WEBVTT - Never Mind the Stasi 0:00:15.170 --> 0:00:31.690 Pushkin. The place is East Berlin, the year nineteen eighty three. 0:00:32.570 --> 0:00:35.410 We're in an interrogation room in the offices of the 0:00:35.490 --> 0:00:42.610 Ministry of State Security known as the Stasi. There's a 0:00:42.610 --> 0:00:46.290 filing cabinet, a dirty neck curtain at the window, a 0:00:46.410 --> 0:00:50.650 view outside of gray concrete blocks. In the middle of 0:00:50.650 --> 0:00:53.450 the room. There's a cheap wood veneered desk. On it 0:00:53.570 --> 0:00:57.130 as a phone, an intercombox with an array of cool buttons, 0:00:57.410 --> 0:01:00.450 and a big old fashioned reel to reel tape recorder. 0:01:02.170 --> 0:01:06.090 Behind the desk is the interrogator. He wears a uniform, 0:01:06.250 --> 0:01:10.130 a gray military jacket, a shirt and tar a peak 0:01:10.210 --> 0:01:14.450 cat placed carefully on the desk beside him. He's a 0:01:14.450 --> 0:01:17.650 committed communist who's sworn an oath to defend the German 0:01:17.690 --> 0:01:22.090 Democratic Republic the GDR, commonly known to the rest of 0:01:22.130 --> 0:01:26.650 the world as East Germany. The interrogator has the authority 0:01:26.730 --> 0:01:28.850 to do more or less whatever he wants, and he 0:01:28.930 --> 0:01:32.490 doesn't have to worry about privacy. He can have people followed, 0:01:32.730 --> 0:01:37.330 listen to their phone calls, break into their apartments, arrest them. 0:01:37.570 --> 0:01:41.210 Usually his interested in dissidence. Political types who meet to 0:01:41.290 --> 0:01:44.690 talk about democracy or the environment will make plans to 0:01:44.810 --> 0:01:48.690 escape to the West, but today he has a different 0:01:48.730 --> 0:01:58.850 kind of problem on his hands. Sitting at the end 0:01:58.890 --> 0:02:01.810 of the desk in front of the microphone is a 0:02:01.890 --> 0:02:06.450 skinny teenage boy. He has bleached spiky hair, a dog 0:02:06.490 --> 0:02:09.370 collar and an old suit jacket with an A for 0:02:09.450 --> 0:02:13.330 anarchy spray painted on the back. The kid is something 0:02:13.410 --> 0:02:18.610 completely new, something never before seen in the GDR. He's 0:02:18.610 --> 0:02:24.970 a pump. Everyone calls him Pancau after the North Berlin 0:02:25.010 --> 0:02:28.450 neighborhood where he comes from. And he's the lead singer 0:02:28.490 --> 0:02:33.130 of a band, East Germany's very first punk band. They're 0:02:33.130 --> 0:02:37.210 called plan Loos, which you could translate as aimless, having 0:02:37.250 --> 0:02:40.970 no plan. By most standards, they're barely a band at all, 0:02:42.090 --> 0:02:46.050 but to the Starzi they're a threat to the very 0:02:46.130 --> 0:03:05.490 foundations of the state. This is Into the Zone, a 0:03:05.610 --> 0:03:09.450 podcast about opposites and how borders are never as clear 0:03:09.490 --> 0:03:14.570 as we think. I'm Harry Kunzru. This episode is about 0:03:14.690 --> 0:03:19.290 government power and individual liberty. It's about how you look 0:03:19.330 --> 0:03:22.890 in public and what you think in private, and what 0:03:23.010 --> 0:03:25.450 it was like to live in a country that wanted 0:03:25.490 --> 0:03:30.970 to abolish privacy altogether. And it's about one of the 0:03:31.010 --> 0:03:35.730 most powerful binary oppositions in modern history, the Cold War 0:03:44.090 --> 0:03:53.370 in Flabbentro, in ostarch Land, Belan Gibson, Punk and plant 0:03:54.570 --> 0:03:57.610 Fu and the Bent. That's what Pankou sounds like. Now. 0:03:58.010 --> 0:04:00.330 His real name is Michael, but everyone still calls him 0:04:00.330 --> 0:04:02.810 by his old nickname, and he still lives in the 0:04:02.810 --> 0:04:06.490 neighborhood of Pankau. He's telling me about the Stasi, how 0:04:06.490 --> 0:04:09.570 they thought in a very top down way. The word 0:04:09.610 --> 0:04:13.810 he uses as patriarchal the stars. He reasoned like this, 0:04:14.850 --> 0:04:18.610 Berlin is the center of East Germany. In Berlin there's 0:04:18.690 --> 0:04:22.090 one punk band, plan Loss. Therefore, they are the leading 0:04:22.130 --> 0:04:24.410 band and the singer as its head. If we can 0:04:24.450 --> 0:04:27.930 get him, then we can neutralize the threat of punks. 