1968 in Europe

PhD Università Ca' Foscari Venezia
Copyright: © Maria Vittoria Martini, 2011

Abstract:
Nel 1968 il critico d’arte inglese Lawrence Alloway terminava The Venice Biennale 1895-1968. From salon to goldfish bowl sostenendo che fosse urgente che la Biennale elaborasse un “sistema di controllo” sulle mostre che risolvesse la sua complessa “struttura cellulare”. E’ in questo punto che cronologicamente si innesta questa ricerca: la crisi istituzionale e funzionale della Biennale giunse al culmine diventando la causa che ne fece l’obiettivo della contestazione sessantottina e il radicale rinnovamento richiesto dalla società civile si espresse nella riforma dello statuto “democratico e antifascista” del 1973. L’ipotesi di questa ricerca è che quel “sistema di controllo” sia stato trovato e testato con l’edizione del 1976 e che questo non sia altro che il frutto delle irripetibili esperienze civili e culturali realizzate all’interno e intorno alla Biennale immediatamente dopo la contestazione.

In 1968 the art critic Lawrence Alloway ended The Venice Biennale 1895-1968. From salon to goldfish bowl asserting that it was necessary that Venice Biennale worked out a “control system” on its exhibitions in order to solve its complex “cellular structure”. It is in this very moment that this research inserts itself chronologically. The institutional and functional crisis came to the apex in 1968 when the Biennale became the target of the protests for these reasons. The quest for a radical renewal of the cultural institution coming from civil society, finally expressed itself in the 1973 “democratic and antifascist” reform. This research hypothesis is that the “control system” on the exhibitions has found and tested in occasion of 1976 Biennale and that it was the result of all the civil and cultural experiences developed soon after ’68 protests in and around the Venice Biennale.

The Year 1968 in Czechoslovakia – exceptional case from political, social and religious point of view in European context
This study presents specific moments of the historical development of the year 1968 in Czechoslovakia. Not only political, social and religious situation in this country differed in many aspects from other states of the soviet block but also the dynamic development of the year 1968 and his reception differed from westeuropean countries. Author analyses also bold experiments such as ecumenical and Marxist-Christian dialogs. 
1968, history of Czechoslovakia, ecumenical dialog, Marxist-Christian dialog

Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der spezifischen Zügen der historischen Entwicklung des Jahres 1968 in der damaligen tschechoslowakischen Gesellschaft. Die politische, gesellschaftliche und auch kirchliche Situation in der Tschechoslowakei unterschied sich in vielerlei Hinsicht von der in anderen Ländern des sowjetischen Blocks aber auch von der Ereignissen in der westeuropäischen Ländern. Autor analysiert auch sehr interessanten Experimenten wie ökumenischen oder christlich-marxistischen Dialog.

In 1968, a group of architecture students at West Berlin’s Technical University formed Aktion 507 in order to critique post-war planning policies within the city. Following modernist principles, post-war policy makers began separating the city by function, with residential developments relocated to the suburbs. The general belief was that nineteenth century tenements were responsible for the ‘undemocratic spirit in the city’ and not suitable for the new ‘democratic’ Germany. Thus, the action taken was to demolish tenements and replace them with prefabricated satellite housing developments. In reaction, Aktion 507 curated an exhibition, ‘Diagnosis on Building in West Berlin’, focusing on the ‘critical analysis of current construction activities’. The exhibition centred on the Märkisches Viertel, a development containing 17,000 apartments, jutting the Berlin Wall to the north of the city. Aktion 507 argued that architects, speculators, the senate, and construction companies exerted a ‘totalitarian rule over the city’. I intend to argue that the ideology of the student movement in Berlin was in a symbiotic relationship with the post-war cityscape whereby readings of urban planners, Marxists, sociologists and others were translated through the lens of Berlin’s unique character and position in the post-war world. For example, Marcuse’s theory on the repressive mechanisms of society held special significance in a post-fascist era where former National Socialists still held positions of power, and where left-wing intellectuals flocked due to exemption from military service. Likewise, the Märkisches Viertel, with its ‘intolerable defects in social infrastructure’, highlighted the wider social implications of relocating inhabitants from the inner city under the guise of social housing. This paper documents the use of architecture as a vessel through which political, cultural and social conflicts were argued and contested which, through involvement with residents, Aktion 507 irreversibly changed West Berlin, both as a physical and political space.

