Flying Lesbians

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Flying Lesbians
LP cover from 1975 with Amazon ax
LP cover from 1975 with Amazon ax
General information
Genre (s) skirt
founding 1974
resolution 1977
Website www.flying-lesbians.de
Founding members
Drums, vocals
 Swetlana Freifrau vd Bottlenberg (1974 to 1975)
Drums
 Christa "Gigi" Lansch (1975 to 1976, † 2002)
Guitar,
vocals
 Danielle de Baat
Singing, percussion
 Monika Mengel
Piano, synthesizer,
harmonica, vocals
 Cäcilia "Cillie" Rentmeister
singing
 Monika Jaeckel († 2009)
Bass; Drums
 MS (1974–1976 bass; 1976 to 1977 drums)
Guitar, percussion
 Christel Wachowski

The Flying Lesbians (loosely translated as "Flying Lesbians" ) were the first all-women rock band in Germany and on the European mainland. The group was founded on the occasion of the first women's festival in Germany Rockfete im Rock on May 11, 1974. She played exclusively in front of female audiences and her LP , released in 1975, was sold exclusively in women's bookshops - with great success for an indie production of two editions and a total of around 17,000 LPs sold.

The Flying Lesbians logo, which also adorns the LP from 1975, is a double-sided silver ax on a gray background with a wide red frame. The so-called Amazon ax should symbolize the combative image of the group.

history

The Flying Lesbians were founded as the first German women's band on May 11, 1974, on the occasion of the first public women 's festival held by the West Berlin Women's Center in the cafeteria of the TU Berlin - overnight, so to speak, because the English band had canceled just two days earlier. The performance was made possible by friendly musicians: Os Mundi and Ton Steine ​​Scherben provided the drums , e-piano and PA system , and also did the first sound check in the large hall.

Sophie von Behr observed this first major women's festival for Der Spiegel . Under the heading “The big soft dominated”, she described the “respectably tough numbers” of the women's band - and her feelings after the party: “In the long run, parties without men will certainly not run. And yet: if, as a normal woman, you drive home at three in the morning through deserted city streets, the world is still all right. Even at this time of the night it is determined and made by men in a penetrating way and therefore suddenly strange. "

Anchoring and resonance in the women's and lesbian movement made the Flying Lesbians the musical "voice of the autonomous women's movement". They saw themselves as part of a comprehensive, developing “women's culture”.

In 1977, Miriam Frank wrote in the US feminist magazine Off Our Backs :

“The Flying Lesbians are the German women's movement, expressed in music. Every song reflects an important idea, criticism or problem that is currently being dealt with in the women's centers or project collectives, or that is being talked about in the pubs ... "

The 1974 international women's camp on the Danish island of Femø - with participants from Europe and the USA, including the well-known sociologist Diana EH Russell and the journalist Alice Schwarzer - and the following large open air women's festival in the Danish capital Copenhagen were a milestone for the European women's movement . Here the impulses and concepts for the first "International Tribunal on Crimes against Women" were created in 1976 after the International Year of Women in Brussels , Belgium. The Flying Lesbians were actively involved and also played at both events, in Copenhagen in front of 30,000 festival-goers - just three months after their formation as a band in Berlin.

For the Brussels Tribunal, the groups of the Women's Center Berlin organized “… a preparatory tribunal, in this case a women's festival , at which the groups presented the contributions they had prepared for Brussels and published them in a brochure.” The Flying played at this festival too Lesbians . During the International Tribunal in Brussels that followed in March 1976, the Flying Lesbians then appeared twice. Diana EH Russell describes the special social function and the atmospheric effects of her music for the tribunal:

“For many women, the tribunal's most enjoyable events were two parties on Saturday and Sunday. Some members of the Coordinating Committee felt it was important to have good social times together, so we invited the Flying Lesbians , an extremely popular, feminist, seven-piece rock band from Germany that played once or twice during the tribunal . While they were ready to play for free, as they always do for feminist events, they needed their transportation costs. Due to our financial situation, we had waited too long to rent a hall for a party. So we had two parties at the weekend in the much too small Maison des Femmes women's shelter. Hundreds of lesbian and straight women danced exuberantly to the music of the Flying Lesbians, and the cramped conditions did not seem to bother anyone.
In situations where language and cultural differences can hamper communication and feelings, music, singing and dancing can be much more effective. The Matson [sic; he Maison des Femmes] will never be the same after its first women's festival, and that also applies to some of the women celebrating. "

The Flying Lesbians wrote their songs - lyrics and music - (apart from two adaptations ) themselves, most of them in German, some in English. They can be heard and read on their website. On the LP from 1975 the songs operate under the pseudonym Emily Pankhurst , because the group felt committed to collective ideals.

Until their dissolution in 1977, the Flying Lesbians played at many different women's festivals across Europe, including in Copenhagen, Brussels, Basel, Vienna and Berlin. They gave their stage revival in autumn 2007. In the same year the LP was reissued as a CD.

