Punk, 'Endzeit' and Gothic in The
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From London to Leipzig and Back (Post-)Punk, ‘Endzeit’ and Gothic in the GDR by MARLENE SCHRIJNDERS A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Modern Languages School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham May 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis investigates Goth culture (in the widest sense, including Post-Punk, New Wave, and New Romantic scenes, genres and styles) in the GDR between 1983 and 1989/1990 from state and participants perspectives. Drawing on the major works within Gothic, subculture, and postmodern theory, this thesis explores the ‘subcultural capital’ of the pluriform, multi-scene East German Goth culture in official state documents and in ‘subcultural micro-media’ to answer the key question how Goth scenes were represented by different participants and political actors. Participants are considered as agents whose ‘spectacular style’ brought them in conflict with society and authority, and who performed different politics of representation which varied between self-marginalisation and demystification, and between isolation and ‘liberalisation through negotiation’. The thesis explores the uniqueness of East German Goth(ic) while considering it as a transnational phenomenon in the Cold War Zeitgeist of the 1980s. The ‘local boundedness’ made East German Goth develop both similarly and differently compared to Goth scenes in the West. The study demonstrates that symbolic representations of Goth contain sets of social and political relationships and practices as well as existential conflicts, strategies, and solutions. It will on the one side be shown how social groups which are considered ‘Goth’ produced meaning, identity, and ‘ideology’. On the other side, it will be shown that the state applied the principle of homology and semiological method to understand subcultural phenomena and what the results of this were. The overarching question of this study is dual: How is Gothic culture and how are participants in Gothic culture represented in the individual interpretations and translations of ‘Gothic’ in micro-media produced by participants, and how is Gothic culture and how are participants in Gothic culture represented in official state documents and embedded in the political-ideological narrative and terminology? The dual perspectivity gives insights into what is referred to in this thesis as ‘Post-Punk transition’ in subcultural ‘texts’, and ‘Post-Punk confusion’ in state theory. It will be shown in this thesis how Punk evolved into Goth, what marks this transition in the subcultural micro-media, and how this transition is reflected in official state documentation. The thesis also shows that within both perspectives, there are difference and ambivalence. The representations of Goth in the GDR are an ideal case study to explore how subcultural identities and meanings are constructed through language and rhetoric, and that definitions of ‘subculture’ and ‘Goth’ are fluid and subject to time and space. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks go to my supervisors Sara Jones and Joanne Sayner for your endless patience and your amazing support and brilliant guidance throughout my PhD career. From the moment when I was warmly welcomed to the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham, Sara and Joanne showed me the way and taught me many academic skills, while they never stopped believing in and encouraging me to push myself further. I would like to thank the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam at the University of Amsterdam; Hanco Jürgens, Ton Nijhuis, Krijn Thijs, and Christina Morina for keeping in touch, opening doors and motivating me to just go for it. Very warm thanks go to my dear PhD colleagues Ivor Bolton and Josefin Graef who helped me get through the darkest days of doctoral life. I would like to thank my oldest and closest friends in Amsterdam who kept supporting me throughout and who never give up on our friendship despite the distance. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, my brother, and my fiancé for endless love and support, for putting up with the mood swings of a PhD researcher, and for providing a home whenever I needed time off from the nomadic PhD adventure, and to make sure that I never lost my sense of humour. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. Introduction to the Research Topic: Gothic Subculture Made in the GDR………...1 II. Literature Review and Relevance of this Study……………………………………6 II.a. Interpretating Gothic Subculture in Societal and Political Contexts………………6 II.b. Towards a (Re-)Definition of Subculture in the GDR:……………..………........16 II.c. Subculture Definitions and Concepts: Contextualizing East German Subculture.27 II.d. Subculture Theory: Interpretations of Subcultural Meanings……………..……..35 III. Research Questions, Methods and Sources……………………………………….42 IV. Thesis Structure…………………………………………………………………...49 CHAPTER 1 DYSTOPIAN FUTURES AND UTOPIAN ENDINGS IN (POST-)PUNK AND GOTHIC SELF-WRITINGS Introduction…….……………………………………………..….......................................52 I. The Conflictual Self in Critical Punk Texts: ‘Ich-Sein’ vs. Too Much Future …….…55 II. Rhetorical Resistance: ‘Anarchiepathos’ as Biographical Punk Strategy….………64 III. Post-Punk Transition: ‘Other Bands’ and Politics of Punk Representation…..........70 IV. Gothic Return: The End of the Doomed and Rise of the Dark Romantic Self……...79 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….......93 CHAPTER 2 SHIFTING IDEOLOGICAL FORMS POLITICAL (RE)INTERPRETATIONS OF PUNK AND GOTHIC PHENOMENA Introduction..........................................................................................................................96 I. Political Punk Theory: Alienated ‘Subculture’, Ambivalent Resistance……..100 II. Post-Punk Confusion: Reading the New Shades of Punk……………………...110 III. The Mysterious Subculture: Between ‘Aufklärung’ and Moral Panics…………125 IV. Hidden Ideology? Surveillance of Gothic Styles and Black Gatherings………..130 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….................142 CHAPTER 3 POLITICS OF WORLD-WIDE WAVE BETWEEN MARGINAL IDENTITY AND FAN COLLECTIVITY Introduction………………………………………………………………………………144 I. Gothic Capital vs. Material: Teenage Sender and Recipient Strategies……...148 II. Politics of Youth Representation: The Negotiation of (Sub)cultural Space…156 III. ‘Depeche Mode Fans Aller Länder Vereinigt Euch’: The Fan Network……...163 IV. ‘Schwarze Bürger’: Goth Citizenship Between Stereotype & Self-Definition.173 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...179 CHAPTER 4 FROM OBSCURE IDEOLOGY TO SCENE AUTONOMY A PEACEFUL SUBCULTURAL (R)EVOLUTION? Introduction........................................................................................................................183 I. Deviant Adolescent Bodies in a ‘Rauschzustand’………………………………...189 II. Folk Devils and ‘Feindbilder’: Between Perpetrators and Victims ………............196 III. Spectacular Secret Society? The Limits of Subcultural Surveillance ……………204 IV. Towards Subcultural Legitimisation: Integrating Independent Youth……………209 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................218 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………220 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………....224 INTRODUCTION ‘celebration of darkness […] invites all manner of interpretation’1 ‘More moral panics will be generated, and other, as yet nameless, folk devils will be created’2 ‘denn nicht alles ist Gothic, was Schwarz trägt’3 ‘Gothic just will not die’4 I. Introduction to the Research Topic: Gothic Subculture Made in the GDR Since 1992, the largest and oldest still existing Gothic festival is held yearly during Pentecost in Leipzig in Eastern Germany. The Wave-Gotik-Treffen (hereafter WGT) is rooted in a ‘distinct movement that developed after the peak of Punk’ and which is usually called Post- Punk or New Wave, as Amy Spencer5 notes. As showcased by various British and American bands like The Cure, Christian Death, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode in the 1980s, New Wave is a ‘genre which […] blended together many musical styles and attitudes’6. The ‘dark, melancholic sounds’, ‘nihilistic lyrics’ and ‘spooky or dark-mystical outfits’, as Susanne El-Nawab7 writes, gained many fans in Germany and kickstarted a new youth (sub)culture. In 1986 and 1987, teen magazine 1 Paul Hodkinson, ‘Beyond Spectacular Specifics in the Study of Youth (Sub)cultures’, Journal of Youth Studies, 15.5 (2012), 557 – 572 (559). 2 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Abingdon: Routledge, 1972), p. 172. 3 Alexander Nym, ‘Die Gothic-Szene gibt es nicht’, in Schillerndes Dunkel. Geschichte, Entwicklung und Themen der Gothic-Szene, ed. by Alexander Nym (Leipzig: Plöttner Verlag, 2010), pp. 12 – 15 (p. 13). 4 Victoria Carrington, ‘The Contemporary Gothic. Literacy and Childhood in Unsettled Times’,