The years around May ’68 (c. 1965 – c. late-1970s) are widely understood to represent a watershed moment for children’s books in France. An important factor was the influence of a new fringe of avant-garde publishers that attracted attention across their trade in and beyond France. Using archives and interviews and accounts of some of the books produced and their reception, this article presents case studies of the most influential publishing houses as a series of three snapshots of the areas of movement in the field. At the same time, it evaluates the extent to which the social, cultural and political upheavals in France in the wake of May ’68 helped to alter the shape of book production for children and to bring about a ›radical revolution‹ in the children’s publishing trade.

Young People and Youth between ‘Form’ and ‘Homologation’: Gombrowicz and Pasolini around and about 1968.

The article is a parallel reading of some literary and nonfictional works of Witold Gombrowicz and Pier Paolo Pasolini, concerning ‘youth’ and ‘young people’ in the 1960s, particularly around 1968. In spite of the substantial difference between the youth movements in the West and in Eastern Europe, as well as despite the immense diversity between the ways of life and world views of the two authors, it is still possible to notice astonishing similarities in their ideas. Their analyses of the contemporary mass-society, of the relationship between the individual (notably, the young person), Power and the community also reveal surprising points in common. All things considered, the pessimistic vision of both authors is based on general concepts, like Gombrowicz’s ‘Form’ and Pasolini’s ‘Homologation’, of different origin (i.e. psycho-sociological and socio-political), but apparently not so distant from each other from today’s standpoint. The article stresses other surprising similarities, such as the constant interest in Dante in the whole production of both writers, especially in the mid-60s, as well as a kind of ‘thematic intertextuality’ in some of their major texts from that period, as the novel Pornografia and the drama Fabrication on the one side, and the tragicomedy History (An Operetta) and the play Calderon on the other one: these works all centre on the relationship between grownups and young people.

Příspěvek vypráví příběh uměleckého díla, sochy nazvané Roznícená nenávist – proti teroru a násilí. Vytvořil ji akademický sochař a malíř Oldřich Bolom-Kotari (1917–1985) jako osobní výpověď o prožité okupaci Československa vojsky pěti armád Varšavské smlouvy v srpnu 1968. Zakoušené násilí, pohrdání smyslem života v zemi, kde žil, proměnil v tvůrčí vzepětí. Během několika měsíců od podzimu 1968 připravil celou sérii návrhů plastik s výmluvnými názvy jako Dialog, Srpen 1968, Srpnové poznání, Velké zklamání, Pták neštěstí, Pták bez poslání, Umírající pták, Na mořském dně, Bez východiska, Roztoužený plaz, Srdce, Proměna, Těžké sny, Přízrak, Getsemanská zahrada, Marná naděje, Když znějí hrany, Don Quiote či Smutné mateřství. Tato díla chtěl realizovat a veřejně vystavit co nejrychleji, dokud okupační režim nezesílí. Záměr se nepodařilo plně realizovat, pokus o vystavení sochy Roznícená nenávist na sklonku roku 1969 znamenal potvrzení konce umělcovy veřejné kariéry.  /  This contribution recounts the story of a work of art, a statue called The Inflamed Hatred – against terror and violence. It was created by Oldřich Bolom--Kotari (1917–1985), academic sculptor and painter, as his personal testimony to the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the five Warsaw Pact countries in August 1968. He transformed the violence experienced, the contempt for the meaning of life in the country where he lived, into a creative spur. Within several months of the autumn of 1968 he prepared an entire series of designs for sculptures with telling titles such as Dialogue, August 1968, August Revelation, Great Disappointment, The Bird of Doom, The Bird Without Mission, The Dying Bird, At the Bottom of the Sea, Without an Escape, The Yearning Reptile, The Heart, Transformation, Nightmares, The Apparition, The Garden of Gethsemane, Hope Lost, When the Bell Tolls, Don Quixote or Sad Motherhood. He wanted to create these works and display them in public as soon as possible before the occupation regime becomes well established. He did not fully succeed in his intention; his attempt to display his statue The Inflamed Hatred towards the end of 1969, in fact, confirmed the end of the artist’s public career.

Raymond Aron’s books stand out as an example of lucid political judgment in an age of extremes in which many intellectuals shunned moderation and were attracted to various forms of political radicalism. As an engaged spectator raised in the tradition of Cartesian rationalism, Aron (1905- 1983) produced an impressive body of writings that include not only reflections on abstract topics such as philosophy of history, and the virtues and limitations of liberal democracy, but also well-informed commentaries on concrete issues such as the war in Algeria, the student’s revolt of May 1968, American foreign policy, and the Soviet Union. In this paper, I would like to reflect on a few key themes that speak to Aron’s political moderation and views on the role, virtues, limits, and possibility of moderation in political life. The paper also addresses the issue of political judgment in Aron’s works and draws on a representative selection from Aron’s writings covering his entire career.

