The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Nonconformity on the Borders of Dictatorship. Youth subcultures in the GDR (1949-1965) Mark Peter Fenemore (University College London) Submitted for the Degree of PhD ProQuest Number: U643189 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643189 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract The subject of the thesis is youth nonconformity in the German Democratic Republic, with a particular focus on Leipzig in the 1950s and 1960s. The thesis contains both a political and a cultural studies analysis of what it was like to grow up in one half of a divided country subject to Communist attempts at influence and control. Assessing the competing claims on youth of the East German state, Western media and young people’s own socio-cultural milieux, the first section explores the borders not just between state and society, but between East and West as well as those between the two German dictatorships. By exploring these overlaps, the thesis permits a more complex understanding of what young people experienced in terms of shifting boundaries between public and private, personal and political. The second section assesses the combined effect of the various competing influences on youth in creating widespread ambivalence, immunity and escapism. By examining both coercive and cooptive strategies for combating inner conflict, the thesis examines the limits of repression and reform in effectively dealing with youth nonconformity and situates the conflict over youth within wider debates about the nature of (and possibility of controlling) modernity. The last section of the thesis explores three, particularly important, examples of nonconformity ranging from 'respectable' nonconformity on the part of young Christians to fans of Beat music and Rock'n Roll in order to show the differences which existed in motivations for ignoring, challenging and defying the state. Theoretically, the thesis draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham. In assessing the nature and role played by gangs in the 1950s and early 1960s, the thesis also refers back to and expands on the work of Detlev Peukert, Eve Rosenhaft and Arno Klonne. The evidence, on which the thesis is based, ranges from official Party, Police and Stasi files to newspaper articles and interviews with former participants in Leipzig's youth subcultural scene. Acknowledgements Many thanks to: The British Academy / The German Historical The German Academic AHRB Institute (GHI) Exchange Service (DAAD) The UCL Graduate The Institute for The Bundesarchiv Berlin School Historical Research (IHR) / the Isobel Thorn ley Bequest The Stadtarchiv Leipzig The Sachsisches The BStU Leipzig Staatsarchiv Leipzig The Landesarchiv Berlin Herr Knoll of the West Peter Bischoff of the Saxon School Museum Deutsche Jugendinstitut Brigitte Hausstein from The Bibliothek für Mr and Mrs Weinberg of the GESIS Aulienstelle Bildungsgeschichtliche Nansen Village in Berlin Forschung, Berlin Mark & Mary Sascha & Ulrike Frank Schulz ‘Ostkreuz’ Ulf, Matthias & Claudia Guy My habibi, Samia Contents List of Illustrations Introduction 8 Angels of History, Demons of Culture 8 Knowledge-guiding Debates 10 A Hegemony-less Zone 19 Detailed Analyses 20 History from Below 29 Evidence and Methodology 32 CONFLICTING INFLUENCES 36 1 ) The Impact of the State 37 Education and Leisure 38 The Effectiveness of the Educational Claim 46 Differential Impact 54 Antifascist Myth and Reality 59 2) The Impact of Western Media 72 The Impact of Changes in Mass Media and Entertainment in 72 the West The Impact in the East of Changes in Mass Media and 79 Entertainment 3) The Impact of Milieu 106 Culture and Socialization 106 Working-class Attitudes to Formal Education 113 Persistence of Working-class Street Culture 118 Hostility to Working-Class Popular Culture 121 Forms of Carnival and Misrule 126 CONTRADICTIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS 133 4) Inner Conflict 134 Ambivalence 136 Immunity 143 Escapism 148 ‘Counter Revolution’ 158 5) Compromise and Cooption 166 ‘Must the Politbüro organize Kite-flying?’ - Problems with a 166 Dysfunctional Youth Organization ‘Lest we create a Murderous Pit in their Hearts’ - Having a 171 Heart for Youth ‘Socialism with a Cheeky Face’ - ‘Trust and Responsibility for 178 Youth’ An Experiment in Unleashing Creativity - The Kino DerJugend 191 6) Conflict and Coercion 199 Stalinist Overtones 199 Nazi Overtones 208 Moral Panics 221 RESISTANCE AND NONCONFORMIST 230 SUBCULTURES 7) Immunity, Opposition and Resistance 231 From ‘Monumental’ to ‘Effective’ Resistance 231 Youth Opposition in the GDR 236 8) Rowdyism and Rock’n Roll 252 Access and Expression 253 Overlapping Cultures 264 The Effects of Public Criticism’ 272 Attempted Solutions 279 9) Beat and the ‘Gammlers’ 287 The Birth of Beat Music’ 287 Conflicting Conceptions of Modernity 295 The Campaign against Beat 300 The Beat Demonstration 306 Conclusion 318 Alternatives and Ambivalence 318 Attempts at Cooption and Reform 321 Nonconformities 322 ‘Political’ and ‘Effective’ Resistance 325 List of Abbreviations 330 Picture references 332 Sources and Bibliography 334 List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Marching Pioneers 13 The Impact of the State 2. Pioneer pyramid 45 3. Jugendweihe 49 4. Unsettling images 60 5. Behind the facade 61 6. Antifascism in action 66 The Impact of Western Media 7. Schund und Schmutz Literatur 83 8. Starclub membership cards 85 9. Knuckle-dusters 87 10. Young workers, 17 June 1953 90 11. Cowboy t-shirt 91 12. Samba socks 91 The Impact of Milieu 13. The choir of the Thomasschule 111 14. Gender balance graph 114 15. The Tauchscher 127 Inner Conflict 16. Group portrait 135 17. Map of Rügen 153 18. Camp life 155 19. Striking poses 157 20. Images of Counter-Revolution 159 21. The incriminating photograph 164 Compromise and Cooption 22. Republikflucht graph 172 23. Walter the gymnast 182 24. The feminization of education 184 25. The 1963 Jugendkommuniqué 187 26. 'Jung mit der Jugencf 189 Conflict and Coercion 27. The 'illegal' Junge Gemeinde 206 28. Depiction of female Rock’n Roll fans 217 29. Beat music caricature 219 30. Sympathy for the Enemy 224 Immunity, Opposition & Resistance 31. Hans and Sophie Scholl 233 Rowdyism and Rock’n Roll 32.Transistor radios ‘Made in the GDR’ 254 33. Freddy Quinn Fanclub 260 34. Dancing Rock’n Roll 262 35. Vogelscheuchen in der Petersstrafle 274 36. Rock’n Roll mugshots 277 Beat and the ‘Gammmlers’ 37. Transistors as fashion statements 289 38. The Guitar Men in concert 293 39. The underground Beat music scene 298 40. ‘The Amateur Dropouts’ 302 41.‘No room for the misuse of youth’ 303 42. Protest leaflets 307 43. The Beatles with Guns 309 44. Pro-Beat graffiti 312 45. Self-commemoration 314 Introduction What follows is a study of youth nonconformity, a study of young people’s struggle for self-determination in the face of an over-determining state. It is an analysis of how young people reacted to and, in some cases, resisted planned attempts to colonise their lifeworlds.^ More specifically, it is an investigation of how young people were able to challenge, negotiate and resist the impositions of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) regime whether actively through protest and opposition or passively through immunity, imperviousness and withdrawal. ANGELS OF HISTORY, DEMONS OF CULTURE^ For a regime wishing to transform society, youth exercises enormous symbolic importance as society’s ‘future’. Thus disembodied, youth comes to act as a metaphor for social change onto which repressed fears and desires are projected.^ In seeking to transform the social conditions they had inherited from the Nazis, the communists created their own myth of youth - seeing young people as the force they would be able to shape, control and use to transform society. Young people were presented as having extraordinary powers to overcome obstacles and to resolve problems which adults, by reason of their stubborn clinging to outmoded outlooks and ideals were unable to contemplate or tackle. In the youth law of 1950, for example, young people were given the right ‘to develop unhindered their initiative everywhere, in all questions affecting the situation of youth, the improvement of work in the factories, administration, apprenticeships and other organs as well as in the fight against bureaucratism, sabotage and deficiencies in working practices.However, the historic role ^ Although originally developed by Jürgen Habermas, the term ‘colonization of the lifeworlds’ was given new meaning by youth researchers at the Central Institute for Youth Research who used it to explain why young people began deserting the official youth organization in droves towards the end of the 1980s. ‘Einige Reflexionen Qber geistig-kulturelle Prozesse in der DDR (21.11.1988)’, Bundesarchiv (BArch.) Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (SAPMO), DY30/IV2/2.039/246. ^ Joe Austin and Michael Willard, Generations of youth. Youth cultures and History in Twentieth Century America (New York & London: New York University Press, 1998). ^ Luisa Passerini, 'Youth as a Metaphor for social Change. Fascist Italy and America in the 1950s' in Giovanni Levi & Jean-Claude Schmitt (eds.). Stormy Evolution. A History of young people in the West (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University), 325. ^ Roswitha Brandtner, Die FDJ und das erste Jugendgesetz der DDR’ in Helga Gotschlich, Katharine Lange & Edeltraud Schulze (eds.), Aber nicht im Gleichschritt.