BORED WITH BOREDOM: ENGAGING MODERNITY IN
WILHELMINE WANDERVOGEL AND WEST GERMAN PUNK SUBCULTURES
By
Matthew James Sikarskie

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
German Studies—Doctor of Philosophy
2014

ABSTRACT
BORED WITH BOREDOM: ENGAGING MODERNITY IN
WILHELMINE WANDERVOGEL AND WEST GERMAN PUNK SUBCULTURES
By
Matthew James Sikarskie
This dissertation looks at two superficially dissimilar German youth cultures framing
opposite ends of the twentieth century—the Wandervogel and West German punks—and
proposes that they shared an important but unexplored commonality in their response to the
subjective malaise of modern life, which has often been read through the discourse of boredom.
Rather than define themselves through dominant societal and historical narratives, these groups
of youth often instead oriented themselves to the future and attempted, through direct action and
the recasting of their lives as unbound and autonomous, to move beyond the root causes of
alienation that have led to the proliferation of modern boredom since the Enlightenment. For the
Wandervogel, this direct action was expressed as Selbsterziehung—the belief that in order to
discover and explore both their world and themselves, youth needed to teach themselves on
their own terms. For punks in West Germany, the DIY (do-it-yourself) project at the core of
punk led these youth to a participatory engagement in the same vein. This study further reads
these projects through the related ideas of Wandern, a form of wandering that, for the
Wandervogel, transcended a simple definition of aimlessly exploring nature and read in it
instead a means of engagement with the world, and Anderssein, West German punks’
expression of experiential difference, a concept heavily rooted in their intense desire for
originality, their expressions of autonomy and their desire for freedom.

Copyright by
MATTHEW JAMES SIKARSKIE
2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, many thanks to my Doktormutter, Liz Mittman, and to my committee
members, who have guided me with much grace and kindness throughout this project. I
would also like to acknowledge the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State
University for their generous support and funding for multiple research trips to Germany
as well as the Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African
Languages for the funding to present on and receive feedback for this project. Thanks
also to the staff of the archives that provided such excellent material—the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen, Berlin, the Wandervogel-Archiv, Ingeborg-Drewitz library, BerlinSteglitz, and the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung, Burg Ludwigstein. Many thanks
also to my mom and dad, Mary Jo Sleder and Jim Sikarskie, and to all of my family and
friends for the various ways that they have helped and encouraged and supported me in
the completion of my doctorate over the past many years. Lastly (but not leastly), thanks
to my amazing wife Amanda. I would not have finished this project without you.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES

vii

INTRODUCTION: BORED WITH BOREDOM

1

CHAPTER ONE: BRENNENDE LANGEWEILE
The Banality of Banality
The Bored Horde: Boredom and Modernity
Boredom in the Technological Age
Participation as Consumption: The Death of Participatory Culture?
Hope and Adventure: Towards an Alternative
Towards the Future

14
16
23
33
39
46
50

CHAPTER TWO: “ALLES ZUVOR WAR OHNE GLANZ”1
The Reform Movements and Youth as the Future
Young Germans in Late Wilhelmine Germany: Between the Past and the
Future
Antiquated Expectations and a New Modernity: Family and School
A Brief History of the Wandervogel
The First Phase: The Wandervogel Take Flight (1890-1901)
The Second Phase—Wandervogel, Ausschuß für Schülerfahrten
(1901-1904)
Third Phase: Forks in the Road
More Forks in the Road
Fourth Phase: The End of the Beginning
Reception of the Wandervogel
Plurality or Autocracy? Wandervogel Youth and Academic Reception

55
60

CHAPTER THREE: THERE’S NO ACTION1
Punk International
Punk Arrives in Germany
Punk in West Germany: Düsseldorf and Hamburg
Scholarly Reception of Punk
The Punk Philosopher / The Punk Ideologue
Punk Aesthetics
Punk Rock
The Punk Political
Towards a Synthesis

127
136
143
156
167
170
172
176
182
186

CHAPTER FOUR: BOREDOM: THE DESIRE FOR DESIRES1
Creating a Voice: The Democratization of Print
The Boredom of Modernity and the Modernity of Boredom
Wandern and Anderssein: Exploring Difference
Tourists and TV: Representing Modern Alienation

199
203
220
223
228

v

64
66
75
77
82
86
91
97
108
112

Engaging Modernity
Reclaiming Engagement: The Redefinition of the Technological

237
260

EPILOGUE: BEYOND BOREDOM

285

WORKS CITED
Archives
Punk Fanzines
Wandervogel Periodicals
Songs
Films
Secondary Sources

297
298
298
300
301
301
302

vi

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: “Verwirrte Kinder,” image source: Gegendarstellung #4

22

Figure 2: Advertisement for alcohol-fueled camp stoves, image source: Nordischer
Wandervogel, June 1908
80
Figure 3: Youth hiking numbers for 1911 and 1912 in the Wandervogel, Vaterländischer
Bund für Jugendwandern, image source: Wandervogel-Warte, January
1913
96
Figure 4: Examples of early West German punk fanzines housed at the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen. Photograph by Matthew Sikarskie, image courtesy of the Archiv
der Jugendkulturen
212
Figure 5: “Moderne Ernaehrung,” image source T4, 1978, image courtesy of the Archiv
der Jugendkulturen
214
Figure 6: An example of fanzine cross-referencing, image source: Antz 1980, image
courtesy of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen
218
Figure 7: “Was ist ein Wandervogel?,” image source: Wandervogel Illustrierte, image
courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
224
Figure 8: “DEN GANZEN TAG,” image source: Propaganda, September 1980, image
courtesy of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen
234
Figure 9: Cover of Antz #3, the self-proclaimed “First bayrisch-schwäbisch Fanzine,”
image courtesy of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen
244
Figure 10: Inside cover of Gegendarstellung #1, image coutesy of the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen
247
Figure 11: “sitz nicht rum und glotz blöd,” image source: Wir waren Helden für einen
Tag
250
Figure 12: “Ein Lied der Arbeit,” image source: Wandervogel Westfalengau, December
1914, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
256
Figure 13: “Maggis Suppen sind der beste Proviant für Wandervögel!,” image source:
Wandervogel Illustrierte, March 1914, image courtesy of the Archiv der
deutschen Jugendbewegung
265

vii

Figure 14: “Türk & Pabst’s,” I,age source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December 1913,
image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
265
Figure 15: “Appels Delikatessen,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December
1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
266
Figure 16: “F. Kiels Fleisch=Ersatz,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift,
December 1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegung
266
Figure 17: “In jeden Rucksack,” Wandervogel Monatsschrift, June 1914, image courtesy
of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
267
Figure 18: “Obst als Durststiller,” image source: Wandervogel Illustrierte, August 1904,
image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
268
Figure 19: “Deutschlands Jugend trägt,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift,
December 1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegung
271
Figure 20: “Wandervogel-Messer,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December
1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
272
Figure 21: “Porös-wasserdichte, wetterfeste Loden,” Wandervogel im Hessen und am
Rhein, November 1913. Image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegung
273
Figure 22: “Ventilations-Wäsche,” Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December 1913, image
courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
273
Figure 23: “Argus Touristenglas,” image source: Gaublatt für Sachsen, March 1911,
image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
274
Figure 24: “Carl Gustav Nowack in Leipzig,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift,
July 1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegund
274
Figure 25: “Hören und gehört werden,” image source: Fuchstrott 1980, image courtesy of
the Archiv der Jugendkulturen
280

viii

INTRODUCTION: BORED WITH BOREDOM
This project began with a simple idea: to bring together two 20th century German
youth subcultures which have rarely been mentioned in the same sentence – the
Wandervögel and the punks – and inspect their similarities and differences. In a way the
seed for this project was planted twenty years ago. I first discovered punk in 1994 when I
was in middle school while reading through a friend’s copy of Thrasher, the
skateboarding magazine founded in the early 1980s which helped to repopularize the
waning skateboarding subculture, combining it with elements of punk. My friend Ben
and I bought a copy of a punk compilation put out by Epitaph records – punk-o-rama – at
the supermarket while his mom was shopping. That summer we listened to that cd dozens
of times. His parents, a doctor and a lawyer, were the only people I knew who had an
internet connection, so we avidly read up on the wider punk scene in the comfort of their
computer room between rounds of our video game de jour, Sid Meier’s Pirates! For me,
like for so many other youth since the mid-1970s, punk was a revelation. Punk was a
whole new world in itself, but it also changed how I saw the world around me. Punk was
edgy, confrontational, countercultural, loud, fast and a little scary. It was emotional but
not sappy, intelligent but not pompous, informed but not preachy. It was intensely
personal but held together by a sense of community and shared purpose. It was a way of
living, experiencing and expressing which I had never encountered but viscerally felt I
had known about my entire life. And branded across the entire thing was the message that
I could join them. It was everything that 13-year-old me was looking for. Beneath the
posturing and affected disengagement (which seemed so cool), punks came across as
more honest, more feeling, more engaged and more adventurous than any other people I

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had ever met. They seemed freer, less beholden to authority and less bored (and boring!)
than the rest of society. My future as part of the mundane and predictable world of
adulthood, which I had been increasingly dreading as the inexorable march of time and
my seeming triviality within it dawned on me, seemed instantly less inevitable – the
future much more open. Punk for me was a return to the excitement, adventure and
novelty of childhood combined with an awareness of and engagement with the
complexities of the world which opened up new ways of thinking, feeling, interpreting
and understanding that will remain with me for the rest of my life.
So like the many punks who study punk, my experiences with it and as a part of it
inflect (infect?) my work. I hope this is a good thing. I’m not blind to the sexist, racist,
homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic bastions of intolerance or the proudly
uneducated and defiantly ignorant groups and individuals who have found a voice
through punk. While some vehemently deny that these elements are part of it, in the end
one of the greatest things about punk is that they are. Most (myself included) would
prefer these elements didn’t exist anywhere, but that they can exist as part of punk
alongside their antitheses is testament to punk’s openness and endless interpretability, the
potency of its call to action, the potential still embedded in the type of direct participatory
action at the core of punk and the sheer diversity of marginalized viewpoints that have
been able and still need to express themselves through it. These marginalized groups,
whether one agrees with them or not, are part of the testament to punk’s continuing
importance and necessity.
After encountering the Wandervogel in a graduate seminar on German youth
culture, I was struck by the many superficial similarities they shared with punk. From
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their contestation of the primacy of family, school and other bastions of authority, their
privileging of the emotional (sometimes over the rational), their desire and attempts to
create a voice for themselves, their efforts to remain apolitical and autonomous in their
interactions with wider society (and the problems inherent in this decision), their turn to
popular music as a means of expression, their utopian desire to change the world, their
disillusionment when this turned out to be much more difficult than imagined, their
development of unique styles – these two groups of youth separated by more than a half
century of the most momentous and catastrophic events in modern history seemed to
exhibit remarkable parallels. Further, the similarities in their often controversial and
tumultuous receptions in Wilhelmine and Cold-War German societies suggested that the
connection between them remained relevant. That none of these parallels had been
examined in scholarship seemed a curious oversight.
Punk and Wandervogel transcended individual and collective demands to be heard
and pointed the way to articulations of living life, engaging with the world and
expressing oneself in ways that have become both possible and permissible, but which
life in late modernity has not actively fostered or has actively opposed. To quote the postpunk band Tocotronic, “Die Idee ist gut, doch die Welt noch nicht bereit.” Their
alternatives become most evident when inspecting their own words. Finding this voice,
however, is not easy – many of the individual cultural productions of both Wandervogel
and punk youth have been lost. This dissertation is therefore heavily indebted to material
held only in archives, especially the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung at Burg
Ludwigstein, the Wandervogelarchiv in Berlin-Steglitz and the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen in Berlin – much of it presented here for the first time. The many

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publications of the various Wandervogel organizations that emerged throughout the early
20th century provide a wealth of perspectives about the meaning and importance of the
Wandervogel as these youth navigated a society often at odds with their motivations.
Similarly, punk zines provide a look at West German punk from the front lines. Written
by punks for their own communities, these documents often offer these youths’ direct
impressions of punk within West German society and the globalizing world which, when
complementing the musical productions of punk, provide a rich picture of the emergent
subculture.
This project inspects the disconnect between the aspirations of youth and their
allies to create directly engaged subjects and the mechanisms of modern life which have
often stood in the way of this desire’s realization and contributed not to the development
of complex subjects, but to the objectification of the modern person. It has often been the
youth of a society – those who have not yet become indoctrinated in the social order –
who have been at the vanguard of attempts not just to change modern society, but to
change the modern person. This exploration of an engaged self is one of my chief goals
for this project, inspecting its articulation by youth who implicitly recognized their
alienation, formulating a new modern self capable of reconciling the disaffecting impact
of life in the technological age with the desire and attempt to lead open, free, self-aware
and meaningful (or at least fulfilling) lives. As I began to research the Wandervogel and
punk in depth, the similarities between the two phenomena were reinforced by three
deeper affinities. First, both of their attempts to “change the world” were not those of
what we would consider modern social movements. While their philosophies have often
overlapped with these movements to varying degrees, their activities were not oriented

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towards specific goals as in the many progressive reformist projects which have emerged
in modern societies such as women’s rights and universal suffrage, homosexual and
transgender rights, racial equality or environmental conservation. Nor were they steeped
in the political motivations of the left or the right. Indeed, both the Wandervogel and
punk encompassed a wide range of perspectives which have resisted one-dimensional
readings and definitions (despite their repeated assertions by scholars in a variety of
disciplines) and have revealed themselves to be incredibly complex and multifaceted. But
behind all of their internal differences was a shared vision of fostering a sense of selfidentity and engagement with the world that, on both the individual and collective level,
they felt could change their world and their reality and make it possible to imagine a
mass change to society from below. In this, they represented an avant-garde, not in the
aesthetic sense of Dadaism, Situationism and the like (although punk and to a lesser
extent the Wandervogel were certainly influenced by this aesthetic dimension), but one
nevertheless at the vanguard of exploring ways of living both permitted by the liberating
effects of modernity and impeded by its totalizing, leveling and rationalizing aspects as
well.
This leads to the second affinity I see between these two youth cultures. Their
confrontations with their respective modern societies were as complex as modernity
itself. But in one important way, one that has remained largely unexplored, their shared
sense of dissatisfaction with life moved beyond concrete issues with society (although
these certainly were manifest as well) and struck at a much less visible aspect of life in
modernity: boredom. Boredom, a notoriously difficult concept to define, and one that
straddles the line between the emotional and the intellectual, between affect and reason,

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has since the Enlightenment proliferated to become a hallmark of existence in the modern
world. Both Wandervögel and punks, in my reading, responded to elements of modern
life which contributed to the rise of boredom. Further, these youth sought alternatives to
these boredom-inducing modes of engagement which they hoped could open up new and
engaging futures for both themselves and their wider societies.
Finally, these youth’s responses to modern life both utilized emerging
technological advances of their days as tools to gain autonomy in order to express
themselves and to amplify their voices. For the Wandervogel, these technologies were
largely centered on movement: the train, the post, hiking and camping gear. They also
utilized their own periodicals and publishing houses to share news and hiking schedules,
articulate their shared identities, spread music and discuss pressing issues. Through much
more advanced media technologies and freedoms available in the mid-1970s, punks took
independent publishing to another level and allowed anyone who wanted to express
themselves to do so through a variety of media – print through zines (reproduced by
photocopier), sound through cassettes and independent record companies and even film
(although the costs of a video camera still put this out of the reach of most punk youth).
Both groups utilized these available and (largely) new technologies to enhance autonomy,
self-expression, differentiation and participation, exploring new uses and potentials for
these advancements which stand in contrast to their dominant applications and receptions.
Bored with Boredom critically examines the concept of boredom and its
proliferation in modernity and, more importantly, charts how these two German youth
subcultures, punk and Wandervogel, attempted to move beyond boredom, exploring
means to articulate themselves and producing futures which they found worthwhile. For
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both the Wandervogel in the early twentieth century and the punks in the 1970s and early
1980s, their solutions to their boredom-inducing social realities took the form of direct
action in the establishment of participatory cultures. In the Wandervogel, this orientation
was embodied by the articulation of the project of Selbsterziehung, the conception that
individuals should focus on their interests and passions and that they should do so on
their own terms and by their own means. For punks, this direct participatory action
manifested in the do-it-yourself ethic (DIY), which extended from the aesthetic realm of
fashion, music and composition to the erection of parallel systems of production and
channels of distribution.
Intimately related to the projects of Selbsterziehung and DIY were the desired
results of their activities. While Selbsterziehung and DIY describe the how, the value
placed on Wandern in the Wandervogel and on Anderssein in punk represented the why.
Both Wandern and Anderssein expressed an emotional and self-aware engagement with
the world that was formulated against the rational worldviews dominant in their societies.
Wandern in the Wandervogel transcended a simple definition of aimlessly exploring
nature and became the programmatic structure which held the Wandervogel together
despite many sometimes bitter splits to emerge as an alternative way of living and
approaching the world. The intent of Wandern is well-articulated in a 1911 article in the
Jung-Wandervogel Zeitschrift, “Oh Wandern, o Wandern, du freie Burschenlust!,” which
reads in Wandern a way of living. “Das Wandern als Kunst zu veredeln, auf daß es uns –
ungeachtet geringer Ausgaben – immer genuß-, erfahrungs- und erlebnisreicher werde”
(67). This search through Wandern, the conception of it as an art and a continuous
cultivation at both the individual and communal level stands in contrast to the

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“Bureaukratismus” of modern life and the meaningless check-list travel of “BädeckerTouristen” (67).1 Finally, Wandern was about exploring and experiencing the diversity of
life, eloquently articulated through a metaphor of the natural world: “Die Natur ist immer
eigenartig schön, Tages- oder Nachtzeit, Sommers oder Winters, im Frühling wie im
Herbst. Darum wandern wir nicht nur im steten Sonnenschein – das möchte bald
langweilig werden – sondern auch bei Wind und Wetter, Regen und Windesbrausen”
(67).
Similarly to Wandern, Anderssein was held up by punks as a means to experience
and express oneself. Jeff Hayton provides a succinct definition in his 2013 Culture From
the Slums:
The pursuit of Anderssein – to be different or the condition of being
different – is the most important ideological reference point for
understanding punk in the West German context. Underwritten by notions
of authenticity, independence, individuality, and an intense desire for
originality, Anderssein was an ideological attempt to mediate between
mainstream conformity on the one hand, and the dogmatic strictures of the
New Left on the other, both of which in the eyes of punks, represented
attempts to stifle creativity and thus block meaningful life. In this sense,
Anderssein was an expression of autonomy and a drive for freedom from

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

!The!Bädecker!was!the!most!popular!travel!guide!at!the!time,!marking!must!see!attractions,!the!best!
hotels!and!the!finest!restaurants.!For!the!Wandervogel,!the!Bädecker!tourist!became!a!favored!depiction!
of!the!alternative!to!their!mode!of!engagement!and!highlighted!the!differences!between!their!seeking!of!
experience!and!adventure!with!the!predominant!cityGjumping!and!sightseeing!of!the!rest!of!society,!which!
itself!was!symptomatic!of!wider!differences!between!the!two.!The!conceptualization!of!the!modern!
tourist!within!the!Wandervogel+forms!a!major!section!of!Chapter!Four.!