0:04:29.210 --> 0:04:33.370 In that interrogation room in nineteen eighty three, the Stasi 0:04:33.450 --> 0:04:37.650 officer has one goal. He wants to turn Pancao into 0:04:37.650 --> 0:04:41.490 an informer for the state. The officer thinks if he 0:04:41.530 --> 0:04:44.050 can get this one kid to work for him, then 0:04:44.090 --> 0:04:48.090 he'll be able to control the whole punk movement. The 0:04:48.130 --> 0:04:51.090 officer will be a hero. They'll probably give him a medal. 0:04:52.490 --> 0:04:55.410 I grew up during the Cold War. If he went 0:04:55.490 --> 0:04:58.570 around at that time, it's hard to imagine the degree 0:04:58.650 --> 0:05:02.770 to which the Cold War organized everything, the whole world 0:05:03.410 --> 0:05:07.890 into one big us versus them. You knew you were 0:05:07.930 --> 0:05:11.490 on one side. On the other, there was a sort 0:05:11.490 --> 0:05:15.210 of mirror world, totally different, and of course the two 0:05:15.250 --> 0:05:20.170 worlds had nuclear weapons pointed at each other. It was madness. 0:05:23.690 --> 0:05:26.610 One summer when I was fifteen, I went on an 0:05:26.690 --> 0:05:31.170 exchange program, staying with the family in West Germany. One 0:05:31.250 --> 0:05:33.370 day we went to the border somewhere out in the 0:05:33.450 --> 0:05:36.410 country to look at the barbed wire fence and the watchtowers. 0:05:37.410 --> 0:05:41.210 It was a weird feeling. We'd read George Orwell's nineteen 0:05:41.210 --> 0:05:44.450 eighty four in school, and I imagined on the other 0:05:44.490 --> 0:05:47.170 side of the wire as a gray world where everyone 0:05:47.170 --> 0:05:50.250 had to be exactly alike but all the same. I 0:05:50.290 --> 0:05:53.090 was curious. If I'd been a bit older, I would 0:05:53.090 --> 0:05:56.770 have wanted to cross over to see for myself, because 0:05:56.810 --> 0:06:03.690 it truly was a different world for the unlucky inhabitants 0:06:03.730 --> 0:06:06.690 of the eastern half of Germany. The horrors of the 0:06:06.810 --> 0:06:10.450 Nazi period were followed by the Soviet patient, then the 0:06:10.530 --> 0:06:15.650 regime of the GDR. The GDR was governed ontotalitarian lines. 0:06:16.010 --> 0:06:19.770 The Communist Party controlled everything including where you worked or 0:06:19.810 --> 0:06:24.490 went to school, how you spent your leisure time. Berlin 0:06:24.730 --> 0:06:28.250 was central to the identity of both East and West Germany. 0:06:29.610 --> 0:06:32.690 Though the city lay deep in East German territory, it 0:06:32.810 --> 0:06:35.810 had been divided just after the war. The city was 0:06:35.850 --> 0:06:39.610 split in two. West Berlin was connected to Western Europe 0:06:39.690 --> 0:06:43.410 only by a long walled off highway. West Berlin was 0:06:43.450 --> 0:06:46.690 an outpost, like a probe stuck into the side of 0:06:46.730 --> 0:06:54.930 the Eastern bloc. In nineteen sixty one, the East German 0:06:54.970 --> 0:06:58.770 government built what it called the anti Fascistictis Schutzva, the 0:06:58.890 --> 0:07:02.730 Anti Fascist Protection Wall, to separate West and East Berlin. 0:07:03.810 --> 0:07:05.890 The government said the war was to keep its citizens 0:07:05.890 --> 0:07:08.810 safe from the fascists in the West, but everyone knew 0:07:09.250 --> 0:07:13.770 really to keep them from leaving. The East. German communist 0:07:13.850 --> 0:07:17.770 leaders had lived almost unimaginably hard and terrifying lives. They'd 0:07:17.810 --> 0:07:21.810 lived through stylinist purges, the Gulag, the Nazi concentration camps. 