Abstract:

The aim of this survey, on the one hand, was to recognise the pre-conditions and causes of student unrest in Germany, and on the other, to measure and describe the response of the population at large in regard of those demonstrations. The starting-off point was the theses by S. Y. Eisenstadt and S. M. Lipset on youth and student unrest. Empirical data were obtained by conducting two representative surveys with students at all German universities in 1966 and 1967, a student survey in Mainz in 1968, and five representative population polls in 1967/68. In the attempt to explain the outbreak of the unrests, we have differentiated between the pre-conditions and the immediate cause that sparked off the demonstrations.