Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany by Jeff Hayton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany by Jeff Hayton Joe Perry Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany. By Jeff Hayton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xvii + 364. Cloth $100.00. ISBN 978-0198866183. At "the first and only museum dedicated to the world's greatest Punk band, the Ramones," fans and curious visitors can find over 1,000 artifacts that span the band's history: rare photos, posters, instruments, and "stage-worn clothing" including Joey Ramone's gloves and CJ Ramone's "blood-stained finger tape" (https://www.ramonesmuseum.com/). The museum and its extensive website explore all things Ramone—yet as Jeff Hayton explains in the opening pages of his history of German punk, it is surprisingly located in Berlin, not New York, where the band rose to fame. Indeed, as Hayton shows, Germans on both sides of the Berlin Wall had unique affinities for punk rock. Although the subculture had its apotheosis in the 1970s and [End Page 176] 1980s, German punk music, books, films, couture, and concerts continue to attract impressive audiences. "Punk has always been a minority taste," writes Hayton, "but its influence upon German life has been profound" (3). In Culture from the Slums, he tells us why. The alternative identities and communities forged by punks in both East and West Germany helped youths find meaning and purpose in their lives. Mainstream society was "inauthentic," but punk was a vehicle for genuine and independent institutions and lifestyles. Punks challenged conformity in different ways in the capitalist West and the communist East, but on both sides of the Iron Curtain, they forced the state and society to respond to their provocative acts and ideologies. As a "motor for social change," Hayton concludes, punk's impact encouraged both Germanys to shape more heterogeneous and pluralistic societies (8). The book opens with chapters on the transnational origins of the German punk scenes in the FRG and the GDR, and on the diverse beliefs and practices of East and West punks; it concludes with an epilogue on "Memory and Meaning" that explores punk's legacy for politics and culture in the Berlin Republic. In both East and West, authenticity, individuality, and difference (Anderssein), as counterpoised to familiar conventions, were foundational. In the GDR punks repudiated the conformist society shaped by "real-existing socialism." In the FRG they attacked consumer-driven, democratic capitalism. Even as they celebrated creativity and experimentation, punks embraced ideologies of rejection. They targeted conformity, the 1960s generation, school and family, the socio-political status quo, and "modern life" itself. Punks continually policed the boundaries of the subcultural community, condemning those who lacked the requisite authenticity. "Living means more than simply existing," wrote a Hamburg-based punk fanzine, "Are you living?" (63). Culture from the Slums next recounts the history of punk in the FRG and the GDR in fine detail. Punks were always a small minority of youths—perhaps 0.05 percent in West Germany in 1981—but their influence on the social imaginary was far greater than their physical presence. By 1980 Western punk was an established movement, but it was already riven by fractures over art and politics. Making experimental music and singing in German pushed the boundaries of popular culture, helped liberate German rock from Anglo-American hegemonies, and gave voice to postindustrial, Cold War anxieties. But Kunstpunks, who sought radical new sounds, clashed with Hardcores, who favored harder beats and extreme political positions. The schism was exacerbated by the incorporation of punk genres into the increasingly commercialized Neue Deutsche Welle in the early 1980s. When the emergence of the so-called Fun Punk abandoned marginality for commercial success, Hardcore punks turned to violence against police, neo-Nazi skinheads, and even themselves. Although the subculture remained, by the mid-1980s it was exhausted as a viable way to transform the mainstream from the margins. [End Page 177] In East Germany, floundering official attempts to manage the small but tenacious punk scene moved from tolerance to repression to integration across the 1980s. At first, the Stasi tolerated—but closely observed—the tiny number of East German punks. After a concert that...