"WIR"

Some Fragmentary Notes on the Use of "Us" and "Them" in the History of West German Pop Music (1966-92).

by Martin Conrads
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Pre-89 West Germany has always been a country, where at least the political notion of "Us" vs "Them", after the war, had been part of very specific contrasts like "FRG vs GDR", "Berlin vs Berlin", "capitalism vs communism", "right vs left", "state power vs terrorism" etc.

The theme of "Us" vs "Them" has always also been a crucial, yet for the most part hidden path of (West) German pop music. Struggling with Germany's Nazi history (or on the other hand: rejecting responsibilities by creating kitsch versions of an ahistoric feeling of "Heimat"), German popular music, after WW II, found itself in a setting, where the contrast of "old vs young", "short hair vs long hair", "traditionalism vs (post-) modernism" defined the rules of discourse.

With Germany definitely not being pop's homeland, West German pop culture, for decades also had to take position in a "belated" conflict about the cultural differentiations between low U-Musik (Unterhaltungsmusik) and high E-Musik (Ernste Musik) – "light music" vs "serious music". So, until the late Eighties, when, with capitalism's provisional victory, the path was made for a total consumerism to finally take over the cultural setting for the years to come (thus seemingly levelling the opponent approaches), the cultural clash of generations has always been embedded in a specific (pre)war generational "Us" confronting a postwar generational "Them" and, vice versa, a specific (pre)war generational "Them" confronted by a postwar generational "Us".

As for West German pop history, this discourse about "Us" vs "Them" became transparent for the first time when in 1966 the Austrian popular singer Freddy Quinn (who mostly is identified as German) wrote the song "Wir" ("Us"/"We"). This song, camouflaged in a folk tune style, for the reactionary audience it was addressing, functioned as an aggressive accusation to name a common enemy: long hair, Beat, youth culture, early Hippies, Pop, modernism, progress, revolt – in other words: "Wir" was the reactionary anthem against "Them" - West Germany‘s "children of Marx and Coca Cola":

"Wer hat noch nicht die Hoffnung verloren? WIR!
Und dankt noch denen, die uns geboren? WIR!
Doch wer will weiter nur protestieren,
bis nichts mehr da ist zum protestieren? IHR! IHR! IHR!"

//

"Who has not given up hope yet? Us!
And who is still grateful to those who gave us birth? Us!
But who just wants to protest,
until there is nothing left to protest against? YOU! YOU! YOU!"

Quinn, somehow being a German language Engelbert-Humperdinck-meets-Tom-Jones-type, shortly joined the French Foreign Legion, he worked as a sailor on the seas and later on presented circus shows on German TV. Being of age today, with rare appearances in the media, he still functions as the grandseigneur of the German "Heimat" industry, which had it's commercial breakthrough in the conservative climate of the Kohl government of the 80s and 90s.

Quinn's "WIR" can easily serve as a starting point to research on slogans, punchlines, titles and lyrics in (West) German pop histoy. Here, the production of the contrast of "Us" vs "Them" has seen different ways and was used in differentiated styles and for dissimilar poltical agendas.

It took some time, until Quinn's provocation was challegend by them "Thems": It has to be noted, that there actually didn't exist any German language "anthem" for the protesters of 1968 (for example, most German Beat bands were known to only play cover versions of British bands together with the original English lyrics). So, it was only in 1972 that the Berlin-based band "Ton Steine Scherben" ("Clay Stones Broken Pieces", with "Ton" also meaning "tone" or "sound") released the double LP "Keine Macht für Niemand" ("No power to anyone"), which became "the initial moment for German rock music", as Blixa Bargeld of the Einstürzende Neubauten would later put it.

