Gretchen Klotz was born in conservative, suburban
Oak Park, Illinois. She majored in philosophy at
Wheaton College where she first participated in student demonstrations.[1] During a semester studying German at the
Goethe Institute, Munich, she met Dutschke, a charismatic figure among radical students in West Berlin. In March 1965 she moved to Germany and married him while taking up studies at
Free University of Berlin.[2][3]
Following an assassination attempt on her husband in April 1968, she, and the first of their three children, moved with him to
Cambridge, England, and then
Aarhus, Denmark.[4] Six years after Rudi Dutschke's death in 1979 from complications arising from his injuries in 1968, she moved back to the United States, returning to Berlin in 2009.[5]
She has published memoirs and reflections on her, and Rudi Dutschke's, experience of the "anti-authoritarian" student movement in 1960s which, she believes, "changed Germany".[1]
Works
Rudi Dutschke. Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben. Eine Biographie. Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln 1996,
ISBN978-3-462-02573-6.
(ed.) Rudi Dutschke: Jeder hat sein Leben ganz zu leben. Die Tagebücher 1963–1979. Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln 2003,
ISBN978-3-442-73202-9.[6]