[5] She became a member of the German Socialist Student Union ("Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund" / SDS) within which she belonged to the "Universities' Political Working Group" ("Hochschulpolitische Arbeitskreis").
[6] Rüger quickly engaged in the arguments of those times about the nature and extent of the political mandate of the "student body ("Studierendenschaft"), and the "democratization" of the university.
[9] The ways in which she reported back to the massed ranks of protestors on the progress of negotiations within the senate were widely seen to have violated hitherto customary principals of confidentiality.
[6][10] First impressions of the German Socialist Student Union ("Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund" / SDS) One contemporary witness of those times was the academic Tilman Fichter.
Although the debate was seen as important in its own terms, backers were also hoping for an opportunity to find practical solutions to the childcare challenges facing new mothers keen to be able to continue their university studies.
[13] As part of their promotional activities a small group of women from the Action Council met up on one side of the room at the twenty-third delegates' conference of the SDS at Frankfurt on 13 September 1968.
[12] That was the context for the widely publicised tomato throwing incident whereby Sigrid Rüger expressed displeasure over the lack of consideration given to women's issues in the discussions and activities of her fellow SDS leaders when airing their ambitions to change West German society.
The attention grabbing difference on this occasion was that the thrown tomatoes came from a group of SDS women: their target was the (male) leadership circle of their own student socialist organisation.
[4] Rüger later recalled that even before the conference opened, Helke Sander's acceptance as an Action Council delegate to it had been pushed through only in the face of stiff opposition from a group of Berlin SDS men.
[11] Two of West Germany's most powerful weekly news magazines, Der Spiegel and Stern reported Sander's speech and Rüger's tomato throwing in some detail.
[18] Rüger's own assessment was quoted by Manfred Bissinger in the Stern article: "I threw the tomatoes to make the girls articulate their problems with emotional courage and aggressions".
West German society had remained strikingly risk-averse since the 1945, however: several commentators contend that it was only the 1971 Stern headline that finally dragged the country's "new" feminism beyond the confines of the university campuses.
[21] Within the student movement and across the universities sector, the tomato throwing incident galvanised awareness of the demands of the Action Council among both backers and opponents.
[21] As her tomato throwing quickly became a lasting symbol for the confident and autonomous feminist movement which emerged rapidly in West Germany during the ensuing ten years, Sigrid Rüger herself withdrew into the political background.