Berlin полностью

While classical music was heavily subsidized by the East German government from the beginning, jazz and rock were repressed in the early years of the GDR as an unwholesome influence from the degenerate West. Like Hitler and Goebbels before him, Ulbricht regarded the West’s popular music as a cultural Trojan horse that was best kept outside the walls. It proved impossible, however, to prevent East German citizens from listening to such music on West German radio, or from trying to emulate it at home.

Rock in particular caught on with the younger generation, which, even more than in the West, saw it as a protest against the stuffy culture of their elders. During the Ulbricht era aspiring East Berlin rockers were obliged to play at out-of-the-way venues in the rural hinterland, such as the legendary Rübezahl Gasthaus on the Müggelsee, but their concerts nonetheless attracted large and enthusiastic crowds. Having watched his predecessor fail to beat the rock invasion, Honecker decided to join it. His regime attempted to create an official rock ’n’ roll culture that could more easily be controlled. The Ministry of Culture gave its blessing to a number of bands—among them the Puhdys, Panta Rhei, the Klaus-Renft-Combo, and Elektra—which were allowed to perform inside the city limits so long as they followed certain guidelines. For example, in order that their music contribute to proper “socialist personality development,” the bands were forbidden from singing in English or wearing their hair long unless it was covered in a net. For the officially sanctioned “Action Rhythm” concert at the Friedrichstadtpalast in 1972, participating groups were required to submit all lyrics for preapproval.

Die Puhdys, a GDR rock band, in performance in 1986

These restrictions, ludicrous even by GDR standards, were soon dropped. In 1982 the GDR’s first official rock festival, “Rock for Peace,” took place in the Palace of the Republic. The exalted venue showed how far rock had come in terms of official acceptance. Now the regime was even claiming that “young people’s dance music”—the official term for rock—was not a Western invention at all but a natural outgrowth of East German culture. As one bureaucrat put it: “The rhythm patterns and sound structures of rock music reflect a sensuousness, a sensuous relation to reality, which, irrespective of all commercial filters, has its social roots in our working-class youth.” Official acceptance, however, was very much a Pyrrhic victory for a music that was supposed to be rebellious, and the bands that played at the big state-sanctioned concerts were dismissed by the kids as Staatsrocker. Moreover, most East German rock fans still preferred to listen to foreign bands on records and Western radio—or, if possible, live. Whenever major Western groups performed near the Wall in West Berlin, as they sometimes did, hordes of young East Berliners instantly materialized on the other side of the border. During the 750th anniversary celebrations a major riot broke out in East Berlin when the Volkspolizei tried to prevent thousands of young East Germans from listening to a concert near the Reichstag put on by David Bowie, Genesis, and the Eurythmics. The rioting quickly turned political, with the kids shouting, “Die Mauer muss weg (The Wall must go).”

Some of East Berlin’s rock bands had their digs in Prenzlauer Berg, the one part of the city that produced a vibrant countercultural scene in the last years of the GDR. If the East German capital had a Greenwich Village or a Haight Ashbury, this was it. The area, bounded by Dunckerstrasse, Lychener Strasse, and Schliemannstrasse, was pitted with places dispensing LSD and hashish. The district boasted seedy Kneipen like the Oderkahn, which turned into an informal jazz club after official closing hours. Here were also the classic “scene cafés,” the Mosaik and the Wiener Café (known fondly as the “WC”), where intellectuals and artists like Robert Havemann, Grit Poppe, and Bärbel Bohley gathered to discuss ways to give the GDR a “socialism with a human face” (presumably not Honecker’s). The “EP Gallerie,” which displayed the work of young artists who could not or would not get into the official shows, became a byword for the cool and the forbidden. Yet one should not mythologize Prenzlauer Berg: along with all the bohemian artists and earnest reformers there were plenty of Stasi collaborators, and all too often they were one and the same.