0:07:22.450 --> 0:07:26.170 Their reality was paranoid and violent, and they were determined 0:07:26.170 --> 0:07:28.450 that their enemies would never get the jump on them, 0:07:29.210 --> 0:07:33.930 so they set up a sprawling domestic intelligence service dedicated 0:07:33.970 --> 0:07:37.290 to watching the citizens for the slightest sign of descent 0:07:38.370 --> 0:07:41.730 the stars. He had informers everywhere. An informer could be 0:07:41.730 --> 0:07:45.210 your colleague at work, one of your roommates, even someone 0:07:45.250 --> 0:07:48.850 in your family. Add to the informers another two point 0:07:48.890 --> 0:07:51.610 two million party members who had a duty to report 0:07:51.690 --> 0:07:55.170 whether other citizens were following orders, and you had one 0:07:55.170 --> 0:07:58.170 of the most pervasive spying machines ever to exist on 0:07:58.290 --> 0:08:03.370 planet Earth. But right in the middle of the GDR 0:08:03.610 --> 0:08:08.090 was an island, a place the spying machine couldn't control, 0:08:08.330 --> 0:08:13.890 a hotbed of dissident culture and radical ideas. West Berlin. 0:08:15.770 --> 0:08:19.810 My name is Mark Reader. I'm a music producer and 0:08:19.970 --> 0:08:24.330 over the record label Cole masterminded for success known as MFS, 0:08:25.330 --> 0:08:29.250 and now I've lived in Berlin for false and Wild. 0:08:32.290 --> 0:08:35.490 In nineteen seventy eight, Mark Reader was living in the 0:08:35.490 --> 0:08:39.410 North of England in Manchester, dreaming of making it in 0:08:39.450 --> 0:08:43.170 the music business. He worked in a record store and 0:08:43.250 --> 0:08:45.850 he'd fallen in love with the sound of West German 0:08:45.890 --> 0:08:50.610 bands who were experimenting with futuristic new sounds, bands like 0:08:50.730 --> 0:08:57.450 Can the Cosmic, Joker's Noise, craft Work and Tangerine Dream. 0:08:57.570 --> 0:09:00.690 Mark was so obsessed with this music that he decided 0:09:00.730 --> 0:09:03.530 to visit the place where it came from. When he 0:09:03.570 --> 0:09:06.890 came to Berlin. What was he able to describe it? 0:09:06.930 --> 0:09:09.330 Just what it looked, what it looked like. It was 0:09:09.370 --> 0:09:12.410 different from from the city that you knew, the fact 0:09:12.410 --> 0:09:14.930 that it was bullet riddled and gray, and rows of 0:09:14.970 --> 0:09:18.770 houses where obviously bombs had fallen and kind of destroyed 0:09:18.810 --> 0:09:20.570 the houses, and so he had a lot of gaps 0:09:21.010 --> 0:09:24.290 in the buildings and stuff. It was like Manchester was 0:09:24.330 --> 0:09:27.890 a bit kind of like a bit decrepit, falling apart, 0:09:28.410 --> 0:09:32.130 but Berlin was the same, but bullet riddled. But first, 0:09:32.490 --> 0:09:37.730 let's put the picture straight. This film tells the time 0:09:37.770 --> 0:09:40.970 when we had all the discovers, girls still had their 0:09:40.970 --> 0:09:45.210 pubic hair, and boys wore perms and makeup. Mark loved 0:09:45.250 --> 0:09:48.610 Berlin so much that he never went home. He's lived 0:09:48.610 --> 0:09:51.610 there for more than forty years now. A few years 0:09:51.610 --> 0:09:54.050 ago he made a documentary about the city's music scene 0:09:54.050 --> 0:09:57.810 in the eighties. It's called b movie Lust and Sound 0:09:57.930 --> 0:10:00.970 in Berlin. If you want to feel jealous of someone 0:10:00.970 --> 0:10:05.130 else's misspent youth, it's well worth watching. It was a 0:10:05.210 --> 0:10:07.770 time when you could smoke him pubs and on TV. 0:10:09.170 --> 0:10:12.850 One had a record player and the wartman. There were 0:10:12.850 --> 0:10:19.650 Scottied Houses, no Hood Band, the Red Armorfraction, packed telephone boxes, 0:10:20.650 --> 0:10:26.250 Polar rode nod Dishwashers, Super eight film, anti gay laws, 0:10:26.410 --> 0:10:31.090 the Deutsch Mark, the German Democratic Republic, the Wall and 0:10:31.290 --> 0:10:40.690 West Berlin. Mark knew everybody. He hung out with the 0:10:40.730 --> 0:10:44.450 pioneers of industrial music, the band Einstead Send any Bouton. 