PSEUDO - a punk novel

 

 

 

Roland Scheller

 

 

 

The Kiel punk scene

in the beginning of the 80s

from the view of a pseudo punk

 

 

 

Copyright © 2020 Roland Scheller

All rights reserved.

 

 

Translated by Roland Scheller, John & al.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

„Perfektion ist Sache der Götter“

(Perfection is a matter for the gods)

 Beton Combo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I. PUNK / The Landfill

 

I spent a part of my childhood on the landfill Schusterkrug which we lovingly dubbed Ramscher. There, scrabbling with our muck-rake hooks, we searched for usable trash like badges, cocades, and uniform buttons. We found Nazi marine charts, tombstones, cartridge cases, Israelian-made exercise rifle grenades, bazooka shoulder bags. Amongst the large muck piles of domestic waste, bloody hospital waste and military waste is where we found our treasures before they were turned down by bulldozers. There were countless rats, crows, and seagulls, which volatilized when we became noticeable. Often we spotted pegged out seagulls and half-decayed rats. Once we even found a dead crow hanging off a metal plank by a wire.

Every time we entered Ramscher we had to cross the railroad tracks, which were used to transport brand-new tanks by slow-moving trains from Friedrichsort at certain times of the day. The Roman snails, which we collected and laid on the railroad tracks had only a few survival chances. Later our junkyard finds which we had already concealed in the dirt were exchanged or sold to other kids from the village. Looking back, it was probably muck-raking in Ramscher that later kick-started my passion for punk.

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting point: children's playground

 

I vividly remember being 15, the bad days back in 1982. It was cold at that time of the year. Cold enough to freeze our arses off. I remember my first visit to the Wik Punks on a small playground on Düvelsbeker Weg, just behind the Penny market. My introduction to the punk scene. There were four of us who dared to go there: Franka, Hecker, Steff and me. We wanted to demonstrate that we identified with the punks, punks all over Kiel who met here every Saturday. We occupied the small wooden hut between the play structures and drank their beer loudly. Hard punk music sounded from a small cassette recorder, that was usually brought by a Wik Punk called Barne.

Inside the hut was covered with punk graffiti like

"Never trust a Hippie!"

"Wik Punx '81" or

"God, give us a Fifth Reich, the Fourth is like the Third."

Directly opposite the playground, painted on the filth-covered Belvedere toilet building read,

"No Reich, no people, no leader,"

something that I would read almost every day on my way to school.

I had once spotted a small group of punks during Kiel Week at the Kiel Line and a lone punk with a crate of beer at Falckenstein Beach. I immediately knew,

"This is exactly my thing!"

When we showed up with the punks on the Penny playground for the first time, little Franka stood next to me the entire time. She was a newcomer in the punk scene at the playground. She was at my school at a class level below me, and we had planned at the smokers' schoolyard to visit the punks on the playground. Although Franka with her long, blond hair was unbelievably pretty, she was at first ignored by the punks just like the others in our little group. We mostly consisted of whispering pseudo-punks, not yet accustomed to their ways. It was a bit embarrassing to us that one of the punks in the wooden hut was called Porn-Bob. They always shouted out his name,

"Porn-Bob, do this! Porn-Bob, do that!"

Porn-Bob, the fully tattooed punk, was on his last legs. I am not sure whether he survived the year '82. We giggled and looked at each other with shame. Electrified by the scene, Franka soon put on a punk outfit and mutilated her long, blond hair opting for an edgier look of short hair on one side, and long on the other. Not long after the change, she got together with a Wik Punk called Mattern.

We immediately found pleasure in the hard, uncompromising music filled with partly rebellious, partly broken lyrics and the provocative behaviour and appearance of the punks. That is why we wanted to take part. The music and the slogans with which we spurred upon each other created a skeptical attitude towards society and a healthy suspicion of any form of authority. Every time I went to the Penny playground, I tried to adapt myself to be more and more like the punks because I was sure I had found my lifestyle and to form my protests.

The topic of alcohol was quite big. Often binge-drinking was prevented only because there was not enough money for alcoholics. We would often get into a coma-like condition, but even without money, we drank to the extreme, still unaware as to what the regular alcohol abuse was doing to our teenage brains. Some punks already had faces disfigured by alcohol. We went beyond our borders – alcoholically, verbally and practically. We belched in an exaggerating way, spat out, distorted our chops and made grimaces. Real teenage punks wanted to look fucked up, appear sick, cough and sniff back their snot. I learned that quickly.

Going out with the punks gave me confidence and a whole new way of life. I was able to relate with the punks everything that I stood for at school with aggressive or right-oriented classmates and my neighbourhood "acers" (discriminating German term for "stupid rocker"). Whenever I was on the road with the punks, my nose smelt a sweet, perfume-like scent. This was extremely funny. I have no explanation for how this misperception came about. It seemed like an intoxication. Perhaps it was the smell of the beer and the soap I smeared into my hair that my brain associated with certain moments? These moments had addictive potential for me.

The conversation of "punk music" was of immense importance to all in the playground. Who had the first awesome LP, EP or single was cutting-edge. There were not many record shops where we could buy good punk records except for Tutti Frutti.

The owner Tutti and her husband, who stood together, both well-styled, behind the sales counter always led the latest punk records in their program, which we could listen to directly in the shop. On the counter stood a box with singles of local bands like Code 7 and No More who were hated in the punk scene at that time.

For many punks, record purchases were expensive. Everyone was happy that the prospect of copying borrowed records onto tapes, or compiling their own recordings was possible. Some even copied tapes or samplers with double cassette recorders, with two tape decks or double tape decks. At the time the bootleg trade began to flourish due to brilliant technical possibilities. I did not invest in such things as clothes, cinema, tattoos and expensive drinks. I just wanted to buy good punk records from time to time.

Some punks booked their records with mail-order companies such as Vinyl Boogie in Berlin, which once a month distributed the Piss-Yellow Punk-List, from which we regularly ordered. In addition, Vinyl Boogie offered the so-called "Pogophon-zine" which was an answering machine, also known as "Pogophon", that provided information about current events in the punk scene. Every time a package from Berlin arrived it was like a small Christmas celebration. Everyone tried to choose from the order list because the bloke who had the most interesting record collection was a hero in the clique.

A lot of people from the punk scene appeared extremely crazy, whilst some looked quite normal. Regardless of our appearance, all punks had record collections which consisted only of the hardest punk sounds. Others were explicitly on "Ami hardcore". Still others looked like the hardest punks ever, but they had no idea of punk music. Some were real fetishists, admiring a single band which they were permanently crazy about and they listened to almost nothing else.

The Dead Kennedys from San Francisco belonged to the group of really addictive bands that we listened to. These LPs were heard so often, played again and again until they began to crackle and crack. This effect was further enhanced by lending them to others several times, touching them with greasy fingers and listening to them until they were almost worn-out or broken.

I directly started with punk as soon as I began to orient myself in the music and subculture scene, but I was only a leisure punk. Until then, my biggest musical treasure was a self-compiled tape with radio recordings of “New German Wave” bands like Abwärts, Nichts, Ideal, Extrabreit, Fehlfarben and The Wirtschaftswunder, but it became more and more unimportant with proceeding social decline as punk.

