Heroes

The young man standing awkwardly in the kitchen of Rudi Dutschke's Berlin apartment in spring 1967, watching him tidy the books from the kitchen table, is me. Looking back over forty years, I don't recognise myself, this tall, dark-haired, diffident student. He is familiar to me only from the many photos of him which still exist. My memories of Rudi Dutschke are far more vivid. He was a man of his time, of that time – and not only because he died so young.

My detached gaze turns to the Venetian lagoon. It is thirty years since I came to live here – a Chilean of Italian descent, earning a living as a writer. Neither my emigration to Venice nor the German language as my medium was a conscious choice. My exile ended eighteen years ago. My thoughts lead me beyond the Ponte dell’umiltà in front of my house towards Berlin, for I am intent on preserving the old memories before they are lost. Ours was a movement, not a revolution.

Rudi Dutschke tidies his kitchen in Berlin. He is not the ghost; the ghost is me.

In Berlin, the month of November does not leave the city until spring. The days are still very short. Darkness has fallen. A bare bulb is suspended over the kitchen table. Like Rudi Dutschke, I have been studying at the Faculty of Philosophy for more than a year. Everyone knows him. I am just a face in the crowd. Recently, the students have held meeting after meeting at the university. The Dean bans an exhibition of photos of Vietnam. This prompts a sit-in – a new experience for Berlin. The police step in and haul the striking students bodily out of the main hall of the Henry Ford Building. Meanwhile, Che Guevara – holed up in the Bolivian rainforest – is attempting to unleash a revolution across the entire sub-continent. In Bonn, the SPD governs in a coalition with the conservative CDU. Every day, the calls for anti-authoritarian student reforms grow louder on campus. The students challenge the "1000 years of mustiness underneath the robes".

Rudi Dutschke often speaks at the meetings. From the back, I watch him hurry to the lectern, his gaze downcast. It is only when this wiry little student with the oversized, brightly striped pullover starts to speak that his deep-set eyes, sparkling with excitement, focus on the audience. I notice his husky voice especially. His voice is quiet but seems to fill the room. His radical critique of imperialism and late capitalism still sounds alien in Berlin. It is still peaceful in Germany – although not for Rudi Dutschke.

1967 – The start of a friendship with Rudi Dutschke

Rudi has left the kitchen. I hear a woman's sleepy voice. Gretchen is pregnant. I only met Rudi Dutschke in person an hour ago. After a lengthy afternoon seminar, I was getting into my VW Beetle with four friends from Latin America. We saw Rudi Dutschke coming towards us. My passengers know him well, for they have attended his political education classes in the student village, where he expounds on strategies for revolution in our countries. As a member of Chile's Socialist Party, that is anathema to me, and I do not attend the courses. So I stood, in some ill-humour, by my car door, while Dutschke asked the others for help. We learned that he has co-founded a political publishing house, with printing to be funded from revenue from future publications. He is planning to send the first book to press the following morning. There's just one problem: with only a few hours to go – for it is already late afternoon – the book does not yet exist. Rudi Dutschke takes Che Guevara's Message to the Tricontinental from his briefcase. We have already read it in the Spanish original, but Dutschke only knows about it from newspaper reports. He has decided to translate it overnight, with his students' help, and to submit it to the Oberbaumpresse early the next day, complete with a postscript. The plan is totally unrealistic. One by one, the others drift off. I have not been invited to participate, but I am ashamed of my fellow students. In my view, it just isn't right to leave one's political mentor in the lurch.

I can still hear my words today: "I'll help you out".

Unwashed dishes have piled up in the sink. Bits of food are stuck to them and are starting to turn green. The plates stink. I start to wash up. Rudi Dutschke reappears and places an elderly typewriter on the kitchen table. He looks at me and laughs impatiently. I wedge Che's text between the wall and the water tap and translate while I do the dishes.

As dawn breaks, the translation and the preface are ready. Violence in the Third World has inevitably spilled over into Berlin. By the time it is light, I too am convinced.

For forty years, I have never dared to think back to that evening's work. It was the start of a great friendship.

Political action but no revolution

The German Socialist Student League (SDS) always held its council meeting on a Monday, at Kurfürstendamm. Anyone could take part. Anyone could speak. Most people were too shy to make use of this right. Those who remained silent appeared to be rapt in concentration or deeply troubled. It was always the same people who spoke. It was very noisy in the room. Some of the women were angry at the men. They complained that the SDS was really nothing but a men's club. They felt discriminated against, and they were right. Feminism had not yet arrived in Berlin. The women speakers criticised the men in vitriolic terms. A list was circulated. The women had to write down the names of the male comrades who they thought should be castrated. Everything had to be discussed to the very end – "ausdiskutiert" – a term coined by the SDS itself. But it was the Vietnam war, US deserters and abetting their escape, aid for the liberation movements in the Third World, and the vendetta being conducted by the Bildzeitung which took up most of our time on a Monday.

