Born in the GDR

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 Montana. http://www.montana.edu/wwwml/Simpson/

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 Central Europe the GDR youth was but another human resource for the party officials”

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)