Beauty Is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe

Historian Häberlen (Citizens and Refugees) offers an informative if stilted account of protest movements in Europe from the 1950s through the ’80s. He begins with “signs of rebellion” among teens chafing under conservative social mores in western Germany and the rise of the Situationist International, an alliance of artists and political theorists who challenged capitalism. These developments culminated with 1968, the “year of radical imagination,” during which students and workers across Western Europe joined forces to demand change. He then surveys political organizations that blossomed immediately before and after ’68, with a focus on the “success” of their methods; they range from violent left-wing cells to political presses and musicians. From there, Häberlen catalogs the movements that emerged following ’68, including the women’s and gay rights movements, tenant unions, and “self-managed” worker communes. He wraps up in the late ’80s with another series of upheavals, this time against Soviet communism. While Häberlen surfaces many fascinating anecdotes, his conclusions don’t really cohere—he praises the ’68 protests as the more influential, if not effective, of the two mass movements but repeatedly condemns their violence—and his tendency to challenge first-person accounts grates (“Of course, we should be careful not to take such claims at face value,” he asserts after quoting Soviet citizens who felt moved when practicing yoga, a banned Western import). This disappoints. (Apr.)