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the past and present in which difference was posited as the future of West
Germany. (133)
Anderssein was explored in punk music, zines and extended to punk scholarship, such as
in Hollow Skai’s Punk: Versuch der künstlerischen Realisierung einer neuen
Lebenshaltung. Skai’s Magisterarbeit, published by Sounds magazine in 1981, asks the
question of what the punk/Neue deutsche Welle (shortened to NDW) project was about.
Was it taking expression to its extreme limits? If so, where was the originality in this?
Was it a protest against and rejection of modern society? A return to a primitive lifestyle?
A return to a childhood mentality? Was it a desire to shock through this regression to the
visceral, “weil es uns nicht mehr möglich ist, dieses auf anderen (intellektuellen?) Ebenen
zu tun, d.h. zu provozieren?” (Skai 3). It was all these things, of course. But most
importantly, “Punk war immer auch ein Ausdruck von Stadterfahrung, modernen
städtischen Lebens, eine Attitüde/Lebenshaltung” (3).Taken together, Wandern and
Anderssein represent the quest for experience through engagement in an effort to create
more meaningful lives for the self in modernity, which was only possible by creating
distance, claiming autonomy and asserting agency through the projects of
Selbsterziehung and DIY.
In focusing on experiences, creation and the cultivation of the self, both of these
German youth subcultures created possibilities for themselves of futures filled with
action, hope, adventure and passion rather than what they saw as an alternative of
stagnation and listlessness. Their relationship with the technological highlighted uses
which reinforced and amplified their autonomy and engagement instead of fostering the
boredom they experienced in the coalescence of a consumption-driven mass culture. In
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the pages that follow, I hope to supplement the history of both the Wandervögel and
punks, giving a more complete view of the ways in which these youth, bored with the
very notion of being bored, created subcultures in which they felt free, empowered, and
engaged. In
This project is divided into four major chapters. Chapter One provides a
theoretical background on boredom in modernity, tracing the origins of modern boredom
from the Enlightenment into the 20th century. Boredom, I suggest, represents an
emotional detachment from experience and a disinterest in available lifestyles and
dominant societal discourses which have proliferated in modernity and the rise of rational
narratives that have contributed immensely to modern alienation. Wandervögel and
punks, in their explorations into alternative lifestyles, formulated modes of engagement
and communities dedicated to the creation and nurturing of their own interests while
critically reading and situating themselves both within and apart from the societies from
which they emerged. The importance of direct action, the foundation of Selbsterziehung
and DIY, emerges as one of the key interventions shared by Wandervogel and punk
youth. In understanding the rise of boredom in modernity and the importance of these
youth phenomena in articulating an alternative, the chapter continues with an in-depth
discussion of the dangers and opportunities of the technological. A discussion of
Heidegger’s thoughts on boredom in his 1928-29 lectures Die Grundbegriffe der
Metaphysik and his conceptualization of the technological in Die Frage nach der Technik
is followed by a practical analysis of the redefinition of the participatory corresponding
with the rise of the culture industry. Tying this back to the Wandervogel and punk,
Chapter One closes with a look at the futures both Wandervogel and punk youth

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envisioned, drawing on the ideas of adventure, hope and the urgency of action as key to
overcoming and moving beyond boredom.
Chapter Two narrows the focus onto the Wandervögel themselves, situating the
beginnings of the Wandervogel project within Wilhelmine Germany and tracing the
history of the pre-war Wandervogel through a discussion of the major splits and
reconciliations within the broader phenomenon from its origins until the outbreak of
WWI. Arising from a greater degree of autonomy granted to (middle class) youth, the
movement is read as a response to the perceived cultural crisis in a young nation state
informed by a profoundly traditional social fabric. The chaotic and tumultuous growth of
the Wandervogel within Germany epitomizes the navigation of new lifestyles and modes
of experience which, I suggest, lie at the heart of the quest for non-boring engaged life
among German youth in modernity. The second section of Chapter Two traces major
discussions within Wandervogel studies, with a focus on the long-lasting and still
prominent specter of National Socialism and the reading of the Wandervogel within this
reading. In its own way, the scholarship on the Wandervogel often reinforces the rational
narratives of modernity, focusing on reading the youth movement and its connections to
early 20th century reform movements, the tumultuous political landscape of Wilhelmine
Germany and the legacy of National Socialism at the expense of investigating what these
youth themselves gained through their involvement. As part two of Chapter Two shows,
this has often led to the vilification of the romantic – cipher for the emotional – and the
perception that the romantic tradition, revitalized by the Wandervogel, contributed to the
social landscape which comprised the Sonderweg to National Socialism. The chapter
closes with a refutation of this criticism, reading it as another manifestation of rational

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modernity that has led to far too one-sided readings of youth culture through the
academy’s own sometimes confining narratives and biases.
Chapter Three turns to West German punk and begins with an exploration of the
participatory capacity of punk and what punk’s legacy in the West German context has
been. Then, after briefly tracing punk’s roots in the United States and Great Britain, its
spread to West Germany and the state of youth culture in the Federal Republic in the
1970s, I take a closer look at two major scenes – Düsseldorf and Hamburg – to illustrate
the diversity and interpretability of punk in West Germany and as a representation of the
major split between the hardcore scene situated around Hamburg (and their greater
emphasis on maintaining punk as it initially emerged) and the more experimental bend
evidenced in the Düsseldorf scene, which sought to explore the central values of DIY and
the open participatory community of punk and apply these ideas outside of punk. The
chapter closes with a contextualization of scholarship on punk within this project. Similar
to scholarship on the Wandervogel, scholarship on punk has often fallen into wellexplored narratives – in punk’s case centered on aesthetics, politics, philosophy and
economics. While all of these trajectories have provided valuable insights, they also
confine the exploration of punk to those narratives at the expense of others and reinforce
many of the leveling and organizing effects of modernity which many punks were
engaged with contesting. In this reading, punk scholarship often does a disservice to its
object of study by overlooking the highly subjective and personal elements that set punk
apart and contributed to making it a worthwhile alternative for many youth in the first
place. This present study attempts to overcome previous limitations by focusing instead

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upon the endless interpretability of punk and the agency youth claimed through it to
explore their worlds and express themselves on their own terms.
Chapter Four turns to an in-depth analysis of the cultural productions of
Wandervogel and punk youth themselves to illustrate how they articulated their
alternatives to modernity’s boredom. Written expression in the form of print publications
emerges as centrally important for both subcultures. Side-by-side readings of
Wandervogel periodicals and punk zines – the two major sources of youth voices used
throughout the chapter — reveal that, through their reappraisal of experience and
engagement, these youth were able to counter the pervasive rationalistic
conceptualization of the self that has flourished in modernity and given rise to boredom
as a dominant reaction. The rest of the chapter is divided into two comparative sections.
The first explores both groups’ emphases on emotional experience and direct engagement
in representing both themselves and their dominant social realities. The second section
returns to the importance of the technological and a reappraisal of its potentials as applied
to the projects of Selbsterziehung and DIY. Ultimately, in their adoption of technological
innovations of their day, both groups were able to create the autonomy necessary to
explore and expand their realities on their own terms. And through their receptive
engagement with life, these youth posited hopeful visions for the future founded on
adventure and exploration in a world once again filled with mystery and the unknown.

!

13!

CHAPTER ONE: BRENNENDE LANGEWEILE

Die Jugend ist in dem Augenblick vorbei,
in dem das Geheimnis unseres Lebens definiert wird.
- Georg Simmel
How can we live without the unknown before us?
- René Char

These two quotes above serve as a sort of guiding principle for this project. The loss of
the unknown in the regimented, compartmentalized and rational existence of life in modern
societies has resulted in a world stripped of wonder and adventure for many and, as this chapter
argues, led to the proliferation of boredom as a dominant response to this structured world. The
prospect of a foreordained future and the perception that even in their school and family life
youth were already being conditioned to accept their roles in a society created for them has
resulted in youth attempts to formulate more engaging and personal communities and futures
based on unsettling the fixedness of life in modernity and reclaiming a sense of autonomy and
agency missing from the world as these youth see it. The Wandervogel of late-Wilhelmine
Germany and the punks of late-1970s West Germany epitomize such attempts to unbind the
fixed narratives that marked the end of the openness of childhood for Simmel and of worthwhile
life for Char and imagine more open and engaging presents and futures3.
In the early 20th century, it was largely the youth of the middle and upper classes in
Germany and in other Western nations who had the free time and freedom to pursue other
interests outside of school, work or familial obligation. This was especially true for the
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Wandervogel. Wandervogel youth claimed a degree of freedom and free time, borrowing time
that had previously been dedicated to academic pursuits, which many of these youth found
uninteresting, irrelevant or excessively boring. This disillusionment with the educational system,
evident in their criticisms of the institution, their often poor performance within it and their
exploration of alternative methods of education points to an initial and important similarity
between punks and Wandervögel that highlights their desire to create a different type of
education on their own terms and points to a wider rejection of modern instruments of authority
and social conditioning.
The Wandervogel, who have so often been viewed as a manifestation of an anti-modern,
anti-technological and romantic conservative and escapist reaction to modernity and the punks,
who have often been contemptuously dismissed as nihilistic and anarchistic, offering no
alternatives to the structures they criticize, have been all too often read through narratives
revolving around charges such as these. These characterizations of Wandervogel and punk are, to
be sure, partially true. An increasingly strong conservative element within the Wandervogel
would become especially salient in the months before the outbreak of WWI and again in the
Weimar period of the youth Bünde. The same can be said of West German punk, which was
quickly embraced by right-wing neo-Nazi and skinhead subcultures. What can be read as a
liberal streak is also easily discernable in both. To take the most salient examples, this is
evidenced by an avowed anti-militarism in many Wandervogel circles and the many reformist
tendencies in the inclusion of girls (often in separate groups, but still unprecedented at the time),
abstinence from drugs and alcohol, in practical fashion and body culture and in educational
reform (especially the reciprocal influence of the Wandervogel on Gustav Wyneken’s Freie
Schulgemeinde and vice-versa). The most dominant strand of punk to emerge out of the 1970s
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has embraced many liberal projects and is evident in everything from the seemingly standard
issue “Halte deine Umwelt sauber” pins and patches of a swastika being discarded into a
wastebasket to the many festivals such as Rock Against Racism. But attempting to characterize
Wandervogel and punk youth and read their reactions to modern society in terms of political
orientations or concrete goals is ultimately unsatisfying in that it reduces the phenomena to broad
generalizations and oversimplifications while forcing a reading through discourses from which
they were often actively attempting to distance themselves. This project departs from these
ideologically-charged and focused readings of both Wandervogel and punk and instead studies
their response to modern life through direct participation, as manifested through their cultural
productions. What most of these youth in both the Wandervogel and punk took issue with,
regardless of their individual beliefs both within each phenomenon and even larger differences
between them, was the expected role of youth in Wilhelmine Germany and Cold War,
globalizing West German society which conditioned them for what they saw as inadequate and
unfulfilling futures in modern Germany.

The Banality of Banality
An irremediable flatness is coming over the world.
William James
But what is modernity? By “modern life” or “modern society” one often simply means
urban, industrial, economic and political transformations which began gaining speed during the
Enlightenment. But these largely describe changes in conditions in the natural landscape, means
of production, and government. What is modernity when applied to culture, or to the individual?
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Here, modernity often means the privileging of reason, naturalism and “progress” over the
emotional, idealistic and traditional. Habermas suggests modernity to be the pursuit of progress
through rationality and the creation of hierarchical structures in public life and thought.
Meanwhile, American sociologist Alejandro Portes defines modernity at what he terms the
structural, cultural, and individual levels:
Much confusion on the meaning of modernity stems from failure to specify the
analytic level at which discussion takes place. Structurally, modernization is often
employed as a synthetic term for urbanization, a democratic polity,
industrialization, and overall economic development. As such, modernization
lacks analytical interest, since its meaning is exhausted by more specific
constructs. Culturally, modernity is portrayed as a consistent set of values and
general orientations permeating a society (Inkeles 1969; Kahl 1968).!Its content is
perhaps best described in terms of the Parsonian pattern variables: a cultural that
is universalistic rather than particularistic, defines roles in specific rather than
diffuse terms, and allocates rewards on the basis of achievement and not
ascription (Parsons 1951; Hoselitz 1960). At the individual level, this set of values
is reflected in a coherent syndrome of psychosocial orientations characterized,
intrinsically, by a certain mental flexibility in dealing with new situations and,
extrinsically, by similarity to an ideal type of behaviors proper to urban-industrial
societies (Portes, 16).
In terms of this project, then, one can understand modernity—and Wandervogel and punk
reactions to it—in this way: modernity is the sum of the urban, industrial, economic and political
structural changes within society, plus a cultural shift toward a “consistent set of values and
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general orientations.” The individual’s place in this system is often compared to that of a cog in a
machine, conforming to “an ideal type of behaviors proper to urban-industrial societies.” Life for
many in modernity is, despite a rapid proliferation of entertaining distractions and an
increasingly interconnected world, flat. It is little wonder that so many youth in the twentieth
century, the Wandervögel and punks included, became dissatisfied with a modern culture and
society that had become predicated on consistent values and the performance of ideal behaviors.
The fluidity and adaptability at the individual level which have been made possible by the
structural and cultural evolution from pre-modern to modern societies reveal new potentials for
engaging with the world, but when applied to the modern condition have often had the effect of
eroding individual difference and reducing the adaptive potential of the individual to aligning
with those elements valued by modern societies such as one’s specific role and desire for
achievement.1 Ultimately, this adaptability has often been subsumed by the processes of
modernity, which have fostered the internalization of its structural and cultural elements at the
individual level. For many youth in the 20th century who have not yet internalized these
structures, the social and cultural confines of modern societies have been uninspiring, and the
prospect of their futures in them distressing.
In practical terms, what is at stake here at the personal level is the conceptualization of
self and of the role of the individual in modern societies. The structures and cultural phenomena
that have become characterized as modernity have tended to force all readings through their own
logic, with the result that modern life for many seems natural and eternal. For others, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

!And!post//late/modern!societies,!if!one!wishes!to!differentiate!the!terms!to!denote!the!shift!from!a!privileging!of!
a!linear,!progressive!focus!in!the!project!of!modernity!to!the!fragmentation!and!problematization!of!linear!
narratives!in!what!is!often!called!postmodernity!or!late/modernity.!

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“discontents of modernity,” this has not been the case.2 The idea that everything must be
knowable was deemed dull and the rational attempt to understand, categorize and organize all
aspects of life—including themselves—even duller. Nietzsche wrote prolifically on the
potentials of the liberating effects of modernity to usher in a new, more engaged and content
human being but also attacked the sociocultural constellation which had emerged under its
auspices for being fundamentally opposed to the creation of such a new person. In this project, I
argue that the reactions of punk and Wandervogel youth to their respective societies can be seen
as attempts to formulate new engagements with the modern world that, far from being antimodern or escapist, should be viewed as attempts to salvage the potentially liberating aspects of
modernity from its often alienating and objectifying consequences.3 In short, this dissertation
argues that these youth saw the types of people they were being conditioned to become and the
available roles and futures open to them and found them lacking. And, precisely because of the
freedom and free time they had gained, these youth were able to set out to search for something
they found better. Whether they found what they were looking for or not is, for this project,
largely immaterial. But the attempt and the search—the adventure—are not. Their utopian
ambitions to create new spaces that valued individual expression and where exploration was
encouraged did not play out as either group had hoped. But their efforts, in themselves, illustrate
a potential way of living life which dispenses with many of the numbing effects of modern life
and the root causes of boredom.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2

!See!James!Marsh,!John!D.!Caputo,!and!Merold!Westphal’s!Modernity*and*Its*Discontents.!!!
!I!am!not!arguing!that!this!is!all*punk!and!the!Wandervogel*were!or!that!those!who!counted!themselves!as!
members!all!shared!this!vision.!Rather,!what!I!am*suggesting!is!that!both!punks!and!Wandervögel*encouraged!and!
fostered!lifestyles!predicated!upon!active!engagement!(physical,!emotional!or!intellectual),!experience,!expression!
and!production!which!helped!them!to!lead!what!they!felt!were!more!meaningful!and!purposive!lives.!!!
3

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The great vision for many of these youth was “simply” a society where they could enjoy
the freedom they currently enjoyed (or were attempting to create for themselves) in the future.
This desire was often the focus of their cultural productions. While an analysis of these
productions will be the focus of Chapter Four, one example which epitomizes the articulation of
this desire will be helpful here. An issue 4 of the 1978 Hannover punk zine Gegendarstellung
features a poem by the contributor Achim titled “Verwirrte Kinder” which articulates this desire
for freedom and the difficulty in its realization in a complex assemblage. The poem closes with
the lines:
Für die meisten Menschen existiere ich nicht,
weil meine Freiheit von ihren Mustern nicht
aufgenommen wird.
For the majority of his encounters with people, he feels his conceptualization and articulation of
self results in a negation of his existence because others simply do not recognize themselves in
his way of living. He adds a post-script, which reads “PS—Wo ist die Zukunft,/eine Zukunft,/in
der ich meine jetzige Freiheit vollkommen erhalten kann!??” This line expresses both desire and
frustration: desire for a future to live how he wants to and frustration with a society that does not
seem to allow for this future. In an example of punk pastiche, the author adds a ripped-out quote
below this post-script as a likely answer to the question. The quote, from Jean Améry, the
Austrian author and Auschwitz survivor who had committed suicide in 1978, the year before this
issue appeared, reads: “Der Tod ist unsere letzte Freiheit.”4 This channeling of a writer who had
experienced tremendous difficulty reconciling himself to his society (being a half-Jew, raised
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4

!Calling!Améry!Austrian!should!be!qualified,!as!he!expatriated!to!France!after!the!end!of!the!war!and!in!an!
empowering!gesture!changed!his!name!from!Hans!Mayer!in!a!renunciation!of!his!nationality!and!culture.!He!was!
only!Austrian!in!the!sense!that!he!was!born!and!grew!up!there.!!

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Catholic who had married a Jewish woman, fled his homeland, later joining the resistance before
being persecuted, tortured and interned in several concentration camps), draws a commonality
between the societies who failed to understand or make room for those they did not understand..
While the struggles of the punks were not literally equivalent to those of Améry, especially in
terms of persecution, Achim’s symbolic appropriation of Améry illustrates the long-standing
obstacles and their continuing power. Finally, he adds an afterthought in the form of Adorno’s
oft-cited quote from Minima Moralia: “Die fast unlösbare Aufgabe besteht darin, weder von der
Macht der anderen, noch von der eigenen Ohnmacht sich dumm machen zu lassen. Es gibt kein
richtiges Leben im falschen.” This final remark acknowledges the difficulties, perhaps even
impossibility, of living a life both autonomous and meaningful, but also marks it as one still
worth undertaking. Taken as a whole, Achim’s conclusion (or conclusions) to “Verwirrte
Kinder” is at once pessimistic and the slightest bit hopeful, but his dedication to remaining an
engaged subject in an objectifying and leveling society is revealed in both his words and action.

