British fashion designer Mary Quant (right) made mini skirts socially acceptable, with models showing off their legs in a fashion show in 1968. German women quickly picked up the trend. Short skirts were followed by short dresses, coats and — the ultimate fashion statement — "hot pants" shorts women loved to match with a maxi coat.

Rock and pop music were dominated by male bands, with the Rolling Stones paying homage to the "Street Fighting Man," and the Beatles in the charts with "Revolution." At best, women were singers or groupies in Germany — until the first all-girl band formed in Duisburg in the mid 1960s with cool chicks on the drums and guitar: the "Rag Dolls" (pictured).

After hearing that "a German woman doesn't wear make-up" in the Nazi era, heavily made-up eyes were part of every woman's evening dress in the mid '60s. Women looked to actresses (Claudia Cardinale, pictured) and singers like Esther Ofarim and Daliah Lavi for the new look. Forget the natural look: black eyeliner and thick, dark eyebrows were utterly stylish.

At the time, a woman's role in West Germany was clearly defined by tradition. Women were mainly homemakers, they raised children and fun was reserved for Sunday outings. The photo shows ladies in 1968 at the Wolfsburg Marksmen Club, in a picture taken by renowned German photographer Robert Lebeck.

In 1968, the opposite of the prim 1960s housewife hit the movie screens. In the science fiction film "Barbarella," a sexy Jane Fonda enthralled the audience. The cult movie was directed by Roger Vadim, who made several films with Brigitte Bardot, while fashion designer Paco Rabanne created the futuristic costumes.

"Make love, not war" — the US antiwar slogan quickly found its way to Germany, too. In the late '60s, offshoots of the hippie movement also made their way across the Atlantic. Jimi Hendrix and his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, played in Cologne, Berlin and London in 1968, their freaky outfits and stage shows a thrill and inspiration to European fans.

That year Janis Joplin told her audiences that "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Germans adored her freewheeling hippie look. Fashion designers worldwide copied the vibrant flowing dresses, bangles and necklaces, and bordered blouses — soon found in department stores everywhere.

The student rebellions that year changed people's outlook on life. Suddenly, there was free love. Poeple chose entirely new forms of living, sometimes replacing traditional marriages and life in a small family unit with life in a commune instead, like Berlin's infamous "Kommune I" community.

Young artists from across the German-speaking world also began to turn to provocative action. In what she called "Tap and Touch," Valie Export, who was from Vienna, Austria, challenged men to touch her. It was her way to try and break down gender traditions, and patriarchal leadership structures in the art academies, by making them face up to a real woman.

Students came up with new forms of protest, including the popular sit-ins, like the one pictured above in February 1968 ahead of the International Vietnam Conference at Berlin's Technical University. Sit-ins, go-ins and teach-ins were soon part of the students' everyday lives.

Protests and demonstrations weren't only staged by students and at colleges in 1968. Young and old took to the streets. Renowned novelist Heinrich Böll (pictured), who was very critical of the German postwar political establishment, spoke to crowds at a peace protest in Bonn. The antiwar movement was peaking as the Vietnam War and Cold War continued without end.

The German student protest movement of 1968 actually took off a year earlier. Demonstrations were organized against the official visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin in 1967. Police and Iranian agents attacked the protesting students; an unarmed student, Benno Ohnesorg, was shot dead by a policeman. The police brutality fueled the movement. Press photographer Ludwig Binder documented the events.

Binder also showed up with his camera right after Rudi Dutschke, the unofficial leader of the student movement, was shot by a far-right man, Josef Bachmann. The photographer listened to the police radio, said Jim Rakete, who was an intern working with him at the time. Here's a shot of the site of the crime on April 11, 1968. Dutschke died a decade later of the after-effects of the injury.

The student protests were systematically crushed by the authorities. Many activists were arrested. Former Nazis were part of the police force — and they didn't hesitate to beat up demonstrators. Filmmaker Roman Brodmann entitled his film on the Shah's visit "The Police State Visit."

The assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke officially marked the beginning of the student unrest. The events in West Berlin launched a country-wide movement, with demonstrations held at West German universities and in front of the buildings of publisher Axel Springer, whose tabloid press demonized the students. Binder took this photo after the clashes known as the "Schlacht am Tegeler Weg."

Along with Binder's photos of the historic events, the exhibition shows recent portraits of the people involved in the 1968 protests taken by photographer Jim Rakete. Friederike Hausmann accidentally became a central figure of the June 2, 1967 demonstration, as she tried to help Benno Ohnesorg after he was shot. A photo of both of them became a world famous icon of the student movement.

He became renowned as the "guru of free love." Rainer Langhans was part of West Berlin's Kommune 1, the first politically motivated commune in Germany. The group of young people experimented with alternative lifestyles. Communards Fritz Teufel, Dieter Kunzelmann and Rainer Langhans promoted the motto: "If you sleep with someone twice, you're already part of the establishment."

In 1968, politically active women complained that they didn't have equal rights even within the leftist movement. Filmmaker Helke Sander fought to obtain support for the women's political agenda within the German Socialist Organization (SDS). When her demands were ignored by the SDS male leaders at a delegate convention, a tomato was hurled at them — sparking the second wave of German feminism.

"The 68ers" is the name of the exhibition held through October 7, 2018 at Berlin's Kulturbrauerei. It shows how the activists of the time followed different paths afterwards. Some of them, such as Otto Schily and Joschka Fischer, chose to work within the system, becoming major politicians in Germany, while others pursued their revolutionary convictions within alternative structures.