0:10:45.330 --> 0:10:48.090 Mark shared a squat with Nick Cave, the young Gothic 0:10:48.130 --> 0:10:52.570 eminence behind the Birthday Party. He stayed up late, made movies, 0:10:52.930 --> 0:10:56.970 played music and became part of the Berlin underground. But 0:10:57.090 --> 0:10:59.610 you became a sort of connection between the Manchester scene 0:10:59.810 --> 0:11:02.770 and Berlin. And from what I understand, you bought joy 0:11:02.810 --> 0:11:08.410 Division univered to Berlin. Yea a convinced to come to 0:11:08.490 --> 0:11:12.570 Berlin before transit of Annan came from from Manchester and 0:11:12.650 --> 0:11:15.330 drove all the way down to put all the way 0:11:15.330 --> 0:11:17.970 down to Berlin. Really, you know, you know, Berlin had 0:11:17.970 --> 0:11:21.410 a different attitude to what we had in Manchester. You know, 0:11:21.490 --> 0:11:24.850 Manchester we are you're in a punk band or you're 0:11:24.890 --> 0:11:26.690 in a band any for any reason. It was just 0:11:26.770 --> 0:11:28.490 just to get away. You know, if you if you 0:11:28.610 --> 0:11:32.130 made it, you'd be able to escape miserable Manchester. Berlin 0:11:32.250 --> 0:11:35.930 was very different. Everyone had already escaped here. It was 0:11:36.010 --> 0:11:38.890 like the place where if you were a male of 0:11:40.410 --> 0:11:43.970 a certain age, you would obliged to go to the military. 0:11:44.050 --> 0:11:45.850 But if you lived in Berlin, you didn't have to 0:11:45.890 --> 0:11:49.130 go to military. So if you were a pacifist, or 0:11:49.170 --> 0:11:53.210 you were gay, transvestile, or ever anything weird, you know, artist, 0:11:53.330 --> 0:11:55.970 or you'll just didn't want to go the army. You know, 0:11:56.010 --> 0:11:58.610 you came to Berlin, you could live here and escape 0:11:58.610 --> 0:12:02.770 going to the army. Because of all the countercultural refugees, 0:12:03.330 --> 0:12:05.810 the West Berlin punk scene was one of the most 0:12:05.930 --> 0:12:10.210 vibrant in the world. But Mark wasn't satisfied with knowing 0:12:10.330 --> 0:12:13.770 just the western half of his new city. Like me, 0:12:14.210 --> 0:12:17.170 he'd grown up wondering what lay on the other side 0:12:17.210 --> 0:12:21.090 of the Iron curtain. Now he had a chance to 0:12:21.090 --> 0:12:24.370 find out. It was a completely different world on the 0:12:24.370 --> 0:12:26.810 other side of the building wall. Can you describe the 0:12:26.810 --> 0:12:32.290 experience of crossing over, Yeah, it was scary, you know, 0:12:32.370 --> 0:12:34.170 it was. It was scary. It was it was like 0:12:35.170 --> 0:12:37.090 because you didn't know what to expect on the other side. 0:12:37.130 --> 0:12:39.650 It was a completely different kind of regime and everything, 0:12:39.690 --> 0:12:42.730 you know, like everything that we'd taken for granted here 0:12:42.770 --> 0:12:45.850 in the West didn't exist in the East. Incense, you know. 0:12:45.890 --> 0:12:48.330 It was like I didn't know what was letting myself 0:12:48.330 --> 0:12:50.890 in full to be honest, you know, I just started 0:12:50.930 --> 0:12:52.530 just go and see what it was like and where 0:12:52.570 --> 0:12:55.370 did you find there? I thought it was it was 0:12:55.410 --> 0:12:58.690 like stepping back in time. It was like a time machine. 0:13:00.290 --> 0:13:03.810 On his first trip, Mark just walked around, but he 0:13:03.890 --> 0:13:08.330 kept going back. For most of his West Berlin friends, 0:13:08.570 --> 0:13:11.210 it was an administrative hassle to get a visa across 0:13:11.250 --> 0:13:14.530 the border. They had to apply days or weeks in advance. 0:13:15.450 --> 0:13:19.370 But strangely enough, with Mark's British passport, he could come 0:13:19.370 --> 0:13:22.370 and go as he pleased. The fascination of that this place, 0:13:22.450 --> 0:13:24.330 you know, it's like it was like like no other 0:13:24.690 --> 0:13:27.450 place I've been to. It's like I felt there was 0:13:27.490 --> 0:13:33.370 a an ambient stare that was like desperate in a sense, 0:13:33.370 --> 0:13:36.570 and I got quite addicted to that and this feeling 0:13:36.610 --> 0:13:40.730 of like big brothers watching you kind of thing. Despite that, 0:13:41.490 --> 0:13:44.810 Mark got talking to other young people and soon he 0:13:44.890 --> 0:13:48.530 had friends in East Berlin. He began to smuggle in 0:13:48.650 --> 0:13:51.850 cassettes of the music his friends were listening to and 0:13:52.050 --> 0:13:55.370 making in the West I'd record all the records that 0:13:55.370 --> 0:13:57.690 I bought and record all every you know, every omni 0:13:57.770 --> 0:14:02.130 record collection as much as possible. Even later on, you know, 0:14:02.210 --> 0:14:04.050 I didn't want them just to listen to punk rock, 0:14:04.170 --> 0:14:05.730 ordered them to listen to all the kinds of music 0:14:05.730 --> 0:14:08.290 as well. So I'd record, like, you know, underground disco music. 