K-Gruppen

K-Gruppen (Kommunistische Gruppen, "Communist Groups") is a term referring to various Marxist (often Maoist) organizations that sprang up in West Germany at the end of the 1960s, following the collapse of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS).^[1] They included the Communist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists (KPD/ML), the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Aufbauorganisation) (KPD-AO), the Communist League (KB) and the Communist League of West Germany (KBW).^[2] In 1971 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated that Germany had around twenty active Maoist groups, with 800 members between them.^[2] A few of these groups went on to join the Green Party (now Alliance 90/The Greens) in the late 1970s, while others eventually formed the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD).^[3]

A 1972 May Day demonstration in Freiburg

See also

• Außerparlamentarische Opposition
• West German student movement
• New Communist Movement

References

1. Slobodian, Quinn (21 March 2012). Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany. Duke University Press. doi:10.1515/9780822395041-010. ISBN 9780822395041. S2CID 243154919.
2. West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Anti-Authoritarian Revolt, 1962–1978. Cambridge University Press. 10 October 2013. ISBN 9781107022553.
3. Protest Song in East and West Germany Since the 1960s. Camden House. 2007. ISBN 9781571132819.

External links

The historical development of West Germany’s new left from a politico-theoretical perspective with particular emphasis on the Marxistische Gruppe and Maoist K-Gruppen Phd thesis by Matthias Dapprich