This album, which included songs like "Allein machen sie dich ein" ("When you're alone, they will come upon you"), "Die letzte Schlacht gewinnen wir" ("The last battle will be won by us"), "Wir müssen hier raus!" ("We have to get out of here!"), featured tunes for a generation radicalised by the events of 1968. There were especially two tracks on the record, which became very popular among the West German radical left of the 70s and 80s, with echoes to be heard until today. The one track was the "Rauch-Haus-Song", a song about the squatting of a former hospital building in Berlin's Kreuzberg district (the same house which, in 1974, became the Künstlerhaus Bethanien). It served as an identifying moment of solidarity, especially for the Berlin squatting movement of the 80s:

"Doch die Leute im besetzten Haus
Riefen: "Ihr kriegt uns hier nicht raus!
Das ist unser Haus – schmeißt doch endlich
Schmidt und Press und Mosch aus Kreuzberg raus!"

//

"But the people in the squatted house
Shouted: "You won't get us out of here!
This is our house – it's time to finally throw
Schmidt and Press and Mosch [local investors at this time] out of Kreuzberg!"

The other popular song from this album, the title-giving track "Keine Macht für Niemand" marked the beginnging of a political struggle, which locally was grounded in Berlin's Kreuzberg district for the most part and, on a nationwide level, was mirroring the specific West German situation of the Seventies with the Red Army Fraction confronting state power:

"Im Süden, im Osten, im Norden, im Westen,
Es sind überall die dieselben, die uns erpressen.
In jeder Stadt und in jedem Land
Heißt die Parole von unserem Kampf,
Keine Macht für Niemand!

Komm rüber Bruder, reih dich ein,
Komm rüber Schwester, du bist nicht allein.
Komm rüber Mutter, wir sind auf deiner Seite,
Komm rüber Alter, wir woll'n das Gleiche."

//

"In the South, in the East, in the North, in the West,
It's the same people everywhere who put us down,
In every town and in every land
The slogan of our fight is:
No power to anyone.

Come over, brother, join us,
Come over, sister, you are not alone,
Come over, mother, we are on your side,
Come over, old man, we all want the same."

Concluding with the lines "Make your hand a fist!" to fight against oppression and claim solidarity, this song allegedly was commissioned by the RAF , but rejected by the same group as "political nonsene and not of use for the anti-imperialist fight". Nevertheless, it was obvious, that six years after Qinn‘s "Wir", a different "Us" had come to existence.

The Scherben's anti-nationalist and internationalist approach became a reference to a lot of German bands of that period, but especially their early records also where quite influential for the German Punk scene. The 1981 track "Deutschland muss sterben" ("Germany must die") by the Hamburg Punk band "Slime" for example took on (in sharp stylistic contrast to the ironic modernism of Kraftwerk's 1978 "The Robots") a quite similar anti-nationalist agenda of power negation:

"Wo Panzer und Raketen den Frieden "sichern"
AKWs und Computer das Leben "verbessern"
Bewaffnete Roboter überall
Doch Deutschland, wir bringen dich zu Fall
Deutschland muß sterben, damit wir leben können!"

//

"Where tanks and missiles "keep" peace
Where NPPs and computers "improve" life
Armed robots everywhere
But Germany, we make you fall
Germany must die, so we can live!"

The hookline "Germany must die, so we can live!" actually was a subverted meaning of an official inscription on a Nazi monument in Hamburg ("Deutschland muß leben, und wenn wir sterben müssen" / "Germany must live, even if we have to die"), and it was only until recently (2000), that the legal ban to play or perform this song in the public was officially reversed. Now just "who wanted to protest, until there was nothing left to protest against?" It seems uncanny and unlikely, but some echoes of Quinn's "Wir" still reverberate through Germany's pop-cultural state of the nation.

But there also is a diffenent way to tell the end of this story, and it starts in the 80s, too. Although Slime in 1983 published a song about fighting the police called "Alle gegen Alle" ("Everybody Fights Everybody"), a different song with the same title from 1981 by the "Deutsch- Amerikanische Freundschaft" (DAF) marked a strong difference to the older leftist claims on solidarity. With the semiotic shiftes of the 80s, the frontlines now were assembled differently:

"Unsere Kleidung ist so schwarz. Unsere Stiefel sind so schön.
Links den roten Blitz. Rechts den schwarzen Stern.
Unsere Schreie sind so laut.
Unser Tanz ist so wild. Ein neuer böser Tanz.
Alle gegen Alle."