0:14:08.290 --> 0:14:12.690 And it wasn't just about punk rock, It's about everything. 0:14:13.930 --> 0:14:16.890 And how much did young people in East Berlin know 0:14:16.970 --> 0:14:19.610 about what was going on on your side of the wall. Well, 0:14:19.650 --> 0:14:23.370 the only information they really got was from TV or radio, 0:14:25.010 --> 0:14:27.650 most of them not unless they had relatives who came 0:14:27.690 --> 0:14:30.890 to visit them. Then his dead relatives that they get 0:14:30.890 --> 0:14:33.490 a bit more information. Book. You know, if your anti 0:14:33.530 --> 0:14:35.210 Betty comes to visity, you know you're not going to 0:14:35.210 --> 0:14:38.610 talk about the punk rock scene Berlin because you won't 0:14:38.650 --> 0:14:41.610 know anything about that, you know. For Mark, going to 0:14:41.690 --> 0:14:44.250 East Berlin was an adventure like being in a movie. 0:14:45.290 --> 0:14:47.770 For his young friends, those tapes were a thread that 0:14:47.810 --> 0:14:51.570 connected them to another world. In West Berlin, you could 0:14:51.570 --> 0:14:55.090 go and see Joy Division or the birthday party. In 0:14:55.290 --> 0:15:24.890 East Berlin, youth culture was a little different. Recently, I 0:15:24.930 --> 0:15:27.690 was in Berlin and I met up with my old 0:15:27.690 --> 0:15:32.410 friend Anya, a German artist and filmmaker. I first met 0:15:32.410 --> 0:15:34.690 her a while back when she lived in London. I 0:15:34.810 --> 0:15:37.170 helped out on a film she made called Trail of 0:15:37.210 --> 0:15:41.850 the Spider, a spaghetti western about gentrification, with people from 0:15:41.850 --> 0:15:47.290 our eastern neighborhood dressed up like lawman and bandits. Anya 0:15:47.410 --> 0:15:50.010 also played in a band with some other artist friends. 0:15:50.650 --> 0:15:53.290 It was more art rock than punk, but Anya is 0:15:53.330 --> 0:15:56.290 not unpunk right now. She's even got kind of a 0:15:56.330 --> 0:16:00.170 mohawk haircut. I wanted Anya to come with me to 0:16:00.210 --> 0:16:02.810 a place that houses some of the most painful memories 0:16:02.850 --> 0:16:06.690 of the GDR, an office building just off Alexander Platz, 0:16:07.130 --> 0:16:12.610 the old center of Communist East Berlin. Alex As Berliners 0:16:12.690 --> 0:16:15.530 call it as a big open square dominated by the 0:16:15.570 --> 0:16:19.810 fans tourm the TV Tower, still the tallest structure in Germany. 0:16:20.610 --> 0:16:23.130 It's a space age needle with a shiny ball skewered 0:16:23.210 --> 0:16:25.530 through it. It looks like a giant version of a 0:16:25.610 --> 0:16:28.770 lamp put for sale in a mid century modern furniture store, 0:16:29.330 --> 0:16:33.530 A massive symbol of the communist state's futuristic ambitions. And 0:16:33.730 --> 0:16:42.290 we're coming up to the officers of STARSI Archive, and 0:16:42.530 --> 0:16:45.210 I have a thin in that there'll be a little 0:16:45.250 --> 0:16:47.370 nervous if we record on the way. But I don't know. 0:16:47.490 --> 0:16:51.610 Maybe you never the woman after the wall fell the stars. 0:16:51.650 --> 0:16:54.130 You did its best to destroy evidence of its crimes 0:16:54.130 --> 0:16:57.650 and human rights violations, but it couldn't get rid of everything. 0:16:58.370 --> 0:17:02.570 There were millions of documents, tape recordings, piles of shredded paper. 