Rudi Dutschke was the pivotal figure. He was the only one in the SDS who really was a born orator, even though he was just a member of the council.

Bernd Rabehl, who – like Dutschke – came from East Germany, repeatedly voiced his concern that Dutschke's views on taking the struggle to the streets would inevitably lead to the criminalisation of students.

Christian Semler, with his thick glasses and mournful expression, looked very much like a late-19th century terrorist. But impressions can be deceptive: in fact, Comrade Semler was the embodiment of good humour. Dutschke had great faith in Semler's wisdom and intelligence. Rudi, Bernd, Christian and I became inseparable. During the day, we would dash from one political event to another. Then we would sit up until the small hours, planning our next political actions. From Rudi, we learned how to ignore our exhaustion. Together, we aimed to bring about a democratic society based on councils. We abhorred every form of dictatorship. We certainly did not want to take the bureaucratic GDR regime as our model. In the walled city of Berlin, real existing socialism was a major political burden. The demonstrators were in no sense revolutionaries; rather, we took to the streets to defend Germany's rule-of-law state.

No one who took part in the demonstration against the Shah of Iran in front of Berlin's opera house on 2 June 1967 will ever forget the experience. The Iranian secret service was deployed to assist the colleagues from Berlin. The repression had reached a worrying level. Unfortunately, something much worse happened that day. In the deserted Krummestrasse, a police officer by the name of Kurras shot dead the 22-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg. Ohnesorg had put up no resistance. It was murder. In my eyes, this appalling crime was where the student movement really began. In his speech, published in our little pamphlet, Che Guevara talked about "the bullets of propaganda". These revolutionary words became tragic reality on that June day by Berlin's opera house. Even in Berlin, it seemed, taking part in a political demonstration meant risking one's life. Rudi Dutschke coined one of his unwieldy phrases for this phenomenon: he called it "the sensory process of becoming aware of the state's arbitrary violence".

The protests spread across the country with lightning force. Overnight, it seemed that every second student had become a socialist. Overnight, grammar school students formed "red guards". Socialist children's nurseries sprang up everywhere. Women's groups began to assert themselves. Old communists and disillusioned SPD members took the protest to the streets.

Campaigns

We learned how to deal with the media – including those overtly hostile to our cause. Without their support in the face of what was admittedly highly ambiguous propaganda, it would have been impossible to extend our social relevance beyond what we had already achieved. We convinced ourselves that we could "reform" the media.

Without some form of structure, the movement – despite its broad base – would certainly have fizzled out. So we decided to establish four separate political platforms. Four key campaigns would be launched: the first focussed on the Third World, the second aimed to "expropriate Springer", the third was to establish a "Critical University", and the fourth aimed to tackle "class justice". Rudi Dutschke and I mapped out these campaigns during the summer vacation. Our plan was now set down on paper. Many times during those summer days, we would cite Lenin, with a wry laugh: "Those who hold the purse strings determine the political course".

Che Guevara was taken prisoner and murdered in a Bolivian cell. For Rudi and me, it was as if we had lost an older brother.

One morning, without explanation, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli summoned us to a flat in the Uhlandstrasse. Rudi took along his newborn son Hosea Che in a carry cot. Feltrinelli stood in the middle of the otherwise empty living room, with a red suitcase of medium size. We stood in front of him. Hosea Che lay between us in his cot. Giangiacomo smiled mischievously beneath his luxuriant moustache. He was behaving oddly, speaking very quietly as if he were afraid of being overheard. Finally, he opened his suitcase with great ceremony. We could not believe our eyes. In front of us lay a large role of plastic explosive, with a box full of fuses wrapped in cotton wool. That was the last thing we had expected, and we were appalled. Recently, a worrying debate had started within the movement. When asked whether we should be prepared to use violence, Dutschke had always said that violence was only ever justified against property, never against people. Violent action was only ever to be symbolic. A frequent example of this violence against property was setting fire to courtroom doors or slitting the tyres of Springer's delivery vehicles. It hadn't taken us very far. Stones had been thrown, breaking the windows of the US cultural centre, America House, and Springer's subscriptions offices had been hit as well. But secretly, we were all wondering whether it was possible to paralyse Springer's press – perhaps by causing a flood from the sewerage system, or creating some kind of glitch in the works. None of us had asked Feltrinelli to supply these explosives. In his cot, Hosea Che started yelling. Giangiacomo had taken a considerable risk at the borders and, naturally enough, was very proud of his own bravery. We found it very hard to show our appreciation. Rudi and I were undoubtedly under constant police surveillance – so we couldn't simply to pick up the red suitcase and carry it down the street. We had no choice but to hide the explosives under Hosea Che's thin mattress. It was to be one of the longest days of my life. Rudi and I took it in turns to carry the heavy load through Berlin. There was nowhere safe to hide the explosives. For hours, the carry cot stood on the top table at an event in the Technical University. Then we took it to a restaurant and to various meetings. It was only late in the evening that Rudi finally remembered a well-meaning married couple who could be entrusted with Feltrinelli's gift.