This is a history of 1968 written from a
new perspective —that of centre-right
activists in West Germany. Based on new
archival sources and oral history interviews,
it examines the ideas, experiences, and
repertoires of centre-right students in this
age of protest. Across six chapters, the book
analyses student protest, cultural revolt,
internationalism, debates about the Nazi past
and left-wing violence, the trajectories of ’68
activists, and the memory wars of the 1980s
and beyond. Writing centre-right activists
back into the history of 1968 and its afterlives
reveals that this was a broader, more
versatile, and, ultimately, more consequential
phenomenon than the traditionally narrower
focus on a left-wing minority allows.

The Other ‘68ers demonstrates that we
need a more nuanced history of the 1968
generation. Student activists comprised
individuals from across the political spectrum,
who often had ver y different ideas about how
to address the shortcomings of West German
democracy. The years around 1968 were a
moment of intense political conflict, but one
that also played out within the student body
and nurtured contrasting identities.

This book shows that the centre-right
involvement in 1968 had a lasting impact.
Many of its protagonists would go on to
pursue high-profile political careers and leave
their mark on West German political culture.
The Other ‘68ers sheds fresh light on how
West Germany’s centre-right dealt with the
crisis of hegemony and political identity it
experienced in the wake of 1968, how it coped
with generational change, how it transformed
and modernized after losing power at the
national level for the first time in 1969, and
how it managed to re-emerge so successfully
in the 1980s.

The Italian architect and historian Manfredo Tafuri (b. Rome, 1935; d. Venice, 1994) made a decisive contribution to the practice of architectural history, yet the breadth of his bibliography and the depth of his perception into historical problems remains largely unexplored even today. The first English-language book to consider his contribution to architectural culture, it opens an overdue discussion on both the premises of his practice and the historical questions that consequently emerge.

This paper reconstructs the history of the reception across the Italian Catholic world of the first sex education film ever screened in Italy, the documentary “Helga” (Erich F. Bender, 1967). Most Catholics were initially fearful and skeptical about the film and its pedagogical potential, and condemned in particular the decision by the national censorship board that the film was “suitable for all”. However, as the weeks went on, and while the film surprisingly topped the box office, their position became less hostile, and more and more nuanced, to the point that some Catholic teachers started testing “Helga” with teenage classes on sex education.

Verifiche ha incontrato lo storico Marcello Flores, autore – con il collega Giovanni Gozzini – del recentissimo “1968. Un anno spartiacque”, edito dalla casa editrice Il Mulino di Bologna. Flores ha gentilmente concesso alla rivista un’intervista e la pubblicazione di alcuni estratti dell’introduzione al suo libro.

Życie Georgesa Minka to prawdziwa kronika drugiej połowy XX wieku. Co więcej, dzięki pamięci rodzinnej w jego opowieści możemy odnaleźć specyficzne i dramatyczne obrazy z życia polsko-francusko-żydowskiej rodziny z pierwszych dekad stulecia. Fascynacja komunizmem, emigracja, wojna domowa w Hiszpanii, ruch oporu i niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne w czasie drugiej wojny światowej, powojenne wybory, inicjacja polityczna, pierwsze przejawy niezależnego myślenia, dysydentyzm, studia, ponowna emigracja (czy reemigracja), protesty marcowe w Polsce, protesty majowe w Paryżu, kariera naukowa we Francji, perypetie ze Służbą Bezpieczeństwa, narodziny opozycji demokratycznej w PRL, wreszcie wsparcie dla jawnej, a następnie podziemnej „Solidarności” – to tylko część tematów przewijających się w bogatych wspomnieniach prof. Minka.

Mayo del 68 en Francia. Los hechos y su trasfondo
SUMARIO 1. Introducción. 2. La revuelta en la Universidad de California en Ber keley. 3. La ola de protestas llega a Europa y estalla en Francia. 4. De la crisis estudiantil a la crisis social. 5. La crisis política. 6. La heren cia de la revuelta.
Los acontecimientos vividos en Francia en mayo de 1968, que han adquirido renombre de acontecimiento fundante, tuvieron interesantes precedentes. Haremos referencia a algunos relativamente próximos en el tiempo que los iluminan y ayudan a comprenderlos. A partir de ellos, nos acercaremos a los sucesos parisinos de ese mes para repasar los más señalados, y trataremos, finalmente, de ofrecer una lectura comprensiva de los hechos.
Cita: PÉREZ LÓPEZ, Pablo, «Mayo del 68 en Francia. Los hechos y su trasfondo», en Jiménez, L. (dir.), Mayo del 68 y su legado. La universidad ante los retos del siglo XXI, Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española, 2020, pp. 27-69.

