Rudi Dutschke - Early Life

Early Life

Dutschke was born in Schönefeld, (Dahme-Spreewald, Brandenburg), in the Third Reich. He attended school in and graduated from the Gymnasium there, but because he refused to join the army of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and convinced many of his fellow students to refuse as well, he was prevented from attending university in the GDR. He fled to West Berlin in August 1961, just one day before the Berlin Wall was built. He studied sociology at the Free University of Berlin under Richard Löwenthal and Klaus Meschkat where he became acquainted with alternative views of Marxism.

Dutschke joined the German SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (which was not the same as the SDS in the USA, but quite similar in goals) 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.

He married the American Gretchen Klotz (de) in 1966. They had three children. Dutschke's third child, 1980-born Rudi-Marek Dutschke (often known as just Marek Dutschke) was born after his father's death. He is a politician of the German Green Party as well as Dean's Office staffer of the Hertie School of Governance today. His older siblings are Hosea-Che Dutschke (named after the Old Testament minor prophet Hosea and Che Guevara) and their sister Polly-Nicole, both born in 1968.