106 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Conversely, Habermas characterized the early student move-
ment’s values in terms that so closely resembled his own that a type
of projection must have been involved: “The task of the student
opposition was and is to compensate for the lack of theoretical per-
spective... the lack of radicality in the interpretation and practice
of our social and democratic constitution [sozialrechtstaatlichen und
demokratische Verfassung].”^75 His characterizations seem to attest
to his values as much as those of the students: “Today’s protest is
directed against a society that has lent the emancipatory ideals of
the eighteenth century the force of constitutional norms and has
accumulated the potential for their realization.”^76
When a sharp recession hit the West German economy in the
summer of 1966, public reaction was nearly hysterical.^77 Within
months, cracks in the coalition of the CDU/CSU with the Free
Democratic Party (FDP) were exacerbated, and the CDU made
overtures to the SPD to join it in what came to be known as the
“Great Coalition.” On November 21, Habermas composed a letter
to Willy Brandt that was co-signed by other professors and assis-
tants at the University of Frankfurt. Entitled, “Theses Against the
Coalition of the Despondent with Dictators,” the letter argued that
the SPD betrayed its best traditions by rehabilitating the Spiegel
affair–discredited CSU politician Franz-Josef Strauss and going
“arm in arm” with the CDU’s Georg Kiessinger, a former member
of the Nazi Party who had worked for the Ministry of Propaganda.^78
In a strongly worded critique, Habermas wrote, “We have more
reason to fear the new coalition than the old” because the former
“endangers the foundations of parliamentarism.”^79 Disregarding
these concerns, the coalition formed and quickly installed Karl
Schiller as Minister of Economics and Strauss as Minister of(^75) Habermas, “Rede über die politische Rolle der Studentenschaft in der
Bundesrepublik,” in PuH, 141; orig. address at the Congress, “University
and Democracy,” Hannover, June 9, 1967.
(^76) Habermas, “Studentenprotest,” PuH, 170.
(^77) Thomas Ellwein, Krisen und Reformen. Die Bundesrepublik seit den sechziger
Jahren (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1993 ), 17; Anthony Nicholls,
The Bonn Republic: West German Democracy, 1945–90 (New York: Longman,
1997 ), 187.
(^78) “Thesen gegen die Koalition der Mutlosen mit den Machthabern,” Kritik an
der Grossen Koalition auf einer vom Sozialdemokratischen Hochschulbund
veranstalteten Podiumsdiskussion (November 1966), Krausharr, Frankfurter
Schule 2:108.
(^79) Ibid.