October Club

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Autograph card from 1968

The Oktoberklub , initially Hootenanny-Klub Berlin , was a political song group in the GDR . The musical style was a mixture of song, chanson , folk and rock music . It was founded in 1966 and existed until 1990.

history

October Club 1967

The folk revival in the United States in the early 1960s sparked a wave of folk music and protest songs in many countries . In the GDR, the Canadian folk singer Perry Friedman had organized hootenannies (American term for an informal, sociable concert) since 1960. A group of young people enthusiastic about folk gathered around him and the youth radio DT 64 , who, supported by the FDJ district management, founded the Hootenanny Club Berlin in February 1966 . Anyone could participate, the club was open and unusually informal by GDR standards.

It was in this club that artists such as Manfred Krug , Bettina Wegner , Reiner Schöne and Gisela May began their careers and appeared on GDR television .

During the 11th plenary session in December 1965, the SED leadership had decided to ban critical art and youth culture, and in early 1967 staged a campaign against Anglicisms . The Hootenanny Club then renamed itself "October Club". The name should associate the October Revolution and the founding of the GDR. The hootenanny movement was officially called the “FDJ singing movement ” from then on and promoted and appropriated as a “model case” of socialist cultural policy.

The members of the October Club were "one hundred percent red, convinced, honest" (Reinhold Andert) and wanted to actively shape society. By combining politics and entertainment, they brought new elements into the frozen political culture of the GDR, but were also instrumentalized for representational purposes and became their own claim "GDR-specific", "singing about everyday life as it is" (Reinhold Andert) , often not fair. There were always arguments about this in the club, and some musicians like Bettina Wegner left him because of political differences. In the early years, the club had a remarkable response from young people loyal to the GDR, but opposition members rejected it as “loyal to the line”, and in the 1980s its agitational songs were increasingly perceived as single-layered and phrase-like.

The club sang international political songs (partly in adaptations), own creations as well as traditional folk and battle songs. In addition to normal recitals with a mixed repertoire, he also performed revue-like programs from 1971 (1971 FDJ night shift , 1972 cantata Manne Klein and love night shift , 1975 Prenzlauer Berg ).

The club was the initiator and organizer of series of events such as the OKK (from 1970 first permanent discotheque in the GDR, from 1977 basement club in the House of Young Talents), the Festival of Political Song (1970-1990) and Ein Kessel Rotes (from 1979). The club also appeared frequently abroad, for example at press festivals of communist newspapers in Western Europe. He received various awards, including the 1986 Gold Star of Friendship of Nations .

The club was an amateur group, at times with a semi-professional core. The line-ups changed frequently. Over the years, it had a total of about 180, at times more than 40 members, but not all of them were artistically active. The writer Gisela Steineckert and the composer Wolfram Heicking had a kind of mentoring role for a long time. Important authors in the early years were Reinhold Andert , Kurt Demmler and Hartmut König , later Gerd Kern as lyricist and Fred Krüger as composer. From 1987 many texts and compositions were written by Michael Letz .

The club was also "of great importance as a talent reservoir for the youth-oriented music sector" (Olaf Leitner). In 1973 he became the professional song group born in 49 , which existed until 1980. Some club members made artistic solo careers (Reinhold Andert, Barbara Thalheim , Jürgen Walter , Gina Pietsch , Tamara Danz and others), others later worked in cultural institutions such as radio, television, record and the general management of the Committee for Entertainment Art. Hartmut König became Deputy Minister for Culture in 1989. The most famous songs of the October Club include Tell me where you are , October song , We are everywhere . From West German choirs were u. a. the songs We want peace , do we have this earth (a German version of the Argentine song Cuando tenga la tierra ) and smoke rises from the roof .

In 1968 Gitta Nickel portrayed the October Club in the DEFA documentary " Songs Make People" . In the 1990s, two television documentaries about the history of the club were made: The End of the Song (VPRO, Netherlands, 1992) and Tell me where you are (Axel Grote and Christian Steinke, MDR 1993).

Brochures and books, records

Brochures and books

  • 1967: Octav (song book for the Whitsun meeting of the FDJ in Karl-Marx-Stadt)
  • 1985: 100 songs October Club . Berlin 1985
  • 1996: And that was in ... the 30th anniversary of the October Club . The most important dates and documents from 1966–1990. Berlin 1996

LPs

  • 1967: The October Club sings ( Amiga )
  • 1968: The guitar under my arm (Amiga)
  • 1973: aha - The October Club (Amiga)
  • 1978: Politkirmes (Amiga)
  • 1985: We are still there - 20 years OK (Amiga, double LP)

Singles (selection)

  • 1967: What do we do at Pentecost? / Back: Hermann Hähnel & Chamber Choir Institute for Music Education Berlin ( eterna )
  • 1967: Tell me where you are / Back: Thomas Natschinski and his group Because they teach the children (Amiga)
  • 1968: Peace song / summer '68 / spring song (sound foil octave, color red)
  • 1969: I was born blind like everyone else / Today a singing club sings ( sound foil octave, color green)
  • 1975: Big Windows / I Sing Peace (Amiga)
  • 1978: do we have this earth? / Back: Born in '49 with RDA greets Cuba socialista (Amiga)
  • 1979: But we are still there / Here, where I live (Amiga)

CDs

  • 1995: The Best (Barbarossa)
  • 1996: Oktoberklub life (Nebelhorn)
  • 1996: Hootenanny (Barbarossa / Amiga)
  • 1999: Subbotnik (Barbarossa)

The October Club is also represented on at least 55 LP samplers (including 1970 to 1987 on the first 17 LPs Festival of Political Song at eterna and Amiga) and on at least 9 CD samplers with songs, starting from 1967 with the LP Baut die Straßen the future (eterna) with the piece You have a goal in mind .

literature

  • Ulrich Mählert , Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan: Blue shirts - red flags. The history of the Free German Youth. Leske and Budrich, Opladen 1996, pp. 175-178 .
  • Hagen Jahn: Youth, Music and Ideology. On the history of the FDJ singing movement. In: Halle contributions to contemporary history. Issue 12, 2002, pp. 5-24 (PDF) .
  • David Robb (Ed.): Protest Song in East and West Germany Since the 1960s. Camden House, Rochester, NY 2007, in it: Narrative Role-Play as Communication Strategy in German Protest Song , pp. 67–96, here pp. 82 f. and ders .: Political Song in the GDR: The Cat-and-Mouse Game with Censorship and Institutions , pp. 227–254, here p. 233 .
  • Stefan Wolle : The dream of a revolt. Die DDR 1968. Ch. Links, Berlin 2013 (original 2008), p. 62 (e-book) .
  • Gerd Dietrich: Cultural history of the GDR. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2018, pp. 1183–1187 .

Web links

Commons : October Club  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ CD box: "Hootenanny in East Berlin" - the rise and fall of the folk scene in the GDR. Retrieved on May 26, 2020 (German).
  2. ^ Hootenanny in East Berlin. January 6, 2016, accessed May 26, 2020 .
  3. ↑ König also writes extensively about the October Club in his autobiography, see this: Let's wait for the future. Autobiography. New Life , Berlin 2017, chapter October Club Principle - the early years (preview) .