Gretchen Dutschke-Klotz (born Gretchen Klotz; March 3, 1942 Oak Park, Illinois) is a German-American author and former activist. In West Berlin and West Germany in 1960s she was active with her husband Rudi Dutschke in the Socialist Students Union (SDS) and the Federal Republic's broader "extra-parliamentary opposition" (APO).
Gretchen Klotz was born in conservative, suburban Oak Park, Illinois. She majored in philosophy at Wheaton College, where she first participated in student demonstrations. [1] During a semester studying German at the Goethe Institute, Munich, she met Dutschke, a charismatic figure among radical students in West Berlin. In March 1965 she moved to Germany and married him while taking up studies at Free University of Berlin. [2] [3]
Following an assassination attempt on her husband in April 1968, she and the first of their three children moved with him to Cambridge, England, and then Aarhus, Denmark. [4] Six years after Rudi Dutschke's death in 1979 from complications arising from his injuries in 1968, she moved back to the United States, returning to Berlin in 2009. [5]
She has published memoirs and reflections on her and Rudi Dutschke's experiences of the "anti-authoritarian" 1960s student movement, which she believes "changed Germany". [1]
Alfred Willi Rudolf "Rudi" Dutschke was a German sociologist and political activist who, until severely injured by an assassin in 1968, was a leading charismatic figure within the Socialist Students Union (SDS) in West Germany, and that country's broader "extra-parliamentary opposition" (APO).
The West German student movement, sometimes called the 1968 movement in West Germany, was a social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as 68ers. The movement was characterized by the protesting students' rejection of traditionalism and of German political authority which included many former Nazi officials. Student unrest had started in 1967 when student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a policeman during a protest against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. The movement is considered to have formally started after the attempted assassination of student activist leader Rudi Dutschke, which sparked various protests across West Germany and gave rise to public opposition. The movement created lasting changes in German culture.
Katja Lange-Müller is a German writer living in Berlin. Her works include several short stories and novellas, radio dramas, and dramatic works.
Alice Sophie Schwarzer is a German journalist and prominent feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal EMMA. Beginning in France, she became a forerunner of feminist positions against anti-abortion laws, for economic self-sufficiency for women, against pornography, prostitution, female genital mutilation, and for a fair position of women in Islam. She authored many books, including biographies of Romy Schneider, Marion Dönhoff, and herself.
Sibylle Berg is a German-Swiss contemporary author and playwright. They write novels, essays, short fiction, plays, radio plays, and columns. And they are as of 2024 a member of the European Parliament. Their 17 books have been translated into 30 languages. They have won numerous awards, including the Thüringer Literaturpreis, the Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis, and the Johann-Peter-Hebel-Preis. They have become an iconic figure in German alternative sub-cultures, gaining a large fan base among the LGBT community and the European artistic communities. They live in Switzerland and Israel. Their 2019 work GRM. Brainfuck, a science fiction novel set in a dystopian near future won the Swiss Book Prize and was noticed by The Washington Post, and reached fourth place on the Spiegel Bestseller list, with the sequel, RCE, entering the list as highest entry of the week at place 14. On 1 March 2023 Berg was invited as special guest to open the high-profile Elevate Festival in Graz.
Bastian Sick is a German journalist and author.
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Christine Westermann is a German television and radio host, journalist and author.
Adriana Altaras is a German actress, theatre director and author.
Thomas Pletzinger is a German writer and translator. He is best known for his debut novel Bestattung eines Hundes, which was published in 2008 to wide acclaim. It has been translated into English as Funeral for a Dog. Pletzinger served as the writer-in-residence in the German department at Grinnell College in 2010 and again in 2014.
Volker Hage is a retired German journalist, author and literary critic, who has reinvented himself as a novelist.
Volker Weidermann is a German writer and literary critic. He currently works for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the literary director and editor of the newspaper's Sunday edition. In 2015, he changed to Der Spiegel.
Carola Stern was the name under which Erika Assmus reinvented herself as a serious journalist and (subsequently) author and politically committed television presenter, after she was obliged to relocate at short notice from East Germany to West Germany in 1951.
Karola Bloch was a Polish-German architect, socialist, and feminist. She was the third wife of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch.
Gerhard Zwerenz was a German writer and politician. From 1994 until 1998 he was a member of the Bundestag for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).
Franz Herre is a German biographer, historian and journalist.
Sigrid Damm-Rüger was a German feminist activist who initially came to prominence in September 1968 through a tomato throwing incident at the 23rd congress of the German Socialist Students' Union, and subsequently became an author specialising in professional education and training.
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Regina Scheer is a German writer and historian.
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