West German Youth and Countercultures in the Global 1960s

Isabel Richter

My current research explores the history of West Germany as global-local intersection of how the popular overland passage to India shaped youth and countercultures in the 1960s and 1970s. I analyze various primary sources such as archival material from Germany, the UK, the U.S. and India, oral history interviews with contemporary witnesses, autobiographical texts but also contemporary magazines, photography, and music. The research project discusses power relations and tests notions of value change and a life style revolutions in the global 1960s focusing on topics such as practices of alternative travel, new soundscapes, drug trade in the 1970s, the (re)introduction of new forms of nutrition and well-being, and the spiritual turn in the long 1960s.