ALFRED MARQUART and fewer restrictions on children. The child-care (Kinderladen) movement which had begun in Berlin, one of the APO centers, soon spread to many other places in Germany. Out of this concern for education, student action groups were soon formed to set up centers for school children in poor neighborhoods; here, workers' children received help with their homework, and an attempt was also made to transmit some social theory to them. "After a few years of student anti-authoritarian struggle at the universities, it became clear that the intelligensia alone could not fight state authority in the proletariat's place; we saw that we had to mobilize the working class to struggle against capitalist domination itself. It seemed to us that this struggle had to be carried out in factories, in worker neighborhoods, and in the most important institutions of bourgeois society through the development of class antagonisms. "(6) Th is extract from a book written by a group of psychology students shows from which standpoint they undertook their activities. Man~· of the child-eare and school children projects founrled c1tthe time were motivated in the same or in a similar manner. Bui 11 wc1snot only APO activism which led to an increase in ci1izen \ act ion groups: as I mentioned earlier, many action groups eame into being in response to direct threats to their members· dail~ lives. The 1966 economic crisis in Germany then led Lo a significant political transformation of the movement. Until 1966, Germany had been ruled by a coalition government made up of the CDU !CSU (Christian Democratic Union/ Christian Social Union) and the Liberal Party (FOP - Free Democratic Party). This government, headed by chancellor Ludwig Erhardt, broke up in 1966 and on December 1, 1966, the socalled "broad coalition", made up of the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union (under Franz.Josef Strauss) and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) took over. Many party members as well as many sympathizers saw the Social Democrats' entry into the government as a treason toward the cause of "democratic socialism". (6) Schiilerladen Rote Freiheit, p. 40. 64
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