Olaf Dante Marx

Olaf Dante Marx (alternatively: Olaph-Dante Marx ; * 1957 in Neuss ; † 1993 in Hamburg ) was a German journalist and music critic . He is considered an early representative of pop journalism in Germany, even before the term came into use.

Olaf Dante Marx worked as a freelance journalist in Hamburg from 1981 and published, among other things, “Texts on Pop and Bolshevism” in the magazine Spex . From 1988 he wrote as editor of the magazine Tempo . His early articles were also featured in Sounds magazine .

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Most of Olaf Dante Marx's texts appeared scattered in magazines. One of his few texts that can be found in books is the essay “Endstation Irgendwo - Ein Flug durch die Zeit”, published in 1983, in which Marx paints a subjective picture of West German post-war youth between rebellion and conformism.

For him, agents of conformism are not only moral ideas handed down from the war and pre-war times and their representatives in political conservatism, but the whole spectrum of well-meaning offerings of meaning, especially left-wing origins. Marx contrasts this with a hedonism that is based on American models and evades the attribution of meaning, as well as, more generally, an aesthetic practice that avoids stipulations through a free, sovereign play with signs. In his essay, Marx mixes his own observations and polemics with quotes from contemporary sources.

Marx sums up the contrast that pervades the youth in the dawn of the 1950s as follows:

"In reality it is about the contrast between fashion consciousness, that is, affirmation of the world for the purpose of personal strengthening, and the negation of the world, which ultimately leads to resignation and a guilty conscience."

- p. 132

In Germany the economic miracle had unintended consequences in the form of youth with their own income; on the other hand, political developments have made the traditions of youth protest movements that had been saved from the Weimar period obsolete:

“But in 1956 the decisive decisions found their place in the everyday Federal Republic: reintroduction of compulsory military service and the KPD ban. [...] Do parkas, hiking guitars and self-rhymed ditty and the great goodwill help? Commitment to a better world - that is nice and that is good. Only the idea of ​​political engagement is not in good hands where sleepiness and eccentric, anachronistic cultural attitudes rule the mind. "

- p. 143

In contrast, Marx attests to the Beat Generation , especially in its German version, of “howling misery” and “provincial self-satisfaction” (p. 136). Youth movements that see themselves as rebellious, especially the beatniks and hippies , would ultimately have curled up in cozy subcultures. Instead of promoting a change in the situation, their rebellion was frozen in rituals (Marx includes the Burg-Waldeck-Festivals and the protests at the Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility ):

“ Subcultures are always cuddly cuddly corners to which you can withdraw when the world has been bad [ sic ] with you again . An anticipation of world designs has long since ceased to take place here. "

- p. 159

The glam-rock to its promise not least the dismantling of rigid gender roles have heard had failed as a youth culture in Germany. Now Marx is placing his hopes on a post-punk culture, on a materialistic youth culture in which consumption is particularly subversive, which beats, hippies and the political youth movements had declared to be bad: "Hippies are in government, and great consumption ( you already know: enjoyment without regrets, e.g. MacDonald's [ sic ], Haircut 100 , Walkmen , etc.) is z. Has long since been frowned upon by the rulers. "(P. 162)

And when this movement hits the mainstream

“Then there will be anticipators again with new world designs and needs who will be exposed to the same sleepyheads. And so on. You can't let yourself go and you are not who you seem. Overbred wild thinking. Against naturalness. Eclecticism. Pop!"

- p. 164

The essay “Hanseatic City of Babylon” is also readily available through an anthology published by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch . He represents a style in which the supposed main subject of the report - an interview with Marc Almond - is joined by autobiographical memories and reflections on contemporary culture.

reception

Although his texts are difficult to find today and a book edition is still pending as well as a comprehensive appraisal of his work, Olaf Dante Marx is named as a representative of German pop journalism of the 1980s and 90s in connection with authors such as Diedrich Diederichsen and Rainald Goetz .

Goetz, in turn, mentions Marx (in the spelling Olaph-Dante Marx ) in his text “Subito”, presented in 1983 at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize .

The novel 1979 by Christian Kracht dedicated Olaf Dante Marx.

Fonts

• "Endstation Irgendwo - A Flight through Time", in: Diedrich Diederichsen, Dick Hebdige, Olaph-Dante Marx, Schocker. Styles and fashions of the subculture . Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983, pp. 121–164.
• "Hansestadt Babylon" (1987), in: Kerstin Gleba and Eckhard Schumacher (eds.), Pop since 1964 . Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2007, pp. 170–179.

Web links

• Review of Schocker in The Argument (1984)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tobias Rüther, “Fell off the stage, but landed in the middle of the parquet. At best, it seems dead: Why the swelling swan songs on pop literature and its journalism are unjustified. ” Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 27, 2002, p. 16
2. ↑ Kerstin Gleba and Eckhard Schumacher (eds.), Pop since 1964 . Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2007, p. 407.
3. ↑ See Ulf Poschardt , DJ Culture . French Edition, Éditions Kargo, 2002, p. 323, as well as the anthology edited by Gleba / Schumacher.
4. ↑ In: Rainald Goetz, brain . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1986, p. 14; also reprinted in Gleba / Schumacher (eds.), p. 135.