For Germany, the 1960s finally came to an end this week. Confirmation of the departure of Gerhard Schröder and his Red-Green government marks the retirement of the 1968 generation that has influenced so much of political and cultural life. In its place comes the "1989 generation" of Angela Merkel, shaped by the joys and subsequent disappointments of the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification.

The transition promises to be quite a moment. The achtundsechziger - or 68ers - were born out of the rebellion against the shifty, stale and reactionary world of postwar West Germany. The way they tell it, it was a heroic endeavour. Having made their parents face up to the horrors of the Nazi years, they embarked on an epic "march through the institutions" that would see the revolution introduced in orderly bureaucratic process.