1968 is often seen as a caesura in the history of sociology's success
after World War II. With regard to the case of Germany, the article de
als with the discovery of society through the students' movement and w
ith the consequences of that for the rise of sociology to the key posi
tion of society's self interpretation. Looking back on the successful
vanishing of the sociological world model in everyday knowledge, it tu
rns out that today sociology is confronted with an enlightened conscio
usness of the difference between the ''social construction of reality'
' and the individual ''being to death''.