Punk in the Church. East Berlin 1979-89
An exhibition area in the ‘Freiraum’ room at BERLIN GLOBAL gives a voice to the punk scene in the former GDR.
East and West Berlin were more connected than one might think, despite the Wall. Youth movements and their music always found a way to transcend the real-existing borders. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, punk also arrived in the eastern part of the city. Through forbidden music stations like BBC and RIAS, young people heard for the first time the raw, untamed sound of the Sex Pistols or the dub of The Clash. Through word of mouth and cassette recordings from East Berlin, the music spread to the rest of the GDR. Notable punk scenes also emerged in Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, and Erfurt.
Now punk has also made it into the museum. ‘This subculture, which was marginalized even in the West, fascinated the youth in the GDR. They were first captivated by the non-conformist punk, which caused a stir and also gave them the opportunity to distance themselves from the system,’ says curator Ulrike Rothe, who, together with the team from the Agency for Education, History and Politics e. V., was instrumental in designing the exhibition. ‘In the GDR, where people’s lives were determined and planned from above, the slogan of the youth was more like “Too much future,” and thus punk quickly became one of the most radical protest movements in socialism.’
Unpolitically political
The initially rather apolitical East Berlin punks met to listen to music, fool around, and drink beer at Alexanderplatz or in the Kulturpark Plänterwald. However, they were monitored from the beginning by the political department of the People’s Police, and there were arrests on the open street. Even in schools and workplaces, pressure was exerted on the punks, as Anne Hahn recounts: ‘It was incomprehensible that the youth were not interested in the future of the GDR. Teachers, supervisors, and parents were instructed to put massive pressure on the young people.The author and punk insider worked as a research assistant on the museum project. She was active in the scene in Magdeburg during her youth. Because she organized some punk concerts, she was denied access to university studies. While attempting to escape to the West via Azerbaijan, she was arrested and brought back to the GDR, where she spent half a year in prison until the Wall fell.
Secret Concerts
As Hahn describes in her book ‘Pogo in Bratwurstland,’ the first punk bands in the GDR were formed, the most famous being ‘Schleimkeim’ from Erfurt, ‘Namenlos,’ ‘Feeling B,’ and ‘Planlos’ from Berlin. Spies were quickly infiltrated into the punk scene, and secret concerts were broken up with police violence. The brutal vehemence with which the state reacted to the punks is astonishing, as there were initially only around 900 people in the entire GDR who were attributed to the punk scene according to Stasi records. The punks found refuge from constant persecution in the political free space of the churches, where they could meet and were largely safe from state persecutionThe open work of the Protestant churches was aimed at non-denominational youth from all subcultures and was carried out by specially trained social deacons, often against the resistance of their own church members. The contrast can also be seen in the exhibition:
Punks Rocks, Jesus Blocks!
A wall-sized photo from an altar room with the cross and the poster ‘Punk lives – Jesus sticks’ proves that the young punks had a rather ambivalent relationship with the church. The exhibits also show how inventive the young punks were, how they spread their music via cassettes, made protest buttons, or tailored their own outfits. There are also self-made films of punk concerts to see, as well as altered identification photos from the Stasi
Punk music can be heard. Many of the rare photos, film clips, and exhibits come from the collection of the Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft and from private lenders who saved these pieces from their youth.
“We had no respect for anyone and a lot of dark energy.”
Anne Hahn is a contemporary witness and was active in the punk scene in Magdeburg during her youth. The author has contributed to the exhibition.
“When I look back through time, I see us as if it were yesterday: dark figures with wild hearts, between thirteen and twenty. We had no respect for anyone and a lot of dark energy. We ran around in groups, in every small town there were a few of us, in the cities large crowds. Leather jackets, hair up. Some drank too much, others drank tea. One sniffed glue until he fell off the roof. One wore bicycle chains, another an old lady’s handbag, another their rat. One wore riding breeches, another a jacket, the third a bomber jacket. One liked to paint, another wrote poems, we loved the same music. We read Bakunin and Nietzsche, played chess or love skat. We pilgrimaged to our concerts, fled from the cops and laughed at the squares, the proletarians at the bus stops, the caretakers and ABVs. One emigrated, another went to prison, one killed their father, another had a child.”
Published in the Tagesspiegel on 14.12.2024
The exhibition presentation can be seen in the room Free Space at BERLIN GLOBAL.