Abstract
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, that eruption of History accompanied the collapse of a theoretical socialist utopia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The changed political climate influenced the production of literature and popular culture in the vanquished and vanishing GDR; but it also brought tensions that had existed within GDR culture of the 1980s to a boil. Throughout that decade, a rupture between officially sanctioned and alternative culture emerged, even within the hegemony of state-controlled media.1 In the realm of “popular” culture—a term made problematic by the totalizing and occasionally didactic function assigned to cultural production in socialism—the generation “born into socialism”2 seemed willing to indict the pedagogical and political imperatives of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED). In other words, alternative artists, usually, though not exclusively, unofficial, filled the absence of critical thought and attitude left vacant by the much official culture of the GDR. The emergence of alternative “amateur” bands played a crucial role in this critical “filling in”; they were often criminalized along with their fans.3 One thing is clear: the politicization4 of popular culture played a part in the decline and demise of the SED; the utopian myth of “real existing socialism” and the propaganda that sustained it contributed significantly to the collapse of the state that had produced the vision in the first place.
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Notes
One of the first to comment on the divide between official and unofficial culture in the GDR was Peter Rossman. See his “Zum ‘Intellektuellenstreit’: ‘Intellectuals’ in the Former GDR,” in Gegenwartsbewältigung: The GDR after the Wefnde, Patricia A. Simpson, guest editor, Michigan Germanic Studies v.21, n.1/2 (Spring/Fall 1995): pp. 32–36.
Uwe Kolbe, Hineingeboren. Gedichte 1975–1979 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982 [Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1980]). The poem has come to signify a feeling of generational affiliation among those “born into” socialism.
See Peter Wicke, “The Role of Rock Music in the Political Disintegration of East Germany,” in Popular Music and Communication, 2nd edition, James Lull, ed. (Newbury Park, London: Sage Publications, 1992), pp. 196–206. He makes similar points in “The Times They Are A-Changin’. Rock Music and Political Change.”
See Lutz Schramm, “Sonderstufe mit Konzertberechtigung—die DT64 Indie-Nische zwischen sanfter Zensur und Szene-Belebung,” Internet website (www.fritz.de/team/lutz), taken from DT64 Das Buch zum Jugenradio 1964–1993, Andreas Ulrich and Jörg Wagner, eds. (Leipzig: Thom Verlag, 1993). I refer to this article with the kind permission of the author.
As defined by Manfred Stock and Philipp Mühlberg in their insightful book Die Szene von innen. Skinheads, Grufties, Heavy Metals, Punks (Berlin: LinksDruck, 1990), the “scene” “… erscheint hier als eine spezielle Organisationsform kollektiver Bindung, die sich von anderen Formen, beispielsweise von der festen gefügten Gruppe, unterscheidet. In der Szene herrscht eine Balance zwischen Intimität und Anonymität. Man kennt sich teils persönlich, teils vom Sehen, aber auch als Unbekannter stößt man nicht gleich auf Ablehnung. Entscheidend ist nicht, daß jeder jeden kennt, sondern daß man davon ausgehen kann, in der Szene Gleichgesinnte zu treffen, Bekannte, über die sich rasch Kontakt zu weiteren Personen herstellen läßt” (p. 240). In a substantial scholarly and highly readable work, Olaf Leitner argues against the existence of a “scene” in GDR rock music in the early 1980s, suggesting that it would be a bit “euphoric” to do so.
See Olaf Leitner, Rockszene DDR. Aspekte einer Massenkultur im Sozialismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowel Taschenbuch Verlag, 1983), p. 412ff. “Denn ‘Szene’ verpflichtet auf ein künstlerisches Environment, das Literatur, Film, Fotografie, Malerei, Graphik (Poster, Plattencover, Werbeprospekte), Presse (Fanzines, Rockzeitschriften), Theater, Mode und immer stärker Video einbezieht,” pp. 412–413. Precisely these aspects of the GDR’s alternative culture—however problematic this term remains in light of the degree of Stasi involvement—developed during the mid- to late 1980s.
For a comprehensive narrative about rock music in the GDR, see Michael Rauhut, Beat in der Grauzone. DDR-Rock 1964 bis 1972—Politik und Alltag (Berlin: BasisDruck Verlag, 1993);
see also Rauhut , Schalmei und Lederjacke. Udo Lindenberg, BAP, Underground: Rock und Politik in den achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1996).
