HCCpunklecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp8CGBipITw&feature=related
Sandow
Born in the GDR
jetzt jetzt lebe ich jetzt jetzt lebe ich
jetzt jetzt trinke ich jetzt jetzt stinke ich
jetzt jetzt rauche ich jetzt jetzt brauch ich dich
wir bauen auf und tapezieren nicht mit
wir sind sehr stolz auf katerina witt
katerina katerina katerina
BORN IN THE GDR
wir können bis an unsere grenzen gehen
hast du schon mal drüber hinweggesehen
ich hab 120.000 menschen gesehen
die sangen so schön sie sangen so schön
BORN IN THE GDR
[English:
now now I live, now now I live
now now I drink, now now I stink
now now I smoke, now now I need you
we build up but we don’t decorate
we are very proud of katerina witt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarina_Witt
we can travel up to our borders
have you ever looked beyond
I saw 120,000 people
They sang so beautifully, they sang so beautifully
Sandow: founded 1982 and reunited 2005
Partition of Germany after the end of WWII
German Democratic Republic
Map: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/images/pix580_GHI_p961d_E.jpg
What
was DONE to Germany
1945 “Committee on the Dismemberment of Germany”
Soviet
Zone:
----seizure
of industrial equipment
----500
Junker estates converted to collective farms
1948:
England, US, France form Federal Republic
1949:
Soviets form German Democratic Republic (Brecht)
“Doing”
in the GDR
Communal doing= working as a society
against
bourgeois complacency and toward the ideal socialist state
group
effort
DISSENTERS:
had to be creative and often to combine dissent and compliance.
COMPLIANCE
AND DEFIANCE
The
Lives of Others
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
Maintained files on many of
the citizens—much more comprehensive than FBI files
IM: Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter or unofficial
collaborator==Stasi informants, approx 400,000 out of 16 million citizens
Stasi files: huge archive of
even the most trivial movements of anyone suspected by the stasi of subversion.
Now available and you can view your file by contacting the 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)
Build up, build up, build up,
build up
Freie Deutsche Jugend, build
up
For a better future
Build up/straighten up your
homeland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVMQR9tiYSA
PUNK
AS A COUNTER-ARGUMENT TO THIS TYPE OF MUSIC
Within
this context, Simpson, a scholar at the U of Montana, examines rock music. http://www.montana.edu/wwwml/Simpson/
It
is this history and the problem of expression that matters to our theme of
doing.
West
TV and Radio : GDR YOUTH HEAR EUROPEAN & US MUSIC
Traditionally
punk lyrics do not express optimism about the progress of the state.
Tend toward negation and critique.
GDR
state regarded it as“degenerate” music (remember art?)
From
an online exhibit/documentary :
“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, spoke of a “punk problem” and recommended strict
measures against punks.
p.199,
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)
Music
distribution carefully controlled in the GDR
Punk
musicians had 2
choices:
1. Stay
underground—do not seek Visibility
Play
to a small counter-public
2. Play
ball: work out some sort of compromise through official channels,
--permission
to perform
--license
to play
--opp
to record with Amiga-VEB, the only label in the GDR.
Simpson: When punk drew
strength from a negative relationship to authority, the state changed its
approach and co-opted key musicians (247)
2 examples of “crossover”
bands in the GDR sense
1. Die
Skeptiker: founded in 1986
“Strahlende
Zukunft,” or “Radiant Future” taken from official socialist optimist rhetoric
about
a radiant future [lots of “future” in rhetoric]
Their
lyrics: boredom, hard times, lack of progress in the current society
Softened
for the recordings.
By
making certain compromises Die Skeptiker were able to reach a mass audience
(and we are still talking about them today).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vR-euW47Y&feature=related
2. Feeling B http://www.alternativmusik.de/images/feeling_b_unten.jpg
Aljosha Rompe, Paul Landers,
Christian (Flake) Lorenz
‘Fun and Party’
themes—recorded for Amiga and had official license to perform
Continued to dissent in this
less confrontational manner
ich
such die ddr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_mHUm6N6w&feature=related
Rammstein:
http://dietrichthrall.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/rammstein.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Rammstein-flamethrowers.jpg
Conclusion
Are
these guys Antigones??? Kohlhaases?
Do
their actions constitute individual political action or resistance to
oppression?