As the fortieth anniversary of 1968 draws to a close, the focus of interest shifts to next year’s anniversaries commemorating twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. On 30 May, a debate was held at the Academy of Arts in Berlin entitled “Crossing 68/89”. The participants, leading protagonists of 1968 and 1989 in eastern and western Europe, were asked to discuss the Prague Spring and the student protest movement in the West in a European perspective – with particular reference to the cataclysmic year of 1989. First published in German in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, Eurozine translates the debate into English.
Oskar Negt
(b. 1934) is professor of sociology at the University of Hannover.