Are the 90s back? Hendrik Bolz and Don Pablo Mulemba, both of whom grew up in the East, want to research it in their podcast.
Photo: MDR/Moise
Due to violent attacks on foreigners, “Die Ärzte” wrote “Cry for Love” in the early 1990s. In 2015, they re-released the song as a sign against the right and shot it to number one in the German charts. Almost ten years later, right-wing extremism is a major problem, especially in the new federal states. An election survey by ZDF’s “Politbarometer” in August showed that the AfD would win 30 percent of the vote in Saxony and Thuringia. Hendrik Bolz and Don Pablo Mulemba want to investigate this problem. They both grew up in the east, Bolz in Stralsund and Mulemba in Eberswalde. If parallels to the experiences of the interviewees emerge, the two also bring in their own experiences.
In 2017, as Testo, Bolz rapped in the hip-hop duo Zuzieh masculin with Moritz Wilken (Grim104) about “All Against All.” In “Noughty Years – Youth in Blooming Landscapes” he described his eventful youth in Stralsund between prefabricated construction, drugs and weight training. He himself fell into the spiral of violence and preferred to be a perpetrator rather than a victim. “I was afraid the whole time,” he later admits in the “Compartment Boots” podcast. Bolz was not a radical, but he could have been. Because back then it was cool to be a neo-Nazi. Bolz wants to understand why.
Election year East
Illustration: Stephanie Schoell
The election year 2024 is not an arbitrary one. The future of the left has not been so uncertain for a long time, never in the history of the Federal Republic have the political landscape and the electorate been so polarized, never since the Nazi era has a right-wing extremist, partly fascist party been so close to power. We look specifically at developments and decisions in the East that are important for all of Germany. All texts at dasnd.de/wahljahrost.
He questions the ex-neo-Nazi Christian. He wants to know why he joined the right-wing scene in the 90s and how active he was. If Christian avoids it, Bolz follows up. Christian often brushes off his past: “When you meet today, you grin about it.” This also irritates Bolz: “You then grin about it. Another statement that I simply don’t understand.” Bolz continues to ask questions and research the background. When Christian was an election worker, right-wing terrorist and Holocaust denier Manfred Roeder was at the top. In 1971, Roeder was a lawyer for Rudolf Heß. How did Christian feel about it? The ex-neo-Nazi again evades that he acted for the party, “but not for him.” He mentions his exit from the scene almost in passing.
Bolz informs himself further. According to the organization Exit-Deutschland, a break with the past only occurs when there has been “critical reflection, reappraisal and successful questioning of the previous ideology.” The podcast author sees the big picture: If there is no public reappraisal by neo-Nazis like Christian, then “a huge part of the work” is missing. Then those affected would have to tell their stories, “relive the traumatic experiences over and over again, so that everything that happened is not forgotten and ultimately also so that it doesn’t happen again.” At the end of each episode there is a summary and new questions. That’s thought-provoking.
Don Pablo Mulemba is also looking for answers. His mother married a contract worker from Angola. He talks to his parents. You learn how the two had a good time in Eberswalde, but were also met with hostility. When the Berlin Wall fell, jobs were lost and contract workers were forced to leave again. After more than 20 years, his father moved to Angola in 2008, and his mother followed him three years later. Father, mother and Mulemba now live in Berlin.
Mai’s father was also a contract worker, but from Vietnam. Together with Mai, the reporter visits her former home in Sachsendorf (Cottbus). Mai looks at the ground so that the shape of her eyes cannot be seen, Mulemba puts on the hood so that his frizzy hair cannot be seen. They have both developed protective mechanisms and talk about them. For Mulemba, it becomes a matter of self-awareness when the Tunisian Ahmed reports on his experiences and his commitment to tolerance. Ahmed moved to Chemnitz in 2015 and, unlike Mulemba, stayed in the east.
Biographies often overlap. For example, those of Christian and Silke, who are looking for orientation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They were left alone in their youth between mass unemployment and a new beginning for which no one was prepared. “Fascho or Punk?” was the title of the first season, which almost seemed to be a coincidence. Because both were looking for a place of belonging. Silke joined a group of anti-fascist punks.
The second season is entitled “The 90s repeat themselves”. The youth looked for their own places during the Corona lockdown, and the right-wing scene often gave them shelter. “Compartment Boots” creates connections that show what is going wrong in our society: it is not youth that is the problem, but rather the way in which crises and grievances are ignored.
Both seasons of “Springer Boots” are available in the ARD audio library and on all common podcast platforms.
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