New ruprecht series: Revolt in Heidelberg

Who says "student movement", means mostly only: 1968. Ruprecht not in such a way. In a fourth-hasty series, which begins in this expenditure, we are also occupied in the emphasis - completely different - forms of student "revolt in Heidelberg" during the 70's: with the "socialist patient collective" 1970/71, which unrests with mathematicians, lawyers and Germanists in the center of the decade as well as the end of the "Collegium Academicum" 1978, which signals also the end of the revolt. A locking article looks back on the more pragmatic 80's, on the "Unimut" winter 1988/89.

"from the illness a weapon make!"
Where from psychiatry patient revolutionary will should - the socialist patient collective SPK (1970/71)
Jean Jean-Paul Sartre was "extraordinarily impressed". The German state protection was other opinion: For it in February 1970 the created "socialist patient collective" ("SPK") was not a self organization of psychiatry patients, but a criminal combination. Stands firmly: Into the straight times 17 months of its contested existence radicalized itself the anti-psychiatric-revolutionary collective up to the armament, and after its end followed over a dozen of its members the armed fight of the "Red Army Faction" ("RAF"), which in the following years the republic should shake. But with these statements the history of the SPK is hardly told to the half.

It is the year, in which separate the Beatles. The Americans march into Kambodscha, Alexander Dubceks attempt of a "socialism with human face" fail, Willy Brandt fall in the Warsaw Ghetto on the knees, Peter Handke published "the fear of the torwarts with the eleven-meter", in German Gazetten are frequent from Oswald Kolle the speech. And: In the spring this yearly 1970, when the SPK takes its beginning, drives the student revolt straight their end too. In the review on this time the left "course book" will write 1985: "if a gewitzter Staatsschuetzer (at that time) would have searched a means, in order to paralyze the protest movement, then nothing Bessereres to him could have occurred, when which ordered itself the movement: the ' proletarian turn ', the training courses, the Marx Exegese, the organization debates, the establishments of party. It was, despite all marches, the stop of the movement, their decay."

Long the mass of the politisierten students, who were even in the wedding of the movement rather (strong) a minority, returned to their desks. Many withdraw themselves into group houses, taverns, child shops, groups of self-helps, administered enterprises, the SPD. The certainty maintained for a long time that the desired revolution before the door stands, does not yield with few linking the creeping feeling that it, although in the long run inexorable, but still another one while on itself will let wait.

Also in the Heidelberger province the once so powerfully arising student revolt shows a picture of the exhaustion in this year 1970: "the movement was in a dead end", the Heidelberger oldleft Dietrich Hildebrandt will remember. "we could not still prevent that certain professors Vorlesungen held, knew however, where with it." At the end of November splits the Heidelberger section of the socialist German student federation, which advanced the movement once; Hildebrandt: "friendships broke, to group houses went into the breaks." In the consequence the students are still occasionally permitted - partial spectacular - actions to mobilize, but, thus Hildebrandt, "of the put goals had really reached something the movement not".

The weakness of the Revoluzzer does not remain hidden for their opponents: The federal state government, in front Secretary of cultural affairs William cock, wants to finally proceed now against radicals at the universities. A conservative roll-bake begins and finds in the "radical decree" two years later, which also the SPD carries, one of his high points. In its book "the fall of Heidelberg" will formulate the Heidelberger writer Michael Buselmeier 1981: "the liberals of free spaces particularly at the University of, which to us had almost combatless been assigned to 1968, were taken now course around course under club impacts and threats again."

While the remainders of the student movement are in such a manner with itself busy and the "system" to say, as it at that time mode, to the resistance aufrappelt, finds the revolt new ways: On 2 March the physician Dr refer 1970. Wolfgang Huber, three colleagues (under it his Mrs. Ursula) and 40 former patients of the psychiatric health center a 4-Zimmer-Wohnung in the ground floor of the Rohrbacher road 12, furnish therapy offers and working groups - the "socialist patient collective" ("SPK") is born.

The hospital has the 35jaehrigen Assistenarzt Huber after long quarrels to dismiss; the reproach: it refuses co-operation and abuses its group therapy for "instigating of patients against the hospital line and the remaining coworkers of the health center" as well as to political agitation. Huber rejected discussions; it avowedly, it must worry about its patients. Many of them have themselves on a plenary assembly - which first in the history of the Federal Republic - with it solidarizes; with him the hospital and from rector Professor Rolf Rendtorff left well three dozen one week later by hunger strike promises forced: The university finances the group the accomodation in the Rohrbacher road (and Hubers content pays); A condition is that the physician locks the treatments begun to at the end of of Septembers there. About a contract for a long time one argues; one of the reasons for the Hader: Instead of completing itself, opens the SPK for more patients; temporarily it supplies student, but increasingly also worker, pupil, employee allegedly up to 500 humans, no longer above all.