In the beginning I picked up more and more punk songs from the radio on tape, including "Homicide" of 999 or "War on the Terraces" of Cockney Rejects. Radio shows even began to announce songs such as "Accidents never happen" by Blondie and a song of the heavy metal band Holocaust as punk. Sometimes, I had no clue who the band was. I once recorded a song sung by a woman. Down to the present day I don't know which band it was. The refrain read,

"Nothing really happens at all".

Henceforth it became one of my favourite songs. When I heard "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols in my room on a small radio alarm clock for the very first time in my life, it downright blew my mind. I was standing in the tiny dungeon with an oversized Why?-poster and a Konkret magazine-poster which had a torture scene pictured on it and was slightly disturbed. I wanted to hear the song again and again, but I was unable to record it.

My very first sampler tape I got was from Brandy. It included Upright Citizens, GBH, Stiff Little Fingers, Anti-Pasti, Kaltwetterfront, OHL, Krupps, Blitzkrieg and Aristocats. Brandy really got me hooked on it musically.

I got my very first record, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle by the Sex Pistols, through a deal in my circle of friends. At that time, I was not afraid of shoplifting, sometimes swiping cigarettes. I received this Sex Pistols-LP for a pack of stolen cigarettes. However the cover of the LP was damaged because the previous owner had cut out the drawn figure of the singer Johnny Rotten and used it for a collage.

My second record, Punks not Dead by The Exploited, could only be attained through shoplifting. I went with a mate in the record shop Membran at the Old Market. There was also the LP of the English band The Wall, Personal Troubles and Public Issues, for 99 Pfennig – nothing special, but a must for every punk. I sneaked into the furthermost corner where the punk records were, and pushed Punks not Dead under my jacket. I put my hands in the front trouser pockets so that the record could not slip down. In the meantime, my accomplice was listening to a 7-inch at the counter and was involved with talking to the salesman, an old punk with blond-coloured hair, wearing both a studded bracelet and a studded belt, who got into an expert discussion about punk bands. Discretely, I passed the seller, who casually perched on a bar stool next to the checkout, from where he had an overview of the entire shop. What I did not notice was the fact that the upper edge of the LP cover popped through just above the last closed button of my jacket. Fortunately, this fact remained undetected by the cash desk punk. First outside, my accomplice Steff informed me about this circumstance. We slowly moved away from the location of the theft, and the LP was quickly recognized as a cult record, even though The Exploited was embarrassing for many punks.

I got a stolen Sounds magazine, in which several punk records were discussed: Anti-Pasti Caution in the Wind, Exploited Troops of Tomorrow, Chron Gen Chronic Generation, Discharge Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing, Anti-Nowhere League We are .... The League and Bad Brains' Rock for Light. When Vielmann handed over the Discharge LP, I copied the lyrics word by word from the gatefold cover. I translated all words I did not know. That helped me prevent my English at school from getting worse.

I sat in my room on the couch and listened to the new Discharge LP. The loudspeakers stood on the left and right next to the double-seater couch on the level with my head and pointed frontally towards each other. My new low-budget hi-fi system was fully turned up and I was sitting right in the middle.

When the song "Free Speech for The Dumb" was on, my grandfather came into the room. He looked at me and asked,

"Are you being rude?"

and laughed. When the following song "The End" began with the short beep at the beginning, he shook his raised index finger in horror and closed the door. I listened to the record intensively until the end.

One day at Membran Record Shop, I changed the price labels on several records. Once I tore off the 21,95 Deutschmark price tag of the GBH LP City Baby Attacked by Rats and replaced it with another label of 9,95 Deutschmarks, which I had previously detached unnoticed and carefully from another record. I was so cunning. I asked my mother, when rushing with her through the city if she could buy me the record. She would get the money back later. It would have been unimaginable what would have happened if Membran had accused my mother of fraud.

Later on arrived a fresh pack of the second Chaos U.K. EP Loud Political & Uncompromising on the shelf next to the cash desk of Membran. The EP contained the songs "No Security", "What about a Future" and "Hypocrite". I made them play it to me loudly in the shop. I knew immediately that I must get into possession of this EP.

At that time there was no way of avoiding punk records from Finnland. Anyone who was able to join in a conversation in this field was considered a special someone. Barne was the first to tell me about Finnish punk. He was one of the most insubordinate punks I've ever met. With his metal-rimmed glasses and a blond punk haircut, he was a small specialist in giving accurate and provocative nicknames, trying to bring us out of our shells. Others had problems to outreach his sayings. He recommended to me bands like Terveet Kädet and Riistetyt. Soon, Finnish punk ran for the first time over the kasi recorder (cassette player) on the playground behind the Penny market or in the laundry at the Triangle Square, where we also sometimes hung out. As long as the batteries still had some juice, and the tape did not begin to grind we could entertain ourselves and the residents sufficiently with our music. It was a mystery to us, why Punk from Finland was so effective. The Finns had understood what it was about. I had to get into possession of Finnish punk music after the first play-back. I ordered my two first Finnish punk singles at Vinyl Boogie.

When I looked into the Piss-Yellow Punk-List, I noticed various Finnish punk records: 7-inches, EPs and LPs. In this cult-list, that was regularly sent to me by mail from Berlin, the abbreviation of the country of origin was printed behind the band name. I came across a single from Kaaos (Finn) – Totalinen Kaaos and the Pultii Sampler (Finn). Every punk immediately realized that it was Finnish punk. I ordered without hesitation. The Kaaos single was the purest frenzy. The Pultii-Sampler, an EP, showed on the cover a urinating punk. Now I could join in the conversation a bit more. In the meantime Vielmann, who also had metal-rimmed glasses, found a punk sampler, that was called Propaganda, that featured the current most important Finnish punk bands. We listened to the sampler until vomiting. These indescribable feelings of happiness were made possible by the few record shops that offered punk music and by our beloved mail order record shop in Berlin. It was an incredible kick every time the Piss-Yellow List arrived by mail. The list was copied with trash effect and folded from DIN-A4 to DIN-A5. Sometimes it was even light green or light blue.

We tried to sing our hearts out with some of the refrains of the Finnish punk songs, although most of the meaning of the lyrics was completely unclear, as was the case with Riisteyts "Painu Helvettiin Natsiäpärä". Someone told us that this refrain in translation means "Go to hell you old Nazi-bastard". Later a second Propaganda sampler came on the market, that of course we also enjoyed. On the cover, the inside cover and on the label imprint, punks could be seen in all sorts of poses: drinking, celebrating, urinating and fucking. Finnish punk music was for us the soul of punk par excellence. This punk wave hit us hard. From now on this new type of music could not be absent at any party, whether it was private, on the playground behind the Penny market or in the laundry. We behaved even rougher, more obscenely and more frivolously, and as for the music we listened to, there was only one motto: faster, louder, harder! Finnish punk records were preferably lent out in the scene and not returned. Finn-punk had a high exchange value and was also used as a stake in bets, but only if you were a hundred percent sure. Soon the next wave swarmed over to us, some of them had already guessed, this time from “Ami Land”. Through catchy punk zines and over the Piss-Yellow Punk-List we learned about the phenomenon ami-hardcore. Compilations like This Is Boston, Not L.A. and Decline of the Western Civilization showed us the way for the future.

