Dr. Huber’s SPK: Psychologically-Damaged Revolutionary Circus Brigade

Whats up, MR-readers? I hope you’re all enjoying the month of July, well stocked-up with ice-cream and light lagers, maybe doing some sporty stuff and listening to music, or working outside, or politically theorizing in the shade of a banana-tree. Anyway, this excerpt is from The Baader-Meinhof Complex by Stefan Aust. Documenting the extremes to which 1968-based Leftists in Europe were willing to go.

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In February 1970, three months before the Baader-escape, Dr. Wolfgang Hubert founded the “Socialist Patient-Collective” in Heidelberg. The 35-year old doctor, scientific assistant at the psychiatric-neurological University-Clinic in Heidelberg, was having difficulties with his superiors and colleagues and was let go. Thereupon he mobilised his patients, mostly Students, which he had treated in Group therapy. Together they occupied the office rooms of the Management-director of the Clinic and immediately began a hunger strike. After this action the University leadership gave way and payed Huber his ongoing salary, and offered the group four rooms for the continuation of their social-psychiatric Project at the Clinic.

In early summer it came to renewed problems with the University. Huber and his patients occupied the Rectory. The University proposed a compromise, which was rejected from the Culture-ministry of Baden-Württemberg. In the meantime it had become known what Dr. Huber and his SPK understood as “therapy”. (PF: Basically going on horse-rides in the country, lounging around, cooking together, smoking Hashish and it was hinted, occasionally engaging in Group sex).

In the “Patient Info Nr. 1” it said: “Comrades! There can be no therapeutic act, which isn’t first and foremost clearly a revolutionary act…The system has made us sick, let’s given this sick system the death-thrust!”

The arguments between the SPK and the University and Culture-Ministry grew ever more intense. The rooms given the SPK were shut, and every day the SPK were worried about the police being called in. They felt thrown-out and despised, which contributed not a little to the fighting spirit of the group. The SPK received a new structure: There would be an “inner circle” of about 12 people, who would work as Therapists and political leaders. The existence of the “inner circle” was to be kept secret from the remaining 300 SPK-Members and Patients. Furthermore, “work-groups” were created, “work-group radiotechnik”, “work-group explosions-technik”, “work-group Foto-technik” and “work-group Karate”.

The originally planned Patients’ Self-Help Organisation developed more and more into a “revolutionary” Fighter Troop. During a seminar in Berlin, Dr. Huber declared that there was a “Identity of Sickness and Capital”. The organizers of the capitalist system should “be treated the same as death-weapons of every kind: guard yourselves from them, avoid them, and where possible, and also where it isn’t possible, neutralize them.”

The Socialist Patient Collective began to arm themselves. In the “inner Circle” which met every Wednesday evening at Dr. Huber’s house, the perspectives for the revolution were discussed. Huber believed, 1000 people, properly positioned, would be enough to bring down the State. As a date he named the end of 1972 or beginning of 1973.

... Gerhard Müller was suffering at this time from allergies; the doctors at the Heidelberg University-Clinic had no explanation for it. In his need, Müller turned to the Initiator and Leader of the SPK, Wolfgang Huber. During this first “Consultation” Dr. Hubert said to Müller: “In Capitalism there is no healing. Therefore Capitalism must first be destroyed.”

... During a Teach-In Wolfgang Huber was heard to say: “There are two possibilities: either one grows Kidney-stones, or one throws stones into the centers of Capital. Beware of Kidney-stones!”.

“In this society,” said Huber, “we are all sick.”

... “Everyone is a patient,” said Huber, “from the worker up to the boss.” While one day farmers demonstrated with their tractors in front of the rooms belonging to the SPK, one shouted: “We are all farmers!”. They identified themselves with all the repressed, sick and those lacking rights. Of course especially with those, who had a revolutionary method. The blacks in America for example.

... Their daily life took on an ever more conspirative aspect, first playfully, then in complete seriousness. In the summer they went swimming together, Saturdays they went into the country. They stole vegetables, which they cooked together in the SPK. But this fun alternated with a persecution mania, depression and fear. In April 1971 a young lady from the SPK threw herself off a tower in the forest. In her farewell letter, she said she didn’t get along well with Marx and Lenin. She had a long history of psychiatric care behind her, but had stabilised over a longer time in the SPK. But now there was the pressure from outside, the loss of the SPK rooms, the smear-campaign in the newspapers. And the nervousness was getting to everyone. And so she jumped.

For Huber and the others in the Collective it was clear: The University management and the Culture-Ministry were responsible for the suicide of the young girl. That was consistant with their stance, which made the State and Society responsible for every single person’s mental break-down.

Huber had pioneered the slogan: “Crazies, To Arms!”

Posted by Potential Frolic on Saturday, July 21, 2007 at 08:55 AM in
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