0:17:03.730 --> 0:17:06.970 The new reunified German government set up the Starzi Records 0:17:07.050 --> 0:17:10.690 Archive to administrate what was left behind. Mind people could 0:17:10.690 --> 0:17:13.130 apply to see the files that were kept on them 0:17:13.170 --> 0:17:15.610 and in some cases find out who had been spying 0:17:15.650 --> 0:17:19.970 on them. We come to see Doug Mahovstadt, who's the 0:17:20.010 --> 0:17:23.330 press spokesperson for the archive and knows more than almost 0:17:23.370 --> 0:17:36.850 anyone about the Stasie. I wanted to understand more about 0:17:36.850 --> 0:17:39.370 what life in the GDR was like for young punks 0:17:39.370 --> 0:17:43.170 like Punkau, what was expected of them. Why would the 0:17:43.210 --> 0:17:45.890 government care what music they liked or how they dressed. 0:17:46.450 --> 0:17:50.610 There is this idea that socialism leads to a better society, 0:17:50.730 --> 0:17:55.330 but socialism requires everybody to believe in this idea in 0:17:55.370 --> 0:18:00.650 the way that it was organized, and in this case 0:18:00.730 --> 0:18:04.570 we're talking about Eastern European communist states. Very much modeled 0:18:04.610 --> 0:18:09.850 after the Soviet idea, the Soviets Revolution of ninety in seventeen. 0:18:10.490 --> 0:18:14.250 Who was always afraid that somebody will take away this 0:18:14.690 --> 0:18:18.690 path to the better society. So there was from the 0:18:18.810 --> 0:18:21.850 very beginning an enemy that would squash the revolution, that 0:18:21.890 --> 0:18:25.970 would persecute the idea of a socialist society. And so 0:18:26.930 --> 0:18:29.370 you had to be aware all the time of the 0:18:29.570 --> 0:18:34.730 enemies who are against you. And it very much is 0:18:34.770 --> 0:18:38.410 summed up in this idea that the dissenter is the enemy. 0:18:38.290 --> 0:18:43.770 Then yeah, thoughts as must if Yune and again not 0:18:44.170 --> 0:18:50.490 on an and deadish land, to Laban, on to Campern. 0:18:54.130 --> 0:18:58.010 That's Eric Honecker, the East German leader, addressing a massive 0:18:58.090 --> 0:19:02.450 rally of the Free German Youth, the official East German 0:19:02.490 --> 0:19:06.330 youth organization. If you wanted to get ahead in East Germany, 0:19:06.370 --> 0:19:07.850 it was a good idea to be a member of 0:19:07.850 --> 0:19:11.050 the Free German Youth and wear their distinctive blue shirt 0:19:11.090 --> 0:19:14.370 with the sunrise emblem on the arm. Conker is saying 0:19:14.610 --> 0:19:17.850 that only socialism can give young people a goal and 0:19:17.930 --> 0:19:21.250 the future. So these were state organized youth organizations, and 0:19:21.290 --> 0:19:24.890 to refuse to become part of them already made you 0:19:25.170 --> 0:19:28.410 very suspicious. And you were not part of the mainstream anymore, 0:19:28.410 --> 0:19:31.090 and that would continue. If you wanted to study, certain 0:19:31.530 --> 0:19:33.810 wanted to study at all, as a young man, you 0:19:33.850 --> 0:19:37.330 would have to sign up for military service. That was 0:19:37.370 --> 0:19:40.410 mandatory military service. And as a young woman, if you 0:19:40.530 --> 0:19:44.090 wanted to study, for instance, journalism, it was mandatory that 0:19:44.130 --> 0:19:47.010 you would eventually join the party, so you would become 0:19:47.050 --> 0:19:49.050 a candidate for the party in order to join the 0:19:49.090 --> 0:19:52.610 party in order to study journalism. That's what was on offer. 0:19:52.970 --> 0:19:55.170 To be a good East German young person, you would 0:19:55.290 --> 0:19:59.090 join the FDJ, go camping and hiking and sing jolly 0:19:59.090 --> 0:20:01.530 songs with verses in English and Russian. To show that 0:20:01.610 --> 0:20:04.970 you were a true internationalist. You wore the blue uniform 0:20:05.050 --> 0:20:08.210 shirt and clapped along because if you didn't, you weren't 0:20:08.210 --> 0:20:10.690 going to be able to have a good life. In 0:20:10.770 --> 0:20:13.290 East Germany, you had to have a job. It was 0:20:13.290 --> 0:20:16.050 illegal not to have one. But if you didn't play 0:20:16.090 --> 0:20:19.890 the game, you would just be cleaning toilets or unloading trucks. 