Swiss Review 2/2018

18 Swiss Review / March 2018 / No.2 Society INTERVIEW: DANIEL DI FALCO Mr Osterwalder, 50 years since 1968 is a big issue this year. And it’s also a chapter in your life. What’s it like to find your own youth presented in a museum? You realise that something you were involved in is over. But you also reflect on what happened. How do you see it? There are two sides. We were con- cerned about issues such as social jus- tice, gender equality and opening up society. In this regard, our efforts paid off as tremendous progress has been made. The other side of it was that we wanted to completely revolutionise society with 19th centuryMarxist, so- cialist and Trotskyist theories. Fortu- nately for us, nothing come of this. What do you mean by “fortunately”? Our ideas had nomajor repercussions in Switzerland. It was different in many Latin American countries where Marxist revolutions took place, some of which ended terribly. They cost lives, and ultimately also those of theMarxists. In this respect, we in Eu- rope were the lucky ones in the 1968 movement. Because nobody was held accountable for the dream of revolution? It goes beyond that. People like me were even able to forge careers in the state education system, fromteachers to professors. In the same system that you wanted to topple as a Marxist. Exactly. Our ideas were as fundamen- talist as they were rudimentary, and perhaps even naive – council-based democracy and a planned economy. It could have ended badly. Very badly. Undemocratically, in other words? In an undemocratic, totalitarian and chaotic way. You were only 21 years old in 1968. You then helped to found the Zurich section of the Revolutionary Marxist League (RML) which split away from the Communist Workers’ Party. Yes, but that wasn’t until 1971. Some- thing else existed before that in 1968 – a broad, extremely diverse move- ment of non-conformists, by which I mean people who were essentially disillusioned with the prevailing so- cial order and who articulated their discontent outside of traditional po- litical structures, which also meant outside of the “old left”. The entire movement extended far beyond a particular social milieu. The non-con- formists also included people who sought radical change in literature and theatre. Other people saw open- ing up the education system as being the most important issue. Others were completely apolitical. How did you organise yourselves? Wemet up at demonstrations, at pubs and in action groups which pursued particular goals, such as solidarity with Vietnam, the empowerment of the trade unions and the revitalisation of theatre. The political groupings were very loosely affiliated. In Thur- gau, there was a group of students, school pupils and apprentices who wouldmeet up for discussions, includ- ing with representatives of the “old left”. So, 1968 was more than just a student movement. I was a student, but we weren’t just campaigning for educational reform but also on behalf of apprentices or foreign workers in Switzerland. It’s hard to imagine today but there was a waste disposal site back then on the outskirts of Frauenfeld next to which was a shanty town where the guest workers from Italy lived, separated from their families who were not allowed to come here with them. This was how Switzerland treated them. We wanted to do something about it. “I’m pleased nothing came of the revolution” Fifty years ago, it seemed in Switzerland too that the time had come to radically change the world. Fritz Osterwalder was involved in the 1968 protests as a Marxist before becoming a professor of education. What remains of 1968? An interview about mistakes and progress Fritz Osterwalder Fritz Osterwalder, born in 1947 in Frauenfeld, was studying history and German literature in Zurich in 1968. Today, he is mainly known for his research on the relationships between edu- cational ideas, religion and the state. He made a name for himself with his critical look at the “expectations of salvation” that society places on schools and the “cult status” of educational reformers, such as Montessori, Steiner and Pestalozzi. In 2012, Osterwalder retired from his position as professor at the Institute of Ed- ucational Science at the University of Berne where he had worked since 2000. Before that he lectured in education in Karlsruhe and worked as a teacher and journalist in Zurich and Winterthur. DDF