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Figure 1: “Verwirrte Kinder,” image source: Gegendarstellung #4
But what effects of modern life were so abhorrent to many of these youth? Said slightly
differently, what future did these youth see in their existing societies that motivated them to take
action? I will focus on a response which I see as at the heart of youth motivations to reformulate
both the self and the conditions in which the self is formed—an affective and intellectual
reaction which has proliferated in modernity and is especially salient to youth: boredom. The
remainder of this chapter is dedicated to exploring what boredom is and, specifically, its relation
to modern life. In the next section, I will first attempt to define boredom. As we will see, this is
not as straightforward as one might think. Engaging with the work of several scholars who have
written on boredom’s rapid rise to become, as Heidegger contended, the mood of the modern
age, I will trace out a framework of the relationship between boredom and modernity. I will then
focus on grounding Wandervogel and punk projects and (especially) their engagement with the
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technological through a discussion of the reception of Heidegger’s writing on boredom in the
technological age and a focus on Adorno and Horkheimer’s articulation of the culture industry
and its effects on participatory culture.

The Bored Horde: Boredom and Modernity
Die größte Sünde ist die Langeweile.
- Johann Friedrich Herbart*
In “Modernity, Boredom, and War: A Suggestive Essay,” Jorg Kustermans and Erik
Ringmar define boredom as “a feeling of ennui associated with a loss of the ability to act”
(Kustermans and Ringmar 1775). They tie the rise of boredom to processes of modernity and the
loss of purposive action.5 Boredom in the 20th century has been intimately linked to processes of
modernization since Georg Simmel, a connection which has remained a constant in research
since. In her 2005 monograph Experience without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity, Elisabeth
Goodstein writes that:
[t]he experience of boredom is not simply a symptom of the hypertrophy of the
complex ‘technologies’ of modern life over the capacity of the individual to
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5

!Kustermans!and!Ringmar!suggest!that!for!many,!war!represents!a!way!to!reclaim!a!visceral!engagement!with!the!
world!lost!to!the!modern!individual.!This!is!particularly!interesting!for!Wandervogel*and!punk,!where!war!has!often!
been!thematized.!Wandervogel*youth!formulated!a!highly!romanticized!conceptualization!of!war,!contributing!to!
their!willingness!to!enlist!and!volunteer!for!front/line!positions,!which!led!to!their!heavy!and!disproportionate!
losses!in!WWI.!West/German!punk!youth!problematized!war!and!often!articulated!positions!which!acknowledged!
both!an!interest!and!ultimate!rejection.!They!embraced!military!symbols,!were!often!supportive!and!intrigued!by!
RAF!domestic!terrorism!and!focused!on!the!affective!reaction!to!war!in!songs!like!ZK’s!“Banner.”!With!the!lines!!
“Schön!muss!es!sein!nach!einer!Norm/!Soldat!zu!sein!in!Uniform!/!Und!gehst!du!dann!die!Straße!lang,/!sehen!die!
schöne!Mädchen!an./!Doch!im!Krieg,!da!macht!es!BUMM/!und!sie!schießen!schöne!Mädchen!um./!Schön!muss!es!
sein,!nach!einer!Norm!Soldat!zu!sein!in!Uniform!”!In!punks’!thematization!of!violence!and!hate,!which!they!held!up!
to!West!German!society!as!a!confrontational!mirror,!they!claimed!the!visceral!individual!engagement!of!war!to!
reject!its!ultimate!viability!as!a!solution.!

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assimilate and make sense of them. The bored subject invokes a very particular
language of reflection, one in which these very material effects of cultural
modernization appear as grounds for a universalized skepticism. In
boredom…skepticism about the value of particular possible ends easily extends to
dubiousness about the very possibility of purposive action as such” (279).
The lack of a means to comprehend the complexities of modern life coupled with the lack of a
register to express this inability and, critically, the erosion of belief in one’s own relevance and
agency has resulted in the proliferation of boredom on a mass scale in modernity.6
Defining exactly what boredom is quickly becomes an exercise in frustration, with
competing definitions in different fields and different types of boredom articulated for different
situations. Psychological studies of boredom tend to focus upon the pathology of the emotion
and the ways in which it strains and disrupts engagement (with life or, in a more mundane way,
specific tasks or objectives). The many negative consequences of boredom have been the subject
of numerous studies. John Watt and Jackie Ewing succinctly summarize these studies in a call
for more research:
A greater understanding of boredom is warranted, given the myriad social and
psychological issues with which this construct has been linked. For instance,
boredom has been significantly related to depression, anxiety, hopelessness,
loneliness, hostility, and impulsivity (see Farmer & Sundberg, 1986; Vodanovich,
Verner, & Gilbride, 1991; Watt & Vodanovich, 1992b). Boredom has also been
shown to be correlated with drug use (Samuels & Samuels, 1974), pathological
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6

!While!she!uses!both!terms,!Goodstein!prefers!to!use!“subjective!malaise”!instead!of!“boredom”!to!situate!the!
emotion!within!modernity,!rather!than!to!understand!it!as!a!universal!and!largely!ahistorical!human!condition.!

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gambling (Blaszczynski, McConaghy, & Frankova, 1990), eating disorders
(Abramson & Stinson, 1977; Ganley, 1989), job dissatisfaction (O'Hanlon, 1981),
and engaging in unprotected sex (Arnett, 1990). (57)
Brissett and Snow ultimately attempt to define what boredom is by what it is not in their
article “Boredom: Where the Future isn’t.” They arrive at the conclusion that the essence of what
boredom is not “is an appreciation of uncertainty, possibility, and rhythm” (252). Others have
noted that “research on boredom has spanned decades and has been approached from a variety of
philosophical, sociological, and psychological perspectives…[t]he only apparent consensus is
that boredom is a complex phenomenon” (Caldwell et al 103). This is, of course, somewhat of an
exaggeration. But the incompatibility of different methodological approaches to boredom has
long stymied consensus on what boredom is and how it should be viewed.
Sean Desmond Healy begins his classic examination of boredom in modernity, Boredom,
Self, and Culture, saying:
There would at first glance seem to be no good reason for supposing that
boredom, any more than any other mental or spiritual state, should have steadily
and continuously increased in modern times. In fact, one might have supposed the
opposite, given the vastly more numerous diversions and entertainments that have
become available, the increase in time for play, the expansion of opportunities for
finding and pursuing constructive interests (15).
But instead, “what was once a rare state of mind…has now become the property of the bored
horde” (15). Healy maintains that boredom in modern society has “grown to pandemic
proportions” and that this rapid spread of boredom throughout all levels of modern society is
“one symptom of an advanced stage of an entire culture in irremediable disintegration” (11).
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Far from viewing boredom as a trivial nuisance, Healy explores boredom’s history and
rise and arrives at the conclusion that boredom’s rapid growth in modernity has coincided with
the erosion of traditional lifestyles and systems that once instilled feelings of personal
significance in the world. With the loss of empowerment brought by once unquestioned
certainties (most fundamentally religion), accompanied (and fostered by) the ascension of an
objective naturalism and the rise of complex and opaque bureaucratic structures, individuals
have become lost, leading them to become emotionally detached from reality. This detachment
Healy calls “hyperboredom”: “Hyperboredom represents the emotional accompaniment of that
‘withering away’ of one’s powers that, less dramatically, occurs in many classrooms and that
powerfully contributes to the sense of isolation people experience in modern industrial society.”
(123). This leads to an “escalating apprehension of the void, the nihilism of the masses, the
largely-unconscious, unacknowledged sense that the bottom has fallen out of the world” (Healy
93). In order to avoid this sensation, one detaches from reality. One becomes bored.
As touched on earlier, this boredom is ambiguous at best. This is evident in the difficulty
in finding agreement about what boredom is—one of the foci of Goodstein’s study. Goodstein
suggests that what she calls the bifurcation of the discourse about boredom in modernity between
a sociological, historically-situated approach and a philosophical, universal approach is
ultimately the result of becoming trapped in an inadequate discourse about experience itself
brought about by modernity. It is the internalization of boredom—the assumption that boredom
is an eternal accompanier of human experience, combined with the paucity of language available
to discuss subjective experience and the inadequacy of boredom as a construct to satisfactorily
explain existence in the modern world that she identifies as one of the root causes of this
difficulty in coming to agreement about what boredom is. The proliferation of numerous
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disciplines, each concerned with interpreting boredom through its own methodological lens, has
contributed to a breakdown of meaning that has come to be regarded as one of the hallmarks of
life in modernity. Thus, the language surrounding boredom has become obsolete and fractured,
and has not yet been replaced by another register through which to parse experience. In her
discussion of boredom, Goodstein discusses Georg Simmel’s concept of Blasiertheit—the blasé
attitude—a defensive rationalism and subjective reaction against the onslaught of input in the
accelerated cityscape of modern existence, and fuses it with Heidegger’s 1927 lecture series Die
Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit and his contention that boredom has
become the overarching mood of the technological age. She ultimately concludes that neither
approach (Simmel exemplifying the sociological and Heidegger the philosophical) is
satisfactory, although both are important and revealing in discussing how subjective experience
is perceived and articulated in a modern existence characterized by existential crisis (for
Heidegger) and the proliferation of an overabundance of input and discourses (Simmel). What
she suggests is needed is a new vocabulary, through which to discuss subjective experience, that
would unite the bifurcated discourse on boredom. Such a vocabulary, having a viable means to
work through the complex issues surrounding the loss of meaning and meaningful registers to
discuss this loss, is paramount in overcoming the intellectual legacy and internalization of
boredom.
One of the most popularly brandished talking points in boredom studies is that the word
“boredom” itself first came into use in the English-language context in the mid-19th century with
Charles Dicken’s Bleak House. This codification of the word into English during the height of
England’s modernizing processes is read as much more than coincidental—it points to a
connection between the increasing pace of technological and societal change and a heightening
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sense of shared ennui—the democratization of boredom. But how did boredom come to take
main stage in the Western world? In “From Idleness to Boredom: On the Historical Development
of Modern Boredom,” Isis Leslie suggests a basis for the emergence of boredom:
I want to suggest that the loss of a political ethic of private self-cultivation is the
basis of the nineteenth-century emergence of boredom as a widespread,
culturally recognizable phenomenon in the Western world. In this formulation,
the phenomenon of boredom is the consequence of an externalization in Western
culture of responsibility for self-management. Michel Foucault traces the
externalization of responsibility for ‘self-care,’ also referred to as ‘the art of
existence,’ from the early admonition, to ‘[s]pend your whole life learning how
to live,’ that is consistently reiterated in the classical era by Stoics, Epicureans,
Platonists and Aristotelians alike, to the Christian and finally modern era where
no such injunction prevails. (Leslie 36)
In this reading, boredom does not lead to disengagement. Disengagement leads to boredom.
Boredom straddles the boundaries between affective and rational reaction. As Elizabeth
Goodstein writes, “As a discursively articulated phenomenon, then, boredom is at once objective
and subjective, emotion and intellectualization—not just a response to the modern world but also
an historically constituted strategy for coping with its discontents” (3). Boredom thus serves as a
bulwark against modernity—both a rational and emotional response to a world that has lost
traditional bastions of meaning. She calls boredom “experience without qualities,” implying in
her exposition not only an internal emotional reaction (or failure to react) to external
sociocultural components but also a definitional ambiguity paralleling the absence and stagnation
of boredom itself. In her monograph on boredom and the historical narrative about boredom in
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modernity, she calls boredom “an adaptation at once visceral and intellectual to life in a world
where nothing stays put, to an era in which the idea of transcendent meaning seems hopelessly
old-fashioned” (1-2).
While the contention that boredom proliferated dramatically throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries is irrefutable, one of the earliest definitions of what we now regard as a modern
phenomenon came from France in the early Enlightenment. Jean-Baptist Dubos’ 1719 Réflexions
critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture suggested that humanity was “eher durch die Kunst und
die durch sie angeregten Gefühle zu bewegen als durch Vernunft und Wissenschaft” (Kessel 40).
Martina Kessel notes that the first section of this work often appeared separated from the full
treatise in German translation. This section, first translated in 1760 as “Von der Notwendigkeit,
beschäfftigt zu seyn, wenn man der verdrüßlichen langen Weile ausweichen will, und von dem
Anzüglichen, welches die Erregung der Leidenschaften für die Menschen hat,” conceived of
boredom as a lack of movement and of being moved—what Kessel summarizes as a “zentralen
Problem, nicht bewegt zu sein, sich nicht lebendig zu fühlen, und um die Attraktivität der
Leidenschaften” (40). It is not only fitting that boredom as a result of a rationalistic worldview
was first proposed at the beginning of what is now regarded as the onset of the processes of
modernity, it is evidence that the danger of this worldview was recognized even as it emerged.
In boredom I see a construct bridging the traditionally intellectual traditions through
which Wandervogel and punk are often registered and the emotional and visceral qualities which
were so central to these subcultures. The foundational role of boredom in the growth of both of
these youth cultures (and youth culture in modernity generally) has been largely overshadowed
in both punk and Wandervogel studies by more entrenched narratives. The Wandervogel, despite
more recent attempts to free their historical contextualization from these well-ingrained paths,
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continue to be read through familiar discourses such as discussions of nationalism versus
patriotism, adolescent sexuality, the neo-Romantic return to nature and both conservative and
liberal reformist movements. For punk, its clear debt to the avant-garde tradition has, since
Hebdige, formed the most significant and fruitful trajectory of research—whether inspecting
fashion, music, zines and their many interstices in punk cultural production and expression or as
part of an analysis of political, social and cultural critique embedded in these activities. An
argument for the inclusion of boredom into discussions of punk and Wandervogel studies in no
way diminishes these existing discourses; however, the prevalence of these discourses has
limited a more robust and differentiated historiography of these youth cultures.
Boredom, in the final analysis, is the result of both an individual incompatibility with the
systemic changes of modern life and the muddled discourse on subjective malaise, which is itself
the result of modern processes. This marks boredom as an at least partially discursively produced
phenomenon. Part of being bored, then, is the result of the language of boredom being the
dominant means of expressing subjective malaise. In a sense, this is what I see as one of the
major issues at the heart of the Wandervogel and punk: the reappraisal of subjective experience
in modernity—a reappraisal that had precedent in the earlier youth movement of the
Wandervogel. Goodstein proposed the need for a reworking of the language of subjective
malaise and found a possible corrective in a literary work, Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften. Goodstein’s solution to resolve the issue surrounding the discourse about
boredom pertains in the end to boredom itself as well—or at least to better understanding what it
is. The language of boredom has been heavily influenced by the literary—most notably the
romantic tradition—and finding the next Baudelaire capable of updating the discourse about
subjective malaise for late modernity is a worthwhile pursuit. And there is much in Musil’s work
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to recommend itself. Goodstein notes that Musil’s protagonist Ulrich was originally named
“Anders” in Musil’s early drafts—a word which translates to “different” in the sense of “other.”
She explains that:
Musil’s protagonist is in pursuit of a mode of relating to his experience
appropriate to a world where traditional bases of meaning have dissolved. As a
figure, he conjoins the impulses of Enlightenment and romanticism. The man
without qualities is in search of a new understanding of the human soul that can
make the fragmentation and impersonality of the modern self the basis for a new,
self-consciously modern, yet spiritually integrated form of existence (350).
But thinking and speaking about boredom (or subjective malaise) might not be sufficient. She is
doubtful in the end whether this language even exists, as “[i]t is not simply that since the
inherited language of reflection fails to capture the subjective experience of modern existence, a
new vocabulary is called for. Modernity has undermined the very conditions of possibility of
reflection” (418). This, like much writing on boredom, ultimately offers a fairly dire prognosis.
But in the confrontation with boredom, what is clear is that words are insufficient when the
mechanics of modernity and the vocabulary of experience fail to allow for adequate expression.
What is needed is action. And Wandervogel and punk provided examples of how experience can
again be made meaningful through direct engagement.
The urgency of action was at the core of punk. Peter Hein, one of West Germany’s
earliest punks heavily involved in the Düsseldorf punk scene, lamented that, in the late-1970s,
everything was boring.7 School, family life, rock music and popular culture in general—all
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7

!For!a!discussion!of!Peter!Hein,!see!Jürgen!Teipel’s!Verschwende*Deine*Jugend:*Ein*Doku=Roman*über*den*
Deutschen*Punk*und*New*Wave.*

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followed the same predictable patterns and scripts. Punks believed they had found something
new in the DIY ethos in their confrontation with this repetitive society—a way to end the cycle
of waiting for the next thing by making it themselves. But they had ultimately rediscovered
something quite old: participatory culture. In this, the Wandervogel are particularly relevant to
punk in Germany—and indeed to punk and youth studies in general.
Ultimately, the DIY ethos provided the script to action that made punk possible. The
same can be said of the Wandervogel project of Selbsterziehung. But the foundational
motivational role of boredom in creating an alternative to this boring society has been
neglected—despite boredom being pointed to by Wandervögel and punks alike time and again as
the dominant mood of their existence prior to their engagement with the punk movement. Still,
this omission is in a way unsurprising. Boredom as widespread cultural phenomenon, especially
among youth, has historically gone unremarked upon. Youth complaining about being bored at
home and in school is unlikely to arouse much astonishment—it is accepted as a given. Boredom
exhibits a simultaneous pervasiveness in modern society and a seeming insignificance—what
Sean Desmond Healy called the “trivial view of boredom,” which he defined as “the supposedly
commonsense perception of [boredom] as a virtually unavoidable occupational hazard,
disagreeable but harmless” (Healy 9). This perception, Healy maintains, adds to the difficulty of
engaging with boredom and continues to misrepresent it as one of life’s constants. But if
boredom is not a constant of human experience, where do its origins lie?
To this point, I have discussed boredom as the result of societal changes brought about by
modernity. One major aspect of this shift has been humanity’s relationship with the
technological. In the next section, I shift focus to this relationship, inspecting readings of

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boredom through the technological with a focus on Heidegger’s conceptualization of boredom as
the mood of the modern age.