At Vinyl Boogie we had to order immediately without hesitation, if the Piss-Yellow List arrived by postal service from Berlin, otherwise the best records were already out of stock. I wanted to order EPs from Rudimentary Peni and the Necros at all cost. They were among the bands whose singles and EPs contained an exceeding number of songs. This was usually a permanent shouting and strumming, that was interrupted after only a few seconds by short pauses, as if it were a single chopped composition. Some EPs even had to be played on 33 rpm (revolutions per minute, instead of 45), that caused additional fun, but in some cases confusion as soon as the singing started. This time I waited too long with the order and never saw the records, because the new list of the following month no longer contained the EPs. Sold out. We tried sometimes to buy belated waxes from previous months, that were no longer in the new list, but it never worked. What was gone was gone. This caused us a regular shopping frenzy, so that we soon started ordering immediately after the arrival of the list, even if it was sometimes only one album or two 7-inches per person.

We constantly had to get in touch with each other to order together with several punks so we could share the postage. Prior to the arrival of the package, one of us – the addressee – collected the money so that cash could be paid immediately. If we missed the parcel carriage, the post office stored our records for a week at Karlstal Post Office in Kiel-Gaarden. It happened several times that we could not accept the package directly at the front door. Therefore on the following day we drove with a small group of punks to the east bank to pay for the parcel and accept it. The cardboard box was immediately torn up directly in the post office and the records handed over to the owners. It was like a Christmas holiday. We drove back to Kiel-North and proudly inspected our brand new records on the bus.

Soon I decided to collect 7-inches from the labels Riot City Records and No Future, because despite the Finnish Punk and Ami hardcore waves, I was more interested in English punk in the long term. Germanpunk had hardly a chance with me. There had to be something extraordinary. It took more than just the music to win me over. The cover work, the posters, the statements and calls for violence. It was absolutely my world to read the English punk lyrics, while at the same time the record played loudly.

With each order new highlights arrived. One in particular – the LP The Partisans – gave me a whole new attitude to life. So did the first Chaos U.K. LP. Because I am colour-blind the cover that contained the lyrics in red letters and the blue background on the backside affected my vision. I was not able to focus properly and my pupils narrowed and widened to the rhythm of my pulse.

Whenever I listened to the maxi-single Politicians and Ministers from The Threats, I could understand the feelings of teenagers on the brink of RAF terrorism. Such emotions were triggered in me by this red high-gloss Maxi with the dancing skeleton in front of the Palace of Westminster on the cover.

Although I now had a rumpled punk-haircut, tattered jeans, army boots, a painted, studded leather jacket, a self-made studded belt, and an equally elaborate self-made studded wristband, I felt at best accepted by most on the playground. I could not wear this in my school at that time, the Hebbel Grammar School Kiel. At this grammar school, very close to the naval base, there still existed a fairly military spirit. The so-called "Grammar School for Boys and Girls" was considered one of the best in the city, and was originally a pure boys' school, but since the end of the 1960s girls were allowed to attend classes as well. The school was easy to reach from the city centre by the bus line 1, but many pupils came from outside.

I bought the cone-shaped and pyramid studs in large quantities at Turkish tailors somewhere in the city. I got the army boots for very little money second-hand at a ramp shop in the Werftbahnstrasse in Gaarden. I copied the squiggly Conflict lettering from the cover of the It's Time To See Who's Who to my tattered jeans.

No one dared to take his painted leather jacket with him to school, for there were a couple of teachers who did not tolerate that. Some punks had a second leather jacket, that remained unpainted, but they did not dare to wear them at school at first. Only on school festivals, when much alcohol was involved and the few supervisors lost track of things, did we become courageous enough to wear our outfits.

Every time I turned the back of my studded jacket towards someone, I was maximum proud, because I knew that the person could certainly read in big letters Chaos U.K. that I had copied from the original emblem of the first two 7-inches. All the punks showed this kind of exhibitionism when they had their favourite band name painted on the back of their leather jacket. These scribblings on jackets evoked conversations again and again,

"Have you already listened to the LP of Chaos U.K.? ",

or,

"What does Mayhem mean?"

Some punks even wrote on their boots with a paint stick or whiteout.

The conversations in the wooden hut on the Penny playground were not really understood outside the hut because of the sound of the kasi recorder, but it was clear from the sentence fragments that nearly everything was about punk music or boozing. The punks showed a lot of slapstick particularly when urinating and disposing of empties. Individuals were provoked. Incrowd-typical songs were sung. If a pack of cheap beer was available, everything in the world was fine. However, not everyone was able to snatch one. It made sense to bring your own beer if you were prepared to protect it from being pocketed by others. Whoever did not dare to ask for a beer was considered a pseudo-punk, or even a follower. Punks had their methods in which to harass others and to label them as outsiders among outsiders.

When in the case of misconduct someone said ironically,

"What kind of attitude have you got?"

A small psycho-drama started among the punks, that served the mutual refreshment and encouragement.

The tendency of the punks towards destructivity was striking. Not only did we mistreat objects, we also suffered from a typical form of self-destructiveness, that was reflected in addictive behaviour, especially in our language. Many developed a malicious cynicism and an associated vocabulary of despair. We imitated and parodied brilliantly at a young age the vocabulary of the alcs and kaputtniks, although we ourselves were already half alcoholics,

"My liver stings!"

"The beer belly bursts!"

"Something to swig down!"

"Have a sip?"

"Only the last sip!"

"Must fight the morning-after thirst!"

"My head is bursting!"

Also slurp down, tank up, get sloshed, wash down, chugalug, knock back a drink and getting pissed were spoken often. It sounds pretty dark, but the fun factor was still extremely high. In addition, small acquisitive crimes were typical of the Kiel punk scene. It was not uncommon to borrow records with the full intend of keeping them for good or giving them away. As a result, unestablished young punks had to suffer – even Töle and Monko-Rolf were ripped-off.

One day, Brandy showed up at the home of Töle and borrowed 20 to 30 new-quality LPs, including Vorkriegsphase, Varukers, Chaotic Dischord, FU's, Terveet Kädet, the Riisteyt with blue vinyl and the first Propaganda sampler. He promised faithfully to return the records immediately, as soon as he had recorded them. Instead, he gave the records ruthlessly to people from the Wik Punk scene, who kept the bulk of the records for themselves. Töle managed to get a single LP back from Barne, but the rest were irretrievably lost.

That's why many punks were not real friends. Many met only to drink and clash. Maybe that was a kind of fucked up friendship in punk times.

In April '82, Slime played in the great hall of the Pumpe. I could not get to the concert, which further proved my status as a 'pseudo'. I later received a short concert review from Brandy. Slime started with A.C.A.B, and there was an incredible Pogo mob with brutal-pogo. After a few songs, there was a lot of trouble. The Konz brothers, Krake and their companions were constantly searching for victims among the concert-goers, upon whom they pounced on punching and kicking. Three or four of them against one. The Slime singer, who was not amused, came from the stage and tried loudly to suppress the stress. He finally managed to do so and the concert continued.

