1968: Student Movement

“1968” as a code for social change, for youth revolt against the values and norms of their parents’ generation, unfolded differently in Austria than in most other countries. On the one hand, art had already gotten an earlier generation protesting against repression and deadlock – for example, Günter Brus or Hermann Nitsch as representatives of Viennese Actionism – and had, as a result, achieved worldwide recognition. On the other hand, the student movement was, in the narrower sense, largely a movement of imitation. Germany was, in both theory and practice, far ahead in its confrontation with National Socialism, France was in the process of setting an example of Actionism, and the Anglo-Saxon world was changing musical listening habits with the Beatles and Bob Dylan. For Austrian students, Vietnam was just a code and the US civil rights movement a distant symbol. Only solidarity with the students of Iran or Greece had real resonance here. To this end, Austria’s confrontation with its Nazi past began, driven primarily by the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance. And since Borodajkewycz, university structures had started to break down.