Exhibition: “Heavy Metal in the GDR”: Peaked Cap and Beer Mat Democracy

You take the liberty: On the less than heavenly journey to Berlin, turn on For Today, who have created some of the best craftsmanship that the metalcore of the noughties and 10s has produced. In terms of content, however, their stuff is similar to the Christian version of the Islamic State; the madness in “My Confession”: “I’ve not just heard about Him, I’ve heard Him/ I’ve not just seen evidence of Him, I’ve seen Him (My King is alive! My King is alive! )/ He’s alive, and He’s conquered the grave once and for all.«

Unfortunately, socialism has not yet risen from the grave in this country, even if the historical present in the flyer for the special exhibition “Heavy Metal in the GDR” in the Berlin Kulturbrauerei rewinds back to the 80s: “While in the West there are bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden conquered the stages, an equally energetic heavy metal scene, oriented towards the West, developed in the GDR in the decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. The SED regime is watching this with suspicion.”

And it wasn’t alone: ​​In 1986, the LP “Fistful of Metal” by US thrashers Anthrax was classified as “glorifying violence” in Germany because of its cover, as was Deathrow’s “Satan’s Gift” and Impaler’s “Rise of the Mutants” a year earlier ” and “Condition Critical” by Quiet Riot, etc. etc. If you look at the long list of banned works by Cannibal Corpse, you ask yourself whether there is someone in the censorship office who is personally inspired by the death metal greats Feels spit coffee.

The world was strange both here and there with the rapidly recruiting metal army. This can be seen using the US example in “Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s” (FAB Press, 2016), edited by Kier-la Janisse and Paul Corupe.

Now, in the most secular state this part of the world has ever experienced, passionate churchgoers had nothing to dictate, especially not fanatics of the For Today ilk. More interesting for the GDR and its institutions was the mundane question of how a subculture felt about organizing the human community: »Unlike punks and skinheads, metal fans in the GDR are apolitical. They come to terms with the SED regime. While they do their work during the day, they create space for themselves after work,” says a rather clumsy and crude summary on an information board at the beginning of the exhibition. One would almost be inclined to say that this is “influenced by prejudice,” but that is what we take from the reference to the “recognition key,” which from today’s perspective naturally seems funny, with which Stasi members are supposed to be able to distinguish between youth scenes from a distance.

The metal scene was definitely concerned with distinction: “It made you stand out from the ‘normals’, from the poppers,” says contemporary witness Claudia Bamberg, when you press the appropriate spot on the touchscreen. There are many videos and sound recordings in the exhibition, almost without exception the prejudice is that anyone who listens to metal hears everything so loud that their eardrums crumble; At least you’ll get a lot of barking at you from metal fans and musicians who experienced the GDR. That kept the socialist authorities away at the time, reveals Jens Molle, who once moderated the “Tendenz Hard bis Heavy” on the youth channel DT64. “They didn’t want to listen to us because they couldn’t stand the music.” According to Molle, this or that text passed through simply because it was simply incomprehensible to untrained ears.

Big thing: Permission to play: That’s what you needed to perform. The fact that over there it was considered “illegal job placement” if you simply organized a concert like that without having received an assignment from the employment office is of course not reflected in the exhibition, which largely and probably considers the comparison with the West too scientific shy away from it, but in Frank Schäfer’s interview volume “Heavy Kraut – How Metal Came to Germany” (Verlag Andreas Reiffer, 2022). The GDR seemed to gradually warm up to metal: the Magdeburg band MCB can be seen covering Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” at the FDJ’s 5th Berlin Rock Summer in 1988.

Meanwhile, other groups were repressed: After an aborted concert by the Erfurt thrashers Macbeth, the band was forced to change its name and band members were called up to the NVA. Shortly afterwards, singer Detlef Wittenburg served a one-year prison sentence, which probably broke him (he hanged himself in December 1989). There is talk of a trivial matter. The crime (theft) is not mentioned; you have to read about it elsewhere, in Nikolai Okunews “Red Metal – The Heavy Metal Subculture of the GDR” (Verlag Ch. Links, 2021).

Many bands had a hard time withstanding the introduction of freedom on a capitalist scale: the Jüteboger Biest, who had converted from blues rock to metal, were able to shove their record contract with Amiga up their asses, covered in tighter jeans. People wouldn’t have bought the album if the interest in the work of the metal bands of real socialism after it was over was as great as that of the curators of the exhibition. Smarter or at least more diligent anti-communists would have dealt more with text and music than focusing almost entirely on the relevant cultural policy of the late GDR.

The really interesting thing remains Rand: “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC was also distributed in the GDR from 1981 and is considered to be a formative influence on GDR metal. People remain silent about what it does to a metal that is influenced by non-metal like the hard rock of AC/DC and Motörhead’s hard rock ‘n’ roll. “They all sound like GDR bands,” says my companion, not a metal fan, but someone who has not only heard about socialism, but experienced it.

The GDR aspect of the music, the special thing about Biest’s “Grab im Moor”, for example, would have been worth analyzing. Instead, the exhibition closes with a generic metal bar imitation, original tones that could have come from the Dragon Lord (Molle: “Metal is a relatively honest style of music.” Aha), and completely random merchandise draped on the wall and has a funny reference to the times (a baseball cap from the Full Force Festival held near Leipzig is a “peak cap”). Oh, and: You can write your opinion about metal on beer mats and stick them on the wall. Because that’s what German democracy fits on: a beer mat.

“Heavy Metal in the GDR”, until February 9, 2025, Museum in der Kulturbrauerei, Berlin.