Boredom in the Technological Age
Der Begriff des Fortschritts ist in der Idee der
Katastrophe zu fundieren. Daß es ›so weiter‹ geht,
ist die Katastrophe.
Walter Benjamin
The idea of the loss of a future—of stagnation on a personal and mass level, is one of the
major commonalities in the works of those studying boredom. Boredom alters the perception of
time for the individual—in a mundane example waiting out the last five minutes of an
unengaging lecture. When conditions arise where such malaise is potentially experienced by
large portions of society, the results can be much more severe. Boredom is empty time for the
individual—an eternal present from which no fulfilling future can arise. Time passes, but nothing
changes—there is no growth, there is no movement towards—there is only time stretching to
eternity. This is the situation which Heidegger explored when he wrote of boredom’s emergence
as the predominant mood of the technological age—a symbiotic relationship between a new
perception of humanity brought about by the emergence of a shifting understanding of and
engagement with the technological leading to an endless cycle of innovation devoid of meaning
in the pursuit of distraction—for Heidegger the very acting out of nihilism on a mass scale.
Like many thinkers on boredom, Heidegger differentiates between levels of boredom. In
its most mundane form, he details boredom in relationship to empty time, with his favorite
example being waiting for hours at a provincial train station. Graham Harman writes that “in this

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first form of boredom, we are held in limbo to the station while also being left empty through our
inability to make use of it…it is the world which bores us here—a system of interrelated things
whose emptiness holds us in limbo” (86). The second encounter with boredom occurs even in the
presence of distraction, for example at a dinner party which, while comfortable and familiar, fails
to allow a subject to engage as themselves. The self which is presented in such interactions is
potentially an alienated self, as the person one is required to be is not always the person one
wants to be. The third form is the most serious—a recognition of our own being-in-the-world,
and the boredom this inspires is caused by the mundaneness of our existence, “since it is the
entire unified structure of being-in-the-world that leaves us empty” (Harman 88). The boredom
with the world, boredom with our inability to be ourselves and boredom with ourselves have
proliferated in modernity, which becomes more understandable when looking at Heidegger’s
thought on the technological.
Boredom is embedded far deeper in modern society than as a response to specific
instances which bore. Elizabeth Goodstein writes that in the modern present, “[t]he moment
lived as meaningless eternity undermines faith in the optimistic trajectory of the historical
whole” (5). Brissett and Snow see boredom as the result of a disruption of life’s rhythm resulting
in a stagnated present which prohibits the self from finding a fulfilling future in a modern society
that currently “provides little in the way of nurturing…nonboring experience” (252). Ben
Anderson marks boredom as a malady of unreflective hopelessness—of a diminished temporality
and spacial situatedness—resulting in an “elongation of the now-time of the present” (743).8

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8

!In!themselves,!the!titles!of!these!analyses!of!boredom!demonstrate!a!shared!conceptualization!of!the!
mood/emotion/state!of!being!as!being!heavily!influenced!by!ordered!time.!!

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This stopped-time of boredom was, for Heidegger, the mood of the technological age.
Heidegger’s technological age is characterized by a new engagement with the world brought on
by an altered way of looking at it. The way in which the world is revealed through the
technological mindset results in a world which ceases to hold mystery. While Heidegger’s
language and terminology is dense and extremely verbose, the fundamental ideas behind it are
fairly simple. The essence of technology for Heidegger was enframing (Gestell)—the way
technology reveals the world to humanity and turns everything into an object with certain
qualities comprising its usefulness as standing reserve (Bestand). Broadly, this enframing is the
same phenomenon responsible for the search for objective knowledge—Heidegger uses the field
of physics as an example—of categorizing, valuing and rethinking the world: “Modern science’s
way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces” (Heidegger
21). This is not necessarily a bad thing in moderation, but the modern sciences applied solely
towards modern technology results in the “deceptive illusion…that modern technology is applied
physical science” (23).
In Die Frage nach der Technik he uses multiple examples of how humanity’s
engagement with the world has shifted as the result of this new way of thinking the world
through the technological. The most poignant of his examples is his symbolic discussion of the
Rhine—a river rich in German mythology and history. In this long quote, he describes not only
how the river has become wrapped into a new constellation of meaning, but how humanity itself
threatens to be subsumed as well.
Das Wasserkraftwerk ist in den Rheinstrom gestellt. Es stellt ihn auf seinen
Wasserdruck, der die Turbinen daraufhin stellt, sich zu drehen, welche Drehung
diejenige Maschine umtreibt, deren Getriebe den elektrischen Strom herstellt, für
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den die Überlandzentrale und ihr Stromnetz zur Strombeförderung bestellt sind.
Im Bereich dieser ineinandergreifenden Folgen der Bestellung elektrischer
Energie erscheint auch der Rheinstrom als etwas Bestelltes…Er ist, was er jetzt
als Strom ist, nämlich Wasserdrucklieferant, aus dem Wesen des Kraftwerks.
Achten wir doch, um das Ungeheure, das hier waltet, auch nur entfernt zu
ermessen, für einen Augenblick auf den Gegensatz, der sich in den beiden Titeln
ausspricht: “Der Rhein”, verbaut in das Kraftwerk, und “Der Rhein”, gesagt aus
dem Kunstwerk der gleichnamigen Hymne Hölderlins. Aber der Rhein bleibt
doch, wird man entgegnen, Strom der Landschaft. Mag sein, aber wie? Nichts
anders denn als bestellbares Objekt der Besichtigung durch eine
Reisegesellschaft, die eine Urlaubsindustrie dorthin bestellt hat” (23-24)
The Rhine becomes a small part of a long chain (or chains) reduced to the sum of its usefulness
as a source of power, transportation or tourism revenue. In similar ways a field reveals itself to
be a coal source, a forest a lumber source—when the world and everything in it become
conceived of as objects to be challenged forth and revealed as standing reserve, objects cease to
have intrinsic value—they are only valuable for something.
This increasing enframing through technology is for Heidegger extremely dangerous.
Most seriously, viewing the world as something to be used threatens to, in the end, cause
humanity to view itself as standing reserve as well. In a fairly innocuous example, the tourist
becomes a part of the same chain as the Rhine: as both consumer of the Rhine as scenery, history
and culture and as consumed by a tourism industry which views the tourist as an object to be
exploited. Further, the focus on this orientation is a trap which closes humanity to other

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approaches and the search for a home in the world. This enframed world, carefully ordered and
regimented, is intensely boring.
Indeed, the word “tourist” was seen as a derogatory term by Wandervogel youth for this
exact reason. For example in an article in the March 1913 issue of the Alt-Wandervogel
Monatsschrift entitled “Die Kultur und wir,” Dr. Konrad Wislicenus begins: “Ihr wißt, daß es
zwei Arten von Menschen gibt, die sich die Ferne besehen wollen: die Reisenden oder auf
deutsch ‘Touristen’ und die Wanderer. Der Reisende braucht vor allem zwei Dinge: das
Kursbuch und den Bädecker. Er…eilt nun von Sehenswürdigkeit zu Sehenswürdigkeit, immer
den ‘Sternen’ des Führers nach; immer mit dem Gefühl der Sorge, er könne etwas Wichtiges
übersehen” (41-42). The tourist is tied to industrialized time, a strict schedule and consumes
certain sites as if they were selections from a menu. This in comparison to the Wandervogel who
concentrated not on the destination and a list of sights to be marked off a list, but on
experiencing the journey. This journey, far from being a boring burden to be endured, was
instead the most meaningful part of the trip. When the journey is the adventure and the goal, the
conditions for boredom, it seems, evaporate.
Punks saw themselves as part of a similar split. The consumers of culture against whom
punks oriented themselves were, like the tourists to the Wandervogel, tied to certain patterns.
Like tourists, they picked and chose the songs, films and fashions presented to them as if
choosing from a menu. They were part of a larger system and were only participants in so much
as they were part of this system. A great deal of the excitement and energy in punk was due to
the freedom of stepping outside of this enframed world—of interpreting reality not as what
Heidegger would call standing reserve, but as a place of hidden meanings and potentials.

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While for the Wandervogel the educational system represented many of the elements of
modern society against which they had situated themselves, for punks, while having strikingly
similar complaints about the focus of their formal education, the larger and more pervasive
representative of modern society was the entertainment industry. Globalizing, consolidating and
forcing artistic expression through its narratives and shaping this expression through their
affirmation and attention, the massive culture industry had, since its beginnings around the turn
of the century, redefined both the production of culture and what participating in this culture
meant. The next section details a shift in cultural reception beginning in the early 20th century
through a discussion of Adorno and Horkheimer’s conceptualization of the culture industry. I see
this as a specific manifestation of what Heidegger had in mind with the ideas of standing reserve
and technological enframing. While they spoke in different terms, the fundamental problem they
were enunciating was similar. Heidegger’s approach places humanity’s engagement with the
technological as the fundamental shift in modern society—or as he preferred—the technological
age. Boredom, what Heidegger noted as the mood of the age, was a manifestation and natural
consequence of this shift—an articulation that shifts the problem of boredom and modernity to
this engagement with the technological itself. If life in the technological age is characterized by
enframing and what Anderson calls “repeated socialspatial orderings” (Anderson 747), then a
potential answer to the boredom such orderings engender might lie in a reappropriation of the
technological to undo the problems it has been complicit in creating.
Heidegger’s philosophy appears rather pessimistic, as his conceptualization of technology
is problematic as an essentialist reading. David Tabachnick argues for various readings of
Heidegger and takes issue with Andrew Feenberg’s assertion that Heidegger’s essentialist stance
on technology amounts to technological determinism. But if technology has a fundamental
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essence that is revealed to us, then where is the room for human agency in Heidegger’s
philosophy? Heidegger himself wrote: “Of course man is shaped by his society, as of course, he
is shaped by his genes, but the very fact that the influence of both of these quite distinct forces
has to be taken into account in man’s development suggests a degree of plasticity and tension in
man that opens up the possibility for an at least partly self-determined self” (120). Tabachnick
calls this a “moderate essentialism” that recognizes the unavoidable risks of the technological
while allowing individuals and groups an element of autonomy. In the next section I will inspect
the shift in cultural production in the early 20th century through a reading based on Adorno and
Horkheimer’s conceptualization of the culture industry in Dialektik der Aufklärung, situating this
shift through the rise of mass communication technologies.

Participation as Consumption: The Death of Participatory Culture?
The Gramophone, the first viable mass medium for recorded sound, has been of
enormous consequence to modern society. But the possible repercussions of the new technology
caused some to immediately question its potential benefits. In 1906 John Phillip Sousa gave his
opinion of the “talking machine” before the US Congress:
These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this
country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you
would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs.
Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a
vocal chord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as
was the tail of man when he came from the ape. (Lessig)
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In his analysis of online participatory culture, legal scholar Lawrence Lessig argues that Sousa
was decrying what he foresaw as a near future where music and the creation and dissemination
of culture would transition from being a communal, multidirectional and participatory project to
a one-way transmission by an elite few who dictated taste to a receptive, but ultimately nonparticipatory audience. The seemingly inevitable spread of recorded sound would create a barrier
separating people from participating in the creation of music. The creative voice of the individual
would be replaced with a created voice directed to the individual. In hindsight, it may be possible
to argue with the aptness of Sousa’s evolutionary metaphor, but it is difficult to argue with
Sousa’s prescience regarding the future of participatory culture for most of the 20th century.
The Wandervogel project of collecting, playing and reviving the German folk culture
legacy of song and dance represents a very clear attempt to foster a German culture based not
only on remembering and engaging with this past, but in privileging a popular culture both
unique to Germany and approachable by all. Similarly, punks found a voice through another
available cultural legacy—rock culture. They foregrounded its participatory, expressive and
popular origins, which had been largely lost as rock became assimilated by the culture industry,
which had leveled it in their opinion to a stale commodity to be consumed. The popular projects
of punk and the Wandervögel have never been appreciated by all. Situated in direct opposition to
Sousa’s fear that the gramophone would erode a populist participatory cultural project was the
interpretation of the gramophone given by a conservative contemporary German composer. A
year before Sousa articulated his concerns before Congress, Engelbert Humperdinck, most
known for his opera Hänsel und Gretel, shared his admiration of the new technology:
In 1905 the composer Engelbert Humperdinck expressed the hope that
‘mechanized’ Hausmusik would supercede the ‘vain bungling’ prevalent in most
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households: ‘The great painting masterpieces are not there to be copied but to be
viewed; could it not be the same with musical works?’ As for lay musicians,
many found it difficult to ‘master an instrument to the point where one’s own
playing can even remotely fulfil [sic] his own musical standards. One is
eventually happy that the gramophone dispenses with the necessity of having to
listen to oneself plonking away.’ (Ross 52- 53)
The value placed on “high” culture and the notion of Germany as Kulturnation are both at work
in Humperdinck’s remarks above. That laypeople might enjoy the production of music in its own
right, regardless of the level of proficiency, escaped Humperdinck’s reasoning. The amateur
would (thankfully for Humperdinck) no longer need to fumble about in the cultural landscape of
music and could instead simply listen.
While Humperdinck’s remarks espousing the superiority of “high” culture and eschewing
the productive capacity of the amateur were well founded in the early 20th century, particularly in
the upper class, there is also a discernable strand of more populist thought that runs counter to
this tradition. Twenty-seven years later, in a 1932 lecture on “Der Rundfunk als
Kommunikationsapparat,” Bertolt Brecht posited:
Ein Vorschlag zur Umfunktionierung des Rundfunks: Der Rundfunk ist aus einem
Distributionsapparat in einen Kommunikationsapparat zu verwandeln. Der
Rundfunk wäre der denkbar großartigste Kommunikationsapparat des
öffentlichen Lebens, ein ungeheures Kanalsystem, das heißt, er wäre es, wenn er
es verstünde, nicht nur auszusenden, sondern auch zu empfangen, also den
Zuhörer nicht nur hören, sondern auch sprechen zu machen und ihn nicht zu
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isolieren, sondern ihn in Beziehung zu setzen. Der Rundfunk müsste demnach aus
dem Lieferantentum herausgehen und den Hörer als Lieferanten organisieren.
(Brecht 129)
These anecdotes point towards a largely forgotten discourse on the meaning of participation in
Western societies in the early 20th century. It was not then a foregone conclusion that
communication technologies would lead to a one-way dissemination of culture, but by the 1970s
this transmission of consumer culture went largely unquestioned by the masses. Brecht’s hope
that radio might play an inclusive role that could foster active participation resonates with
Sousa’s admiration of amateur cultural participation while moving beyond Sousa’s pessimistic
and Humperdinck’s approving forecasts of a technologically-silenced public. The years
immediately following Brecht’s 1932 appeal for a more participatory medium would see these
aspirations go unrealized in Germany and the rest of the world. Still, his desire to utilize
technology to harness the creative power of citizens as opposed to turning them into simple
receivers presaged a repressed desire for participation that, in the 1970s, would find fierce
expression in the Punk movement.
The intervening decades between the beginnings of the Wandervogel and Sousa’s
warning at the birth of recorded sound and the rise of punk in the mid-1970s saw great
refinement and expansion in the mass distribution of culture, from the gramophone to cinema,
radio and television, and a tremendous increase in their popularity. The co-option of these
technologies for nationalistic, corporate and other propagandistic uses gave rise to theories of the
danger posed by them, as well as responses reassessing the culture industry’s potential.

