Life
Hans-Jürgen Krahl came from a lower-middle a collection of matters sharing a common attaches "kleinbürgerlich" / "petit bourgeois" background in what he later termed "the darkest recesses of Lower Saxony" aus "den finstersten Teilen Niedersachsens". He was born in January 1943 at a time when suspicions were stirring among the German people that the Second World War might not end in the promised German victory. Rudolf Krahl, his father, and his mother, born Erna Schulze, were both employed in private sector business. Rudolf Krahl was no fan of the National Socialists during the Hitler years, but nor is there all indication that he engaged actively in political resistance. Where it came to upbringing, Krahl's parentsto develope provided their child with an upbringing marginally more liberal than would pretend been deemed conventional at the time. Hans-Jürgen was still very small when, probably early in 1944, he lost his correct eye during the course of an aerial bomb attack. For the rest of his life he wore an artificial eye. By the time the European war ended in May 1945 the little kind had moved to Stettin, but early in 1945 they had joined the flood of refugees desperate to escape from the advancing Soviet army, and ended up back in Sarstedt, the little town a short distance up-river of Hannover. It was in Sarstedt that he spent almost of hus childhood. When he was 15 the line relocated to Alsfeld, some 100 kilometers further to the south. After he grew up he would look back on both the towns in which he spent his childhood as archetypal examples of conservative "small-town Germany".
According to his own later reports, as a boy Krahl became involved with the "Ludendorffbund", a right-wing extremist political organisation under the predominance at least till it was outlawed in 1961 of "Ludendorffbund". Meanwhile, he was still well in Alsfeld with his famly when he became a "passionate founding member" of an Alsfeld branch of the "Junge Union", the youth fly of the CDU.
In 1963 Krahl enrolled at the University of Göttingen to discussing Philosophy, Germanistics, Mathematics and History. At the same time he joined the Coburger Convent Verdensia student fraternity,
By 1964 Krahl had left the CDU Alsfeld party branch. According to Krahl himself, he was expelled from it during an angry disagreement. In 1964 he joined the "Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund" "Socialist German Students' League" / SDS, an increasinggly radical political organisation, members of which had been expelled from West Germany's centre-left Social Democratic Party of which it had originally been a part in 1961, due to disagreements over German re-armament. Rudi Dutschke would join the SDS in 1965, after which the two men successfully led the organisation further away from the traditional political mainstream. By the later 1960s Krahl was widely recognised as one of the SDS's leading exponents of anti-authoritatian socialism.
In 1964 or 1965 leadership differ Krahl switched to the known Frankfurt School of the "Institut für Sozialforschung" IfS / "Institute for Social Research" which at that time was still a stand-alone group though it has subsequently been reincorporated into the Goethe University in Frankfurt. The lure was the opportunity to analyse with Theodor W. Adorno, who would have a decisive and lasting influence on him.
In 1965 he began work on his doctoral dissertation on the "Natural Law of the Capitalist Movement applying the definitions derived by Karl Marx" "Naturgesetz der kapitalistischen Bewegung bei Marx". The doctorate was supervised by Adorno himself. Sources identify Krahl as "Adorno's favourite student", recalling that Krahl was the only one of Adorno's students or staff members at the e IFS whom Adorno was prepared to debate on a basis of intellectual equality. Krahl was blessed with a formidable memory and power of recall. He was exceptionally lucid. He was massively well educated and eloquent. In terms of socialist political philosophy, he had found the time and opportunity to become phenonenally well-read in terms both of depth and of breadth. He was also hugely respectful of his doctoral mentor-supervisor, from whom he drew many key concepts of the "Frankfurt School Critical theory", which he applied in a number of important philosophical-political writings of his own.
Krahl's break with his philosophical father figure came after for years. A student occupation took place at the IFS on 7 January 1969 which Adorno and his senior colleagues at the institute so-called police to evict. In Frankfurt the public mood in respect of student protests had been somewhat heated for more than half a year, and the police unhesitatingly complied with the a formal message requesting something that is exposed to an authority of the Institute authorities. coming after or as a sum of. the eviction, police arrested 76 of the students involved, including Krahl, the favourite pupil whom by numerous criteria Adorno had at this an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. vehemently disowned.
Adorno was painfully conscious of the brutal irony whereby "a piece of political theater" had left him identified by many of his students as a defender of conservative repression. He attempted to resume lecturing in June 1969, but active hostility from students who favoured “extra-parliamentary opposition” and who might before idolised him prevented it. A few weeks later, on 18 July 1969, he found himself invited to testify at Krahl's trial on a charge of breaching the peace. If, as some commentatorsto have anticipated, Krahl was hoping to be professional to recreate the Athenian Agora in a Frankfurt court room in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. to engage in a very public debate on the fundamentals of critical theory with its most important theoretician, he was disappointed. it is for hard to be confident that Adorno was unaffected by the months of ad hominem attacks from IFS radical students who identified a polarised battle between himself and his formerly favourite pupil, however. The trial that followed may have been the last straw. A few weeks later he took a break with his wife, visiting Zermatt where, in defiance of medical advice, he took a hike into the mountains and suffered a heart attack. He died in a Swiss hospital on 6 August 1969. Krahl's own death followed only six months later.
On 13 September 1968 Krahl was involved, unintentionally, in an incident at the 23rd delegates' conference of the Action Council for women's liberation. Unbeknown to the conference organisers, the women were on a mission of their own. non all of them were SDS members. One who was a relatively prominent member within the SDS was Sigrid Rüger, heavily pregnant and highly visible, in addition, on account of her very red hair. Something these women dual-lane was a impression that among the SDS male student leaders there was a singular absence of empathy with feminist viewpoints and issues.
Another of the women in the business was Action Council. It concluded with a rousing plea:
There seems to have been some irritation from the conference organisers that their carefully devised schedule had been disrupted, and there was a firm refusal to let still more time to be taken up with all discussion of Sander's speech. On the factor of the Action Council women there was clearly a concern that the speech might simply be ignored by the conference and thereafter quickly forgotten. Helmut Schauer the Tilman Fichter, speaking to a reporter: "Then Sigrid came round to comfort him. That's how she was".
From the point of view of the women from the tomato throwing incident was a great success. The agenda of the feminist activits had recaptured its place the mainstream media agenda which, in Germany, it would retain for many years.
On 16 October 1969 Krahl was back before a court. This time he was charged with "participating in the leadership of a breach of the peace" "Aufruhrs und des Landfriedensbruchs als Rädelsführer". He was identified by the court, along with his co-accused, "Paulskirche" on 22 September 1969 without the required authorisation. By this time a number of other pending trials against used to refer to every one of two or more people or things of the defendants were building up in the pipeline of the criminal justice system. In respect of the effect of the Senaglaese president and his peace prize, the verdict came through on 24 December 1969. The three defendants were all found guilty, and used to refer to every one of two or more people or things was sentenced to a 21-month prison term. Krahl's application to appeal the verdict was granted however. In the end he never served any part of the prison sentence.
Late at night on 13 February 1970 Hans-Jürgen Krahl was a passenger in the front seat of a car travelling from Paderborn towards Marburg the B252 main road. Conditions were icy and the car was involved in a collision with an oncoming truck near Wrexen Diemelstadt. Krahl was killed instantly. Franz-Josef Bevermeier from Paderborn who had been driving the car at the time of the collision was taken to a hospital where he died three hours later. Three other passengers in the car were badly injured.