The police had devised a clever battle plan to clear the squatted houses in Frankfurt's Westend: night after night they drove past the old buildings, shone spotlights into the rooms and startled the squatters awake.

This was also the case on the evening of February 21, 1974. When they were gone, the tired urban fighters had gone to sleep.

At 4:21 a.m. the officers came back - camouflaged in two trucks from a car rental company.

Two dozen police officers broke into the four Art Nouveau houses with crowbars, picks, chainsaws and cutting torches;

the occupiers, startled out of their sleep, surrendered without resistance.

Their actions were certainly “a bit suspicious,” the police chief admitted.

The bulldozers moved into Westend that night.

Two days after the demolition, the city on the Main experienced what was probably the largest street battle to date between demonstrators and police;

In “Frankfurt’s Westend, terror reigned on Carnival,” reported SPIEGEL.

Around 4,000 participants gathered in front of the rubble of the previously occupied "block" for a demonstration that soon escalated into a wild battle.

In the end, there were "77 injured police officers, almost a hundred mistreated demonstrators, 192 people arrested and an arsenal of firearms and impact weapons seized," according to the news magazine.

Stones rained down and police officers were beaten with poles.

Following “Maoist guerrilla tactics,” the masked “terror squads” appeared in constantly changing locations and engaged the police in “fights.”

The authorities also quickly gave up their initial restraint.

The “Bild am Sonntag” wrote about an “assault by opponents of the system,” and Frankfurt’s mayor “hissed about ‘fascist chaotics’.”

However, the squatters explained to SPIEGEL that the violence came from Frankfurt's urban development policy.

Their resistance is directed against speculators who systematically let old buildings rot in order to get demolition permits for more profitable new office buildings.

As is so often the case, it was probably a small minority of protesters who set the spiral of violence in motion, even if no one knew exactly which of the radical left-wing groups involved was in charge: the "Mao-pious" "Communist Student Association" was of course there, otherwise Lots of "'Spontis', 'Anarchos' and 'Chinese', maots and chaots from the left-wing Frankfurt university scene," as SPIEGEL knew.

The so-called “cleaning troops” of the left-wing group “Revolutionary Struggle” (RK) fought on the front line.

She took the eviction as an opportunity to take action against the “practice of capital” and the “reactionary violence” of the system.

They saw themselves as “fighters against a repressive, violent state,” but there was also a certain amount of fun in the violence.

The "Men's League" had met several times in the Taunus to practice "encircling the opponent" and "overpowering them, hitting them."

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of the two leading figures in the RK, had predicted "a political-military defeat" to the authorities in the run-up to the demonstration.

The second central figure of the RK, Joschka Fischer, was also there when the “bull slapping,” as it was called in the jargon, took place in February 1974.

He was considered the "commandante" of the troops.

Fischer, who was promoted to foreign minister, told SPIEGEL in 2001 that he could still "remember the demonstration on the block after the eviction: "It was very hard."

At the time, Fischer came under pressure because of photos.

They showed how in 1973 he hit a police officer who was lying on the ground after evacuating the occupied house on Kettenhofweg.

The conversion of the old residential areas into commercial areas was certainly not a glory for the ruling SPD, as Frankfurt's mayor Arndt admitted: One often has the feeling: "We are now doing something absolutely right, and after four or five years we realize that we have something absolutely wrong made."

However, long before the riots, a temporary right of residence for the occupiers was negotiated with the investors.

To compensate for the demolition, social housing had to be built elsewhere.

Laws against the destruction of living space without replacement had been introduced - which didn't quite fit the picture of cold capitalism that the opponents painted.

SPIEGEL 10/1974: “Spontis” and “Chinese” controlled the battle

To the table of contents of issue 10/1974

Otherwise in this issue:

Decline thanks to speed limits?

Six weeks after the first SPIEGEL cover story against the speed limit, the news magazine followed up and made a direct connection between speed limits on Germany's motorways and the significant drop in sales by domestic car manufacturers.

According to experts, BMW, Mercedes and VW are threatened with production declines of 20 percent.

Short-time work and layoffs would be the result, and the decline of the industry seemed inevitable.

Cover photo of issue 10/1974

But the decline had only marginally to do with the speed limit imposed during the oil crisis, which it was feared would remain.

More expensive gasoline promoted the trend toward small cars, regardless of speed limits, and this was less profitable: "The smaller the car, the meager the profit," SPIEGEL knew.

The second reason for the reluctance to buy was inflation.

People drove their cars longer and ordered less lucrative special equipment.

That had little to do with the speed limit either.

The third argument was also unconvincing: The "full-throttle everyday life of free top speeds" had "created exceptionally safe and powerful cars," according to SPIEGEL at the time.

On the other hand, “synchronizing motorway speeds” – which brought a nice Nazi analogy into the debate – would undoubtedly lead to a lowering of safety standards.

Who needed complex protective mechanisms when you were just creeping along anyway?

Last but not least, lobbying by the manufacturers ensured that the basic motorway speed limit was lifted again - although even CDU car enthusiast Helmut Kohl, then Prime Minister of the Palatinate, could have been comfortable with a 140 km/h limit.

SPIEGEL 10/1974: "Then we're dead"

Vague melancholy

The German “housewife only” was a complex creature.

This is what a sociologist found out when she first researched the emotional state of such women on behalf of the magazine “Brigitte”: On the one hand, three quarters of them were “completely satisfied,” reported SPIEGEL.

The average housewife cooked three times a day, cleaned thoroughly once a week, and listed "crafting, sewing, and gardening" as hobbies.

Half of the 1,200 women surveyed were convinced that they would "never be able to take their husband's place in their professional lives" - "not even with the appropriate training."

61 percent believed that the husband should not be put under an additional burden by working at home.

But critics immediately complained that this was at best a “demoscopic truth”.

The displayed satisfaction is “nothing but a psychological self-protection mechanism, an unconscious way of concealing oneself about adversities.”

On the other hand, the professor also noticed a “feature of resignation,” a “vague melancholy.”

The housewives felt like “figures of renunciation,” which manifested itself in “pronounced self-regret.”

SPIEGEL 10/1974: Ideal world