Klaus Maeck: Everything is legal, except smoking weed

This year Angela Merkel turned 70. Me too. And also Klaus Maeck. The Hamburg film producer gave himself a gift and presented his autobiography: “Full pull into ruin,” published by the wonderful publisher Moloko Print.

Klaus Maeck is one of those left-wing activists who never pushed for the front row. In the 70s he was in the anarchist alternative scene and then became an organizer, publisher and cultural worker in the avant-garde of music and film. His collaboration with the slightly older Alfred Hilsberg was legendary when they imported punk from England to West Germany and helped to establish a new scene of free, self-determined music, setting up a store, label and distribution for this purpose. Maeck temporarily became manager of the Einstreichen Neubuildings. Well, we were young and just did it – you could say – and always steered clear of economic catastrophe. Maeck says he hasn’t done anything illegal “other than smoking weed.”

“1 book, 11 stories, 11 pictures, 1 poem,” is how the publisher summarizes this book. Maeck also paints, and each chapter features one of his pictures. First of all, there is a dramatic turning point in the first story about a trip to Mexico in 2022 for the “Festival of the Dead”. When he was five years old, Maeck watched as his two-and-a-half-year-old brother was run over by a truck. He was unable to fulfill the burden of being his brother’s guardian, a trauma. Traveling apparently always means reflecting on your own life so far. In Mexico he discovered a pirated copy of the award-winning film “Against the Wall” by the German-Turkish director Fatih Akin, for which he was responsible for the music selection – under the title “Full pull into ruin.”

Maeck is a school dropout and a conscientious objector. When punk emerged, he created the fanzine “Cooly Lully,” a “magazine for radical joie de vivre.” He came from the hippie era and worked at the “Schwarzmarkt” information and book store, which still exists today, and then founded the “Rip Off” record store in 1979, which quickly developed into a meeting place for punks and avant-garde musicians, loosely based on that Motto “Amok/Koma”, as the debut album by Abwärts was called, the band of the moment at the time.

The first stories in the book are a wild ride through the 70s and 80s with the RAF and repression, the ominous AAO commune and London as a Mecca for everyone interested in music. During this time there was a big business making badges because everyone wanted to pin these little colorful pins on their leather jackets.

Maeck was also interested in William S. Burroughs and film experiments. He published the “Decoder Handbook” for Muscha’s film of the same name, which was influenced by Burroughs’ ideas, and the book “Hear with Pain” about the new buildings. New editions of these cult books were not handed over to any major publishers. Here, Maeck has remained true to the old indie ideals (“No Mark in the Industry”).

Klaus Maeck tells stories from Morocco, Peru, Mexico and the USA. Immerse yourself and learn: “Nothing is further from traveling than being a tourist,” he writes. A nice birthday present he gave himself. But why didn’t he become better known as a painter?

Klaus Maeck: Full speed towards ruin. Stories, interviews, pictures. Moloko Print, 235 pages, br., €17.50.