Il Pre-Sessantotto in Italia. L’occupazione dell’Università degli studi di Roma La Sapienza” del 1966.
Il mio intervento mira ad includere nella rivolta studentesca la fase preparatoria dell’esplosione rivoluzionaria ponendo l’attenzione sul mondo studentesco dell’ateneo romano che sperimentò il sistema delle occupazioni nel 1966 in seguito alla tragica morte “politica” dello studente Paolo Rossi. Chi erano gli attori del fenomeno 68? Quali le loro esperienze precedenti? In Italia, la lunga esperienza degli Organismi Rappresentativi studenteschi viene spesso lasciata in secondo piano rispetto all’evento, eppure fu proprio all’interno di questa innovativa forma di partecipazione politica (esterna ai partiti ma non ai riferimenti ideologici) che si formò la coscienza studentesca.

The May—June 1968 events are of particular significance in terms of their global, European and national contexts. Fifty years later similar events take place in France. There are sources of Bulgarian origin, which allow us to make analogies between them. Based on a variety of sources, written by diplomats, intelligence officers, journalists, witness of events or today's analysts, a detailed Bulgarian view of French May can be presented.

Table of contents
Introduction
First chapter. 1968 - “the year of separation”
Second chapter. Why exploded May
Third chapter. The awaken society
Forth chapter. Flight of the French : “the rocket of three degrees “
Fifth chapter. 1968 - Touchstone for the leaders
Sixth chapter. De Gaulle and the street: the dialog by default
Seventh chapter. The Captain who didn’t left the chip
Eighth chapter. 1968: from Paris to Sofia. From French May to the Sofia Festival
Ninth chapter. What happened after May

It is impossible to stick a label on French May. It is called "revolution" and "pseudo-revolution", "revolt" and "carnival", "hurricane" and "Bengal fire", "positive event in French history" and the actions of "students who are afraid of their exams". None of these definitions can't exhaust the deep significance of this month - a time of profound changes of whole the society and many political factors were revealed in a new light.
In the course of this key month, the prominent statesman and politician Charles de Gaulle, who has always led and won, has been put on the scales. His work, the Fifth Republic, which was created under his leadership, and his mythology are called into question. The "player", who has always been a few moves ahead of his opponents, this time seems to be losing control of the situation. Even those closest to him abandoned him and began making plans for new ministries. One of the most critical moments in this period was the "disappearance" of de Gaulle and his visit to the commander-in-chief of the French occupation forces in Germany, the General Massu in Baden-Baden on May 29, 1968, which preceded his triumphant return to Paris. De Gaulle is at the top once again. The 1968 parliamentary elections were a triumph of the Gaullism and a catastrophe for all its opponents.

1968 comenzó en Praga. Entre el 5 de enero y el 20 de agosto de aquel año paradigmático, Checoslovaquia fue el laboratorio donde se pretendió crear un “socialismo con rostro humano” que inspiraría a otras latitudes. A cincuenta años de esa tentativa, vale la pena hacer un repaso del acontecimiento que buscó concretar la utopía.

This paper aims to analyse an unrecognized episode that occurred in Turin at the height of the 1968 protests. The conference was organized at the Faculty of Architecture by the “Committee of assistants”, with the support of colleagues and students from the humanities and science faculties, and it coincided with the 1969 celebrations in memory of the liberation of Italy from the Nazi-Fascists. Many important guests took part to this event: architects such as Archigram, Architecture Principe, Utopie, Yona Friedman, Archizoom, Paolo Soleri and Aldo Giurgola, and people involved in the debate such as Gianni Vattimo, Carlo Olmo, Gian Mario Bravo and Aimaro Isola. The three dense days were scrupulously documented in minutes published by the magazine Marcatré. Apart from them, in this paper other sources have been investigated: unpublished documents, direct testimonies and echoes of the event published in national and international magazines of the time. As one of the few occasions to link categories such as Utopia and Revolution, the conference provides a glimpse of both the euphoric atmosphere and the uncertainty surrounding the social and political role of the architects and the design. In their speeches, the guests brought up themes such as the incipient ecological crisis, the criticism of the western capitalist city and the contamination with non-architectural disciplines. All the contradictions in the political confrontation and in the professional scene emerged from the ensuing debate, which included even harsh discussions about the use of ideologies and political assessments. All these items developed in the subsequent paths taken by the protagonists.

