Hamburg School: When texts in German were no longer embarrassing

The paths of German-language music have always been highways to hell. From earthy folk songs to feudal classical music, moronic imperial period operettas or the Horst Wessel song, Germanic singing was so calculatedly directed towards NDW, Eurodance, Helene Fischer that exits to more remote regions were usually not even properly signposted. One of them sounds more like compulsion than genre: Hamburg School.

Created in 1991 by the “Taz” critic Thomas Groß, the art term describes a local collecting pool in which three or four boys on four or five instruments have little more in common than language, posture, gestures and what Natascha Geier describes in her documentation “a “movement”. “An attitude to life” to do everything differently than everyone else in local rock before. Tocotronic for example.

Relatively late, i.e. after the preschool bands Blumeld, Die Sternen, Huah! or Colossal Youth were added, the trio around Freiburg’s Dirk von Lowtzow quickly became so important that their 1995 album “After the Lost Time” contained the anthem of this lifestyle movement:

I’m new to the Hamburg School
And I don’t know it very well yet
I just started first grade
And I don’t know anything for sure yet

But that, as Geier’s navel-gazing into the most influential German music style since Kraftwerk and Krautrock shows, applied to the entire genre. Born in the fever dream of the fall of the Berlin Wall out of disillusionment with the NDW, hedonism and reunification plus fear of war, AIDS and the shift to the right, the distinguished punk offshoot was directed against what the painting icon Daniel Richter, who was involved in the film, calls “commerce, mainstream, also political”. At the same time, however, there was hardly any commonality apart from the text, which was neither embarrassed by German nor poetry.

I’m new to the Hamburg School
And I’ve just left home
The teachers are all really nice here
And most of my classmates too

As in every educational institution, there were spokesmen and outsiders, cuddle teachers and frontal teaching. Despite all the differences, two aspects of previous eras were taboo: “Folk and Romanticism,” as star singer Frank Spilker puts it. Despite all the dissonance, the Hamburg School not only shaped the sound of the years of social change in carefree times; it also began to charge pop culture discursively, i.e. politically.

I’m new to the Hamburg School
And I actually really like it here
The classrooms are pleasantly dark
There is beer as a snack

“The Hamburg School” is also a foray through what may be the last rebellion of the subculture against gentrification, mainstream and exploitation logic. Appearances were made in club legends such as Goldener Pudel, Komet and Heinz Karmers, where the documentary can once again indulge in nostalgia. At least briefly. Because, as is so often the case, this revolution has eaten its children. And once again Tocotronic serves as a (warning) example of this.

I’m new to the Hamburg School
And don’t learn Greek or Latin
And yet the Hamburg School seems to me
Being an elite school

In the second part of the documentary, where, parallel to the rise of Viva and Love Parade, what Myriam Brügger from the L’Age D’Or label calls a “hit turn” emerges, the breaking points become apparent: a blatant lack of women and an equally blatant excess Complacency to the point of arrogance. The greatest scene is when Dirk von Lowtzow utters word monsters like “heterotropic” or “epiphany” and his bassist Jan Müller smiles almost pitifully.

I’m new to the Hamburg School
And maybe I’ll never get out of here again
Maybe I’ll never graduate
Because there is always applause here

This still exists – even if the Hamburg school gate has long been locked. However, Tocotronic may fill multi-purpose halls; But for her companion Christine Rösinger from the Berlin Lassie Singers, they are “to blame for AnnenMaiKantereit or Bosse”. Natascha Geier’s film still leaves no doubt that the Hamburg School left its mark on art and literature. Seeing, hearing and feeling them here deserves more than 30 minutes twice in the ARD media library.

Available in the ARD media library