Popular Music and Internationalism in East Germany - Detailseite

Popular music played important roles in GDR daily life, cultural production, and state policy.  In fact, what kinds of music citizens consumed was a matter of great importance to East German officials, who debated these questions with surprising intensity and regularity – perhaps in part because VEB Schallplatten, the state record label, was one of the Eastern Bloc’s more successful state-owned businesses. GDR officials wanted East German artists to compete successfully with Western ones, which ironically led to reduced state control of the artistic sphere; they also considered the arts an important way in which to create an international socialist community and counter capitalist cultural influences, leading them to support numerous artistic and cultural exchanges with other socialist countries. Among the more successful of these efforts was Berlin's Festival des politischen Liedes, which for two decades brought together top protest music artists from around the world, and might even be considered the first world music festival. But East German citizens found ways yet other to interact with international sounds, for instance by learning chachachá, mambo, or breakdance or by playing metal, blues, or punk. By the time the Wall fell, East Germans had developed lively rock, pop, jazz, underground, and international music scenes. Meanwhile, East German music scholars played central roles in the development of the new field of popular music studies. This class will examine the popular music landscape that once surrounded Humboldt University by reading existing literature on popular music scenes, policy, production, scholarship, and internationalism in East Germany, as well as considering how East German music culture affects current musical practice. We will also gain a fuller and more complex view of this landscape by examining primary sources from official magazines to audio recordings and by speaking with participants.

Bimberg, Guido. 2004. “Cha-cha-chá und die Preußen. Kubanische Musik und die DDR.“ In Alles in meinem Dasein ist Musik: Kubanische Musik von Rumba bis Techno, eds. Torsten Esser und Patrick Fröhlicher. Vervuert, pp.487-498.

Binas-Preisendörfer, Susanne and Arne Wachtmann. 2016. „Rammstein under Observation.” In Perspectives on German Popular Music, eds. Michael Ahlers and Chrisopher Jacke. New York: Routledge.

Giersdorf, Jens. 2014. Volkseigene Körper: Ostdeutscher Tanz seit 1945. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Hansen, Lindsay. 2012. “A Well-oiled Machine: The Creation and Dissolution of East Germany’s VEB Deutsche Schallplatten.” ARSC Journal 43: 1-22.

Hosek, Jennifer Ruth. 2007. “Buena Vista Deutschland: Nation and Gender in Wenders, Gaulke and Eggert.” German Politics & Society 25(1):  46–69.

Howes, Seth. 2016. “Subcultural studies between the blocs: unexpected cosmopolitanism and stubborn blind spots in East German theories of punk.” In Beyond No Future: Cultures of German Punk, eds. Mirko M. Hall, Seth Howes, Cyrus M. Shahan. Bloomsbury.

Larkey, Edward, ed. 2000. A sound legacy? Music and politics in East Germany. Harry & Helen Gray Humanities Program Series, vol. 8. Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.

Larkey, Edward. 2007. Rotes Rockradio: populäre Musik und die Kommerzialisierung des DDR-Rundfunks. Lit Verlag.

Mayer, Günter. 1984. “Popular music in the GDR.” Journal of Popular Culture 18(3):145-158.

Rauhut, Michael. 2016. Ein Klang - zwei Welten: Blues im geteilten Deutschland, 1945 bis 1990. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Robb, David. “Political song in the GDR: The cat-and-mouse game with censorship and institutions.” In Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s, ed. David Robb, 227-254. Rochester, NY: Camden House.

Schubert, Maria. 2017. “’Oh freedom!’ Afroamerikanische Freiheitsklänge in der DDR.“ In Amerika-Euphorie - Amerika-Hysterie: Populäre Musik made in USA in der Wahrnehmung der Deutschen, 1914-2014,  eds. Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost, pp. 257-276. Populäre Kultur und Musik, vo. 20. Münster: Waxman.

Weissenbacher, Katharina. 2016. “Der Jazz unter Kontrolle des Regimes: Einblicke in der Entwicklung des Jazz in der DDR nach der Mauerbau.“ In Amerika-Euphorie - Amerika-Hysterie: Populäre Musik made in USA in der Wahrnehmung der Deutschen, 1914-2014,  eds. Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost, pp. 185-200. Populäre Kultur und Musik, vo. 20. Münster: Waxman.

Wicke, Peter. 2016. “Looking East: Popular Music Studies between Theory and Practice.” In Perspectives on German Popular Music, eds. Michael Ahlers and Chrisopher Jacke. New York: Routledge.

Wicke, Peter and John Shepard. 2005. “’The cabaret is dead’: Rock culture as state enterprise.” In Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions, edited by Tony Bennett, Simon Frith, Larry Grossberg, John Shepherd, Graeme Turne. New York: Routledge

Wießner, Matthias. 2006. „Die DDR und das internationale Urheberrechtsregime.“ Entgrenzung des Eigentums in modernen Gesellschaften und Rechtskulturen 16(5-6):249-267.

Zaddach, Wolf-Georg. 2018. Heavy Metal in der DDR: Szene, Akteure, Praktiken. Bielefeld: Transcript.

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