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During their exile in the United States from National Socialist Germany in the 1940s,
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer provided a description of the mechanisms of capitalist
culture in their Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947). One of the major limitations of Adorno and
Horkheimer’s theory was their insistence on the qualitative superiority of “high” culture and
their relegation of anything else to a separate, inferior sphere. Adorno and Horkheimer would
almost certainly, like the West German media, have dismissed the punk movement as degenerate
non-culture. This does not mean, however, that their theory of the culture industry is irrelevant to
an analysis of the punk movement.
Their depiction of the culture industry in the United States, which they conceived of as a
highly differentiated but ultimately monolithic entity, offers a convincing theory of how mass
media had been used to reinforce the values and faith in a capitalistic system while shaping and
controlling the cultural sphere of the masses. By claiming that “[d]ie Standards seien
ursprünglich aus den Bedürfnissen der Konsumenten hervorgegangen: daher würden sie so
widerstandslos akzeptiert” (Adorno and Horkheimer 142), the culture industry masks the
foundational role it played in creating this system by suggesting it to be the natural consequence
of satisfying the needs of the millions. The ease with which this commodified mass culture was
accepted is spun by the culture industry not in Gramscian hegemonic terms, but by suggesting
that it sprang organically from the people and not from above them.
Technological innovations in mass communications made this system possible, and the
framing of these technologies as one-way media by the culture industry obfuscates the potential
of these media to serve other, more inclusive, democratic and participatory roles: “Verschwiegen
wird dabei, dass der Boden, auf dem die Technik Macht über die Gesellschaft gewinnt, die
Macht der ökonomisch Stärksten über die Gesellschaft ist. Technische Rationalität heute ist die
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Rationalität der Herrschaft selbst” (Adorno and Horkheimer 142). Without an independent
medium to turn to, new cultural phenomena are confined to operating within the culture industry
in order to reach a broader audience.
The very idea of participation itself has been reconceived to fit within the discourse of the
culture industry. “Die Teilnahme der Millionen” (Adorno and Horkheimer 142) is now linked to
ideas of cultural participation in society espoused by Sousa without allowing for any role other
than that of the participant as consumer. By redefining cultural participation as participation in
consumption of cultural products, cultural production within the culture industry is misleadingly
tied to a long-standing participatory popular tradition, not as a co-opting of that tradition that
directs the creative forces of the population through familiar tropes and media by commercial
industries with the ultimate goals of profit maximization and market security.
More optimistic responses to Horkheimer and Adorno focus on cultural populism and
greater agency among consumers to infinitely interpret cultural products and to influence the
form these products take. In progressive evolutionism, formulated among others by Edward Shils
and Daniel Bell, the plurality of voices in a democratic society enriches the cultural lives of all
consumers. Criticizing a romanticized view of the past based on notions of “high” culture within
critical theory, progressive evolutionists suggest that “[c]onsumer capitalism, rather than creating
a vast homogenous and culturally brutalized mass, generates different levels of taste, different
audiences and consumers. Culture is stratified, its consumption differentiated” (Swingewood 20).
Cultural populists do not seem to refute that there is a culture industry, but that, because all
participate in it, albeit in a redefined way, and because it negotiates at some level with the
masses to satisfy the demands of a heterogeneous population, its existence is to be tolerated,
even lauded.
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In the end, progressive evolutionism illustrates how fundamental and successful the shift
from engaged production to engaged reception has become. The culture industry has without
doubt made culture much more readily available to the masses, and cultural populism’s critique
of critical theory that consumers negotiate meaning and influence which products are produced is
quite valid. But cultural populism fails to imagine a more democratic and participatory
engagement with cultural production, and by looking for redemption from within the media as it
is, it misses the potential of mass media technologies to play a role in breaking down the barriers
to a more direct form of participation that these technologies were utilized to erect in the first
place. The culture industry can be seen as a sort of microcosm of the alienating and disengaging
effects of modern life in the technological age. In forcing artistic expression through its filters,
the culture industry applies its own logic, redefining not only what it means to produce culture,
but redefining participation through this logic to mean little more than consumption of the
choices presented. Participation is reduced to affirming or rejecting what is offered and
validating these offerings through their purchase. For many, this form of cultural participation is
not enough.
The fact that Wandervogel youth were bored long before this new constellation of culture
fully emerged points to a more fundamental origin to modern boredom. The culture industry is
perhaps the most visible symptom of modernity, threatening to erase cultural expression and
diversity through its internal logic and leveling of cultural production as commodity. Ultimately,
the culture industry underscores the potentially alienating elements of modern technology. Both
Wandervögel and punks, I argue, took issue with this orientation towards the technological and
instead put it to uses more aligned with the potential Brecht saw in radio to foster discourse and
diversity.
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Hope and Adventure: Towards an Alternative
In his article “Postmodernity and the Routinization of Novelty: Heidegger on Boredom
and Technology,” Leslie Paul Thiele discusses these problems and the relationship between
boredom and technology in Heidegger’s writing. He concludes that the attempt to escape
boredom through technological innovation and consumption as practiced in the technological age
“undermines the practice of philosophy and the inherently political human task of discovering a
home in the world” (489). If caring (Sorge) is a prerequisite to an ontological being questioning
existence, then boredom, as a side-effect of an enframed world, results in an inability to care
about the world or one’s role in it. This manifests either in the inability to do anything or in a
frenzied state of action without awareness of one’s own being in an attempt to escape it. This sort
of frenzied activity is particularly at home in the technological age. It has, as Heidegger intones,
become the mood of the age—the water through which all (often unwittingly) swim. Not all will
be bored, but the conditions that give rise to boredom on a mass scale exist. Technological
innovation threatens to become an end in itself as a false answer to humanity’s existence. The
effort to ignore the discomfort of an engagement with humanity’s existential homelessness has,
in the technological age, resulted in an expanding and endless spiral in which humans innovate
and consume in order to escape a widening existential boredom that ultimately can only serve to
remove humanity further from a lived reflective engagement with its own existence. This cycle
of boredom temporarily chased away by technological innovation only to return in a heightened
sense is, for Heidegger, nothing less than nihilism. There is no future in this chase. The flight
from boredom only serves to prolong an existence in which time has become an enemy to be
spent, filled, and defeated.
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The boredom of a perceived pre-ordained life that the Wandervogel recognized and
attempted to address in the early 20th century and which had by the explosion of punk in the late1970s accelerated and intensified with the development of a (then still) globalizing culture
industry saw youth encountering a reversed situation. Both groups’ application of technology
was a response to the threat of the technological and the boredom that life in technological
societies engendered. The Wandervogel utilized the technologies of their day to greatly enhance
the range and scope of their activities. The democratized media technologies that proliferated in
the 1970s—most importantly photocopying, cassettes and other cheap sound recording
capabilities—offered punks a new opportunity to create and to be heard. Given the conditions for
boredom that permeated modern society, how could youth create an authentic culture based upon
something beyond the artificial foundation this society rested upon?
For Heidegger, neither ignoring the problem of technological enframing through escaping
nor bowing to the power of enframing and accepting it as an inevitability was adequate—but
neither was a valiant fight in the face of overwhelming odds of which exhaustion was the only
guarantee. This unwinnable fight was one of the traps to which punk fell victim and by which it
has been harshly judged. But the initial explosiveness of punk is often confused with the entire
participatory punk project. Singer Campino (née Andreas Frege) of the Toten Hosen (and
originally of early punk group ZK) said of punk that “Das war ‘ne Revolution. Das war ‘ne
Explosion. Und so ‘ne Wut und so ‘ne Wucht und so ‘ne Leidenschaft. Das kannst du nicht auf
Dauer konservieren. Das ist einfach eine Momentaufnahme. Aber sie hat viel ins Wackeln
gebracht” (Galenza, 98). This initial moment of punk was its direct confrontation with
boredom—a response to the stopped-time of the present and an exuberant invocation to action.
This was precisely what Ben Anderson suggested when he wrote of boredom’s dissipation:
47!
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For example, joy moves into rupture in those circumstances where a point of
suspension, boredom, dissipates suddenly into new connections that transgress, or
even destroy, the durable repeated socialspatial orderings that form boredom. This
imperative was translated into genres of music, specifically punk, that worked
with the explosiveness that follows the dead time of boredom (747).
But what comes after this initial rupture? Here again, I see the answer in the personal
participatory engagement of punks and Wandervögel in their constructions of alternative and
autonomous spheres. Anderson saw joy as fragile, brittle, or fleeting in the face of boredom,
whereas, in simple hope, he perceived an answer to boredom, writing that “Hope is an affective
supplement that begins from an embedded trust in/for the world” (751). This hope is risky
because “hope, and the act of hoping, incorporate a break with the past that means hope is
inevitably uncertain” (751). But the inherent hope that the one’s personal action can create the
possibility of a fulfilling future is a potent emotion in the face of a disempowering and predicable
society is powerful. In Musil’s The Man without Qualities, Goodstein sees Ulrich’s decision to
live life as an experiment and the uncertainty of such an existence a small glimmer of hope. “In
trying to imagine what it would mean to live for the sake of possibilities rather than realities,
Musil’s novel strives to reconnect the philosophical and social-critical rhetorics of experience
that were originally conjoined in the discourse on boredom” (417). Brissett & Snow, borrowing
from Simmel, suggest a similar resolution: “Perhaps the best antidote for boredom is what Georg
Simmel called ‘the adventure.’ For Simmel, the adventure is a social form and experience that
maximizes uncertainty while anticipating resolution. In the adventure, an uncertain end becomes
a quest for its own sake” (252). The quest for possibilities and alternatives and the hope of
finding meaning or, at the very least, fulfillment might be the best answer to modernity and the
48!
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technological age. The participatory projects of the Wandervogel and punk rejected the dominant
boredom-inducing engagement with technology. Still, neither group was anti-technological.
Instead, both groups utilized technology in ways that created a necessary distance from the
dominant engagement with technology and put these same technologies to new (or old) uses as
tools to foster a more direct engagement with the world. For punks, the cassette, photocopier and
recording equipment formed the most important of these new technologies. For the
Wandervogel, it was transportation, camping and hiking gear and food. The world opened up by
train travel and the potential of the mail system to deliver supplies along long hikes made
possible the activities of the Wandervogel. And far from roughing it, these youth pioneered the
use of cutting-edge gear. From reinforced hiking boots and alcohol-fueled aluminum camp
stoves to lightweight tents, waterproof coats and battery-powered flashlights, the Wandervogel
utilized many technologies that made these youth largely self-reliant and allowed them to remain
on Fahrt for longer periods of time and more comfortably. Their use of industrialized foodstuffs
such as Maggi bouillon capsules kept their weight light and allowed them to cook on their own
as well. Finally—as the thousands of photos on record at the Archiv der Jugendbewegung at
Burg Ludwigstein and the numerous photography clubs in Wandervogel groups (often with their
own dark room) attest—the camera was put to prolific use in documenting their outings and in
capturing the experience of going on Fahrt. Burg Ludwigstein holds dozens of photo albums
compiled by youth on outings detailing everything from cooking, sleeping and hiking to attempts
to capture traditional German country to expressionistic and impressionistic representations of
natural beauty. Both punks and Wandervögel utilized technologies not to disengage and not to
consume, but in the pursuit of expression, engagement and adventure.

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Towards the Future
Heidegger’s view of the essence of technology has come under fire for being too
essentialist—viewing technological enframing as a constant and leaving far too little room for
human agency. But even he saw some room for hope, writing that “We can affirm the
unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to
warp, confuse and lay waste our nature” (Heidegger 1966 54). For Martin Heidegger (and, I
argue, for the Wandervögel and punks), the incessant parade of new technologies, new fads, new
sights and new sounds that one is compelled to consume and then discard in the technological
age led not to a state of perpetual amusement but to a deep-seated but inexpressible subjective
malaise and discontent. Both the punks and the Wandervögel arose out of this confrontation with
modernity and a technology-induced (or at least assisted) boredom. In their confrontations with
this boredom, both the Wandervögel and punks implicitly showed that words were insufficient
when the entire vocabulary of experience failed to allow for adequate expression. What was
needed was action—a participatory culture that stood as an alternative to the cavalcade of new
technology and consumer culture. Viewed this way, the Wandervogel ethic of Selbsterziehung
(self-upbringing) and the punk adoption of DIY cultural production both arose to a large extent
out of the desire to address the perceived insufficient opportunities, available futures, and
methods of expression in their respective societies. Wandervogel and punk provided examples of
how experience can again be made meaningful through action.9 This urgency of action was at the
core of both youth cultures.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9

!“Meaningful”!not!in!the!sense!of!having!an!intrinsic!meaning,!but!rather!as!the!result!of!the!various!ways!and!
methods!of!experiencing!and!interacting!with!the!world!that!each!group!saw!as!worthwhile!and!exciting.!!

50!
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In this analysis of Wandervogel and punk through the lens of modernity, technology, and
boredom, I argue that both Wandervogel and punk arose as a result of inadequate potentials for
subjective expression and interpretation in the modern age—a dearth which had by the end of the
19th and increasingly throughout the 20th centuries manifested in what became seen as an
endemic boredom permeating German society (and with slightly altered chronology
Western/globalized society more broadly)—a boredom which has been especially palpable and
abhorrent to youth still uninitiated into society and still possessing a degree of idealism and
hopefulness in an unwritten future. Ultimately, the growth of Wandervogel and punk both
represented youth responses to and attempts to rewrite static presents offering these youth little
hope in personally fulfilling futures.
In these projects in the face of unending innovation, both the Wandervögel and punks
saw in the emerging technologies of their days not simply means for distraction (which
Heidegger saw as laying the foundation for boredom) but tools to engage with a complex and
changing world. The Wandervogel movement has often been accused of a backwards-oriented
escapist trajectory. However, I would argue they were in many ways ahead of their time. And in
their activities I see a precursor to the actions of punks near the end of the “century of youth.”
There is a great deal of the romantic in the Wandervogel, and more than a little in the
punk movement as well. The Wandervögel were understood as part of the neoromantic revival of
the early 20th century, and their adoption of outmoded fashion and medieval titles, their intense
interest in folk music and traditional dances, their meandering search for meaning while on a
Fahrt (days, weeks, or even months-long journey), their increasing patriotism and their affinity
for nature all mark them as having been heavily influenced by the Romantic tradition. Ironically,
punks formulated a similar sort of romanticism turned inwards to the urban—what the
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introduction to Keine Zukunft war gestern, (No Future was Yesterday) called “IndustrieRomantik” and “Beton-Romantik.” While a large part of this punk romanticism manifested as
“Subversion durch Affirmation” (IG Dreck auf Papier 13), the quest for finding deeper meaning
in modern existence was central to punk. But instead of a search for meaning in nature, punks
turned back to the urban (glorified in the SYPH punk classic “Zurück zum Beton”), searching
through the decay and detritus of the last century for inspiration. I would argue, however, that
both movements moved well beyond these backwards-looking and ultimately escapist
foundations and, despite exhibiting very different aesthetics and engagements with society at
opposing ends of tremendous upheavals in German history, both groups of youth revealed
themselves to be engaged in the same urgent quest for a meaningful future in modernity.
Both groups found initial motivation not in the difficulties of their lives, but in the
inadequacy of the comfortable predictability of this pre-scripted existence. Certainly futures
existed. But they were too certain. The youth of the Wandervogel were expected to follow in
their parents’ paths and take up their jobs as civil servants—taking up their roles as the next
generation in a depersonalized and industrialized system. They hoped for something better. The
punks saw the society left to them and were similarly unimpressed. The conditions that had
inspired the Wandervogel to seek alternative ways of living had accelerated tremendously by the
late 1970s. The culture industry dominated taste. Rock culture had emerged, grown and become
stagnant and bloated. And no group had been able to effect a significant degree of change—that
the 68ers who a decade before were protesting in the streets were now working
unproblematically side-by-side with former Nazis was too much. In one of the most evocative
passages in Teipel’s work, Franz Bielmeier characterized West German society in the 70s,
saying: “Damals war Deutschland vom Gefühl her so eine gepolsterte Wohnzimmerwelt mit
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dem fetten, zigarrerauchenden Altnazichef darin. Wenn du auf irgendeinem Teil gesessen bist,
hast du gespürt, dass du auf Kunstleder sitzt, in dem Schaumgummi drin ist” (42). It wasn’t
solely the unresolved engagement with National Socialism that Bielmeier was decrying. The fat,
cigar-smoking Nazi was but one part of a system rationalized to its own existence. The entire
nation was an “upholstered living-room world.” Whenever you found a place to situate yourself,
it was revealed as artificial. It was comfortable, but this artificiality was also fundamentally
uncomfortable. Life in such a room simply could not satisfy Bielmeier and those like him.
Youth are, it appears, much more susceptible to (or at least aware of) boredom, and this
sensation of the approaching void, this nihilism, is for Healy most profoundly felt by young
people. “[M]any in the younger generation…feel the form of consciousness of the civilization
they inherit as a foreign object. Many do not yet see other forms with which to replace them. In
the ensuing formlessness, they taste the experience of nothingness. Without an image by which
to shape themselves, how do they know how to make sense of their experience, or who they
are?” (Novak quoted in Healy 92). Wandervogel and punk youths’ intrinsic recognition and
rejection of this type of existential boredom, of the taste of “the experience of nothingness,” was
ultimately motivating. It pushed these youth to engage with their respective stagnant presents and
insufficient futures and motivated them to search for something else. Both Wandervogel and
punk youth attempted to create new realities that re-started the stopped-time of boredom, hoping
to revivify their respective societies from the bottom up. Further, in this engaged search itself,
boredom seems to dissipate.
Anderson’s notion of hopelessness is particularly important here, as in the context of the
hyper-optimistic youth of the Wandervogel and the outwardly pessimistic but hopeful punks, it is
this shared vision of and hope for a better future and personal involvement in nurturing this
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potential that made these projects seem worthwhile to so many and allowed this suspension of
boredom. Hope—the antithesis of boredom in Anderson’s opinion—was instrumental in
inspiring these modern youth to imagine societies and ways of living fundamentally different
from those in which they originated. The projects of Selbsterziehung and DIY were not only the
result of a desire to be heard in societies that in different ways had silenced these youth. They
also provided the means, with the aid of a re-articulation of the technological, for youth to pursue
lifestyles and worldviews based on this action and the articulation of difference in the concepts
of Anderssein and Wandern which could give rise to the hopeful belief that, through their efforts,
meaningful futures could become possible.
Both groups’ application of technology was incorporated into their programs of
Selbsterziehung and DIY as responses to the threat of the technological and the boredom that life
in technological societies engendered. The greatest failures of both movements—the
Wandervogel in their eventual reconciliation with conservative elements of Wilhelmine society
just before WWI and their subsequent confrontation with the horrors of modern war, and punk’s
absorption as yet another codified and, in its unpredictability, woefully predictable, safe,
exploitable and salable trend are not evidence of the insufficiency of hope and the adventure for
the creation of meaningful futures. Instead, they are proof of the veracity, power and threat of a
technologically enframed world and peoples’ fear of it. Boredom remains a plague for many, but
the original impulses behind both movements persist and point towards the possibility of a future
beyond “no future.”

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CHAPTER TWO: “ALLES ZUVOR WAR OHNE GLANZ”1
Das ist neu, das ist neu! Hurra Hurra die Schule brennt!
- Extrabreit (1981)
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw Wilhelmine Germany rapidly modernizing.
The Wandervogel are read as a reaction to modern German society, but generally as a rebellion
from school, family, and militaristic nationalism against which they oriented themselves in the
attempt to create a new, less restrictive society. The inspection of the Wandervogel through the
lens of boredom is long overdue, because in creating an autonomous and engaged culture of
direct action, the Wandervogel hit upon a means of approaching life which—in the eyes of its
adherents—made it much more interesting and worthwhile. Similar to punk, as we will see in
Chapter Three, the Wandervogel have been long read through discourses that obscure their larger
critique and alternative to modern lifestyles.
The Wandervogel was the first youth subculture in the German nation, and it arose at a
time of rapid societal transformation. This chapter traces the history of the Wandervogel from
their beginnings in Steglitz to the outbreak of World War I, narrowing the focus from broader
social trends, particularly boredom of and with modernity, down to the Wandervogel
organization itself and its members’ struggles for autonomy and direct action. Their history is
often complex, and unraveling the major events, personalities and, especially, the various
organizations which would emerge, provides valuable insight into the diversity and often
contentious nature of what is often approached with blanket statements and generalizations.
Further, this history allows those without a firm understanding of the Wandervogel to quickly
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

!From!Mogge,&Winfried.&&“Ihr&Wandervögel&in&der&Luft&...:”&Fundstücke&zur&Wanderung&eines&romantischen&Bildes&
und&zur&Selbstinszenierung&einer&Jugendbewegung.&&Würzburg:&Königshausen&&&Neumann,&2009,&page!9.&

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!

acquaint themselves with these major events and personalities. The chapter closes with a detailed
inspection of the elephant in the room: the debate surrounding the Wandervogel and National
Socialism, a debate that highlights several of the issues at the heart of this dissertation, especially
when viewed as a conflict about the meaning of modernity.
While only adopting the name in 1901, the Wandervogel first began organizing around
the stenography group at the Steglitz Gymnasium led by the university student Hermann
Hoffmann-Fölkersamb in 1896. A predominantly middle class town on the outskirts of Berlin,
Steglitz was home to many bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, lawyers and the other professionals
who comprised the Bildungsbürgertum of German society. Around the turn of the century,
Steglitz was on the verge of being absorbed into greater Berlin and its population was exploding.
From a population of 17,244 in 1896, by 1914 it had swelled to 86,451.2 It is fitting that Steglitz
formed the birthplace of the Wandervogel, as the encroaching sprawl of greater Berlin,
Germany’s fastest growing city, crept ceaselessly closer to the small town. Steglitz was
representative of the type of places in which the Wandervogel proliferated—the many reformminded elements of the Bildungsbürgertum fostered an atmosphere much more conducive to
allowing youth to experiment with alternative ways of living, the urban environment read as an
alienating intrusion. As Günter Köhler writes:
So erscheint die Wandervogelbewegung in einer Gesellschaft wie der
bürgerlichen von Steglitz und nicht nur dort als eine Befreiung, oder
zurückhaltender ausgedrückt, als eine Möglichkeit für die Jugend, für sich eine
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2

!The!growth!of!Steglitz!is!also!evident!in!an!analysis!of!its!infrastructure!(for!a!more!complete!picture!of!Steglitz!
and!its!growth!around!the!turn!of!the!century,!see!Juuta!Eisenmenger,*Gerhard*Ille,*and*Günter*Köhler’s!Es&Begann&
in&Steglitz).!In!1891,!75!trains!stopped!in!the!town!daily.!By!1907,!the!number!had!reached!151.!In!1896,!the!
process!of!converting!its!streets!from!cobblestone!to!asphalt!began.!The!landscape!of!Steglitz,!most!notably!the!
Grunewald,!Fichteberg!and!Jagdrevier!still!marked!Steglitz!as!rich!in!natural!beauty,!although!the!construction!of!
th
the!Teltow!canal!in!the!early!20 !century!greatly!changed!the!complexion!of!the!town.!!!