The year drew to a close. The International Vietnam Congress was planned for 17 and 18 February 1968. The mood in Berlin was oppressive. Rudi Dutschke almost seemed to be expecting an attempt on his life. 1967 ended in a mood of disquiet. Rudi disrupted the Christmas Eve service in the Gedächtniskirche on Kurfürstendamm in West Berlin. He took over the pulpit and delivered a sermon about America's crimes in Vietnam. As he was leaving the church, an incensed pensioner hit him over the head with his walking stick. Covered in blood, Dutschke was sent to hospital with cuts and bruises.

1968

Dutschke was living with his family in Enzensberger's house in Fregestrasse. He was travelling a great deal. We spent entire nights sitting in the kitchen, trying to appease our opponents within the movement. They were firmly convinced that at the Congress demonstration, we would leave the permitted route and attack the American compound in Clayallee. If we did so, they argued, we would have to expect massive action by the police on an unforeseen scale. If the US military police got involved as well, we would plunge West Berlin into a serious international crisis. We reassured them, again and again, that we were not planning anything of the sort. But our opponents would not believe us.

The Vietnam Congress was the absolute climax of the German movement. It was then that Rudi Dutschke and I ended our political work in Germany. He wanted to move to America for a while with Gretchen, and I intended to return to Chile. For those who accused us of desertion, Rudi had an answer: "No one should attempt the same revolution twice". It was partly a joke. A revolution only takes place if the issue of power is raised in a country. Looking back, what we achieved in Germany, at least in part, was a cultural revolution. Without realising it at the time, we made a contribution to the country's ultimate democratisation. At least for a while, we were the unwitting authors of German history. That is my objective observation.

On Maundy Thursday, I returned from meetings at the Cuban embassy in Prague. I planned to pick up Rudi, who was with Professor Gollwitzer, to take him to our appointment in Horst Mahler's law offices. We were standing trial for aggravated breach of the peace: at a demonstration, we had torn through the police barricades in front of Moabit Court, allegedly causing a riot. In fact, it was actually to make an escape. We were both accused of being the ring-leaders.

Rudi hadn't waited for me; instead, he had cycled to the SDS. By the time I arrived there, Rudi had just been shot by Josef Bachmann. He was taken by ambulance to Spandau Hospital. Two of the bullets were lodged in his head. I started praying. Gretchen showed herself to be one of the most courageous women I have ever met. "He's alive", said the surgeon after the seven-hour operation. What more could he say?

Rudi Dutschke survived. Apart from Gretchen, I was the only person he recognised at first. He was suffering from severe amnesia. After a few days, he asked me to tell him the name of the place for whose liberation we had campaigned for so long. He said, "I know there are a lot of trees there". "Vietnam" was one of the first words my friend relearned. His recuperation was a long process. He visited Feltrinelli in Milan, Henze in Rome, and a MP friend in Dublin. At our trial, I was sentenced to nine months, with no possibility of remission. Mahler urged me to flee; I took his advice and slipped away to Rome overnight.

When Rudi Dutschke died in Denmark years later from the effects of the attempt on his life, I was not at his side. The movement was dead. It had splintered into many small factions – exactly what Rudi and I had always feared would happen. Had he lived, Rudi Dutschke could undoubtedly have made a major contribution to German politics.

Today in my thoughts, Rudi has remained a young man. But that is no consolation. I find myself mourning the loss of my friend once more.

Every successful escape marks the start of exile. Venice, the sinking city, is probably my last place of refuge. The view of the vanishing city reminds me that every young man is a king, every old man a king in exile.

The complete version of this essay was published in the magazine Park Avenue in 2008:
www.parkavenue.de