0:20:20.370 --> 0:20:24.210 There was a real risk to being a rebel. As 0:20:24.250 --> 0:20:27.970 for music, East Germany had one record company owned and 0:20:28.170 --> 0:20:31.490 operated by the government. To be in a band and 0:20:31.650 --> 0:20:35.290 play live, you needed a license. That's right. You couldn't 0:20:35.290 --> 0:20:37.850 just go out and play a gig in a local bar. 0:20:38.290 --> 0:20:40.490 The cops would break it up and you'd get arrested. 0:20:41.330 --> 0:20:44.250 To get a license, you needed two things. You had 0:20:44.290 --> 0:20:46.450 to have done your military service, and you had to 0:20:46.490 --> 0:20:49.010 pass an audition in front of a panel of judges 0:20:49.050 --> 0:20:56.010 from the Musicians Union. And in the middle of this, 0:20:56.930 --> 0:21:00.610 imagine your Panco, an angry fifteen year old who pissed 0:21:00.650 --> 0:21:05.410 off with your violent dad and needs something, anything, to happen, 0:21:06.170 --> 0:21:11.690 otherwise you're going to go mad. Then one day you 0:21:11.770 --> 0:21:15.850 hear the Stranglers on a bootleg cassette tape, perhaps copied 0:21:15.930 --> 0:21:18.610 from a copy brought over by an English guy called Mark. 0:21:19.530 --> 0:21:21.770 You see a picture of the band and you want 0:21:21.810 --> 0:21:23.970 to look like them, so you tear some holes in 0:21:24.050 --> 0:21:26.210 your t shirt and walk out of your front door 0:21:26.250 --> 0:21:29.450 with your hair spiked up with soap. You go to 0:21:29.530 --> 0:21:32.410 Alexander Platz, where you find some other kids like you 0:21:33.210 --> 0:21:35.650 if you're not doing anything, just hanging around. But the 0:21:35.730 --> 0:21:40.210 cops come and you get arrested. They ask some questions 0:21:40.250 --> 0:21:43.290 and tell you to clean yourself up. The next day 0:21:43.410 --> 0:21:46.410 you go there again and the same thing happens. The 0:21:46.490 --> 0:21:49.570 cops are nervous because this is a tourist spot right 0:21:49.610 --> 0:21:53.770 next to the famous TV tower. The government likes foreigners 0:21:53.770 --> 0:21:58.050 to see the architectural and technological achievements of socialism. It 0:21:58.130 --> 0:22:01.290 doesn't like foreigners to see that East Germany has punks. 0:22:02.330 --> 0:22:05.930 So you end up in an interrogation room facing a 0:22:06.010 --> 0:22:09.330 guy in a uniform who wants to know if you're 0:22:09.330 --> 0:22:20.290 an enemy of the state. This was Pancou's reality as 0:22:20.330 --> 0:22:23.010 a teenager. He ran up against the full might of 0:22:23.090 --> 0:22:33.970 the GDR. I want to go and talk to him, 0:22:34.050 --> 0:22:36.730 but he doesn't speak English and my German isn't good 0:22:36.810 --> 0:22:39.490 enough to do an interview. So I asked my artist 0:22:39.570 --> 0:22:42.610 friend Anya if she'll come along with me. Clearly still 0:22:42.730 --> 0:22:47.490 a little bit impaired, thanks for coming along on this 0:22:48.010 --> 0:22:54.010 small adventure. So we're on a tram traveling out of 0:22:54.050 --> 0:22:58.570 the center of Berlin Northwoods. We're in a district of 0:22:58.570 --> 0:23:02.610 Punka to see somebody who's called Punko. The neighborhood of 0:23:02.610 --> 0:23:05.210 Punko is a little way out of the center, and 0:23:05.290 --> 0:23:08.090 it turns out neither Ana nor Oliver the producer, have 0:23:08.170 --> 0:23:11.210 ever been there before. To me, it looks like a 0:23:11.210 --> 0:23:13.130 lot of places on the East side of the city. 0:23:14.730 --> 0:23:17.170 We get there early and it's starting to rain, so 0:23:17.210 --> 0:23:20.290 we hang around under a bus shelter like board teenage 0:23:20.330 --> 0:23:24.570 punks and yeah, and Oliver smoked cigarettes. People like to 0:23:24.570 --> 0:23:27.410 smoke in Berlin. Smoking is part of the culture, like 0:23:27.650 --> 0:23:32.450 nude sunbathing and techno music. So yeah, this looks like 0:23:33.050 --> 0:23:38.090 not the new Berlin. It's an old, old building cover 0:23:38.170 --> 0:23:41.690 and graffiti him with a sort of messed up wooden 0:23:41.770 --> 0:23:43.530 door and no bell. So I'm going to see if 0:23:43.730 --> 0:23:52.570 actually opens. So it does, comment, I'm hurry. Punko turns 0:23:52.570 --> 0:23:55.210 