ABSTRACT
The Freideutsche youth provided the main forum of controversy between left and right advocates of the younger generation, and also between the moderates and the extreme left among them. The left and the right wings of the youth movement did not, of course, suddenly come into existence in November 1918; in one form or another they had been active for several years before. This chapter traces their development up to 1914, to gain a fuller and more accurate picture of the tug-of-war that went on for three years after the end of the war, brought about so many schisms and splits, and finally led to the dissolution of the Freideutsche youth. Reinhold Wulle, the publisher of the Deutsche Zeitung, a representative of the most extreme of the groups of the Right before Hitler appeared on the scene, convened leaders of the youth movement at Potsdam in August 1919 at a 'First German Youth Day'.
