Art: Punk in the GDR: Immoral festival of the senses

Although, according to the Stasi’s diligent count, there were only 900 punks in the GDR at its peak, this small subculture has been well researched. Documentaries, books and, more recently, podcasts examine punk in the East with different approaches. The micro scene is experiencing a small renaissance, the current concerts by the band Schmelzkeim are sold out. Jan Heck’s documentary about the band is showing in cinemas all over the country. Now Henryk Gericke is expanding the canon with another book. It’s called “Dance the Communism” and is based on the booklet of the triple vinyl box “Too Much Future – Punk Rock GDR” published by Gericke and colleagues in 2019. One of the strengths of this narrative non-fiction book is the fine pen of Gericke, who weaves the history of the bands into cultural-historical contexts and clearly names his personal favorites.

Why is punk rock made in GDR still interesting today?

I have an idea about this. In times when points of friction are becoming more and more diffuse, there is a great need to be subversive in some way, to stand up against certain things. To distance yourself from another generation, the state, any structures. When I work with young people and ask them what it means to be subversive today, I run into open doors.

Your book is entitled “Dance to Communism,” which is reminiscent of a title by the West German band DAF? Why did you choose this title?

There is a technical answer. The vinyl compilation in which the original booklet, the Old Testament, appeared was called “too much future”. Because I didn’t want everything to get mixed up, Verbrecher Verlag and I named the edited long version after the title of the foreword in the booklet. I think the title was well chosen, on the one hand it brought the story out of the East because it is anchored in the West. Secondly, it is stated right away in the title that no litany is to be expected. When it comes to repression and state security today, you have to ask yourself, why did half of the children in the GDR put up with this? There must be a reason why they endured all of this. Here you quickly come to the pleasure principle. This is present in the title. Underground was never strategy, underground was dance, play, an immoral feast for the senses.

Punks in the GDR were treated as enemies of the state. How come? What danger did they pose?

In the GDR it was about a great plan, the utopia of communism. If you want to implement a utopia, you can’t take those who think differently into account and you just eliminate what stands in the way left and right. Punk was a moment of great irritation. Of course, punks deviated significantly from the image of the party’s fighting reserve. Punks no longer ran in line, but danced out of line and took off the FDJ’s blue shirt. Punk was also an explosion of color and an orgy of noise. Of course, the GDR state was completely overwhelmed by this. When a dictatorship is overwhelmed, it strikes.

When did punk rock come to you personally and what happened afterwards?

He came to me when I was 13, at the beginning of 1974. It was a process, you don’t become a punk straight away, at least that’s how it was for me. The first time I was confronted with punk rock was not through Western television, but through an article in the GDR magazine “Trommel”, the FDJ’s central organ for Thälmann pioneers and students from 4th to 7th grade. A small black and white photo of two punks on the Kingsroad in London, one punk had, quite uncharacteristically, his hair slicked back. He pulled a punk girl on a dog leash through a crowd of people. The article basically said that punks were misguided young people who killed each other at concerts and threw the bodies into the sewers. It is also a protest against capitalism, but misguided because it is not based on Marxism-Leninism. That immediately lit me up. Not that I wanted to get killed, but I thought, wow, what a move. Then came the music, punk was simply the order of the day, primarily pop culture.

Why is there no place for GDR subculture in major German general interest publishers? Ulrich Gutmair has at least made it to Tropen/Klett-Cotta with his book “We are the Turks of Tomorrow: New Wave, New Germany”?

I spontaneously have an idea. When you publish books like this, a certain subcultural competence is always required. This is based on similar experiences. It may be that there are people on the decision-making floors at the big publishers who don’t feel any impulse to publish anything about these topics. That’s my guess. I myself have a close connection to the Verbrecher Verlag because I published texts here in various anthologies.

In your book you portray almost forty former punk bands. Under what circumstances did you select the bands?

The decisive criterion was that they had to be illegal bands. There are many bands who never left their rehearsal basement for gigs and died in the basement. Of course I had to like it musically. A certain pop appeal was also important to me; I didn’t want to bring in every snotty band for purely documentary reasons. True punks please forgive me, I wanted at least one song to be recognizable. There are many bands that are in my heart, that I saw live, whose lyrics stay with me to this day. With bands like Planlos,Namelos or L’Attentat, writing the lyrics really took me away; they were monsters that I worked on. The three of us made the selection based on the box’s tracklist: Maik Reichenbach (L’Attentat), Pankow (Planlos) and me. An example of how complicated it could get: With the remainder, one of the original three people was no longer alive, one had ended up in Cambodia and the third in Zurich. I asked both of them, when did remaining stock exist? One says: founded in 1984. The other says we disbanded in 1984. I then had to make sure I got the blurriness out. I didn’t just want to portray the bands, but also embed them. Danger zone from Saalfeld, located between the idyll of the fairy grottoes and the harsh prison in Unterwellenborn. It would be a shame not to describe it, it’s psychodynamic.

When Slimkeim perform their songs, most of which are forty years old, at SO 36 today, the sold-out hall sings along to every line of the song. How do you explain this deep identification with lines like: “Wars make people, people make war”? Where does SK’s sudden popularity come from?

This is not easy for me to explain. They did not have the status that SK has today during the GDR era. Please don’t take this as a statement against the band. The bands that were important back then like Planlos, Nameless and Wutanfall no longer play a role today. Schimmelkeim were very lucky that a number of songs were quickly released by Höhnie Records. This made the band famous in the West. A positive pioneering act. They were the first to be produced and marketed in the West. They came out on CD, which was a hot thing at the time. The success of today’s Slime Germ line-up is linked to the legendary figure of Dieter Otze Ehrlich. The cult of Otze still shapes the cult of Slime Germ to this day. He wrote most of the songs and provided the musical implementation. He stands as a presence in the room. I heard mucus germ once or twice, it wasn’t my cup of tea. What I find remarkable about SK is Otze as a singular figure in punk. Schimmelkeim sang a mix of fun punk and highly political lyrics that are now present in the hearts of a new, different generation, which is perhaps the reason for their popularity today.

Since 2019 you have been the editor of the record edition tape topia – GDR Undergroundtapes 1980-1990. What’s it all about?

I once released a CD and later a double album for a large exhibition in the Gropiusbau, which is when I came into very close contact with old tapes that I used to listen to often and intensively. Click & Aus, The Local Moon, Ornament & Crime and so on. The tapes were just as important to me as a Killing Joke, Stranglers or Wire LP. These tapes are artistic material that, firstly, is not only audible, but is still musically valid today, in a different way than slime germ. That’s why the series exists. The bands were never released, there were maybe 10 or 20 copies at the time. Each LP is released in an edition of 100 as a tape and 500 as an LP. The numbers are manageable, but you have to sell it first. Doing this today is a moment of great satisfaction for me. There are things that are in danger of disappearing that make me think, OK, this is a culture that is worth preserving.

Is there a reading tour? Where are you presenting the book?

On May 14th I will present “Dance the Communism” in the Fahimi Bar in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Then I’ll go on tour with it.

What can we expect from you in terms of publications in the future?

Let’s take a look. I am currently the 31st castle clerk in Beeskow and am currently writing a story that may also become a novel. It’s all about subculture in the GDR. Not about the punk scene, but about the independent literary scene.