//

"Our gear is so black. Our boots so beautiful.
The red blitz on the left. The black star on the right.
Our shouting so loud.
Our dance so wild. The new evil dance.
Everybody fights everybody."

With its (seemingly) fascistic attitude, which DAF's Gabi Delagado, in a 1983 interview, described as a "concept of a lack of ideology", the anti-Hippie stance of "Alle gegen Alle" (next to other tracks like "Der Mussolini"), beared witness to a climate of political youth protest and solidarity quite different from the 70s: What "Alle gegen Alle" actually talked about (among other things, at least) was the cultural setting of an emerging 80s youth culture in West Germany (and elsewhere), with its characteristics of fragmentation into different scenes based on differently used sign systems. Thus, "Alle gegen Alle" also claimed no solidarity among youths any more, but it stated (and by doing this, it affirmatively criticised) a relativistic predominance of styles and schemes, which had nothing in common with the idealistic appeal of "coming over". If there was solidarity, if there was a common "Us" to oppose Quinn's echo, it was only on a higer level of mainly unpolitical hedonism and appropriation - a motif, that dominated the atmosphere of most of the decade.

When, with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the 80s culturally and politically came to an abrupt halt, things shifted again. Politics returned in favour of Quinn's echo: When the protesters on the streets of East Germany changed their slogans all too rapidly from "Wir sind das Volk!" ("We are the people!") to "Wir sind ein Volk!" ("We are one people!") - which actually became to mean "We are one market!" – Germany's reunification seemed just a matter of time and money. With the GDR becoming part of the FRG on October 3rd, 1990 (and thus ceasing to exist), the space of the difference between "Us" and "Them" vanished. For 40 years this difference had produced one of the main subjects of the specific German postwar situation, now its levelling produced an undifferentiated, a nationalist "One". This definitely wasn't the the kind of unity, the common "Us", Scherben's Rio Reiser dreamt about on "Keine Macht für Niemand":

"Wir werden es schaffen.
Und was kann uns hindern? Kein Geld, keine Waffen,
wenn wir es woll'n. Wir werden es schaffen.
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein.
Wir sind zwei von Millionen, wir sind nicht allein.
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein,
Wir sind 60 Millionen, wir sind nicht allein.
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein.
Frei!

//

"We will make it.
And what can keep us back? Neither money, nor arms.
If we really want it, we will make it.
We are born to be free.
We are two among millions, we are not alone.
We are born to be free,
we are 60 millions, we are not alone.
We are born to be free.
Free!"

From: "Wir müssen hier raus" ("We have to get out of here"). 60 million was West Germany's population at the time, 80 million is Germany's population after Reunification)

As it is known, in the early 90s brutal racist attacks became part of Germany's daily life, leaving behind murdered and injured migrants and reproducing the mediated image of the "ugly German". When, in 1992, the leftist Hamburg Punkrockers "Die Goldenen Zitronen" released the Hip Hop track "80 Millionen Hooligans" ("80 million Hooligans") as a reaction to the racist pogroms, it had become very obvious, that the cultural setting neither was the semiotic playground of DAF's "Alle gegen Alle" anymore, nor the revolutionary dream of being part of an emancipatory people of millions. What was discussed in "80 Millionen Hooligans" was a fight of a people of 80 millions (the big nationalist "Us") against a generalized migrant "Them". Thus, this song was a radical attempt of coming to terms with the conditions of "speaking for the suppressed" at at time when the cultural and political notion of "Us" and "Them" had changed once again: with the end of the two Germans states and the rise of a new one, the echoes of Quinn's song could be heard louder than ever, marking the path for the years to follow.

Martin Conrads is a writer and art critc based in Berlin. His writings include contributions to magazines like Cabinet, de:Bug, Kunstforum, mute, neue bildende kunst, Springerin etc. From March 2001 to February 2002 he was editor for Texte zur Kunst magazine, Berlin. His artistic work has been embedded in collective structures for the most part, using techniques of sound, radio, text, images, the Internet and real space.