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Alternative zur Welt der Eltern zu schaffen und damit reformerisch tätig zu sein.
Da dies weitgehend gelang, kann mit Fug und Recht beim Wandervogel vom
Anfang einer Jugendbewegung gesprochen werden. (Eisenmenger, Ille and
Köhler 27)
This freedom to pursue their own agendas was ultimately the single greatest factor in making the
Wandervogel a possibility and allowing it to proliferate across the young nation. The reasons for
this openness lay in an increased emphasis on and interest in youth—a development referred to
as the Jugendkult, a term credited to educational reformer Gustav Wyneken—which saw youth
as the great hope for cultural rejuvenation in modern Germany.
The origins of the Wandervogel in Steglitz were heavily mythologized by later youth,
with Hans Blüher’s history cementing a romantic depiction of the earliest days of the
Wandervogel that remains a valuable source of often rather subjective accounts of the early
group.3 On the night of 4 November 1901 in the Ratskeller of Steglitz a group of men and
schoolboys had gathered for what was at that time a rather peculiar purpose—the establishment
of an officially recognized organization founded around the idea of youth hiking. Through afterschool stenography lessons in his apartment on the Schloßstraße in Steglitz, at the insistence of
many of his students, including a particularly vocal young Karl Fischer, Hoffmann shared his
love of hiking and the outdoors after some of these students had happened upon Hoffmann’s
notebook about his own experiences walking the countryside in his school days a few years
prior. The activities of the group quickly broadened in scope from shorthand instruction to
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3

!Hans!Blüher!was!an!influential!figure!in!the!Wandervogel,!especially!its!more!radical!circles.!A!member!of!the!
original!Steglitz!group,!he!went!on!to!write!the!first!history!of!the!phenomenon,!a!threeRvolume!anthology!
published!throughout!1912.!The!third!volume,!Die&Wandervogelbewegung&als&erotisches&Phänome,!would!stir!a!
great!deal!of!controversy!as!will!be!seen!later!in!this!chapter.!

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!

include Sunday hiking excursions. From then on, increasing numbers of curious students from
outside the study group began to join them—not in an official capacity as members of the
stenography circle, but as interested kids who wanted to see what these outings were about. So
while the hikes had begun in 1896 in an unofficial capacity, by the turn of the century, they were
growing in both popularity and significance for the youth involved. A legal foundation became a
necessity. The organization founded in Steglitz in 1901, the Wandervogel, Ausschuß für
Schulerfahrten (hereafter shortened to AfS) was short-lived, dissolving due to internal power
struggles in July of 1904. But the movement would continue to grow as new organizations
emerged to take the AfS’s place across Germany—each carrying the Wandervogel name. The
initial modest excursions of perhaps a dozen schoolboys hiking the countryside around Berlin
with Hoffmann comprised the first activities of what by 1910 became a national phenomenon of
an estimated 25,000 young boys and girls in a movement that would stir a great deal of debate
about the role of youth in late-Wilhelmine Germany.
It is important to differentiate between youth of the middle-class Bürgertum and the
youth of the lower classes in Wilhelmine conceptualizations of youth—a discussion propagated
by the educated circles of the Bildungsbürgertum. This educated milieu was extremely
influential in shaping the major relevant discourses in German society, leading to the
proliferation of reform movements and a focus upon youth. In a clear double-standard, middleclass youth were, as the existence of the Wandervogel makes clear, granted far greater
permissions and autonomy to explore (within reason) alternative lifestyles and held aloft as the
great hope for the future (although Jugendpflege groups would increasingly target middle-class
youth as well). In contrast, as Wilfried Ferchhoff suggests in “Wandervogel, Jugend und
Jugendkultur,” working-class youth were read against the background of “industrieller
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Modernisierungsumbrüche sowie im Bezug auf ein ‘normatives Idealbildes von Jugend’
mindestens als krisengefährdet und bedrohte Opfer” (117). And while the Wandervogel talked a
great deal about a unified and inclusive German youth, the reality was that the Wandervogel
drew nearly all its members from the Bildungsbürgertum and were generally quite content with
maintaining this exclusivity. Importantly, they also had a!great deal more leisure time, which was
of course a necessity when planning and undertaking, for example, a month-long trek across
Germany or abroad.
The Wandervogel can therefore be situated within this increased societal focus on the role
of youth, but they would never affiliate with the various reform groups courting their favor, and
they likewise remained separate from the many much larger and ideologically-driven
Jugendpflege organizations. Germany developed industrially in comparison with much of
Western Europe at a relatively late date but extremely quickly—leading to a young nation which
saw itself embroiled in a cultural and social crisis resulting from the need to confront the
unsettling effects of modernization. There was never a unanimous vision of how this
confrontation should be approached. Splinterings and reconciliations of Wandervogel
organizations would become a mainstay in a movement ostensibly (and officially) based on the
simple activity of hiking. At its heart, the Wandervogel became not about hiking itself, but rather
about what hiking represented—which came to be embodied in the idea of Wandern—and about
that there were interpretations to go around. While there were many interpretations of what
Wandern meant, it had a lot to do with that notoriously vague concept of freedom. But freedom
from what? And freedom to do what? To answer these questions the Wandervogel must first be
situated in early-20th century German society. Peter Stachura suggest that “[t]he Wandervogel
arose spontaneously as a movement of youthful protest against the stuffy and constricting
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!

conventions of late Wilhelmine society. It reflected an acute boredom with contemporary
society…caused by the failure of the technological age and urban culture to offer youth either
emotional satisfaction or moral inspiration” (15). The Germany which existed for many
Wandervögel was a world of boredom of and with modernity, of a struggle between autonomy
and authority, and of many conflicting ideologies regarding class, education, sexuality,
industrialization, militarism, nationalism, and race relations.

The Reform Movements and Youth as the Future
The Wandervogel were widely discussed in pedagogical journals such as the
Monatsschrift für Höhere Schulen in the early 20th century, usually in tandem with discussions of
educational reform and alternative forms of schooling such as the Freie Schulgemeinde
Wickersdorf led by Gustav Wyneken, which stressed youth autonomy (the school located in the
countryside to ensure this distance) in the aim of allowing youth the freedom to learn what
interested them and the opportunity to develop a Jugendkultur (another term Wyneken is
credited with popularizing) capable of rejuvenating the nation to lead Germany into the future.4
These journals generally read a great deal of potential into the Wandervogel and articles were
often written by those with close connections to them, such as Ludwig Gurlitt (who was
instrumental in the beginnings of the Wandervogel in Steglitz and in obtaining state-sanctioned
permission for the Wandervogel’s very existence from the Prussian Ministry of Culture) and of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4

!There!is!a!clear!connection!here!to!an!articulation!of!German!nationalism!not!towards!proving!military!might,!but!
in!the!merit!of!creating!a!cultural!nation!strong!enough!to!withstand!the!rapid!industrialization!and!urbanization!
which!many!in!educated!circles!saw!as!a!threat!to!a!developing!German!identity.!This!is!not!to!say!that!
Wandervogel!youth!were!not!nationalistic!or!that!some!elements!of!the!WV!did!not!espouse!such!militaristic!
rhetoric,!but!when!viewed!in!the!context!of!Wilhelmine!society,!WV!conceptions!of!the!nation!were!much!less!
overtly!jingoistic!than!those!of!their!elders.!!!!

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course Gustav Wyneken (who would become at times one of the leading figures in the
Jugendbewegung and at others marginalized for his liberal and often controversial views,
especially in the nationalistic fervor leading up to WWI).
The Wandervogel served as a living and relatively autonomous model of youth
Selbsterziehung and Selbstbildung which became the core of the educational reform movement
surrounding Wyneken and, for a time, Gurlitt. As has been discussed at length in scholarship, an
increasing discontent with the existing restrictive educational system was one of the major
grievances of Wandervogel youth, and this dissatisfaction with school life was one of the initial
impetuses for their desire to seek alternative, self-directed lifestyles. The school embodied many
of the aspects of society which Wandervogel youth found abhorrent: a cold rationality, lack of
warmth and caring, a disregard for the emotional, a demand for unquestioned obedience,
outmoded tradition and a focus not upon allowing youth to explore their own interests, but rather
upon forming the next carbon copy of the current generation.5 Youth who were left disengaged
and bored by their experiences with school and life in Wilhelmine Germany broadly found
themselves in a position as a result of the Jugendkult phenomenon to ask for more. If existing
social structures were unable or obstinately opposed to providing the kinds of education and
opportunity many of these youth craved, they were dedicated to creating these opportunities
themselves (and dedicated to the goal of creating a society where youth demands for selfdirection were fostered instead of repressed).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5

!See!Gerhard!Ille’s!“Schülernot!und!Jugendkult!im!deutschen!Kaiserreich:!Zur!Situation!der!bürgerlichen!Jugend!
um!1900”!in!Es&begann&in&Steglitz!and!Detlev!Gaus!&!Reinhard!Uhle’s!“Pädagogik!im!erste!Jahrzehnt.!Zwischen!
Tradition!und!Moderne,!zwischen!Erstarrung!und!Aufbruch”!in!Das&erste&Jahrzehnt&for!more!on!both!the!existing!
pedagogical!system!and!the!increased!reformist!influences!of!the!era.!

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There was a close symbiotic relationship between the Wandervogel and educational
reformers, as it was only with their (often quite literal) rubber stamp that the Wandervogel were
allowed to organize and expand. The Wandervogel represented a real-existing, multifaceted and
constantly evolving example of the hands-off, autonomous and often nature-oriented model they
advocated. The educational reformers were not the only group to see their interests align with the
Wandervogel. The abstinence movement, Freikörperkultur and Gesundheitsreform (especially in
realms of fitness and practical clothing) were all elements of the wide-reaching Lebensreform
movements whose demands often paralleled the Wandervogel. Importantly, it must be noted that
while there were often strong affinities between these groups and the Wandervogel, reform
groups were intentionally kept at length by the Wandervogel subculture, at least in an official
capacity. In the engagement with the public (adult) sphere, even where their interests aligned,
Wandervogel youth were committed to autonomy and self-direction.6
This charge to remain autonomous went part and parcel with the Wandervogel program
of Selbsterziehung. Selbsterziehung was the practical side of what is often condemned as a vague
demand for “freedom.” The great strengths of Wandervogel self-direction and self-cultivation
were its flexibility in interpretation (with groups and individuals internalizing and developing in
directions towards which they were most drawn) and its hands-on, do-it-yourself philosophy.
Both of these allowed for a relationship with modernity that encouraged engagement, experience
and experimentation—three important elements they saw as sorely lacking in modern German
society and which have since been posited as elements which dissolve the conditions for
boredom. While the much larger Jugendpflege organizations indoctrinated youth with their
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6

!For!a!fuller!picture!of!the!connection!between!the!various!reform!movements!and!the!Wandervogel,!see!Kai!
Buchholz’!anthology!Die&Lebensreform.&Entwürfe&zur&Neugestaltung&von&Leben&und&Kunst&um&1900!and!Sabine!
Weißler’s!Fokus&Wandervogel.&Der&Wandervogel&in&seinen&Beziehungen&zu&den&Reformbewegungen&vor&dem&Ersten&
Weltkrieg.!

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!

particular agendas (political, religious, reformist, völkisch, etc.), the ultimate goal of the
Wandervogel was not to push an existing ideology, but to create a new type of person free of
indoctrination.7 This orientation towards youth—of cultivating not an ideology but an approach
to living openly and receptively—is one of the major contributions of the Wandervogel project.
The idea of Selbsterziehung is critical here. As Otto Neuloh remarked: “Nur aus diesem
Grundsatz der Selbsterziehung und Selbstbildung konnte der Wandervogel die buntscheckige
Formenwelt seines Lebenstils entwickeln” (37). It is this foundational value, not in itself new but
novel in its reception by youth themselves, which permitted Wandervögel across the Germanspeaking world the freedom to work through their own engagement with the world on their own
and as part of a group of individuals engaged in the same project. When the many schisms of the
Wandervogel are viewed in light of this Selbsterziehung project, the checkered and diverse
nature of the multiple groups can be seen differently than the usual failure to unite youth into a
cohesive movement. With thousands of individuals in hundreds of groups all working towards
their own ideal of Wandern, the idea of a single “youth movement” holding all of these strands
together seems absurd, and the fracturings of the Wandervogel an inevitability, not necessarily a
failure. In working through the leveling effects of modern life, a monolithic youth movement
cannot be expected to provide a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, the general worldview
explored and expressed by Wandervögel, regardless of their specific group affiliation or
ideological interpretation, held these youth loosely in a confederation of difference predicated
upon a shared approach to life.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7

!See!“Who&Has&the&Youth,&Has&the&Future”:&The&Campaign&to&Save&Young&Workers&in&Imperial&Germany!by!Derek!
Linton!for!a!handling!of!the!different!Jugendpflege&organizations!as!they!engaged!with!workingRclass!Germans!as!
th
well!as!for!more!discussion!on!the!Jugendkult&in!early!20 !century!and!for!a!detailed!analysis!of!Germany’s!
increasing!youth!population,!which!Linton!notes!was!growing!much!more!quickly!than!the!population!as!a!whole.!

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The response from (a small portion of) middle-class youth in the early 20th century in
claiming autonomy to explore themselves and the world is very similar to those of a much wider
segment of youth following 1945 (and especially during the 1960s, although subcultures such as
the Halbstarken certainly existed earlier), when youth leisure time began to become fully
democratized and social barriers continued to give way. Only recently have the Wandervogel
begun to be inspected as a modern youth subculture, opening the door for new readings in
cultural studies. Viewing the Wandervogel as an early 20th century youth subculture, albeit one
which had to fight much harder for recognition and accept many more concessions and
boundaries in order to exist, allows for a much more direct comparison between it and those
subcultures of the post-war era, including the punks.

Young Germans in Late Wilhelmine Germany: Between the Past and the Future
The Wandervogel were considered by youth and adults alike as a novel, perhaps even
rebellious phenomenon. Wilhelmine Germany was caught between two worlds. Rapidly
industrializing and urbanizing, Germany was nevertheless still heavily guided by a conservative
aristocracy and monarchy that exercised a great deal of influence and power. Ulrich Aufmuth
notes that, from the founding of the Reich in 1871 and for about four decades after: “Deutschland
erlebte einen Industrialisierungsschub, der in der Geschichte der alten Industrienationen einmalig
dasteht” (Aufmuth 119).8 The accompanying demographic and social shifts further mark this
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8

!Aufmuth!compares!German!and!English!steel!production!between!the!year!1873,!in!which!Germany!produced!
only!a!third!of!England’s!output!and!1893,!the!year!that!Germany!eclipsed!England’s!production.!By!1900,!
Germany’s!chemical!and!electrical!production!was!the!highest!among!all!industrialized!nations.!Between!1870!and!
1900,!Germany’s!rail!network!increased!from!20,000!kilometers!to!52,000,!compared!with!a!much!more!modest!
increase!from!25,000!to!35,000!kilometers!in!England.!While!it!is!important!to!note!that!England,!as!a!smaller!but!
more!developed!nation,!should!be!expected!to!experience!slower!growth!in!these!areas,!the!speed!and!intensity!of!

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!

forty year span from 1871 until around 1910 as a tumultuous and rapidly changing period of
German history. As people flocked to the cities, the traditional agrarian existence that had
characterized life for hundreds of years for millions was eroding. In its place among the lower
classes was a rapidly expanding working class, taxing the infrastructures of large cities and
redefining the social structure of the nation.
Between 1871 and 1910, the percentage of people living in towns of 5,000 or more
doubled from 23.7% to 48.8%. Berlin, the birthplace of the Jugendbewegung and Germany’s
most rapidly growing urban center, saw its population increase from 970,000 to 1.6 million
between 1875 and 1890—a figure which would swell to 2.1 million by 1910. In addition,
urbanization in the Wilhelmine era outside Berlin was uneven, with the vast majority of
population redistribution occurring in Westphalia, the Rheinland and in Saxony, not
coincidentally the hotbeds of Wandervogel expansion pre-WWI.9 The internal migration that
resulted further unsettled traditional German society as Germans from across the country, who a
generation or two before might never have spoken High German nor left their hometowns, now
mixed freely in often quite distant cities. Further, this demographic shift was disproportionately
composed of male adolescents, and by 1900 cities housed an estimated four million adolescent
male workers.
In between the aristocracy and the lower classes of workers and farmers remained the
traditional German middle classes - the Bildungsbürgertum of professionals which included
lawyers, doctors, clergy, teachers, professors and civil servants as well as the steadily growing
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Germany’s!industrialization!effort!is!nevertheless!staggering.!The!parents,!young!professionals,!and!especially!
teachers!who!supported!the!Wandervogel&effort!were!heavily!influenced!by!their!own!experiences!as!the!first!
generation!born!into!this!rapidly!changing!world.!This!is!important!to!note!as!it!certainly!contributed!to!their!
willingness!to!allow!their!own!children!and!pupils!a!degree!of!autonomy!which!they!had!not!been!given!in!their!
own!youth.!!!!
9
!See!Wolfgang!Köllmann!(1969)!for!more!details.!

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!

Wirtschaftsbürgertum of merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs and other capitalists. It was from the
ranks of this Bürgertum, and especially from the Bildungsbürgertum, that the Wandervogel
originated and remained throughout its development.
In England, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland the erosion of
aristocratic privilege precipitated much closer ties between their middle and upper classes and a
great deal more popular influence. But in Germany the division between classes remained strong,
with the nobility maintaining a highly influential role in guiding the direction of society after
unification in 1871. As Walter Laqueur noted: “The official ideology of this society and its
declared values were not those of individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness, but consisted
of aristocratic Prussian ideas about loyalty and service to Kaiser and Reich” (Laqueur 4). It was a
mixture of these Prussian ideas combined with the disengaging effects of modern life that middle
class youth would find themselves butting up against and through which Wandervögel would
navigate. Two institutions that perpetuated this Prussian worldview of loyalty and service, while
serving as emblems of Germany’s struggles to come to grips with the effects of modern life,
were particularly ubiquitous in youths’ lives: family and school.

Antiquated Expectations and a New Modernity: Family and School
For middle-class youth, life remained in many ways remarkably unchanged from
previous generations despite growing up in an era of rapid societal transformation. The
traditional nuclear structure of the family, which had changed drastically with the largely youth
fueled migration to the cities, remained largely intact within the Bürgertum. In Teenage: The

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Creation of Youth Culture, Jon Savage discusses parenting in Germany in the early 20th century
as still adhering to the model of 18th century King Frederick Wilhelm I:
The Prussian ideal of parenting was epitomized by the story of the eighteenth
century Prince Frederick. Rebelling against his martinet father, King Frederick
Wilhelm I, the aesthetically inclined young prince tried to run away but was
betrayed and captured: his punishment was to watch the execution of his closest
friend, Hans Hermann von Katte, who had escaped with him. Only through this
severity did he mature to become the national legend, Frederick the Great of
Prussia” (Savage, 2007, 103).
This ideal had certainly weakened by the early 1900s, especially in reform-minded households.
Still, around the turn of the century, deviation by middle-class youth from the role set before
them was, if not met with the brutal murder of one’s best friend, still most often likely to be
punished by authoritarian fathers with the strap or cane.10
The situation was worse in the schools. The educational system drilled discipline into the
youth of the middle classes, who were expected to transition into the university system before
taking up the reigns of civil service from the older generation. This state educational system
stood both as a self-perpetuating institutional exercise of elite power as well as a microcosm of
this power structure throughout Germany in the 19th and into the 20th century. Prussian ideals,
along with the difficulties of maintaining tradition in the face of rapidly expanding numbers of
students and a shifting complexion in the student population, marked the educational system in
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10

!Interestingly,!in!Neuloh!and!Zilius’!interviews!with!surviving!Wandervögel,!which!appeared!in!1982,!many!
respondents!noted!that!they!had!very!close!ties!to!their!families,!but!that!they!realized!others!were!not!as!
fortunate.!Their!“rebellion”!from!family!should!therefore!be!seen!as!a!more!general!recognition!of!their!privileged!
role!and!their!desire!to!allow!others!this!same!degree!of!autonomy!and!freedom.!!!

