The period from 1968 through 1972 marked a turning point in the second half of the twentieth century as social and intellectual upheavals spread throughout Europe and North America. I experienced it from the somewhat unusual vantage point of a foreigner in Germany engaged in graduate studies and confronted with impressive academic and cultural institutions with which I was not familiar. In October 1968 I arrived in Gรถttingen to begin doctoral studies in Old Testament at Georg-August-Universitรคt. At the time I knew little about this venerable institution other than the roster of distinguished biblical and other scholars since its founding in 1737. Even with my earlier studies in Oslo, I possessed little more than vague generalities about the German academic scene and did not have a clear sense of the distinctive relationship there among Church, state and university. Upon completion of my degree programme four years later, I returned to the United States a much different person-not only with the training and credentials needed for a career in teaching and research but also with a new understanding of political, cultural and ecclesiastical as well as academic issues. As will be apparent in this essay, my 'American' notions of church/state relations and academic freedom still persist, reinforced in line with the deep-seated challenges of the '60s and '70s. Considering matters now from the remove of three decades, I cannot help but think that those same cultural and institutional forces, particularly in their German form, set the stage for the conflict that subsequently engulfed my doctoral colleague in Gรถttingen of that period, Gerd Lรผdemann.
At the base of the student unrest, both in Europe and in the U.S., was a fundamental questioning of authority-of governments over citizens, of the military-industrial establishment over political policies, of the First World over the Third World, of one race over others, of males over females, of parents over children, of traditional social norms over the new generation's choices. No social institution was above the suspicion of those who became known as 'the '60s generation' or-in German jargon, singling out the year of the beginning-'die Achtundsechziger'. In Germany a special element was added: the parents and grandparents of the students were responsible for the greatest war and the most horrible, appalling massacre of modern times, likely of all times. As I observed in innumerable conversations and situations, the German students felt branded and fated: they were treated with suspicion and even hostility as they traveled in other countries; they often regarded their parents and their social institutions as being morally bankrupt; and they worried that the traits that characterised their predecessors might reside, if not in their genes, then in the cultural air they were breathing-the same atmosphere that could at once produce a Mozart and a Mengele, a Goethe and a Goebbels, a Dรผrer and a Fรผhrer. Much around them was to be discredited. Open criticism and intellectual honesty provided the best hope for escape from the cycle.