Back on the Penny playground, it was not long before the coppers appeared for the first time on a Saturday afternoon and prompted the punks to clear out. Since the punks were in the majority, cautious discussions were possible at the beginning, but in the end, the punks had to give in and leave for a different place to party – always with the fear of being surveilled. To avoid this, the punks took the tram and drove to the city centre, where the group broke up, disoriented. Sometimes we met again in the laundry, where we continued to booze. Sometimes we simply drove by tram to the final destination or landed senseless in the Schrevenpark or at Hertie department store where Kiel's best graffiti was to be read – a clear capitalism scolding,

"Feeling and Hertie".

I found it super-funny that the punk Smike from Mettenhof just like me had sprayed the band name BLITZ on the upper arm of his leather jacket as if we had used the same template. Likely, he had, just like me, traced the same lettering from the LP, transferred it on a piece of cardboard and cut it out. We never talked about this curiosity. Really crude. I hung around with punks from all over Kiel, who were like soul mates to me, some of them though I did not exchange a single word with. Smike always appeared with this Bonny, a punk with blond, tuned up hair, also from Mettenhof, quite a ruffian, with a painted and studded leather jacket, whose acne scars were able to frighten even the last upright citizen.

It was all about nothing. We wanted our fun, and as the coppers showed up more and more frequently in the playground, this meeting point was suddenly passé. So we had our rights to celebrate disputed.

Soon we had no choice but to continue our parties in ever-changing groups in other places, such as beer machines. We stood on the pavement for hours and drank our beer.

There were often party-like meetings and fraternizations. However, even in these places, many residents felt disturbed for their privacy, especially when someone was smashing bottles or yelling too loud. As the cops came more and more frequently to keep an eye on us, our personal details were slowly being recorded. This was, of course, a bit of a drag. Especially with the junior-coppers. We had the impression that they had to fight out their personal disputes with the punks.

The Kiel cops were easy to provoke, and every provocative expression or gesture or even slight misunderstanding seemed to aggrevate them more. Anyone who said tipsily "Herr Wachtmeister" or responded to instructions with "Jawoll" or even with a military greeting and "Yes sir!" had to expect slight consequences that mostly remained within the framework of the legally permissible. In most cases, the boys in blue left it with threats and intimidation, but there were also exceptions. Sometimes you could be accidently pushed down the stairs if you were shipped to the notorious Falkwache Police Station. This happened to my cousin, a rocker at the time. The current threat in this police station was well-known,

"Be careful not to stumble down the stairs."

This was not the image of ​​the police that we were taught during our childhood. We, as punks, made no acquaintance with Mr Correct in the ranks of the Kiel cops. They tried to exorcise our scurrilities consistently and uncompromisingly. Often when we were seen strolling as a group, like dazed background actors in a theatre production of a "last days of the Earth" tragedy, the police station executives were particularly unimpressed. They would rather have applied a mentally-ill clause in order to get us out of the way, especially as "dangerous junkies" and "anti-socials" who were to be stopped.

At that time, I felt like a punk rebel in the group. When I was alone in the street, I often lacked confidence and courage. Besides, I felt the anguish that my parents could see me in my painted leather jacket. This jacket belonged to my father and was originally a short coat, that I stripped from my parents' bedroom cabinet and unscrupulously cut off at waist level with a long pair of scissors.

Whenever I left the house to meet with my punk buddies, I preferred either to turn the jacket around, or to flee from the cellar window in the evening with the intention of avoiding the front door. I also started to shape my hair on the road with beer, because I still had to live with my parents at my age. When I arranged my punk haircut, I tried almost everything. I tested my mother's hairspray and hair lacqueur as well. A few people grabbed into my spiky hair to check what material I used and how hard it was. I did not like that.

When I was standing in my parents' garden with a punk haircut and Chaos U.K. T-shirt, my aunt came to visit and saw me from the terrace. She looked at me briefly and screamed, horrified,

"Well, now he's a punk!"

At that time my mother, too, was beginning to get wind of the looming disaster. While I gained new friends in the punk scene, I also gained new kinds of enemies. This was my most difficult learning experience. The youths from the rocker scene were not well-disposed towards me, and they were sometimes dangerous when they appeared in groups. It was often said,

"There, a punk!"

Or I was taken to task,

"What do you want to represent, a punk or what?"

And there were regular beatings. However, I was often lucky enough and others were caught instead because I fled in many precarious situations.

My first New Year as a punk was already extremely dramatic. There was a party in the Youth Club Buschblick in Pries-Friedrichsort. It was organized by the motorcycle club Toxavit, where my cousin was a member. I went with my friends Vielmann and Wisent on New Year's Eve to the Buschblick. When I asked at the entrance for my cousin, the first rockers were already bothered by my punk outfit. I did not get a real answer and just went inside. There were only aggressive, drunken rockers everywhere. Suddenly someone shouted,

"There's a punk!"

and a group of rockers set in motion and pursued me relentless. One of them had a baseball bat. With a bottle of rum mixture in my hand, I sprinted head-on and off right through the terraced house settlement. After some hundred metres I threw the bottle into the bushes, when the rocker pack shouted,

"Stay, you pig!"

"Kill him!"

"Get him!"

The rocker pack chased me cursing me with insults so foul-mouthed that even celluloid rockers such as Marlon B. and Dennis H. would not have taken it. I passed a place where I could hit the bushes. Realizing that the last rocker had passed my hiding place gasping, I crouched there for a moment in a state of shock. When the air was clean again, I skipped off unnoticed. A short time later I met my two friends, who told me furiously that one of the rockers took their heads and knocked them against each other. I was regarded as culprit because of my performance in the Club with punk outfit. It was not to be the last New Year's Eve where I would have problems with rockers. My hatred for this species could not have been greater.

The whole everyday life as a punk was totally dangerous. We often had to suffer because of our outer appearance. I felt like a spearhead in our working class district Friedrichsort. More than once I was a victim of the hostilities between punks and the many hard rock kids. We lived in 1982, and the first big punk wave was already five years old. Nevertheless, punks were in some regions, hunted like rabbits. It became more and more frequent to receive insults, threats, attacks, beatings, disadvantages and discriminations. You were verbally abused from passing cars, some stepped on the gas when you crossed the road, and they honked their horns obtrusively without any reason while driving past in a short distance. Also, as a cyclist I was horribly cut off by cars. In many situations, especially former world war participants gawked after me provocatively with an evil face or looked me up and down. There were dog-owners who gave attacking commands to their four-legged friends as they passed by, so that the animals nearly broke free bearing their teeth wildly, barking and almost strangling themselves. These were unforgettable shocking times. Life as a punk was sometimes life-threatening. Since skinheads played no role in Kiel at the time, the natural enemies for punks were rockers.

It all sounds quite harmless, but as a 16-year-old I had to live with the constant fear of being beaten up without reason. I twice experienced a situation that rockers would let loose on me with the obvious intention of beating me up, and I usually rescued myself by striking back and sprinting away.

At my school there was a massive crackdown by the most violent teachers against our little punk scene – with slaps in the face and other punishments. In case somebody wore something disturbing on his jacket, for example the caps of Beugelbuddelbeer, as Monko-Rolf dared, he was taken and slapped, apparently to drive out the devil, as if the criminal code did not apply in our school. It was pure psychological terror what some teachers initiated against certain pupils at our school, especially those devoted to subculture.

