March through | Rhine-Main

• fromPitt v. Bebenburg

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The CDU “petrol station” hangs full of medals. Karin Wolff also has one now. The column from the state parliament.

This is probably not how Rudi Dutschke imagined the “March through the Institutions”. The student leader wanted to put the capitalist Federal Republic on new, socialist feet when he called out the march that many of his comrades from the 60s and 70s actually took.

But in Hesse there was an even more successful “March through the Institutions”. It was covered by young Christian Democrats in the 1980s. At that time they met at the Wetterau-Ost motorway service station and were therefore later briefly referred to as the “gas station”.

They also wanted a different society – but by no means like the student movement. For Union politicians, social democratic school policy was the ultimate enemy. Away from comprehensive school back to grammar school was the Christian Democratic motto.

Prime Minister Volker Bouffier, himself a leading member of the “Gas Station”, had the opportunity to remember this time this week. He awarded the former Minister of Education Karin Wolff, the only woman from the “gas station”, with the Hessian Order of Merit.

As a teacher in Darmstadt, Wolff “experienced first hand how school policy in the state and the city had an impact on her work,” he described the culture war over schools at the time. This time was “certainly very formative for her”.

Almost all members of the “petrol station” have become MPs or ministers or, like Roland Koch and Bouffier, even prime ministers. This function entitles you to award Hessian orders of merit. The “gas station” is now full of medals. In 2005, for example, Roland Koch awarded Bouffier the golden lion. Now fellow campaigner Wolff also owns it. For decades in Darmstadt’s local politics, for 23 years as a member of the state parliament and almost a decade as a minister.

A “march through the institutions”, despite many setbacks. After resigning from the state parliament against her will, Karin Wolff has been running the Frankfurt / Rhein-Main cultural fund for a year. Your march is not over yet.

The awarding of the medal was a kind of ceremony for a Hessian in Christian Democratic hands, including an honor for many long-time colleagues of Bouffier. One of the CDU people who received the medal was the former mayor Berthold Jost, honorary chairman of the CDU / CSU SME Association (MIT). How did MIT state chairman Marco Reuter say two years ago about Jost’s 70th birthday? “Berthold Jost comes from the militant, conservative Dregger / Kanther / Koch CDU – you can feel that every day.” That was not how Dutschke had imagined it.

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