Rudi Dutschke - Shooting and Later Life

Shooting and Later Life

On April 11, 1968, Dutschke was shot in the head by Josef Bachmann in which he survived miraculously. After the attempted assassination, Dutschke and his family went to the United Kingdom in the hope that he could recuperate there. He was accepted at Cambridge University to finish his degree in 1969, but in 1971 the Conservative government under Edward Heath expelled him and his family as an "undesirable alien" who had engaged in "subversive activity", causing a political storm in London. They then moved to Århus, Denmark, after professor Johannes Sløk had offered him a job at the University of Aarhus which made it possible for Dutschke to gain a Danish residence permit.

Dutschke reentered the German political scene after protests against the building of nuclear power plants activated a new movement in the mid-1970s. He also began working with dissidents opposing the Communist governments in East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, including Robert Havemann, Wolf Biermann, Mihailo Petkovic, Milan Horáček, Adam Michnik, Ota Šik and more.

Because of brain damage sustained in the assassination attempt, Rudi Dutschke continued to suffer health problems. He died on 24 December 1979 in Århus, Denmark. He had an epileptic seizure while in the bathtub and drowned.