Spaßguerilla

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The Spaßguerilla, or Spaßgerilja (fun guerrilla), was a group inside the German student protest movement in the 1960s. They fought for social changes toward a freer, less authoritarian and less materialistic society. Their tactics mixed humor with provocative, disruptive actions that were mostly nonviolent. They even staged acts like custard-pie attacks on politicians or police.

Fritz Teufel was a leading figure, sometimes called the political clown of the extra-parliamentary opposition. He is known for the joke, “If it helps the search for the truth,” spoken when he was asked to stand for a judge. Their approach relied on civil disobedience and symbolic, not serious, violence to expose outdated authority rituals. This contrasted with the more serious rhetoric of groups around the SDS and Rudi Dutschke, who spoke of urban guerrilla. Teufel preferred the term Spaßguerilla (fun guerrilla) to Stadtguerilla (urban guerrilla).

Wolfgang Lefèvre urged that protests should be fun for the participants. The playful protest style of the Spaßguerilla was later adopted by the peace movement of the 1980s and by youth protests after Germany’s reunification. Similar disruptive tactics have also appeared in hacktivist actions. Teufel used the spelling Spaßgerilja, a so-called devilish or Teufelian spelling; some scholars still use this variant today.