The Disquieted Muses. When La Biennale di Venezia meet history
Texts of the exhibition realised by the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts - ASAC and curated for the first time by the artistic directors of all six departments (Art, Architecture, Cinema, Dance, Music, and Theatre) with the cooperation of Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, Rai Teche and other Italian and international archives.

Italiano
Il '68 italiano, rispetto allo stesso movimento in altri paesi europei, si caratterizza per la sua lunga durata e per la sua particolare intensità. Si tratta infatti di un movimento che ha prodotto effetti potenti e duraturi sulla società italiana per almeno un decennio, con un impatto ben visibile nella persistente memoria storica dell'evento che si ripresenta anche ai giorni nostri. Ma lo scoppio del '68, come le conquiste sociali e legislative degli anni '70, devono le loro condizioni di possibilità a una rottura, politica ma soprattutto teorica, che si è verificata in precedenza, all'inizio degli anni '60. Risalire alla genesi della rottura dell'immaginario conservatore degli anni '50, oltre ad essere un'operazione di storia intellettuale, può essere utile per indagare come emerge la "novità teorica", in questo caso attraverso una rottura con la tradizione tesa però alla sua riattivazione.

English
'68 in Italy, compared to the same movement in other European countries, is characterized by its long duration and its particular intensity. It is in fact a movement that has produced powerful and lasting effects on the Italian society for at least a decade, as it is visible in its central presence in the historical memory of the country, still today. But the outbreak of '68, like the social and legislative achievements of the 70s, owe their conditions of possibility to a break-a political break but above all a theoretical break-which occurred earlier, at the beginning of the 1960s. Going back to the genesis of the breakdown of the conservative imagery of the 1950s, while being an operation of intellectual history, can be useful to investigate how the "theoretical novelty" emerges, in this case through a break with its own tradition, albeit aiming to its reactivation.

Το καλοκαίρι του 1968 ο συνθέτης Γιάννης Χρήστου λαμβάνει πρόσκληση του Αθηναϊκού Κέντρου Οικιστικής, του Αθηναϊκού Τεχνολογικού Ομίλου του Κωνσταντίνου Α. Δοξιάδη, προκειμένου να συνεισφέρει με μια ομιλία στις εκδηλώσεις του Athens Ekistics Month. Είναι η ίδια περίοδος μιας έντονης και ιδιαίτερα παραγωγικής φάσης του Έλληνα συνθέτη, όσον αφορά τη μουσική δημιουργία αλλά και τη φιλοσοφική πλευρά του που αποτυπώνεται σε μια σειρά κειμένων και σημειώσεων (Η Σεληνιακή Εμπειρία, Πρωτοεκτελέσεις κ.ά.). Παρά το γεγονός ότι η ομιλία δεν έγινε ποτέ, λόγω φόρτου εργασίας που επικαλέστηκε ο Χρήστου, υπάρχει στα πρακτικά της συνεδριακής εκδήλωσης ένα πολύ ενδιαφέρον κείμενο το οποίο έστειλε ο συνθέτης στον Γ.Γ.Παπαϊωάννου προκειμένου να διαβαστεί αντί ανακοίνωσης. Το κείμενο αυτό απηχεί την στοχαστική προβληματική του Χρήστου εκείνη την εποχή, αλλά και συμπληρώνει καίρια τις φιλοσοφικές αγωνίες και αρχές που καταγράφονται στα παραπάνω κείμενα που συνέταξε την ίδια χρονιά.

