks against Springer's plants, Bild Am Sonntag, his big Sunday paper, vowed: "No terror will bend us." His readers seemed to like what they read. Despite all the efforts of radical students to stop the distribution of his papers, they enjoyed last week the best sales in their history.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.