“INDIANI METROPOLITANI” AND “STADTINDIANER”:
REPRESENTING AUTONOMY IN ITALY AND WEST-GERMANY

During the late 1970s West-German protest culture went through a paradigm shift from revolution as an end of protest to autonomy as objective. Besides internal factors such as the apparent failure of terrorism external factors had an important impact on the reorientation of West-German protest movements. Among them, drawing on the Italian discourse on "autonomia" which had been going on since the late 60s, the identification with the archetypical Native American was highly symbolical of the claim for autonomy.

The appearance of "indiani metropolitani" was the most influential means of the transfer of the idea of autonomy from Italy to West-Germany. Its reception and recontextualization as "Stadtindianer" was a precondition for the emergence of the specific German protest culture of the „Autonome“ in the early 1980s.

Sebastian Haumann is graduate student at the History Department of the University of Duesseldorf. His dissertation started in September 2005 will be on protest against urban renewal 1965-1985: A comparison of Cologne and Philadelphia. After studying in Duesseldorf and Berlin, he obtained his MA from the University of Duesseldorf in 2005 with a thesis on the West-German squatters movement.

[IFK Home] [Affiliierte] [Konferenz 2004] [Konferenz 2005] [Konferenz 2006] [Publikationen] [Sponsoren] [Kontakt] [English version]