Revolution.

For which collective in next months with handbills, teach in , Petition to federal state parliament and a great deal different actions argues, is therapeutic experiment, which a whole set of impulses - Hegel dialectic, marxism, Freud Psychoanalyse, William realm, anti-psychiatry, which anti-institutional student movement - takes up and even after the yardsticks of the time at that time, which is indeed rich at pagings, daringly comes along: "comrades!", it is called there griffig in the SPK "Patienten info. No. 1"from June 1970. "there may not be therapeutic act, those clearly and as revolutionary act not proven before is clear." Actually Hubers therapy model is immensely political - however that is also its reason Credo: "illness", then does not explain the SPK, "is a procedure in individual humans, ill is our society"; which is called ' illness ', the "individual unconscious expression of the social contradictions" actually is in capitalism. This produces illness, in order to create capital - a destruction system, in which also the medicine, in particular the psychiatry, has their function: "you re-establishes the patients for the working process, so that it can produce again increase in value. (the worker) comes already as destroying into the hospital and completely one mutilates there."

From this analysis there is one consequence for the SPK only: "in the sense it can give only an appropriate and/or causal fight of their illness to the patient, i.e. the abolishment of the ill-making privatwirtschaftlich patriarchalischen society." While the traditional psychiatry is out to fit the patients to conditions which made it ill nevertheless straight, the SPK beginning aims at "Emanzipation": The patient is to make its apparent weakness illness productive, to transform her from a "unconscious misfortune" into a "unfortunate consciousness", which recognizes the cause of its misery. The desired consequence: "the suffering pressure as subjective necessity for the change is produced politically", the illness "its own opposite, the revolution."

Thus is the SPK in the historical situation, in which the left 1970 are, likewise an answer to the Lenin' question about "which does?" as other things, which develop in that time from the bankrupt's estate of the student movement: the army of groups and Grueppchen Maoistic, Leninistic, trotzkistischer adjustment about or the RAF of terror. The left one looks already for a long time for what calls it the "revolutionary subject": the potential carrier of the revolution. Into the disappointment over it that the proletariat with the rebellion, originally expenditure-looked for this role, leaves itself still to time, a part that reached a linking to the so-called fringe group strategy: the idea that such as home pupils or edge-constant young people from their intensifies social marginalisierte groups underprivileged situation as starting point of the circulation are out particularly suited. The SPK now locates the revolutionary subject in a group, which understands it first as avant-garde: in the patients, who experience the contradictions of the system at the sinnlichsten. "it makes revolution" then it is called in the "info." No. 38, "can only those, which understood that they do not have to lose anything as their ill, broken existence." Fast however the SPK extends its fringe group to the universal strategy: "we are ill all" - potential revolutionaries: everyone.

Around such theories and the further fate of the SPK are inflamed not only a public debate, but also a proper consultant war: On SPK side three scientists - under them the social psychologist Professor Peter Brueckner from Hanover - for, it contacted by Rendtorff, express themselves, the collective, if necessary as universitaere mechanism to continue. On the other side the established university medicine in the person of the hospital boss Professor Walter von Baeyer and two foreign professors - exclusive on the basis of the document study - condemns the concept of the SPK than "unscientifically" and for patients "expressed harmful". Is "quite conceivable", writes for instance the Ulmer consultant Professor Hans Thomae that the membership in the SPK will affect itself "therapeutically" - "just like it for some humans to be helpful can, member sparkling wines to become"; as its also it guesses/advises to institutionalize colleagues heftigst of it off, the "utopia of a illusion-similar character" at the university.

typically this article and th analysis offered makes no distinction between different kinds of mental health problems. And glosses the difference between recognising that a sick soiety may indeed be a contributory factor in mental health problems but rejecting the general generic response of medical society to mental health criis is not a reason to throw medical intervention out with the diagnosis.

magic mushrooms may have been useful for some people with certain mental health problems but psychosis is not the same as multiple personalty and neither is the same as chronic depression
some people want and need to be heard and understood and supported by the system within their own lifetimes and not end up as political gineau pigs for spk's experimental one size fits all answer to medical health.

not all alternative approachs to medicine are rational, healthful appropriate or sane. and its a shame indymedia has fallen into the trap of promoting this dangerous rubbish