See also Leitner, p. 297. Hagen is described as “Verantwortlicher Mitarbeiter für den Bereich Unterhaltungskunst in der Abteilung Kultur des ZK der SED,” and interviewed in Rockmusik und Politik. Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente, Peter Wicke and Lothar Müller, eds. (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag in Zusammenarbeit mit der Berliner Zeitung, 1996), pp. 165–178.
Jürgen Hagen, “Unterhaltungskunst—fest mit dem sozialistischen Leben verbunden,” in Praktische und theoretische Fragen der Entwicklung von Unterhaltung und Unterhaltungskunst in der DDR, ed. Informationszentrum beim Ministerium für Kultur v.4 (1981): pp. 1–32. His specific discussion of themes can be found on p. 16.
Key Pankonin, Keynkampf (Berlin: Unabhängige Verlagsbuchhandlung Ackerstraße, 1993), p. 26. Pankonin is described as the guitarist and singer of the “Trashfoodpunk ‘n’ Roll-Band” IchFunktion. He wrote songs for the “Firma,” a band implicated in the Stasi network. His book is an autobiographical narrative about life in the “scene.” For more on Pankonin and the band, see my “Soundtracks: GDR Music from ‘Revolution’ to ‘Reunification,’ ” in The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany, Michael Geyer, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 227–248.
H.P. Hofmann, Rock: Interpreten, Autoren, Sachbegriffe (Berlin: VEB Lied der Zeit, 1983), p. 186: “Es sind zutiefst gesellschaftliche Ursachen, die dem Entstehen des Punk Rock zugrundeliegen: Jugendarbeitslosigkeit, trübe Zukunftsaussichten, aber auch aufkommender Rassismus und Neofaschismus hatten die Kluft zwischen grauem Alltag und dem, was von einem Großteil der etablierten Rock-Hierarchie unter Einsatz von kaum erschwinglichen Gerätschaften an glitzernden Unverbindlichkeiten angeboten wurde, derart vergrößert, daß sich junge Amateurmusiker angesprochen fühlten, dem eine Musik ihrer Gefühle, Gedanken, Haltungen und (finanziellen) Möglichkeiten entgegenzusetzen.”
Peter Wicke, “Rock Music and Everyday Culture in the GDR,” in Studies in GDR Culture and Society 8, Margy Gerber et al., eds. (Lanham, New York, London: University of America Press, 1988), pp. 171–178.
Peter Wicke, “Pop Music in the GDR between Conformity and Resistance,” trans. Margy Gerber, in Studies in GDR Culture and Society v.14, n.15, Margy Gerber and Roger Woods, eds. (Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America, 1996), pp. 25–35, here p. 27. Wicke demonstrates the degree to which party officials were at a loss when it came to understanding the vicissitudes of “youth music” in the following: “When in 1984 the Mielke ministry began to take notice of punk music, it was not reacting to developments in the GDR—there were no signs of punk music at that time—but instead to an article on this form of youth culture in the Federal Republic which had appeared shortly before in Der Spiegel. The influences were ridiculously slight, but the apparatus had one more category for determining ‘negative’ developments. This notwithstanding, up to 1989 Party functionaries who still had not learned to pronounce the word properly made public speeches in which they denounced ‘Western punk,’ not noticing that punk existed under their very noses […]” (p. 34). Since that article appeared, several books have documented the excessive state response against punk in the former GDR.
See, e.g., Ronald Galenza and Heinz Havemeister, eds., Wir wollen immer artig sein … Punk, New Wave, HipHop, Independent-Szene in der DDR 1980–1990 (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 1999).
See Christoph Dieckmann, My Generation. Cocker, Dylan, Lindenberg und die verlorene Zeit (Berlin: LinksDruck, 1991), pp. 250–252, for a review of the film “Flüstern und Schreien.”
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© 2006 Ruth A. Starkman
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Simpson, P.A. (2006). Born in the “Bakschischrepublik”: Anthems of the Late GDR. In: Starkman, R.A. (eds) Transformations of the New Germany. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984661_6
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