Soon the bastards had their eyes on me as well. It was cruel when they roared at you for the smallest misconduct, and you were fiercely reprimanded until your whole body trembled. In this way, we were confronted with manners that we thought had long been obsolete. This was, of course, very crass and came as a shock. On the one hand, there were a few teachers who specifically focused on punks and punk-like species. On the other hand, there were people like English teacher Bonn, who showed a radical reaction when a student had problems with English pronunciation. The English "th" was beaten into some of us in the true sense of the word in front of the mirror in the cloakroom. Only among the girls the radical teachers were cautious concerning the application of physical violence.

To report a teacher because of bodily harm was absolutely no use at that time, only inconvenient. I had learnt this already at the primary school when, together with my mother, I in vain reported the headmaster, who had slapped me violently in the face during a music lesson.

One of the school punks, Maxi, flunked out of school soon, as he fought back reflexively against a slap in the face by teacher Haberlack. Maxi seemed rather reserved until then, but broken and desolate after his expulsion. The school expulsion from Hebbel Grammar and the circumstances that led to it left clear traces. Only when he was amicably teased and built up by his punk mates, he came out of his shell – or when he could drink the day away on the Penny playground. The responsible teacher, Herr Haberlack, had a mutilated hand. This probably resulted of a war-wound. Looking back, no one could remember whether the teacher had hit with this injured hand or with the other. Several pupils including Monko-Rolf, Maxi and later myself were shocked as we asked ourselves which hand the teacher was using while beating us. This could really make you sick.

At that time my performance at school left a lot to be desired. Everything was going downhill. Frustrated, I no longer did anything to improve my school performance. It was rare enough that I did my homework, but when I did I was listening to loud punk music.

To make matters even worse I later received a two-week school ban due to misconduct at a school festival. This meant, in principle, the end of my career at the age of 16. As my school ban got around to the punks, I finally began to gain acceptance, but we'll get to that later.

 

Punks in Kiel-Gaarden

The squat

 

As punks we were constantly looking for new places to stay. One day we landed in a squatted house on the Sophienblatt. At that time punks and squatters were not necessarily groups that were sympathetic to each other. Perhaps squatter-punks already existed somewhere in Germany at the time, but definitely not in Kiel. We hated the squatters and the squatters hated us. They were to us nothing more than hippies, from which we wanted to distinguish ourselves clearly.

Further up the corner was the Movie Intim, a filthy porn theatre, where I fortunately never stopped off. About this place existed the worst of stories. I was not aware of what was happening in the neighbouring squatted houses at that time.

The Falklands War was freshly raging – including the sinking of ships. This war in the southern Atlantic had totally gotten on our nerves. As the General Belgrano was sunk by a torpedo strike and later the HMS Sheffield through an Exocet rocket we felt our hearts drop into our boots. I can remember that the media reporting about the sinking of the Belgrano was still quite restrained here. This in addition to the Sheffield was purely outrageous. I still remember the photographs of the smoking shipwrecks. We were relieved when the spook was over.

That afternoon, we were on the road with a powerful group of punks, particularly powerful were Gonnrad, Stidi, Mig and Kammkatz – the epitome of everything that had rank and name in the eyes of the young punks. We aimed specifically at a building near Hertie, that had been occupied for some time by a larger mob of squatters.

Kammkatz was one of the few Kiel punks who constantly lugged their girlfriend around. With her sharp eyes she looked daggers at everyone, and everywhere Kammkatz had his girlfriend in tow. Just on that day, strangely enough, she was not at his side. Gonnrad and the Konz brothers immediately were loud-mouthed as we entered the squatter’s café. They were really terrific at the time, straight in their views and tolerated no criticism. After a verbal attack they used to say provocatively,

"Do you want to discuss with me?"

and the conversation was promptly cut short. Different oddballs and strangers had to experience this first hand and now the squatters as well. Mig in particular was unrestrictedly crass in these situations. He simply said,

"I do not want to discuss with you any further!"

They thus imitated the behaviour of the henchmen, with whom they had disputes on the streets. Even towards his own people, Mig often acted savagely,

"But I want to drink this beer alone now. We really do not have to discuss this,"

and the subject seemed to be over, except he quarreled with his brother again, who liked to contradict him to the utmost. This was a never ending psychodrama.

On this day I wore a brown leather coat, and entered the Untergrund (Underground), as the squatter's cafe was called, with wide awake, wide-open eyes. The punks gave a stressful picture right from the start. Gonnrad and the Konz brothers were one of the few older punks who, by way of exception, had not pierced the rivets through their leather jackets. Gonnrad's black, abraded jacket was smeared with a white or beige colour at one spot on his back. He had probably leaned against a freshly painted wall or a radiator. His haircut – blond and almost ten centimetres long – stuck out in short strands. Did he have a package of dye in his hair?

Like a lot of people from the punk scene, he sometimes bent his knees sideward while standing upright under the influence. This looked funny and dangerous, as if he could lose the balance and collapse at any moment. Because of his pure physical presence, he permanently made reproducible to us young punks what being a punk means. Gonnrad sometimes decided dictatorially, where the wind was blowing. He earned our respect through his tattered face. Should we experience this facial expression as well?

Stidi was wearing his spiffy brown leather jacket with the band name GBH on his back. We puzzled for a while what the abbreviation GBH might stand for. Some said Great Britain Heroes, the other Grievous Bodily Harm. Also from the haircut he looked absolutely similar to the singer of GBH. Completely crazy.

We radically seized the squatter's café, which did not suit the squatters at all. The squatter's café Underground was thus partially occupied by others again – an easy prey and a really successful activity that would get around – just according our taste.

At first, the squatters hid, while we punks consistently occupied the café. Stidi meanwhile located the refrigerator with the alcoholic drinks and took hold for the first time. At the same time, Mig with his pithy slogans created an electrifying atmosphere. He provoked the squatters and was very offensive. The squatters were not in a position to call the coppers. They faced an overwhelming majority of punks. A funny situation. One of the protagonists of the Kiel squatter scene, a bloke named Long Jock, disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a baseball bat in his hand.

Meanwhile, I sat with my mate Steff on a couch, from where we could well oversee the scenario as cinema visitors. After a while, Zico, one of the die-hard punks, came to us and we talked about punk bands. He gave us an absolute insider tip. Zico recommended the LP of a band called One Way System,

"This is a groundbreaking record, absolutely. You have to get it as soon as possible! The LP is called All Systems Go!"

I repeated the band name again to memorize it,

"What? One Way System? "

"Yes, One Way System, super hard and awesome lyrics!"

"I'll get it!"

As young punks we were happy about this unexpected record tip. It seemed a bit like the die-hard punk wanted to give development assistance in the scene, because we hung around for the first time with the big ones.

Of course, we got the record as soon as possible, and it was recognized as an unquestionable cult record. We did not need to discuss that. After Zico got up again from the worn-out couch, to our surprise Gonnrad sat down next to me and Steff.

"May I have a drag?"

he asked, and I handed him my HB filter cigarette, that I had stolen from the living room cabinet from my father the night before. I felt ennobled.

"The long squatter is getting on my nerves!"

I said to Gonnrad.

He dragged with pleasure from the cigarette and said,

"He won't do anything!"

"He's already trembling all over his body!"

