The political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968 is marked by the specificity of widespread concern that parliamentary democracy was on the verge of collapse. The erosion of authority of the Union parties (CDU and CSU), the exclusion of part of the spectrum of public opinion from Germany’s elected assembly, the prohibition of certain political parties and part of the population’s impression that the parties were compromised and engaged in complicity under a Grand Coalition fueled a vociferous opposition to the government outside the Bundestag, referred to as the extraparliamentary opposition or APO, producing profuse expressions of its discontent.