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the early 20th century. Jürgen Kocka describes the context of German education at the turn of the
century:
“[R]eform from above” was a strong tradition in Prussia, Bavaria, Austria and
other central European states. Absolutist rulers and their emerging bureaucracies
had taken the lead in modernizing their societies for the sake of enhancing their
power. In this context one has to understand the early emphasis on modernizing
and expanding the state-run school systems in Prussia and other German states.
Secondary schools based on Latin and classical studies (Gymansien) and
universities expanded remarkably; the latter were primarily intended to train
young men for state service (Kocka 239).
Lessons in Gymnasien in the early 20th century kept the same form they had maintained
throughout the 19th century. Lecture, drill, rote memorization and recitation in the classic
disciplines formed a monotonous and boring routine: “In den Schulen waltete ein Geist der
Erstickung alles jugendhaften Wesens. Das nackte Dasein als solches war langweilig, steril
geworden” (Helwig 7). But by the late 1800s, this model was beginning to be questioned, and
youth were granted the opportunity to seek alternatives. Whereas Kocka described reform from
above in a general relaxing of tensions, the activities of the Wandervogel can be seen as a form
of reform from below made possible by this newfound sanction. Despite their rather privileged
positions as members of the educated middle-class, they were nevertheless subordinate citizens
as a result of their age and the many restrictions this placed upon their activities.
As touched on earlier in this chapter, in other industrialized European nations, throughout
Germany and particularly in the middle classes, a novel idea had gained currency: the notion of

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the importance of adolescence as a unique period in life. “Young people between the ages of
twelve and twenty allegedly possessed a unique physical and psychological identity that set them
apart from both children and adults” (Williams 107). But if adolescence marked a time of great
potential for growth, it also represented a tremendous threat if youth chose the wrong path
which, given the numbers of young working-class men in cities, was especially salient in the
minds of many adults in the Reich. Unsurprisingly for a society with such entrenched notions of
the importance of discipline, the question quickly became how adults could best cultivate youth
to become model citizens in adulthood, given the rapid transformations unsettling the social
fabric of the young nation. Various Jugendpflege organizations sought to do just this.
The earliest of what might be termed a Jugendpflege organization arose through the
Catholic church in the 1840s. These small groups attached to local parishes numbered at least six
hundred by the foundation of the Reichsverband der katholischen Jugend- und
Jungmännervereine in 1896 and “by 1914 there were over thirty-five hundred Catholic youth
cultivation clubs with a membership of some 350,000 boys and 150,000 girls…primarily from
the urban working class” (Williams 112). These groups’ interest in youth was, like most
Jugendpflege organizations, largely inculcatory. For the church this meant primarily preserving
youth involvement with Catholicism in the face of separation from family and their local parish.
Other organizations were, as John Williams characterizes in his Turning to Nature in Germany,
“organizationally divided into sectors that paralleled the ideological divisions in Wilhelmine
Germany. The most significant of these domains were bourgeois-reformist, Catholic, Social
Democratic, and conservative-militarist” (111). The Jugendpflege organizations of the early 20th
century each had their own ideological agenda to indoctrinate into youth and were organized and
generally run by members of the middle class. This is interesting to note because, before 1912,
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they were targeted primarily at working-class youth who, distanced from their families and
subject to the “allegedly natural irrationality of adolescents, combined with poor living and
working conditions in the city,” were deprived of “orderliness, cleanliness, and patriotism. If
these youth failed to reach a respectable and rational adulthood, a catastrophic breakdown of the
social order would occur” (Williams 112). This perceived threat from below, which beyond the
fear of millions of newly independent young men in urban centers falling into lives of vice and
crime also couched a fear they might organize into revolutionary communist and socialist
groups, saw cooperation between the middle class and the aristocratic upper class and Prussian
government, who fashioned themselves as bulwarks of traditional German society and
cooperated to maintain the conventional practice of reform from above.11
The youth of the Bürgertum, where school and family life still formed a system keeping
youthful exuberance in check, were given a great deal more leeway. But all was not well in the
middle class. Theodor Lessing wrote about his experiences in school in Einmal und nicht
wieder: “sie war vor allem langweilig, langweilig bis zum Stumpfsinn…Nichts, nichts, nichts
könnte je gutmachen, was diese fünfzehn Lebensjahre in mir zerstört haben” (qtd. in Ille and
Köhler 30). This boredom, combined with stress and the expectation of maintaining strict
discipline, led to often tragic outcomes. As Émile Durkheim discusses in the 1897 sociological
work Le Suicide, suicide rates among German youth were the highest in Europe. Suicides were
especially pronounced among Gymnasiasten—allegedly the result of “Examenfurcht, nicht
bestandene Examen und Nichtversetzungen” (Ille and Köhler 37).
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11

!This!combined!concern!led!to!the!founding!of!the!JungdeutschlandYBund&in!1911!by!the!Kriegsministerium,!
which,!while!rejected!by!most!Wandervogel&organizations!for!the!overt!militaristic!overtones!of!the!organization,!
was!generally!wellRreceived!for!giving!quarter!to!youth!groups!in!barracks!and!other!military!quarters,!which!
helped!to!reduce!the!costs!of!travel.!The!journals!of!the!Wandervogel&provide!entertaining!reading!on!the!merits!
and!(much!more!often)!the!problems!of!the!JungdeutschlandYBund!which!were!heavily!debated!throughout!1911!
and!1912.!

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!

In addition to the difficulties many pupils had in their studies, the Gymnasium had
become, since the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Germany in 1871,
increasingly the site of nationalistic and militaristic indoctrination—further increasing the stress
of student life in the face of strict discipline and exacting moral standards. A rapidly increasing
student population (in Prussia from 1967 to 1900, enrollment increased from 73,467 to 156,630,
with 241,051 students by 1914) further taxed this system, as these secondary schools often
evolved into industrialized educational factories with even less concern for individual students
and the potential injustices committed against them.
Fortunately for many students in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, relief came through
a relaxing of tensions that, in the spirit of what would be dubbed “Das Jahrhundert des Kindes”
after the title of the popular 1900 work of the same name by Swedish reformer Ellen Key, sought
to pattern education both in and out of schools on natural processes (and nature) as opposed to
the artificial constraints of society. A series of works by educational reformers had begun to
appear by the late-19th century that heavily influenced a new generation of educators. Foremost
among these was August Julius Langbehn’s Rembrandt als Erzieher, first published in 1899,
which became standard reading in the Wandervogel ranks and by millions of others as well, in
particular those with an interest in educational reform, by the outbreak of the first World War.
He opens his work with the line: “Es ist nachgerade zum öffentlichen Geheimnis geworden, daß
das geistige Leben des deutschen Volkes sich gegenwärtig in einem Zustande des langsamen,
einige meinen auch des rapiden Verfalls befindet” (Langbehn 1). Looking back to the
seventeenth century, Dutch painter Rembrandt’s move away from the Baroque style that had
dominated the artistic landscape of his age and towards an introspective and self-determined
mode of expression was seen by Langbehn as a model that German youth could emulate in order
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to cultivate their own individuality by exploring their own interests—it was these youth who
were to complete the task he laid before them to rejuvenate the nation. In short, Langbehn
suggested that youth should not be beholden to the culture that had been made for them. They
should, rather, test their abilities in an environment unpolluted by the social institutions of the
day. Langbehn closes: “Das neue geistige Leben der Deutschen ist keine Sache für Professoren;
es ist eine Sache der deutschen Jugend, und zwar der unverdorbenen, unverbilteten,
unbefangenen deutschen Jugend. Sie hat das Recht” (Langbehn 356). This was a message that
the Wandervogel would take to heart. This work and others that followed led to a détente in the
relations between (middle-class) youth and some in positions of academic authority fueled
largely by a new generation of educators concerned with the failings of the existing system and
willing to consider alternative educational practices and greater freedoms for students outside of
school. Without the open-mindedness of such pedagogues and other adults in esteemed positions
within the Reich, the Wandervogel would never have been possible given the social realities of
the day.
One of the most respected and renowned of these reformers was Ludwig Gurlitt, who
taught at the Steglitz Gymnasium and was instrumental in the establishment of the Wandervogel
organization. Hans Blüher, the first chronicler of Wandervogel history and one of its earliest
members, wrote on the importance of educational reformers like Gurlitt in opening up the
opportunity for youth to develop their own identities early in the first volume of his
Wandervogel: Geschichte einer Jugendbewegung, published in 1912. Blüher saw the differences
between the existing educational system and the autonomy and exploration favored by
educational reformers as a manifestation of two types of society:

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Steglitz hat eine gewisse pädogogische Berühmtheit dadurch erfahren, daß es der
Schauplatz der Kampfes wurde, den Ludwig Gurlitt gegen das Gymnasium
ausfocht. Es war ein Kampf zweier Welten der Erziehung, ja zweier Welten
überhaupt, der hier wie überall ausbrach, zweier Stimmungen dem Leben und den
Menschen gegenüber, aus ihnen geboren zwei Urteile von denen jedes ein
Todesurteil war.—Die eine Welt war die protestantische, die fromme, gehorsame,
die andere war die protestierende, die Befreiung.
“Das Kind ist eine Persönlichkeit!” sagte Ludwig Gurlitt.
“Nein, das Kind ist keine Persönlichkeit!” sagte das System, “und wenn es eine
ist, so hat es keine zu sein!” (17).12
It is no coincidence that the ideas at the center of the Wandervogel emerged in Steglitz—
Gurlitt’s efforts to turn the Steglitz Gymnasium into a more open environment found resonance
in the youth who passed through. His efforts were instrumental to the creation of the
Wandervogel not just on paper as a legal organization, but also in inspiring youth to take control
of their own education and imagine a society less boring. Blüher quotes an anecdote told by
Gurlitt about his distaste for dinner parties which perfectly describes the social conventions
against which the Wandervogel balked, which also hearken back to Heidegger’s
conceptualization of boredom:
Da war ich auch mal eingeladen bei irgend einem Menschen. Ich sage Ihnen:
stundenlang nichts weiter zu tun, als fortwährend fressen und das dümmste Zeug
reden müssen, das kann kein anständiger Mensch vertragen. Dann wollte ich
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12

!While!Blüher!rightly!recognizes!the!importance!of!Gurlitt,!this!passage!also!provides!a!portrait!of!Blüher’s!
romantic!and!often!rather!biased!history.!

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!

gehen; man hatte mir den Hut versteckt. Ich mußte also bleiben und die ganze
Nacht Sekt trinken, mir das Gequatsche von einem Dutzend langweiliger, hoher
Beamter anhören, bis es endlich Morgen wurde, da kriegte ich meinen Hut
wieder. (31-32)
The Wandervogel wanted nothing to do with this stilted adult world, and their articulation
of Selbsterziehung was centered on creating individuals in a different cast focused on a direct
and engagement with the world. In nature, they found the visceral engagement they demanded as
well as the comparatively autonomous spaces they needed; the idea of Selbsterziehung and its
internalization by Wandervögel throughout the nation were indebted to Ludwig Gurlitt and his
pedagogical approach. The Wandervogel arose and were allowed to organize as a direct result of
this new emphasis on the importance of youth. While sharing some similarities and often being
grouped in with the Jugendpflege organizations arising around the same time, the Wandervogel
were much more closely aligned with the ideology of the educational reformers who looked to
Langbehn’s model of a hands-off approach and gentle guidance rather than to the overtly
agenda-driven and adult-led efforts of the Jugendpflege organizations, which many Wandervögel
saw as unsatisfactorily linked to existing institutions and far too immersed in existing political,
religious and military discourses.
Wandervogel youth ultimately distanced themselves not only from their parents, school
and other bastions of authority, but also from the mannerisms of other youth, whom they saw as
caught in a self-perpetuating cycle as generation replaced generation in a stagnant parade of
cultural conformity. As Walter Hornstein notes of the younger generationJugend in ihrer Zeit:
“Der höchste Ehrgeiz war, sich in Kleidung, Haltung, Gewohnheit, Geschmack nach den
Erwachsenen zu richten, die mit Stolz die Feststellung ‘ganz wie ein Alter’
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machten…Zigarettenrauchen und Biertrinken und üble Witze erzählen galt als das sicherste
Kennzeichen der Männlichkeit” (237). In an effort to redraw the cultural constellation of German
society, Wandervogel youth turned to the emotional and toward reflective and engaged
experience as an alternative to what many of these youth viewed as the beer-swilling,
rationalistic, routine-driven and boring Alltag of life in Wilhelmine Germany. Drinking and
smoking became for the Wandervogel symbols of conformity to avoid—false emotion that
pacified youth as opposed to the unmediated engagement these youth sought not just in nature on
Fahrt, but in their everyday interactions. Hermann Giesecke describes this orientation to
experience, writing: “Das gemeinschaftstiftende Element ist vorwiegend emotionaler Art: das
Erlebnis der Gemeinsamkeit, weniger die rationale Diskussion. Wo die intellektuelle Diskussion
in Gruppen eine Rolle spielt, hat auch sie ihren Grund in der starken Emotionalität der
Gruppenbeziehung und der gemeinsamen Erlebnisse” (38). While the rational intellect certainly
had a role in group discussion for the Wandervogel, the role of emotional engagement was
paramount. In the next section, the many Wandervogel splits and reconciliations in this
emotionally charged and heatedly contested realm take center stage.

A Brief History of the Wandervogel
The creation of a space autonomous and open enough for all of the various perspectives
and interpretations that were brought to the Wandervogel in a way that allowed them to
(relatively) peacefully coexist—a space as necessarily turbulent and varied as youth itself—was
one of the greatest achievements of the Wandervogel, especially given the societal obstacles with
which they had to contend. But the development of the broadly defined Wandervogel

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movement—that is, the history of the initial organization and those groups that broke off from or
otherwise formed following the disintegration of the Ausschuß für Schülerfahrten in 1904—
constitutes a complex and often contradictory whole. In this section I trace the growth of the
movement and its major organizational divisions, how these divisions differed and, finally, how
they were (largely) reunited in the Einigungsbund in 1913. Finally, I will discuss the moral panic
revolving around the Wandervogel that gripped the nation in the months leading up to WWI that
resulted in dramatic changes within the organization as its leaders went on the defensive. This
history provides the reader a foundational knowledge of the organization and key terms, names
and events that will be necessary for contextualizing the discussion in the following chapters.13
The lack of a firm understanding of Wandervogel history and the differences between groups,
over-reliance on the often highly subjective histories of its members and those with a clear
agenda (such as the works produced during the National Socialist period) as well as a readiness
to read into the youth movement the criticisms leveled against it by its detractors has led to a
large amount of cherry-picking when discussing the movement, often distilled into a monolithic
notion of the Wandervogel. As a result, they have been read as conservative, liberal,
authoritarian, democratic, militaristically nationalist, anti-militaristic, culturally nationalist,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
13

!I!hope!this!general!history!will!be!of!value!to!other!researchers,!as!no!other!basic!historical!outline!has!been!
published!in!the!English!language.!Walter!Laqueur!provided!a!highly!stylized!history!greatly!lacking!in!detail!in!his!
1962!Young&Germany:&A&History&of&the&German&Youth&Movement.!This!history!was!not!greatly!disambiguated!by!
Peter!Stachura!in!his!1981!The&German&Youth&Movement,!which!relied!heavily!upon!Laqueur’s!work.!The!bulk!of!
this!history!have!been!adapted!from!many!works,!including!Gerhard!Ziemer!and!Hans!Wolf’s!Wandervogel&und&
freideutsche&Jugend!(1961)!and!Wandervogel&Bildatlas&(1963),!Werner!Kindt’s!Dokumentation&der&
Jugendbewegung.!Band!II:!Die&Wandervogelzeit.&Quellenschriften&zur&deutschen&Jugendbewegung&1896&bis&1919&
(1968),!Hans!Blüher’s!Wandervogel.&Geschichte&einer&Jugendbewegung&(1976),!Ulrich!Aufmuth:!Die&deutsche&
Wandervogelbewegung&unter&soziologischem&Aspekt&(1979),!Otto!Neuloh!and!Wilhelm!Zilius’s!Die&Wandervögel!
(1982),!Gerhard!Ille!and!Günter!Köhler’s!Der&Wandervogel&–&Es&begann&in&Steglitz&(1987),!Marion!Ras’s!Körper,&Eros&
und&weibliche&Kultur.&Mädchen&im&Wandervogel&und&der&Bündischen&Jugend&1900–1933!(1988),!Sabine!Weißler’s!
Fokus&Wandervogel.&Der&Wandervogel&in&seinen&Beziehungen&zu&den&Reformbewegungen&vor&dem&Ersten&Weltkrieg&
(2001),!Ulrich!Herrmann’s!„Mit&uns&zieht&die&neue&Zeit“&–&Der&Wandervogel&in&der&deutschen&Jugendbewegung!
(2006)!and!John!Alexander!Williams!Turning&to&Nature&in&Germany:&Hiking,&Nudism&and&Conservation,&1900Y1940&
(2007).!

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!

homoerotic, overly masculine, overly feminine, inclusive of women, misogynistic, racist, racially
tolerant and more. While all of these labels can be applied to different groups and individuals at
different times and in different places, and while some can be applied more credibly than others
to large sections of the movement as a whole, the end effect has been a tremendous amount of
confusion in the literature that detracts from the major accomplishments of these youth.
This history of the Wandervogel roughly follows four phases.14 The first phase
encompasses the activities of Hermann Hoffmann and his successor Karl Fischer up to the
founding of the Ausschuß für Schülerfahrten (AfS) in 1901. The second phase comprises the
activities of the AfS until its dissolution in 1904. The long third phase, which I have broken into
two temporally overlapping discussions, was characterized by further fracturing and the
formation of new organizations and lasted until 1913 when the vast majority of groups reunited
to form the Wandervogel, eingetragener Verein (shortened hereafter to the commonly followed
abbreviation WVEV), which constitutes the fourth phase of the movement lasting until 1919,
although I will be ending my analysis following the incidents of the Hohe Meißner15 and the
outbreak of WWI, which saw events drastically alter the complexion of the Wandervogel.