Steff emphasized.

"Never mind!"

Gonnrad, a qualified lagger, was the undisputed chief punk. There was hardly any discussion about that, even Tutti saw it that way. Gonnrad's language immediately rubbed off on us. In a corner of the squatter's café it was getting tumultuous now. Long Jock in his position as chief squatter wanted to protect the counter area with his club as Stidi tried to get the remaining drinks from the fridge. When Stidi managed to grab the last bottles that he was holding with both arms in front of his chest, the dispute escalated.

Long Jock, the male icon of the Kiel squatter scene, performed horrible, horror-show-like threatening gestures, until it came to a first scuffle. We punks finally decided to retreat along with our captured drinks. Jock, the two-metre beanpole, was just too unpredictable. Probably pumped up again with drugs and enraged, he seemed with his baseball bat ready to do the utmost damage he could. He was still trembling, probably deliberately overplayed as a demonstrative threatening gesture, savagely latched onto the club. In the meantime, we left the busy house amused. It was 1 : 0 for the punks.

This guerrilla warfare with the squatters contributed to the fact that several of the Kiel punks later converted to skinheads, but we'll come to that later. Kiel's squatted houses were soon demolished and had to give way to an ultra-modern shopping mall. Later, in July '83, I observed with mixed emotions the use of the demolition excavator, that simply chopped up the walls of one of the old houses, creating debris and dust. The squatted houses are history now.

This intermezzo in the squatter's cafe was just one of many episodes in which Gonnrad, the Konz brothers and Kammkatz played the chief parts. Not least because of his convincing punk visage, Gonnrad was able to drag along us junior punks, but he was not untouchable. Behind his back some were making sporadically derisive remarks. Lurid tongues claimed that his face appeared so battered because his mother might have drunk too much alcohol during pregnancy. These rumours even affected me. Some new wavers and mods contemptuously called the Konz brothers "The Twins". That turned me off as well.

In some on tour actions, Kammkatz appeared as a leader when we were going through the streets, because he was handling our booze-ups apparently according to protocol. Gonnrad could not always be in the foreground. Perhaps there was actually a subliminal rivalry between Gonnrad, the Konz brothers and Kammkatz. Once Kammkatz transferred his fresh stamp to the back of my hand when we went to the Pumpe for a concert. When there was a slight problem with the cashier, I said,

"I've just washed my hands, the stamp is already blurred."

"Let me see,"

said the cashier, looking at the back of my hand above the studded bracelet.

"Give me a fresh stamp!"

Without difficulty, the cashier pressed a new stamp on me. In the Bergstrasse this method was only partly helpful. The bouncers there proved to be much more radical and pressed the stamp with a lot of force onto the pulse. It was told that the Bergstrasse bouncers were devoted to dealing really hardcore-like and we had to be constantly careful not to be caught.

 

 

 Räumung der besetzten Häuser Sophienblatt '81

 

25 Øre

Zack. Suddenly, a new punk fashion was born. All young punks wanted to get 25-Øre pieces to hang this special coin with the small hole in the middle with a leather strap around the neck. That was wicked. One of them started it, the others followed. A 25-Øre coin was about the size of a Deutschmark coin or a five pence coin. These Danish coins even fitted into some cigarette and game machines for some time, but its value was not particularly high. I got almost half a kilo of them when I went to Denmark with my parents and my sister in a green VW-Passat.

Back home, I organized a thin leather strap, ran it through the hole of one of the coins, and tied the strap together. It had to sit tight, otherwise the coin was not shown to its fullest advantage. I did not master sailor knots or similar arts and therefore used a double knot. It is conceivable that I stuck the remaining coins in cigarette machines at the start, when it still worked, and later in video-games and pinball machines. Unfortunately, this trick did not work with gambling machines. In any case the 25-Øre coin on the neck was a popular fashion accessory. Besides the 25-Øre pieces a strand of hair falling in the face was compulsory as well for many of the young punks, even though this might have produced a squint.

Kieler punks in Aarhus, Denmark

At die-hard punks private

In order to escape boredom, we regularly visited with little punk-mobs in hit-and-run-style some persons that were unknown to me. This happened mostly in the afternoon and always without advance notification. Sometimes we were let in, sometimes we had to stay outside. In case we did not get in, we occasionally occupied the house entrance for a long time and behaved off-key.

We met with various die-hard punks in private. In one instance we drove to Schulstrasse in Gaarden. With a small bunch of punks we visited someone there in an old building and occupied the living room. The guy's record collection did not really please us. Gonnrad finally found an album of The Cure. It was the Seventeen Seconds. We sat with our backs to the walls on the floor and listened to this post-punk classic. Suddenly Mig and Gonnrad began to argue horribly. It just ran "A Forest". Mig claimed the song was "The Final Sound". Gonnrad insisted that the song would be called "A Forest". They argued for more than twenty minutes. During this stressful phase, the needle of the record player was repeatedly placed before the said song "A Forest". The quarrel always began again. Mig said

"This is 'The Final Sound'!"

Gonnrad cried with threatening gestures,

"No, this is 'A Forest'!"

Thereupon Mig again,

"No, 'The Final Sound'!"

"Hundred Percent 'A Forest'!"

"The Final Sound!"

"A Forest!"

They really were overdoing it, and we were slowly scared that they would punch each other. The host had to play the record over and over again, and Mig kept saying "The Final Sound". We all listened skeptically to the text to find clues, checked the cover and later also the record label. The problem was not solved, even the host was fed up and we drank like hardcore.

On another day I ended up with Steff and a punk couple in the Holtenauer Strasse, near the Penny market. I guess they were junkies, but I'm not sure. We originally wanted to go to the Wik Punks on the playground, but the meeting point was deserted. I do not remember how the flat visit came about. We finally hung around for half an afternoon in the flat and got pissed. Proper conversations with the hosts were not possible. I think they belonged to the Hertie gang, but they did not want to hook us on or convert us to something. They were just glad they had visitors. Unknown punk music was playing on the low-cost hifi system. We did not ask what was playing from the speakers. The flat was run-down, yellowed and filthy. Even crumpled newspapers were lying around. Yellowed flats were quite typical for Kiel at the time. In nearly every other home lived die-hard Nazis, war veterans, marine members and various boozers. At the time there were still countless old people who had experienced the First World War. When there was nothing left to drink, Steff and I set off again to explore Kiel on our own.

Punks in front of Tutti Frutti Record Store, Holtenauer Street 176

Spit in the face

At my old school, it was a kind of fashion for a while in the lower classes to choose someone in the schoolyard, to approach him and spit snot in his face. I do not know how much snot I got in total, but each time I fell into a rage. The whole thing ran like a screenplay: a schoolboy sought out a victim, entangled him in a superficial conversation, and finally spat at him out of the blue. This went on for quite some time, until the victims were able to assess when a spit was about to happen, and therefore avoided conversation with certain specialists. We learned to dodge the spit, to turn our heads away, to protect our faces, to anticipate our opponents or to spit in their faces a bit earlier. The whole issue was extremely disgusting. The spitter ran away after spitting and was chased by the spitted. In many cases, this led to tussles in the schoolyard or even to small brawls. For the victims, these were unforgettable moments – the virtual pin in the elephant's trunk. These spawling events occurred at the time when many of us became punks.

