Since there won’t be any pictures in my book, I thought I’d use this blog to show a few important images from the story of Germany’s 1968 generation – some of which I mention in the book. To begin with, here’s the famous 1960s poster whose visual style also influenced the cover of my book a little. The caption reads: “Everyone’s talking about the weather. We aren’t”. It’s an iconic image in Germany – it’s actually in the Haus der Geschichte, the German national history museum, in Bonn – but is little known in the UK or the US. The first time I saw it – and, I think, the first time I heard about the West German student movement – was when Iived in Berlin in 1992 with a guy who had grown up in East Germany and had a black and white photocopy of it on his bedroom wall.

They were the children of murderers. They were revolutionary optimists. They went from protest to resistance. But within them was an abominable irrationalism. The struggle continued. They went on a death trip. But they were given a lifeline. They made peace. There was a new republic. They won power. They fought a war against the past. History returned. They found a German way.