”Genom blommans historicitet”

Folkmusik och politik i DDR

Abstract

”Through the Flower’s Historicity” — Folk Music and Politics in the GDR During the 1970s, a “Folk Music Revival” began to emerge in the GDR. This movement, which was influenced by, among others, new folk music trends from Ireland, Sweden, and the US, is described by GDR folk musicians as a kind of counter-movement to the dominant singing movement of the time, mostly organized by the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) and the GDR authorities. German Volksmusik was since WWII stigmatized as Nazi and the Folk Music Revival, where folk music was spelled with an ”F” instead of a ”V”, also should renew folk music with the help of influences from other countries, including Western countries.

This article provides some examples of ideas about folk music and politics in the GDR during the 1970s and 1980s which existed among folk musicians, local authorities and the state surveillance apparatus. Through historical discourse analyses of some concrete examples from sources from Stasi archives and published interviews with contemporary witnesses the scope for action between political adaption and artistic freedom is examined. More specifically, the article provides insight into how the authorities, and in particular the Stasi, exercised power in concrete terms, how that power was justified, accepted, and challenged, and what consequences this had for those affected.

The study shows that in the early 1970s, when the first folk music groups outside the official singing movement emerged, the GDR authorities were not particularly familiar with the phenomenon and were unprepared for the numerous groups that began to appear in the late 1970s and during the 1980s. It was common for folk musicians to try to maintain contact with the authorities responsible for organizing musical life, but at the same time they also tried to express social criticism by, for example, rewriting the lyrics of well-known songs or embedding performed songs in a socially critical context. While some musicians succeeded in building a career as folk musicians in this way, others got into trouble with the authorities and some, such as Wolf Biermann and Stephan Krawcyk, were expelled to West Germany.