out to be a wiry guy in his fifties. He's 0:23:55.290 --> 0:23:57.730 dressed in jeans and a hoodie and looks more like 0:23:57.770 --> 0:24:01.250 a rock climber than a rock musician. Has the punk 0:24:02.090 --> 0:24:06.730 one angist piece Dima n front and then tut as 0:24:06.730 --> 0:24:13.050 fast ring Us Normal heros sexpisodevmenton Bollocks on the door, 0:24:13.450 --> 0:24:21.290 Plata fun Damdaman, do you have a little They were 0:24:21.290 --> 0:24:23.930 in names of the records, and they were passed around, 0:24:23.930 --> 0:24:27.090 and he got them from a friend, and then he 0:24:27.170 --> 0:24:31.290 copied them to cassette, and he made a hundred eighty 0:24:31.330 --> 0:24:36.730 copies of and and and passed them on again to 0:24:37.010 --> 0:24:40.490 all his other maids. Punko had never really ventured out 0:24:40.490 --> 0:24:43.810 of his neighborhood, but somehow he found his way to 0:24:43.850 --> 0:24:46.450 the south of the city to a youth club where 0:24:46.490 --> 0:24:49.490 some other punks hung out. I asked him how many 0:24:49.490 --> 0:24:52.890 punks there were in East Berlin at this time, about twenty. 0:24:53.010 --> 0:24:55.490 He says, for which funny flag John Rotten as the 0:24:55.530 --> 0:24:59.170 cutters and polls stuff on his expisode on Johnny Rotten. 0:25:00.010 --> 0:25:03.210 Soon enough, Punkou's idol was Johnny Rotten. He had a 0:25:03.250 --> 0:25:05.410 poster of him, and he had the tape of never 0:25:05.450 --> 0:25:07.890 Mind the Bollocks that he copied from his friend. So 0:25:07.970 --> 0:25:09.970 the first time he went to a youth club at 0:25:10.010 --> 0:25:13.490 that time, He's son who was really punk already, but 0:25:13.970 --> 0:25:16.930 he was a huge fan of Udo Lindenberg. And actually 0:25:16.930 --> 0:25:19.690 he dressed like Udo Lindberg at that point and also 0:25:19.690 --> 0:25:23.410 had this hair club on this Panic belt. So Udo 0:25:23.490 --> 0:25:27.450 Lindenburg is a West German rock star who circa nineteen 0:25:27.490 --> 0:25:30.810 eighty had long hair and wore a big metal belt 0:25:30.810 --> 0:25:35.290 buckle that's spelled out Panic. On YouTube, you can find 0:25:35.370 --> 0:25:39.570 him doing a satirical cover of All Things Chattanooga Chu 0:25:39.690 --> 0:25:45.090 Chu called Special Train to Punkau, where he's singing for 0:25:45.130 --> 0:25:47.770 whatever reason to a dwarf dressed as an East German 0:25:47.890 --> 0:25:58.370 railway conductor about how he wants to go to East 0:25:58.370 --> 0:26:01.530 Berlin to sing if only Eric Honeker and the Communist 0:26:01.530 --> 0:26:04.690 Party would let him. The whole Udo Lindenburg thing is 0:26:04.850 --> 0:26:08.850 kind of weird and very specifically German. For our purposes. 0:26:09.290 --> 0:26:11.810 Really need to know is that sixteen year old Punkau 0:26:12.130 --> 0:26:19.010 thought he was cool, but he really wasn't. Panco dyed 0:26:19.090 --> 0:26:22.050 his hair blonde, which wasn't easy to do in East Berlin, 0:26:22.650 --> 0:26:24.770 but he'd met a hairdresser at a gay bar in 0:26:24.810 --> 0:26:28.250 Prince Lauerberg who helped him. Punko and his friends used 0:26:28.290 --> 0:26:29.970 to hang out at this gay bar because it was 0:26:30.010 --> 0:26:32.330 one of the few places where they wouldn't get kicked out. 0:26:33.970 --> 0:26:37.810 Some of Punkou's experiences sound pretty typical for teen rebels 0:26:37.810 --> 0:26:41.290 anywhere in the world. The neighbors stared at him, his 0:26:41.450 --> 0:26:45.010 dad was angry. He got chased by football hooligans who 0:26:45.010 --> 0:26:48.130 wanted to beat him up. Since most people in East 0:26:48.130 --> 0:26:51.010 Berlin had never seen a punk, people would ask him 0:26:51.090 --> 0:26:57.090 questions on the tram, sometimes hostile, sometimes just curious. Then 0:26:57.290 --> 0:27:07.650 he did something genuinely dangerous. He joined a band. He 0:27:07.850 --> 0:27:10.490 joined a band at best already existed that they didn't 0:27:10.530 --> 0:27:15.690 have a singer, and they were called if like the Wall. 0:27:17.330 --> 0:27:20.410