Rudi Dutschke (March 7, 1940 – December 24, 1979) was the most prominent spokesperson of the left-wing German student movement of the 1960s. He famously split from those who went on to form the violent Red Army Faction and advocated instead ‘a long march through the institutions’ of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery. Dutschke was born in Schönefeld, Germany. He attended school in Luckenwalde and graduated, but because he refused to join the army of the German Democratic Republic and convinced many of his fellow students to refuse as well, he was prevented from attending university. He fled to West Berlin in August 1961, one day before the Berlin Wall was built. He studied sociology at the Free University of Berlin where he became acquainted with alternative views of Marxism. Dutschke joined the German SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund in 1965 and from that time on the SDS became the center of the student movement, growing very rapidly and organizing demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. On April 11, 1968 was shot in the head by Josef Bachmann. After the attempted assassination, Dutschke and his family went to the UK in the hope that he could recuperate. He was accepted at Cambridge University to finish his degree but in 1971 the government under Edward Heath expelled him and his family as an “undesirable alien” who had engaged in “subversive activity”. They then moved to Aarhus, Denmark. He also began working with dissidents opposing the Communist governments in Eastern Europe and because of massive brain damage from the assassination attempt, Rudi continued to suffer health problems. He died on 24 December 1979 in Aarhus, Denmark. He had an epileptic seizure while in the bathtub and drowned.
