Kommune 1 - Emergence

Emergence

Members of the "Munich Subversive Action" (such as Dieter Kunzelmann) and of the Berlin Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund ("SDS") (such as Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl) discussed how to break from what they considered to be narrow-minded and bourgeois concepts.

Dieter Kunzelmann had the idea of creating a commune. They decided to try a life of "those passionately interested in themselves". Kunzelmann soon moved to Berlin. In Berlin, the SDS had its first "commune working group", which advanced the following ideas:

• Fascism develops from the nuclear family. It is the smallest cell of the state from whose oppressive character all institutions are derived.
• Men and women live in dependence on each other so that neither could develop freely as people.
• This cell (that is, the small family) had to be shattered.

When it was proposed that this theory should be realized as the practice of a life as a commune, many SDS members left, including Dutschke and Rabehl, who did not want to give up their marriages and lifestyles. In the end, nine men and women, as well as a child, moved into the empty apartment of Hans Magnus Enzensberger and the studio apartment of the author Uwe Johnson in Berlin-Friedenau, who was staying in New York City at the time, on February 19, 1967. After Enzensberger's return from an extended study trip to Moscow, the communards left and occupied the main residence of Johnson in the nearby Stierstraße 3. They called themselves Kommune 1.

The early communards included Dagrun Enzensberger (divorced wife of Enzensberger), Tanaquil Enzensberger (nine years old at that time, daughter of Enzensberger), Ulrich Enzensberger (Hans Magnus Enzensberger's brother), Dieter Kunzelmann, Detlef Michel (until March 25, 1967), Volker Gebbert, Hans-Joachim Hameister, Dorothea Ridder, ("the iron Dorothee"), Dagmar Seehuber and Fritz Teufel. Rainer Langhans joined in March 1967. At times, other people also lived in the premises of Kommune 1, such as Dagmar von Doetinchem and Gertrud Hemmer („Agathe“).

The communards first tried to tell each other their own biographical identity, to break the old certainties. They were very different from each other. Correspondingly, the roles each of them played were soon different. Kunzelmann was the "patriarch" and made sure everyone knew it. His definition of the goals of the commune were based on his time as a "situationist" and in the "Subversive Action". He was therefore in favor of getting rid of all securities, even financial ones, which is why he scorned study grants, for example. He wanted to abolish any property, any private sphere. And he was against the principle of work, but for the principle of fun or pleasure. Everyone could and should do what he wanted, as long as it happened where everyone could see it.

Langhans, Teufel and the others wore long hair, beaded necklaces, army jackets or Mao suits at the urging of the women of the commune. Soon, they were paid for interviews and photographs. A sign hung plainly in the hallway of their apartment: "First pay up, then speak".