I can remember that Maxi, who still counted as an ordinary schoolboy, and I had a horrible punch-up in one of the class lines. He was in one of the other classes in the same year as me, in these were exclusively city children. Maxi was half a head bigger than me. We beat and rolled around on the ground like wrestlers. He finally gained the upper hand and had already won the fight in principle when a powerful teacher separated us. Perhaps this argument would have gone further, if I had shown a few more tricks, if he'd slipped up or if others had interfered for my favour. I cannot remember what led to this one-on-one battle. Since at this time spitting was still in fashion, I strongly assume that one of us spat in the face of the other before. The teacher did not pursue this incident between Maxi and me. Our little dogpile at school was thus finished and was not continued, because Maxi was soon expelled from the school, as he finally mutated into a punk. He could not stand that deputy headmaster Haberlack slapped him in the face and hit him back reflexively. Maxi landed up at the nearby secondary school and quickly advanced to the chief punk of the Wik Punk scene. When we met again on the Penny playground among the punks, we never really talked a word to each other. We hated each other, probably a little arrogant, too, he because he dared to fight back with deputy headmaster Haberlack, I because I still could call myself a grammar school pupil, even though I had long since entered the road of the losers. Maxi was, of course, a thousand times tougher than me. He became depressed, because of the circumstances that led to his school expulsion. That wasn't the real tragedy to come. The tragedy only began when Barne died of a heroin overdose.

Punk band Scapegoats, outside their rehearsal room, Kiel

The school fascists

In my class there was a fellow schoolboy who came from the right-wing milieu: Gerd who was a member of Bund Heimattreuer Jugend (BHJ, Alliance of Patriotic Youth) and the Wiking Jugend (Wiking Youth), that were later banned. It happened regularly that Gerd with his slicked back undercut wanted to speak to fellow schoolboys person-to-person. He preferred outsiders who came from socially weak families that did not achieve good school reports or whose personalities were considered not stable. They told these schoolboys about camaraderie, camp fire, and first affairs with women that were supposedly on the agenda in the summer camp of the BHJ. The fellow schoolboy was persuaded with nasty tricks to join them. It was said again and again,

"You will really experience something"

and

"This is really cool!"

or

"Here you have something for life. There is true comradeship."

The last resort was the spell

"Just come with us,"

accompanied by a punch to the stomach area. Gerd had already formed a small aggressive group who liked to maltreat others. No one was really beaten up. The fascist youths in our class had specialized in giving blows to the stomach area, excessively shoulder tapping, hard jostling and slaps on the back and sometimes in the testicles too. They also liked to pull at your ears and twist your arms around – this was to bring fellow schoolboys under their control. All this was not what I wanted to do.

Gerd was the ringleader, who was soon secretly called "Obernazi", "Jungnazi" or Nazi-Gerd by some. Particularly during the breaks, if someone did not leave the classroom, it became a habit for hit-and-run style attacks on selected classmates. The fascist schoolboys in the class would shove around their victims. Gerd lived with his parents in Molfsee. His father who was an extreme right-winger as well, who was working as an entrepreneur – being a spokesman for parents at our school. This frightened many pupils.

Gerd's father was in charge of a security service, a sort of security firm that, in 1982, was supposed to recruit its employees exclusively from the right spectrum.

But there was no real flow of information about these facts, that could have made these circumstances public. It turned out that Gerd and his class thugs had tendencies to the far-right. This became undoubtedly clear in their utterances and discussions. Because we were in the same class, we were bound to form some sort of mutual understanding with these people, even though we tried to avoid them during breaks in the class and in the schoolyard. We were together five days a week, several hours a day. In addition, we were squeezed into a pigeon-hole by the teachers, so we had to get along with each other.

Gerd's "comrade" Körtz, who later left school to go into the navy and command a frigate, specialized during this time at school – as soon as Gerd gave the order – to bump into his selected classmate first and pinch him in the testicles. He was a really disgusting guy. Five of these jerks were in our class. For some victims, provocation and physical violence soon became the norm. Most of the time they called you a "servant", a "dosser" or a "hedge dosser".

You could regularly hear the phrase,

"Better dead than red,"

that was uttered to isolated schoolboys who had attempted to take a stand.

Nobody really knows how many classmates Gerd could force to the meetings of BHJ and Wiking Jugend. The teachers looked away throughout. Some were either themselves former soldiers, anti-aircraft auxiliary, in the Hitler Youth or as youths traumatized by the bombings and everything else or even disabled. One teacher, for example, started to tell about Stalingrad in the middle of Latin course,

"First row of Russians, machine-gunned. Second row of Russians, machine-gunned. Third row of Russians, machine-gunned ... Somehow the Russians got through. "

Nazi-Gerd and his thugs tried to manipulate, to maltreat and to influence me at school as well. However, I successfully resisted the "school yard terror". At that time it was a bit of a drag that the leaflets of the "Kieler Liste für Ausländerbegrenzung" (KLA, Kiel List for Restiction of Foreigners) were distributed openly by a person with a slicked back undercut before the entrance of Hebbel Grammar, or better said, the leaflets were forced on the pupils. The slicked back undercut, who distributed the KLA leaflet, was at our school two classes above us. As it turned out later, he was the best friend of Gerd. These fascists obviously had a free hand at the school. The school management forbade the creators of the left-oriented student magazine "Anders" to distribute their A5-booklet for a while. Later, however, this distribution ban could no longer be maintained.

Wiker punks, Blücher playground "Blü", Kiel (left); punk party

Our beloved tram

It was a paradox that Maxi and I went around regularly together in a group of punks for a while after we had beaten each other at school and permanently hated each other. He still ignored me. Once we walked to the tram tracks together at the Belvedere stop and put one-pfennig and two-pfennig pieces on the edge of the track to flatten them by the wheels of the next line 4 tram. Somebody told us that it would bring good luck. The drunken punks had this mania for quite some time, to jump on the tracks just before the tram arrived and place their coins there. This always seemed extremely chaotic during the busy traffic on Holtenauer Street on a Saturday afternoon. The tram drivers rang the bell in the most alarming way, so that many residents were disturbed from their afternoon nap. Actually this was considered a great day. A few punk girls from Kiel-Mettenhof and Kiel-Gaarden took part in it, who always ignored me because I seemed too young and probably too pseudo-like. They brought with them a perfume smell of patchouli, a sort of Rattendiesel[1]. We rode to the city centre, boozed up, made a lot of grimaces and harassed the other passengers, who then moved forward into the front wagon. I think we wanted to drink at the Hertie department store, where sometimes the Hertie gang were hanging around. The Hertie gang, as I was informed, consisted of a bunch of heavily tattooed punks and outlaws like Krake, Rotzig, Hotten, Hasteg and co., who were all around ten years older than most of us. To me the Hertie gang were not that important because they had no future and were only spreading negative energy. For them everyone who had not drunk themselves to death or overdosed at 30 counted only as losers. Their image was regarded by the young punk as very disreputable due to their excessive drug consumption. The Hertie gang was threatened with extinction. We were also downgraded too. On our way across the Holsten Place, other young punks joined us, including $abrina, whom I saw for the very first time on that day, with her oversized mohawk, that shocked and fascinated me at the same time, as well as her self-made tattoos that she got inked during school breaks at the comprehensive school by fellow pupils. At first it didn't come to my mind that this comatose person was female. She looked terribly exhausted by excessive consumption of psilocybin fungus and appeared a little schizophrenic. Every other word was "bullshit". I chatted her up briefly and tried to talk with her, but she was already smashed. Even if she looked out of it, her mohawk was like a dream to me.