In 1976, at the time of the Flying Lesbians' appearances, Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig dedicated an article to the band in their book Lesbische Völker. A dictionary :

“The Flying Lesbians come from Germany. As singers and musicians, they owe their fame to the fact that they were the first group of errant lesbians in the frenzy that heralded the glory days. "

- Monique Wittig, Sande Show: Lesbian Peoples. A dictionary . Paris 1976, New York 1979, Munich 1981

The musicologist Joachim Strieben assigns the Flying Lesbians within the Berlin bands to the ranks of the political rock groups Ton Steine ​​Scherben and Lokomotive Kreuzberg . Birgitt Schuster describes the historical connection between women's movement , women's music and women's rock in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1983 as follows: "Sensitized by the women's movement, women felt the need for their own music with women-specific texts and some were unwilling to continue dancing to sexist rock music by men ( Eg 'Under my thumb' by the ' Rolling Stones ') 1973 [sic] the Flying Lesbians, a radical lesbian group that combined appropriate lyrics with hard rock , was founded with the aim of creating their own dance music for women's festivals The first women's festival 'Rockfestival im Rock' with 2000 women took place in May 1974. Afterwards, especially encouraged by this festival, women in various cities in Germany decided to make music with other women the French and Italian movement acted out and sung. The second women's rock party took place in the summer of 1975. D he 'Flying Lesbians' made their first long-playing record this year . These developments were on good ground because the number of feminists in 1976 was estimated at 20,000 to 30,000 in the FRG. "

In several essays , Cillie Rentmeister reflects on the function of women's festivals as passage rituals and as coming-out parties for the women's movement .

The Flying Lesbians were also present in the double exhibition Homosexuality_en in the Schwules Museum and the German Historical Museum (DHM) in Berlin in 2015, a remarkable presentation in particular with regard to the "official" exhibition location "DHM" and the extensive content: "The German Historical Museum and the Schwule Museum * will be presenting the exhibition" Homosexuality_en ", jointly funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the State Cultural Foundation, from June 26 to December 1, 2015. The special show covers a total of 1,600 square meters and offers 150 years of history and politics and the culture of homosexual women and men in Germany ... "Among other things, an audio station for songs by the Flying Lesbians was set up at the exhibition.

Discography

  • 1975: Flying Lesbians (album, Frauen Offensive; 2007 re-release as CD, distributed by Bear Family Records and via the Flying Lesbians homepage)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Strieben: Live-Rock in Berlin , in: Tibor Kneif (Ed.): Rock in the 70s, Reinbek 1980, pp. 176–177
  2. ↑ [1] Os Mundi on the website rockinberlin.de
  3. ↑ Sophie von Behr: “The great soft dominated” - DER SPIEGEL 22/1974. In: Der Spiegel. May 27, 1974, accessed August 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ quoted from Rentmeister, Cillie: Women's festivals as initiation ritual, in: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Feministisches Institut (Ed.): How far did the tomato fly? A reflection gala of 68 women, Berlin 1999, online at http://www.sphinxmedien.de
  5. ↑ on this anchoring of the Flying Lesbians cf. the Wikipedia article Women's Movement , Section Second Wave , Communication Channels , and Women's Center West Berlin , Sections Topics of the Working Groups and Twenty Projects in Five Years .
  6. ↑ For an overview of this larger, also cultural framework of the women's and lesbian movement cf. the Herstory website feministberlin.de [2]
  7. ↑ Miriam Frank, Off Our Backs magazine, Sept. 1977, p. 15.
  8. ↑ For the herstory of Femø Kvindelejr, which has taken place annually since 1971 with reference to the Flying Lesbians in 1974, see the Danish website of the organizers in English [3]
  9. ↑ Documents on this women's festival on the Flying Lesbians homepage [4] and in the Danish Wikipedia Kvindefestival '74 .
  10. ↑ For Femø images, documents and videos cf. [5] and [6] ; for the first international tribunal on crimes against women in Brussels 1976 cf. the documentation by Diana EH Russell [7]
  11. ↑ cf. the Herstory website http://feministberlin.de/category/gewalt/intern-tribunal/
  12. ^ Diana EH Russell, Nicole Van de Ven (Eds.): Crimes Against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal . Russell Publications, Berkeley 1990, ISBN 0-9603628-5-1 , pp. 12 ( womenation.org [PDF]).
  13. ↑ Link to songs - lyrics and music - of the Flying Lesbians [8]
  14. ↑ The legacy of the Flying Lesbians was taken over by the Berlin women's rock band Lysistrara ; more about Lystrara at feministberlin.de [9]
  15. ↑ Stage revival 2007 Berlin on Youtube: "Flying Lesbians fly again!"
  16. ↑ Joachim Strieben: Live-Rock in Berlin , in: Tibor Kneif (Ed.): Rock in the 70s, Reinbek 1980, pp. 176–177
  17. ↑ Birgitt Schuster: Women in rock history. An overview , in: Rita vd Grün (Ed.): Venus Weltklang. Musikfrauen - Frauenmusik, Berlin 1983, pp. 77–78.
  18. ↑ in English z. B. in “Sounds of Women's Movement”, The Finland Lectures - held at Helsinki , Sibelius Academy and at the University of Jyväskylä , Dept. of Music, Art and Culture Studies, 1985 [10] , with illustrations; as well as on feministberlin1968ff (historical, English-language website about the autonomous women's movement in Berlin, by Cristina Perincioli ) with her essay 1974 - Flying Lesbians, Feminist Festivals, Women's Festivals , abridged version, with illustrations [11]
  19. ↑ [12] . The Flying Lesbians in the exhibition catalog: see Birgit Bosold, Dorothee Brill, Detlev Weitz (editors on behalf of the German Historical Museum and the Schwules Museum ): Homosexualität_en, Berlin 2015, pp. 150–151.
  20. ↑ http://flying-lesbians.de/beispiel-seite/