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by Schüler:innengruppe Cologne
“For us, the Algerian liberation struggle was the issue at all. Compared to later movements, of course, it was small and tiny. But for our time it was like the Vietnam movement in the sixties” (Hoch die Internationale Solidarität, Cologne 1986, p. 90). This is how a Cologne activist at the time put it in retrospect. The cathedral city was one of the centers of Algerian solidarity work in West Germany. Here, for example, the magazine “Free Algeria” was published by a “Free Algeria Working Group”.
Since 1954, the National Liberation Front (FNL ) had been fighting in Algeria against the French colonial power. International solidarity not only put pressure on the French government, which wanted to put down the liberation struggle with brutal warfare and even the establishment of concentration camps. The “Internationalistas” also collected money and shipped FNL leaflets and information material to France.
In 1956, high school student Kurt Holl learned that representatives of the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN) were working in the Bonn embassy in Tunisia, went there, and returned with two suitcases full of French-language leaflets and educational pamphlets. On a class trip to Paris, Kurt smuggled FNL material across the strictly controlled border into Paris, which was not at all harmless and could have landed him in jail. In an autobiographical text, he reported much later: “I got through the border controls unscathed. Quite nervous, of course. After all, the FLN people were considered terrorists. During our sightseeing program, I managed to lay out the material again and again in museums, churches and the Métro. In the prayer books in the churches I wrote in big letters: “Pour la paix en Algérie – vive FLN!”.
An important contribution to solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle of Algerians was the repatriation of German members of the Foreign Legion, tens of thousands of whom fought alongside the French. More than 4,000 were helped to flee at that time, and the desertions considerably unsettled wartime France. Revelations by deserted Foreign Legionnaires about torture and murder they had carried out in Algeria attracted attention in Germany and fostered sentiment against this war. Even the BILD newspaper reported critically on this in 1958 (Fritz Keller 2017: Ein Leben am Rande der Wahrscheinlichkeit, Vienna, p. 56).
In 1960, the student parliament of the University of Cologne decided to raise money to support Algerian students who had fled to West Germany.
For further information:
Interbrigadas e.V. (2022): Interview with two activists from Cologne at the time. Source: Youtube