Advocacy Movements: Germany

The German disabled people's disability rights movement began at the end of the 1970s in West Germany. Disabled people in East Germany (then German Democratic Republic) had to wait until the reunification of Germany in 1989 before they could be actively involved. After the catastrophe of national socialism and the horrible experiences of compulsory sterilization and euthanasia earlier in the twentieth century, followed by decades of silence about these atrocities and also decades of being put away in institutions and homes, German people with disabilities started to set up their own groups. The time seemed to be ripe: Disabled people profited from the political, societal, and cultural changes that had been initiated by student revolutions at the end of the 1960s. Ever since, Germany has been gradually turning into a more liberal, pluralistic, and individualistic society. “Self help” was the key concept of these and the following years.

Undoubtedly, when the disability rights movement started, disabled people in Germany could look back on a long tradition of self-help organization, which can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Blind and deaf people as well as war victims of World War I (1914–1918) were among the first who had their own interest groups. An early self-help organization of the physically disabled was founded by Otto Perl (1882–1951) in 1919. After World War II (1939–1945), organizations of war victims grew even bigger and were quite successful in political lobbying. Since the end of the 1950s, parents of disabled children began to build up their own disability-related organizations and services. The Bundesvereinigung Lebenshilfe (Confederation Help to Life) for mentally disabled children, founded in 1958 in Marburg, is one prominent example of a parent group.

Despite these activities, until the late 1970s a crossdisability rights movement did not exist in Germany. But the end of that decade saw the emergence of something new: So-called cripples' groups sprang up in several places. Their members came together solely because of their disabilities, but their specific impairments did not matter. Principally, the meetings were open for all people who defined themselves as being disabled. In contrast to the already existing organizations, the new groups excluded nondisabled people from their ranks. These new groups founded the “Krüppelzeitung” (“cripples' newsletter”) and adopted a radical position: the “cripples' standpoint,” which had been formulated by Franz Christoph (1953–1996), a major activist of the new movement. This philosophy was directed against professionals and experts, who took charge of and oppressed disabled people, and against do-gooders and what was viewed as their denigrating compassion. The new disability standpoint was full of angry protest against the ideologies of partnership and integration propagated by the traditional disability organizations. Instead, the new disability rights movement followed the example set by the women's liberation movement and women's consciousness-raising groups. Its aim was to accept and value disability as a specific form of life. Radical changes in living conditions were demanded as political rights and not as charity.

After that first phase in which angry young men and women with disabilities protested, for example, against the charity approach officially adopted in Germany for the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons, a more pragmatic period followed. During the 1980s, German [Page 58]activists in the disability rights movement were busy organizing peer counseling services, giving each other legal advice and psychosocial support, protesting against inadequate public transport, and political lobbying. They built up their own infrastructure, consisting of counseling and advocacy facilities as well as job creation programs all over the country.

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