In the last fifty years an extensive bibliography has discussed The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) and the inseparable proposal of Third Cinema (1969). In this chapter I will focus on a less explored aspect: the film’s journey in non-commercial, alternative or militant circuits linked to the student and workers movement in the first world throughout 1968 and the immediate following years. 
    The Hour of the Furnaces and the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema can be inscribed, as it is well known, within a wider period, the so-called long 60s. After the pioneer essay by Fredric Jameson (1984) on this period – that according to him could be tracked back to sometime in the second half of the 1950s and could be extended until 1972-1974 – many other authors used the same concept and proposed different periodizations. As far as I am aware, the ‘widest’ locates the origins of the long 60s at the beginning of the Algeria War (1954) or the Bandung Conference (1955) and its ending in the Sandinist Revolution (1979). Of course, it is a periodization that takes into account also the idea of the global 1960s inasmuch as the 1960s account for the expansion of a common sensibility at an international level that tries to cover a wide range of processes of rebellion, revolt, insurrection and revolution in a number of countries around the world. That temporal extension (long 60s.) and geographical (global 60s.) is quite apt to think about The Hour of the Furnaces in its national and international context. Although its world premiere took place amidst the revolts of 1968, at the same time, it is possible to find the conditions that made the film possible as far back as the middle of the 1950s. And this not only because its third worldism dialogues with Algeria and Bandung, but also because 1955 is the year of the civic-military coup against the government of General Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina and the beginning of the so-called “Peronist resistance” against successive governments. The whole of the second part of the film, sometimes disregarded by academic accounts, concerns itself precisely with Peronism and “the Resistance”. At the same time, we can extend its ‘sixties’ influence until the end of the 1970s. In this respect, we can take also as a significant fact the almost forgotten dossier organised in 1979 by Guy Hennebelle and the group CinémAction for the magazine Tiers Monde (1979) about the influence of the film and the manifesto in several countries around the world.
    As it is well known, in the 1980s, and even in later periods, the film and the document were revisited in new manifestos, events and proposals in different places. Although, from my perspective, the historical period of The Hour of the Furnaces (and of Third Cinema) had already concluded even in those years, its ideas (cinematic, political) could still dialogue without a doubt with oppositional and confrontational to power initiatives in many countries. In an important essay on the “changing geography” of Third Cinema, Michael Chanan (1997) reconstructed, among other questions, the history of the film and of Solanas and Getino’s manifesto; some misinterpretations and modifications of the original definitions of the three types of cinema; the connections of the film with parallel movements in different countries; and the “transnational function” of Third Cinema. The author also addressed the subsequent recuperation of the thesis put forward by the film and the manifesto and their dialogue with other perspectives more or less similar in the 1980s. In particular, he wrote of the pioneer recuperation by the scholar Teshome Gabriel in his works at the beginning of the decade. He also focused on the well-known Third Cinema Conference held in Edinburgh in 1986, organised by Jim Pines and Paul Willemen that focused on the relevance of the concept of Third Cinema for the oppositional practices in film and video in the 1980s in the metropolitan centres of First World countries.
    In what follows, I will return over some of the testimonies and ideas included in those two moments of the debate around Third Cinema. (the CinémAction dossier of 1979 and the meeting in Edinburgh of 1986 ) and I will survey other less well known sources and documents such as catalogues from parallel distributors, letters, testimonies or press notes from those days. From there, I aim to look at the place that The Hour of the Furnaces occupied in the circuit of political and militant cinema in the first world, the debates it sparked, the polemics in which it took part . Of course, it will probably be an incomplete journey but I do not think it is a question of summarising that history but of continuing to explore it. 
(...)

Published in the book A trail of fire for political cinema (Javier Campo and Humberto Pérez-Blanco, eds.), Intellect, 2018; pp.135-158.

Frank Zappa, Germany, 1968. A transatlantic paradox and an accusation of cultural provincialism. (Frank Zappa e il '68 tedesco. Un paradosso transatlantico e un'accusa di provincialismo culturale). Besides his autobiography, the rock guitarist and contemporary composer Frank Zappa (1940-1993) has disseminated his thinking through hundreds of highly articulate and seldom repetitive interviews. Published around the world by the international press since 1965, for almost thirty years, his statements, reflections, and analyses display a musicological, sociological, even semiotic and political approach not only to the arts, but to reality in the wider sense. Part of a broader research on his thinking, this paper aims to retrace Zappa's position towards the protest movement in late Sixties, not only in the USA but also in Europe. A key moment in the development of such position came when he played in West Berlin in 1968 with his band The Mothers of Invention. That concert provides a very good example of a cultural clash between the highly politicized German audience, with its believes and principles, and Zappa's personal visions for society and the way to improve it. That night the musician realized that ideas and actions implemented by the student protest in Europe, and above all in Germany, were the byproduct of a 'cultural periphery' in the worst sense: a sort of provincial extension of the USA which had been culturally colonized by the American model of the 'youth revolt', with local distortions and worsening. The crucial evolution of politics in the late Sixties both in Germany and in the USA, the social theories on youth developed during the Fifties and the Sixties, the influence and impact of Zappa's songs and lyrics during the late Sixties, and the reaction of European media to his statements, are here examined contextually to the unfortunate concert in Berlin and the evolution of Zappa's sociological and political theories developed after that controversial episode.