What was the music culture of East German youths like during the GDR and how did the communist state deal with it? To answer that question, Marlene Schrijnders, a former student of Germany Studies at the University of Amsterdam, delved into the Berlin archives. She won the Volkskrant/DIA thesis prize for her research.
Anything that even smelled of the capitalist West and American culture was strictly forbidden in the GDR, communist East Germany during the Cold War. The communist party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) infiltrated youth clubs to find out whether GDR youth were not listening to the wrong music. But despite strict state control, a vibrant youth culture emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, fully inspired by American and British rock music.
Marlene Schrijnders presents this music and youth culture in her prize-winning German-language master's thesis ‘Heiβe Musik’ im Kalten Krieg. Jugendmusikkultur in Ost-Berlin 1956-66' map. She did extensive archival research in five different Berlin archives. She discovered piles of state documents in which Stasi infiltrators and the Volkspolitei reported on how young people listened to what they Heiβe Musik ("hot music").
These officials named a new phenomenon in these files:rock and roll gangs with strange names like the Elvis Presley club, the Gentleman hobos, the Broadway gang, the jeans gang, and the leather jacket clique. At the end of the 1950s, the SED did not know what to do with what they considered to be a dangerous, burgeoning youth culture.
Why did you want to research this? “In any case, I wanted to do something with East Berlin, preferably the 50s and 60s. That is a very exciting time. The idea of a new beginning after the Second World War was still in the air. In large parts of the world, “Americanization” set in. Rock music conquered the world. I wanted to see whether, and if so how, this Americanization of culture also permeated the GDR. I started it very open-minded, just to see what I came across.”
How did you approach your research? “In Berlin I visited all kinds of different archives, including the Bundesarchiv, the Landesarchiv and the archive of the secret service Stasi in search of documents that could tell something about this. As it turned out, there were tons of state reports on youth culture. You always have to be careful with government documents from a totalitarian state, because they are almost never objective.”
“Nevertheless, because everything was described in extreme detail in the GDR, you can get a realistic picture between the lines. Other archives, such as the archive of the youth radio station DT-64 (after the Deutschland Treffen festival in 1964, where the Beatles could be heard for the first time) also contained letters from young people themselves. They gave a more complete picture.”
You would think that the state was doing everything it could to suppress this youth culture. How did they deal with it? “The SED did not like at all that popular enemy America tried to lead the socialist youth off the right path through her music. The files show that the police knew exactly what was going on in the youth clubs, but that they did not get a good grip on it. Music cannot simply be stopped by repression. What is very interesting, and also clearly noticeable in the sources, is that once the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, the control and repression diminished somewhat.”
Instrumental 'beat music' from East Berlin.
“In the early 1960s, the police continued to try to keep the center of Berlin as free of rock music as possible. After all, socialism had to show its strongest side in the center. But in the suburbs of the city a kind of tolerance zone arose. This development had never been demonstrated before. It is precisely in those suburbs that all kinds of youth bands started making modern, western 'beat music'. Especially instrumental, because English-language music was still out of the question.”
What are you going to do with your thesis prize – a cash prize of 1500 euros and a two-day internship at the Volkskrant? “For the internship I can choose between Amsterdam, Brussels or Berlin. That choice is very easy for me! I would very much like to become a correspondent in Berlin and move to that city. So this is a great opportunity for me.”