Current Book Project: Red Youth, Anti-Imperialism, and East Berlin’s Musical Lifeworlds, 1970s-80s

Snippet: Living in East Berlin in 1973 it would have been nearly impossible not to encounter the slogan ‘anti-imperialist solidarity, peace, and friendship.’[1] It shouted its way off the pages of state newspapers, was plastered on city buildings, and served as a talking point in official speeches. And yet, we are often skeptical of assigning significance to such ideologically laden slogans, questioning their value, doubting their authenticity. Casting them aside as “state speak,” scholars look for answers elsewhere. Red Youth proposes to do the opposite. Rather than reading the slogan as a remnant of a washed-up ideology, this book works to recapture the lifeworlds of East German young people through their interactions with, chafing against, and reclaiming of the very ideas of solidarity, peace, and friendship. Red Youth argues that these concepts were more than stale rhetoric; rather, they undergirded what it meant for young people to live in a world that was shaped through socialist ideology. This was the case as the ideas of anti-imperialist solidarity, peace, and friendship marked the terrain of the everyday public places across the East German capital where young people met, embraced, drank, danced, sang, conversed, and occasionally protested in 1970s and 1980s. Even more so, it was the case because young people themselves interacted with, bantered about, and laid claim to such ideals through their own iterative slants and interpretations—giving them meaning though not necessarily in the ways that the authorities had intended.

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[1] The phrase emerged as part of the official mantra of the international World Festival of Youth and Students, which was inaugurated in the Eastern bloc in the late 1940s. Background needed

A work in progress, Red Youth is a revised version of my dissertation manuscript. The project incorporates materials collected from over ten libraries and archives, including the German Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde (das Bundesarchiv), the Berlin-state archives (das Landesarchiv), the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR (der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR or BStU), the Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste Ost), the Evangelical Central Archive (Evangelisches Zentralarchiv), the Evangelical State Church Archive, (Evangelisches Landeskirchliches Archiv) , the Robert Havemann Society, and the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) in Berlin. Additional materials were obtained from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and the DEFA Film Archive in Amherst, MA.