[1] "rat diesel" or "rat gasoline" as rough translation of "Rattendiesel". Used to describe an individual wearing very strong amounts of low quality perfume.

Kieler punks drinking Hansa Pils, "Hansaplast"

Trouble with die-hard Nazis

For us, everything was dominated by No Future. Especially the confrontation with former world war combatants. The die-hard Nazis really got on our nerves. They sometimes overreacted and many of these people gave the impression that precious little has changed in their minds since the end of Nazi terror. We were especially sensitive to the old Nazi jargon, that could not be completely removed from the heads of the older generations. Our behaviour was finally a reaction to the unbroken contempt for human beings of the war generation in many cases. When we got the chance, we tried to hit back at them. Within the city these die-hard Nazis were much more likely to encounter verbal resistance than outside of the city, because of the high number of male war victims, old women and especially war widows were in the majority. They limited themselves to provocatively staring at somebody with potential death stares, or stood eternally at the windows and watched the proceedings petrified when a bunch of punks passed by, ran riot or screamed. They immediately called the cops as soon as they saw that their safety was at risk.

The male die-hard Nazis sometimes got down to business more ruthlessly. They cursed us like crazy. Punks were not tolerated. They were accused of being manipulated by the English. These hate-filled human relics of the Nazi era radically applied the inhuman Nazi vocabulary to us youths, and it generally did not stop with expressions like 'rabble', 'scum', 'social misfit' and 'parasites'. These were harmless insults really. The battle of words between young and old on account of some trivialities could completely derail and escalate things. Both sides traded insults, so that it frequently meant that the affected punk had to be torn away by another punk from the place of the incident. Many of these insults were quite heavy-going for us young people.

The cohabitation of young and old at the time in Kiel was also negatively affected by the Asche trial[1], that stirred up a lot of trouble. This was shown by spray-paint on a house wall in the inner city area. At that time the paint was not removed overnight, as it would have been nowadays. Perhaps therefore the die-hard Nazis were especially alarmed and repulsed?

Not everyone in the Third Reich was a convinced Nazi, and many convinced Nazis had turned away from their mistaken beliefs after '45, but the convinced Nazis were still around in great numbers, and in Kiel seemingly more than elsewhere.

We could not escape the disputes with these die-hard Nazis. I even experienced an active attack on teenagers by a die-hard Nazi, as at the bus stop Belvedere, where an enraged resident, with his hands in the trouser pockets, barked loudly and indiscriminately bumped and pushed over pupils waiting for the bus. They were too noisy for him at noon. It makes no sense at this point for any further insults used by the old Nazi henchmen. It was always important for punks to take care that they did not stoop to the level of the die-hard Nazis. That was not accepted within the scene. Therefore the punks developed their own style to defend themselves after a while, up to finally giving them the finger.

[1] Kurt Asche, a former SS henchman, was sentenced in Kiel to 7 years imprisonment in 1981.

Wiker punks, park Kiel-Wik

Completely on provocation

Leo had the biggest mohawk I ever saw. This fact made him the centre of every punk meeting. When he passed through normal-sized door frames or entrances, he had to bend his knees slightly, lean forward or tilt his head to the side. He owned a baseball bat, that he kept most of the time at home. When he took it on the road, he inevitably caused trouble. He simply had to carry it with him, in order to attract the attention of all citizens. He never used it as a weapon, but just as an accessory, like a precautionary umbrella in his arm. Leo wanted to attract even more attention with it, provoke and shock. The reactions of his fellow men were important to him, as if his mohawk was not provocative enough. When we were touring in the inner city during the day, we were not really keen on rioting. There the boys in blue were particularly vigilant. We felt chic in our tattered outfit and just wanted to be seen and to provoke with our appearance. Punks felt good on the street, and the more punks in a group, the better it was. Everyone in the pack was thrilled when Leo was in on it, because he really looked the most frightening. I once asked him about the consistency of his mohawk when we were on our way to Schrevenpark,

"Tell me, what are you pasting into your mohawk, that it is towering that tightly?"

"I slap egg white into my hair,"

Leo answered briefly.

"Sugar water works as well!"

a punk, rather provocatively, joined the conversation, who just walked next to us.

Along the route through the town, there were exchanges of profanities with passers-by, again with retirees who had actively witnessed the Third Reich. The standard sayings we heard were,

"Adolf would have made short work of you!"

or

"The Nazis would have cleaned up with you!"

or

"They better put you all up against the wall!"

We permanently heard hurtful expressions to which we responded, even if they sapped our energy. We were not willing to let the constant swearing of the die-hard Nazis be unanswered who cursed us in the street, and that shaped us. Or they also said,

"You are a shame for Germany!"

and it was diligently challenged by our side,

"Just go to 'your Führer',”

and

"You fucking Nazis!"

Once, in the Mittelstrasse on the way to the Schrevenpark a pensioner, who was leaning on his brown walking stick with a rounded handle shouted,

"Adolf Hitler would have eliminated you!"

Some grumbled back, others ignored him. We were soon regarded as left germs[1], a term that was coined by the Bavarian hate preacher Franz Josef Strauss[2], and were addressed in a most aggressive way with Nazi jargon. That was always quite crass. In such situations it was possible that one of the punks could not control himself and crossed a red line on his part. Sometimes passers-by walked past during the disputes, who took sides on behalf of the parties. When they agreed with us, they said,

"Keep going!"

or

"You are right!"

Other passers-by added fuel to the fire, they said,

"It's not what you say but the way you say it!"

or

"A little more respect for the older generation!"

We had to be cautious with comments and gestures. Come 1984, when the scene became strongly polarized and politicized, certain forms of responses were no longer acceptable and were internalized. So there was always something going on, and when nice weather prevailed, we went to the park or to the beach.

[1] Left-wing germs = "linke Bazillen"

[2] Franz Josef Strauss, German politician, Minister-President of Bavaria and Defence Minister.

Punks posing in front of Tutti Frutti Record store

An incident at McDonald's

McDonald's was something quite new on the Kiel city map. For many teenage punks it was considered as rebellious to misbehave at this American burger shop, to hang around there, to drink alcohol, to make a mess of the meals, to drool, to burp, to shout, to riot, to pick an argument with other guests or provoke and ultimately offend the staff. This inevitably led to bans from entering the restaurant, which the punks regarded internally as an achievement. Our hate for McDonald's was unbelievably strong. Soon, the employees put all punks under universal suspicion, and a general house ban was imposed on punks and pseudo-punks. One evening, Leo and his brother Greg

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Roland Scheller
Bildmaterialien: Bildmaterial Mathias Muthmann, Dirk Eisermann, Tilman Mantl, Klaus Jänicke, Scapegoats, No More, Tim Schwabedissen, Roy Schirdewahn, punkfoto.de, fanzine.de
Cover: Cover H3pro
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 28.03.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-3381-2

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