Week Nine
Born in the GDR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nyfJdm3G5M
Music: Pankow
Visuals: Katharina Witt/Trabant and Wartburg/FDJ
rallies
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“Doing” in the GDR
A different perspective on individual political action
GDR= Collective; Communal
“Doing”
Dissent: Dissenters often
combine compliance and defiance
The Lives of Others 2006
Florian Henckel von
Donnersmark (writer and Director)
Starring Ulrich Mühe and
Sebastian Koch
A few terms:
Stasi:
Ministry for STAatsSIcherheit (state security): State Security police
IM: Inoffizielle
Mitarbeiter or unofficial collaborator==Stasi informants, approx 400,000 out of
16 million citizens
Stasi files: BTSU or
Bundesbeauftragte für die
Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen
Demokratischen Republik
http://www.bstu.bund.de/nn_715068/DE/Home/homepage__node.html__nnn=true
FDJ Freie
Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEpviWbXlNk&feature=related
Bau auf! = Build up [the nation, its infra-structure,
socialist society..]
Patricia Simpson,U of
Retro-nationalism
Commences after the nation
dissolves
History of rock music in the GDR
It is this history and the problem of expression that
matters to our theme of doing.
“The first sightings of Punks invading the
bogus idyll of socialism in 1979/80 can only be compared to - and this is no
exaggeration - the landing of aliens. Stuck in a dead corner of
Speaker unidentified. From
“Too Much Future” exhibit:
http://www.toomuchfuture.de/english/index.php
Eric Mielke, head of the
Stasi : toughness against punk
p.248
Wir wollen immer artig sein: Punk, New Wave, Hiphop
und Independent-Szene in der DDR von 1980-1990, ed. Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister (Berlin:
Schwartzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2005)
How did these musicians DO
anything within this society?
How did they make their own
music and find or assemble a public
for this music??
2 choices:
1. stay underground or
marginalized and not seek Visibility
2. Compromise with the state and use official
channels:
Permission to perform
License to play
Record with Amiga-VEB
Simpson: When punk drew
strength from a negative relationship to authority, the state changed its
approach and co-opted key musicians (247)
2 examples:
Die Skeptiker:
(The Skeptics) founded in 1986
“Strahlende Zukunft,” (Radiant Future)
And they are still with us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vR-euW47Y&feature=related
Feeling B http://www.alternativmusik.de/images/feeling_b_unten.jpg
Aljosha Rompe, Paul Landers,
Christian (Flake) Lorenz
‘Fun and Party’ themes
“Ich such’ die DDR” (I am
looking for the GDR)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_mHUm6N6w&feature=related
Are these guys Antigones ?
Brecht’s Prologue to
Antigone: What would you do?