The student revolt that in the late sixties swept West Germany found its reflection in works of literature, influenced by Marxist-orientated theoreticians, writers sought an engaged and objective literature. When collective enthusiasm, at the beginning of the seventies and because of the failure of the revolt, was replaced by individual depression, literature also showed a change of tendencies. Mass and public political engagements gave way to the subjective experience of the individual. Peter Schneider was the first German writer to look back at the time of the student revolt and to lay down the basis of a New Subjectivity. The basic problem in his work is the duality between theory and the immediacy of sensation. At the center of the short story “Lenz” is a young intellectual who, satiated with theoretics, makes an attempt to fuse his political engagement and his sensations and, by so doing, give new meaning to his life.
