Abstract
On 12 December 1980, police officers in the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg prevented squatters from occupying an empty house on Fränkeluferstrasse. The police intervention escalated an already tense situation and sparked spontaneous demonstrations and riots that lasted more than two days. The cover photo of this book shows a scene from that first night: two police officers had left their van, guns drawn, to keep a group of demonstrators in check, but other protesters subsequently moved in and knocked over the police van. The West Berlin squatters soon named the episode the ‘Battle of Fränkelufer’, and the riots became the starting point of the West Berlin squatters’ movement. Before the ‘battle’ the city counted 18 squatted buildings; by June 1981 that number had risen to 165.1
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Notes
For the squatters’ movement in Berlin, see F. Anders (2010) ‘Wohnraum, Freiraum, Widerstand. Die Formierung der Autonomen in den Konflikten um Hausbesetzungen Anfang der achtziger Jahre’, in D. Siegfried and S. Reichardt (eds) Das Alternative Milieu. Antibürgerlicher Lebensstil und linke Politik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Europa), 1968–1983 (Berlin: Wallstein, pp. 473–98; Geronimo (2002) Feuer und Flamme. Zur Geschichte der Autonomen (Berlin: ID-Archiv);
A.G. Grauwacke (2003) Autonome in Bewegung. Aus den ersten 23 Jahren (Berlin: Association A).
This was reflected in both journalist accounts and government reports. See for example H.J.A. Hofland (1981) De stadsoorlog. Amsterdam ’80 (Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijthof); Wetenschappelijke Raad voor Regeringsbeleid [WRR] (1980) Democratie en geweld. Probleemanalyse naar aanleiding van de gebeurtenissen in Amsterdam op 30 april 1980 (Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij);
L.G. Scarman (1986) The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders 10–12 April 1981, reprinted edn. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books).
L. Adriaenssen (1996) Een dwarse buurt. Het herscheppingsverhaal van de Staatsliedenbuurt en Frederik Hendrikbuurt, 1971–1996 (Amsterdam: Wijkcentrum Staatslieden-Hugo de Grootburt), p. 71;
E. Duivenvoorden (2000) Een Voet Tussen de Deur: Geschiedenis van de Kraakbeweging 1964–1999 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij de Arbeiderspers).
For Amsterdam: Duivenvoorden, Een Voet Tussen de Deur; Adilkno (1994) Cracking the Movement. Squatting Beyond the Media (Brooklyn: Autonomedia); L. Owens (2009) Cracking under Pressure. Narrating the Decline of the Amsterdam Squatters’ Movement (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
J. Uitermark (2004) ‘Framing urban injustices. The case of the Amsterdam squatter movement’ Space and Polity, vol. 8, no. 2, 227–44. For contemporary observations on Zürich, see G. Amendt (1980) ‘Leichte Krawallerie’ Konkret, no. 8 (August), 17–21;
R. Hänny (1981) Zürich Anfang September (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp).
For historical accounts: H. Nigg (2001) Wir wollen alles, und zwar subito! Die achtziger Jugendunruhen in der Schweiz und ihr Folgen (Zurich: Limmat);
H.P. Kriesi (1984) Die Zürcher Bewegung. Bilder, Interaktionen, Zusammenhänge (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus).
‘Grün und Gloria’ Der Spiegel, no. 47, 17 November 1980, 21–24; T. Ali (2005) Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (London and New York: Verso).
Kriesi et al. took this as point of departure in their research of social movements in the 1970s and 1980s in Western Europe: H.P Kriesi et al. (1995) New Social Movements in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). For the development of welfare regimes in the West,
see G. Esping-Andersen (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press).
This latter aspect is amongst others emphasized in the volume: S. Aust and S. Rosenbladt (1981) Hausbesetzer. Wofür sie kämpfen, wie sie leben und wie sie leben wollen (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe).
For the former aspect, see J. Smith and J. Haeberlen (2014) ‘Struggling for Feelings. The Politics of Emotions in the Radical New Left in West-Germany, c. 1968–1984’ Contemporary European History, vol. 23, no. 4, 615–37.
L. Owens et al. (2013) ‘At home in the movement: constructing an oppositional identity through activist travel across European squats’, in C. Flesher Fominaya and L. Cox (eds) Understanding European Movements. New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-austerity Protest (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 172–86, p. 176.
For the first, see among others: Kriesi, Die Zürcher Bewegung; ibid., New Social Movements; R. Koopmans (1995) Democracy from Below: New social movements and the political system in West Germany (Boulder: Westview Press). For the latter, for example: WRR, Democratie en geweld.
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For Italy, see G. Katsiaficas (1997) The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press);
D. della Porta (1995) Social Movements, Political Violence and the State. A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press);
S. Tarrow (1989) Democracy and Disorder. Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
For Greece see N. Papadogiannis (2015) Militant Around the Clock? Youth Politics, Leisure and Sexuality in Post-dictatorship Greece, 1974–1981 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn).
S. Häder (2005) ‘Selbstbehauptungen wider Partei und Staat: westlicher Einfluss und östliche Eigenständigkeit in den Jugendkulturen jenseits des Eisernen Vorhangs’ Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, vol. 45, 449–74.
For this, see for example J. Bacia and K.J. Scherer (1981) Passt bloss auf! Was will die neue Jugendbewegung? (Berlin: Olle and Wolter).
P. Birke and C. Holmsted Larsen (eds) (2007) Besetze deine Stadt! BZ din By! Häuserkämpfe und Stadtentwicklung in Kopenhagen (Berlin: Assoziation A).
For a political science approach: A. Markovits and P. Gorski (1993) The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press).
For a contemporarily survey: H.C. Harten (1983) Jugendarbeitslosigkeit in der EG (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus).
H. Kaelble (2007) Sozialgeschichte Europas 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (München: Beck), pp. 35–56;
Michael Mitterauer (1993) A History of Youth. Family, Sexuality, and Social Relations in Past Times (Oxford: Blackwell).
J. Bopp (1981) ‘Trauer-Power. Zur Jugendrevolte 1981’ Kursbuch 65. Der große Bruch — Revolte 1981 (Berlin: Kursbuch Verlag).
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D. Roth and R. Rucht (eds) (2000) Jugendkulturen, Politik und Protest. Vom Widerstand zum Kommerz? (Opladen: Leske & Budrich);
A. Schildt and D. Siegfried (eds) (2006) Between Marx and Coca-Cola. Youth cultures in changing European societies, 1960–1980 (Oxford: Berghahn).
P. Birke et al. (eds) (2009) Alte Linke — Neue Linke? Die sozialen Kämpfe der 1968er Jahre in der Diskussion (Berlin: Dietz);
G. Koenen (2001) Das rote Jahrzehnt: Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution, 1967–1977 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch);
A. Verbij (2005) Tien rode jaren: Links radicalisme in Nederland, 1970–1980 (Amsterdam: Ambo);
E. Smith and M. Worley (eds) (2014) Against the Grain: The British far left from 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
P. Kenney (2002) A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 13.
M. Mazower (2000) Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage), pp. 327–59;
T. Judt (2005) Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin), pp. 453–635.
F. de Vries (2006) Club Risiko: De Jaren Tachtig Toen en Nu (Amsterdam: Nijgh en Van Ditmar);
Subcultures Network (eds) (2015) Fight Back: Punk, Politics and Resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
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© 2016 Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen
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Andresen, K., van der Steen, B. (2016). Introduction: The Last Insurrection? Youth, Revolts and Social Movements in the 1980s. In: Andresen, K., van der Steen, B. (eds) A European Youth Revolt. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56570-9_1
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