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