History outline

Book explores the history of the Hamburg School

Tocotronic at a concert in the recent past - they are still the "poser boys" of the broadly defined Hamburg school.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Ventil Verlag, Tocotronic)

Beloved, infamous and legendary - the Hamburg School is one of the most important sub-scenes in European music culture, although it never existed in a logical order. The book "Der Text ist meine Party" (Ventil Verlag) explores the history of the North once again and, pleasingly, also focuses on less well-known aspects.

What exactly the Hamburger Schule is will probably never be made tangible in detail. Those who don't want to delve too deeply into their musical knowledge will automatically associate certain signal images with it. Smoky stalls in the Kiez, Adidas tracksuits, (pseudo)intelligent conversations by self-created artists and left-wing politics. Roughly summarized, Wikipedia claims that the Hamburg School is a loose music movement that emerged at the end of the 1980s and reached its peak in the mid-1990s. For the musicians involved, the only term more unpopular than the urban categorization was "discourse pop", which captured the essence of the movement but hid the pure power of the music - consciously or unconsciously - behind a fantasized idea that eternal German studies students would shout their late communist polemics at you via a CD system.

Searching for something new
In his expertly written book "Der Text ist meine Party - Eine Geschichte der Hamburger Schule" (Ventil Verlag), literary scholar and freelance journalist Jonas Engelmann takes a relaxed and unpretentious look behind the scenes of the scene, conducting interviews with countless key figures in and out of the limelight and explaining in between why he preferred to leave out some of the planned interviewees. The most important insight to understand the basis of this movement: It was about the search for something new. Germany was initially shaken by the aftermath of the Second World War, then pop music swept across the country like a creative plague and even the Krautrock and New Wave bands in the 70s and early 80s were unable to rid the country of the stink of over-correct boredom.

Whether it wanted to or not, the Hamburg School was first and foremost an all-German school. The origins of the early bands could be traced back to Bad Salzuflen, the Black Forest, the Bavarian diaspora or to Berlin, which was still divided into two parts at the time and which, although it created its own medium-sized scenes, was much more fragmented. In the equally rough and cheap, as well as picturesque and open northern city next to the rough sea, creative spirits found a common center to found subculture, cultivate it and finally carry it unintentionally into the mainstream. The term "Hamburg School" was only to become acceptable at the beginning of the 1990s, but even earlier the musicians were not entirely clear about what belonged where and what did not.

Democratization of music
Bernd Begemann, one of the scene's brightest but commercially unrewarded heroes, is considered by some to be a decisive pioneer, while others see his influence as having come to an end. The famous British DJ John Peel, who died in 2004, was particularly influential on the Hamburg scene, as Begemann explains in the book. "What I've kept from that time is real diversity, forgotten names, people who may have only made one single - but that was the essence of their lives. You heard these odd little things and for me that's basically the real richness of music history. In 'John Peel's Music On BFBS', this chorus of misfits was negotiating off-kilter themes. To say there's only Bob Dylan or the Beatles is a monarchist way of looking at music history. And as a democrat, I would oppose that."

The Hamburg School could not be defined musically. It consisted of pop and rock, electronic and soul, funk and punk, alternative, indie and even leftover pop elements. Different bands and projects such as Blumfeld, Superpunk, Tocotronic, Huah! Die Goldenen Zitronen, Kolossale Jugend or Ostzonensuppenwürfelmachenkrebs could not be more different and often even disagreed ideologically, but they shaped an all-encompassing scene, together with the intellectual print-pop mouthpiece "Spex", the emerging music TV wave and the thirst of creatives and listeners to free themselves from the simple-mindedness and simplicity of German music and create something with content, verve, meaning and edge. The work is divided into interesting sub-chapters that not only present the most important bands and albums, but also offer a historical outline, focus on the creation of structures (bars, concert halls, labels, fanzines) and finally head towards the commercial explosion.

Guitar music in German
With Tocotronic, Blumfeld and Die Sterne, three bands are still leading the way for an entire scene that had so much more to offer behind and alongside it, but did not reach beyond its own circle. The part where you try to find out why such a left-wing and open scene contained so few women is particularly interesting. You take part in the rise of racism in Germany in 1991, how a funpunk band (Die Goldenen Zitronen) undergoes a necessary change of image and content as a result of the tragic events and how the various Hamburg bands and artists try to create peace and community through discourse, education and music. At some point it was over. What remains are the superstars Tocotronic and many fermented dreams. And the Hamburg School? Bernd Kroschewski (Boy Division) would sum it up as follows: "Theoretically, because it's guitar music, a bit of soul and good lyrics, and then in German". So we know that too!