Last week's march on Bonn by 40,000 university students provoked a noisy attack of nostalgia in the fiftysomethings who took part in the great student revolt of 1968. The banners, the sit-ins, the humourless, young faces shouting slogans. . . it all sent the grey-haired, former rebels scurrying down memory lane to regale their children with tales from the Berlin barricades.
The only problem is that last week's protests had almost nothing in common with the demonstrations of 30 years ago and today's German students view their revolutionary forerunners with utter disdain.
The 1968ers wanted to force the universities to become more democratic; but they were also interested in changing society and influencing world affairs, and joined the international campaign against the Vietnam War.
Last week's students were marching for more lecturers, better libraries and laboratories and more money from the state. Far from wishing to dismantle the state, they graciously accepted support from Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government. This new kind of protest reflects the profound change that has undergone university life in Germany in recent years, a change that threatens to make extinct one of the country's most recognisable social types - the eternal student.
At 35, Volker has studied philosophy in Tubingen, law in Cologne and medicine in Berlin, yet he doesn't have a single letter after his name. Under the German university system, he has been free to sit his examinations whenever he feels ready. He has not felt the urge just yet.
Many students of Volker's generation stopped attending lectures years ago but remain on the university register simply to qualify for social benefits. Others are genuinely interested in their chosen subject - to the extent that they never want to stop studying.
Today's young Germans take a less romantic view of university life. A recent study estimated the number of long-term, idle students at just 5 per cent. The majority want to finish their studies as soon as possible and to plunge into the world of work as early as they can. Political activity is frowned on as an expression of woolly idealism and only about one student in five is truly committed to learning for its own sake.
One reason for the change is the recent rise in unemployment in Germany, which has made this generation the first in decades to face the prospect of job insecurity. Employers have started to examine the CVs of their prospective recruits with a more critical eye and long-term students are no longer welcome in most firms.
Personnel departments now look for graduates who finished their degrees in the shortest possible time, spent a year abroad and speak good English. Many firms complain that German university education is too heavily focused on theoretical matters and that graduates are ill-prepared for life.
Thilo (23) is typical of the new generation of German students. After 18 months of community service, instead of military service, he started studying Communications at Berlin's Free University. But he is now considering abandoning the course because he fears it will prove useless in the job market.
"These old lecturers are totally out of date and they don't know what's going on in the real world of business. When I talk to people in marketing and public relations firms, they tell me that work experience and computer skills are much more valuable than a university degree," he said.
Such sentiments are not enough to dissuade young Germans from going to university, however, and lecture halls continue to be crowded each semester.
Germany's education minister last week called on students to consider attending universities in the east which are still fairly sparsely attended. Few are likely to take him up on the suggestion because, although western academics now run many eastern university departments, a stigma lingers from the communist era.
One crucial factor which has kept Germany's eternal students at university is the indulgence of their parents, whose income determines whether a student qualifies for a maintenance grant. Last week's protesters called for a change in the system, arguing that every student should receive the same subsidy, regardless of their family background.
There is little chance of the government, which is desperately short of funds, implementing such a change. Instead, Dr Kohl complains that Germans leave school and university later and retire earlier than their European neighbours. Rather than making life easier for long-term students, he hopes to abolish them altogether - by introducing compulsory time limits for all degree courses.