The First Phase: The Wandervogel Take Flight (1890-1901)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
14

!These!phases!are!discussed!in!Kindt’s!1968!collection!of!primary!documents!of!the!Youth!Movement,!
Dokumentation&der&Jugendbewegung&II:&Die&Wandervogelzeit.!The!Kindt!anthologies!were!the!center!of!a!scandal!
in!2013,!when!Christian!Niemeyer!revealed!the!extent!of!Kindt’s!omissions,!ostensibly!an!attempt!to!distance!the!
youth!movement!from!allegations!surrounding!National!Socialism.!While!the!material!presented!is!largely!
unbiased!and!contains!the!most!complete!handling!of!primary!documents!published!to!date,!its!newly!revealed!
shortcomings!must!be!noted.!See!the!second!major!section!of!this!chapter!for!a!full!analysis!of!the!issues!
surrounding!this!contentious!debate.&
15
!In!1913,!the!first!Freideutsche&Jugend&organized!at!the!Hohe!Meißner!to!stage!a!counterRprogram!to!the!
militaristic!commemoration!of!the!100th!anniversary!of!the!October!1813!Battle!of!Leipzig.!

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!

For a movement that on the one side sought freedom from the constricting educational
system of the age and on the other relied on staying in its good graces, it is perhaps only fitting
that Hermann Hoffmann-Fölkersamb was inspired to begin hiking after a lecture during his own
school days in Magdeburg:
Es war im Jahre 1890. Deutschstunde in der Untersekunda der Magdeburger
Guerickeschule. Einer von uns las pflichtgemäß aus dem Lesebuch von Hopf und
Paulsieck das fällige Lesestück vor. Es hieß: “Reise zu Fuß”. Wir anderen hörten
mit halbem Ohre zu oder lasen heimlich etwas Spannenderes oder machten eine
Mathematikarbeit fertig. Plötzlich ein Faustschlag unseres Professors Sträter auf
das Pult: “Jungens! Was seid ihr für Schlafmützen! Was Ihr da hört, ist Euch wohl
ganz egal! Als wir Jungen waren, da sparten wir unsere Groschen zusammen, und
zu Pfingsten oder in der großen Ferien, da ging das Wandern los…Das packte!
Wenigstens einige von uns. In den nächsten Sommerferien wanderte ich mit
meinem jüngeren Bruder und einem Klassenkameraden zum Magdeburger Tor
hinaus, den Tournister auf dem Rücken—die Zeit der Rucksäcke war für
Norddeutschland noch nicht gekommen. Wir wanderten in Tagesmärschen von
vierzig Kilometern zum Harz, im Zickzack durch diesen und nach achtzehn Tagen
heimwärts durch dasselbe Tor. (qtd. in Kindt 37)
Hoffmann’s anecdote exemplifies the ambivalent relationship middle-class youth had with the
educational system of the day. The distracted pupils had tuned out, but in his fiery reprimand of
their disinterest, Hoffmann’s professor incited some of them to engage with the subject in a
much more direct manner (a hands-on approach that would become one of the central tenets of
the movement). This passage also hearkens back to something older than Hoffmann—to a legacy
! 78!
!

of youth hiking preceding the humble beginnings of the Wandervogel. Hiking as recreation had
been a popular pastime in the lands that became the modern German state long before
unification. Hoffmann’s trips well could have remained isolated outings in the continuation of
this tradition, had events during his years as a university student in Berlin not given these
excursions greater importance.
Karl Fischer, one of the students who discovered Hoffmann’s hiking journal during a
stenography lesson, took an immediate interest in the idea of hiking and would go on to become
a major influence. From 1896 until Hoffmann’s departure for the foreign service in February
1900, Hoffmann took ever-increasing numbers of students (from Steglitz and, soon, other
schools as well) on increasingly far-reaching hikes throughout Germany. These early outings of
the pre-Wandervogel era evolved and took on dimensions that would become standard for all
groups in later years. The early hikes were only one-day affairs, but the fall of 1896 saw the first
two-day outing, which also marked the first trip involving cooking on alcohol-burning stoves
such as the one pictured below—a hallmark of Wandervogel self-reliance, practical education
and independence.16

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16

!Their!popularization!of!these!stoves!and!other!camping!equipment!innovations!will!be!discussed!in!Chapter!Four.!
As!the!Wandervogel&grew,!the!Hordentopf&–!a!communal,!large!pot!in!which!the!group’s!meals!were!prepared!
together!–!became!increasingly!popular.!!

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!

Figure 2: Advertisement for alcohol-fueled camp stoves, image source: Nordischer Wandervogel,
June 1908

The summer of 1897 marked the first multi-week outing of the group, a two-week hike
through the Harz Mountains, which also marked the first instance titles were given to
participants, with new members being dubbed Füchse and more experienced members Burschen.
In this vein, Hoffmann would take the title Oberhäuptling while Fischer would be given the rank
of Häuptling—allusions to the wildly popular writings of Karl May, an author known for his
tales of Native Americans and the American West and particularly for his fictional hero,
Winnetou. While the titles changed, they became, like cooking on camp stoves and sleeping in
barns, conventions in the youth movement as it evolved. The Große Fahrt the next summer
! 80!
!

through the Harz and along the Rhine marked a further milestone as the first month-long trip of
the group, and was followed the next summer with another four-week trip—the
Böhmerwaldfahrt—starting on 7 July, the same day classes ended. This trip was notable not only
as the final major event Hoffmann was involved in, but also as the first instance a large number
of songs was printed that participants were to learn before departing. While singing had been
common practice, this was the first time they were officially recorded and reinforced the
importance of music in the evolving movement. This pamphlet would be followed by numerous
song books in the years to come as the Wandervogel moved through styles (from drinking songs
to fighting songs to folk songs), with the million-copy selling Zupfgeigenhansl, compiled by
Hans Breuer, being the most prominent example.17
What was prominently absent from the early years of the group were the elements of
cultural criticism and the explicit cultivation of a youth culture set in opposition to contemporary
German society that would slowly evolve in Wandervogel ideology in the coming years. They
hiked, by and large, simply because it was engaging, provided a sense of adventure sorely
lacking in their lives and allowed them to be among themselves. This is not to say that youth in
the early years of the movement were not interested in finding autonomy from social institutions
and pressure to conform—far from it—but the organized articulation of dissent is something that
grew out of the movement, not something that sprang fully formed from the beginning. However
the most important element of the Wandervogel, and one that never changed, remained the focus
on Wandern&itself.!As one of the early Wandervögel interviewed by Neuloh and Zilius
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
17

!Breuer!moved!to!Steglitz!with!his!family!in!1898!and!in!1899!began!to!participate!in!the!early!group’s!hikes.!His!
song!book!had!an!impact!far!beyond!the!Wandervogel&and!remains!one!of!the!great!legacies!of!the!movement.!
Sadly,!he!was!killed!at!Verdun!in!1918!(Malzacher!and!Daenschel!32).!The!Zupfgeigenhansl,!however,!would!live!on!
after!his!death!as!a!massive!success.!Hermann!Giesecke!notes!that!it!remained!a!bestseller,!and!that!by!1933!it!had!
been!“über!eine!Million!Mal!verkauft”!(19).!

! 81!
!

summarized: “Wandern wurde Selbstzweck und war nicht dazu da, einen Ort, ein Ziel zu
erreichen. Wandern stand im Gegensatz zum Reisen…Daß man zu Fuß die Straße unter die
Beine bekam und daß das ein neues Erlebnis, eine ganz neue Dimension war, das wurde
entdeckt. Dort wurde auch entdeckt, wie man eine ganze Landschaft erfaßte, wie man sie
sozusagen von innen erlebte” (74). The focus on experience and exploration over arriving at a
goal, the hallmarks of the adventure that Simmel posited as a simple answer to boredom, were
accidentally discovered by these youth, among themselves, before the Wandervogel was born.
The first phase of what would become the Wandervogel ended with Hoffmann’s
departure. Before leaving in 1900, he invited Karl Fischer to meet with him on the Fichtenberg
in Steglitz in what has become known as the Fichtenberg Abrede. Hoffmann went into the
meeting hoping to convince Fischer to begin to expand the group’s activities across Germany:
“Ich suchte Fischer für den Plan zu begeistern, diese Art des Jugendwanderns über Steglitz
hinaus unter der deutschen Jugend zu verbreiten” (qtd. in Kindt 1968 39). Fischer needed no
convincing and excitedly agreed to take over for Hoffmann. Fischer is a controversial figure
whose leadership style could kindly be described as autocratic. He attempted to control all facets
of the organization, which would directly lead to the splintering of the organization in 1904. But
in the beginning, his dedicated leadership saw many necessary steps taken to legitimize the
fledgling movement.

The Second Phase—Wandervogel, Ausschuß für Schülerfahrten (1901-1904)
Who first brought forward the idea to restructure the group into an officially sanctioned
organization will likely never be known. Many scholars give the credit to Fischer himself, and
! 82!
!

Hoffmann never recalled having suggested such an organization to Fischer, as he thought such
an endeavor too premature. But Walther Gerber suggests the idea came not from Fischer, but
from two elder influences: the author and journalist Wolfgang Kirchbach (the father of one of the
early Steglitz hikers Ernst Kirchbach) and Ludwig Gurlitt—the progressive teacher at the
Steglitz Gymnasium. From Gerber:
Fischer ging in Hause Kirchbachs ein und aus und holte sich in allen Fragen bei
dem Älteren und Erfahreneren Rat. Von Kirchbach stammte nachweislich die
Idee der Organisation. Er und Gurlitt haben Fischer später zutreffend als
‘Mitgründer’ des A.f.S. bezeichnet; sie haben seinen Alleinanspruch damit
abgewiesen. (Kindt 1968 40)
Kirchbach’s suggestion for the organization of the group was to form a partnership
beween older adults and the elder youth leaders of the group—what he termed a Kartell. Fischer
understood the necessity of involving the adult element in the group, although as his later actions
would show, he attempted to control as many of the organization’s activities as possible. This
early concession to an adult influence on the organization has been interpreted by Gerber and
others, including Winfrieg Mogge in Ihr Wandervögel in der Luft, as evidence that the
movement was scripted by reform-minded parents and other interested adults from the
beginning. Mogge writes: “Die Rede von einer spontanen, gar autonomen Bewegung der Jugend
war schon damals Wunschdenken—oder Teil einer pädogogischen Strategie” (26). While others
like Stachura put forward the spontaneous emergence of a youthful spirit, the reality likely falls
in between these positions. Without adult sponsorship, there was simply no way the
Wandervogel could have had the legal foundation to expand or the sometimes tenuous social
acceptance that came with this adult sanction. Adults like Gurlitt and Kirchbach certainly had
! 83!
!

ideas of what the Wandervogel should be, but the foundation built upon experience and
exploration had emerged long before the institutionalization of the Wandervogel commenced. On
4 November 1901, in the Ratskeller of Steglitz, the Ausschuß für Schülerfahrten was founded.
Presiding over the meeting was Kirchbach, who was accompanied by four other fathers of youth
involved in the group. Also in attendance were the first Führer of the organization: Karl Fischer,
Bruno Thiede, Ernst Kirchbach, Siegfried Coppalla and Wolfgang Meyen (who was a rare
exception to the otherwise completely bürgerlich composition of the group, being an apprentice
mechanic). In addition, several students from nearby schools attended the Ratskeller meeting as
well. Wolfgang Meyen, who had noticed the inscription on a gravestone during a hike, suggested
the name Wandervogel.18 The newly organized Wandervogel adopted titles hearkening back to
the itinerant scholars of the middle ages—a topic that Fischer and Meyen found fascinating.
Fischer took the title Oberbachant while other youth leaders were given the title Bachant, with
regular full members given the title Scholar.
With the legitimacy granted by the official adult sanction of the group, the Wandervogel
began to expand. Fischer started an intense advertising campaign. A new group was begun by
Wolfgang Meyen in nearby Groß-Lichterfelde as an extension of the Steglitz group, both of
which grew rapidly. Respectable professionals (among them Dr. Heinrich Albrecht, Prof. Dr.
Menadier and Prof. Dr. Albano Brand) were recruited to further cement the good name of the
group. During Easter of 1903 Fischer travelled with the Bachanten of the group along with
nearly 75 Scholaren on a Fahrt through Brandenburg, Lehnin, Ferch and Potsdam to spread
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
18

th

!The!grave!was!that!of!Kaethe!Branco,!a!young!woman!just!shy!of!her!26 !birthday!who!had!died!in!1877.!The!
inscription!on!the!tombstone!began!“Wer!hat!euch!Wandervögeln/!Die!Wissenschaft!geschenkt/!Dass!ihr!auf!Land!
und!Meeren/!Nie!falsch!den!Flügel!lenkt?”!(Grünzweig!126R130)!The!word!Wandervogel&can!be!found!earlier,!most!
notably!in!Otto!Roquette’s!“Ihr!Wandervögel!in!der!Luft,”!a!lyrical!poem!which!first!appeared!in!his!1851!
Waldmeisters&Brautfahrt.!The!song!would!become!a!favorite!within!the!Wandervogel,!and!as!it!remained!a!popular!
song!around!the!turn!of!the!century!has!been!pointed!to!by!scholars!as!another!likely!inspiration!for!the!naming!of!
the!Wandervogel.!(Mogge!53)!

! 84!
!

word of and recruit for the Wandervogel (an event that further alienated the Bachanten Thiede,
Copalle and Weber). And on a hike later in October, Fischer founded a Wandervogel group in
Posen, now part of Poland, under the leadership of Wilhelm Brunne.
This trajectory of growth and increasing dissatisfaction on the parts of Fischer’s
subordinates and many of the Scholaren characterized the years from 1901 to 1904. Fischer did a
great deal to expand the movement, but did so while ignoring demands for a free and open
exchange of opinions and the cultivation of an atmosphere of mutual respect, reciprocal learning
and natural growth. In short, he attempted to restructure the Wandervogel in the image of the topdown social structures from which many Wandervogel were attempting to distance
themselves.1904 proved to be a turbulent year for the Wandervogel, with a rising sentiment
against Fischer’s leadership style taking center stage. The year began on a high note: the
Wandervogel Illustrierte Monatschrift, the first periodical of the WV, began publication in
March of 1904 under Fritz A. Meyen (with heavy input from Fischer).19 The backlash against
Fischer’s leadership came to a head following a trip in the summer of 1903, which culminated
with the first split in the Wandervogel. On the trip, Bachant Siegfried Copalle sent one of
Fischer’s favored Scholaren, Hans Blüher, home for inappropriate conduct. Fischer, while
agreeing that Copalle had the right and obligation to maintain order and discipline, nevertheless
overruled the decision to punish Blüher, causing Copalle to, in his estimation, lose face and his
ability to control those under his responsibility.20 This friction escalated further when Copalle
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
19

!Wandervogel&publishing!will!be!discussed!in!greater!detail!in!Chapter!Four.!!
!Blüher!would!go!on!to!become!the!first!historian!of!the!Wandervogel.!His!threeRvolume!history,!Wandervogel,&
Geschichte&einer&Jugendbewegung,!published!in!1912!was,!by!his!own!admission,!a!subjective!account.!It!contained!
numerous!inaccuracies!and!biases!and!mythologized!the!early!years!and!figures!of!the!movement!–!particularly!his!
close!friend!Karl!Fischer,!who!had!sided!with!him!against!Copalle’s!judgment!to!dismiss!him!from!the!
aforementioned!hike.!The!third!volume!of!his!history,!Die&Wandervogelbewegung&als&erotisches&Phänomen,!was!a!
contributing!factor!to!the!moral!panic!surrounding!the!youth!movement!in!1913,!which!saw!most!Wandervögel&
20

! 85!
!

planned, with the approval of the elder council but without the approval of Fischer (who was,
according to the group’s bylaws, required to approve all hikes), an Easter Fahrt. In protest of
what he felt to be (and was indeed intended to be) an act of defiance and disloyalty, Fischer
abdicated his position as Oberbachant—with several of the Bachanten loyal to him following
suit. Attempts by the elders to bring the two sides together were unsuccessful, and on June 29th
in 1904 the AfS was dissolved.

Third Phase: Forks in the Road
The two groups that emerged from the dissolution of the AfS were the Steglitzer
Wandervogel EV, formed by those dissatisfied with Fischer’s leadership and the AltWandervogel, under the continued leadership of Fischer.21 Early squabbles about the use of the
Wandervogel name and which group represented the true continuation of the Wandervogel gave
way to a relatively peaceful coexistence of the two organizations.
The Steglitzer EV would remain a small organization (advertising, recruiting and
expanding were never as important for them as they were in other organizations) and went on to
focus largely on operations within Berlin.22 Still, the Posen group quickly joined their ranks and
a few groups in Bavaria (where other organizations experienced difficulty making inroads due to
the prevalence of Catholic youth groups) joined the organization as fully autonomous groups
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
vociferously!rejecting!his!theories!and,!ultimately,!moving!the!movement!towards!a!much!more!militaristic!
nationalism!and!nonRconfrontational!position!visYàYvis&society&in!an!attempt!to!clear!their!name.!!!!
21
!Fischer!had!promised!not!to!interfere!with!or!obstruct!the!newly!formed!Steglitzer&EV,!but!quickly!rescinded!on!
this!promise!by!forming!the!AltYWandervogel!–!something!that!for!a!time!further!damaged!relations!between!the!
groups.&!
22
!The!Steglitzer&Wandervogel&were!more!academically!oriented!and!saw!collegeRage!students!as!possessing!
greater!experience!and!maturity!while!still!belonging!the!general!population!of!“youth.”!Reflecting!this,!they!
largely!chose!Führer&who!attended!university.!!

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!

sharing their rules and receiving their publications. The Steglitzer EV remained one of the
smallest Wandervogel organizations until their assimilation into the united Wandervogel e.V.,
Bund für deutsches Jugendwandern (WVEV or EV) at the beginning of 1913.
The Alt-Wandervogel (AWV) began its life as a lone group of about fifty youth centered
around Fischer. In the early years of the AWV, Fischer continued his rigid leadership style,
taking on now the new title of Großbachant. However Fischer would depart for China in 1906 as
the organization grew and his influence diminished. The structure of the AWV quickly changed
to a system comprised of a Bundesleitung of the Eltern und Freundesrat collaborating with the
Führerschaft of older youth headed by a five-person elected body. The title of Bachant was
retired and replaced with Führer. The AWV became by far the largest and most influential of the
Wandervogel organizations with 15,000 Scholaren and 5,000 members of the Eltern und
Freundesrat by 1913, when a majority of the AWV merged with the newly formed WVEV. The
AWV were not particularly reform-minded and resisted the more radical elements that developed
within the movement, as suggested by their autocratic leadership style (which would however
become somewhat more inclusive after Fischer’s departure), their opposition to abstinence from
alcohol and tobacco and their reluctance to include girls in the organization. As youth took issue
with various practices of the AWV, further splinter groups would branch off from them. While
never the most progressive of the groups, they likewise never took their ideology to the extreme
völkisch dimensions that some others would. Beyond the AWV and the Steglitzer EV, youth
hiking was beginning to expand in popularity elsewhere. In 1902, the 17-year-old student Erich
Wolfram independently founded a hiking group, the Magdeburger Wanderriegen at the
Realgymnasium in Magdeburg. The group remained very small and isolated until Wolfram
discovered the Steglitzer EV after moving to Berlin to begin his studies at the Technische
! 87!
!

Hochschule zu Charlottenburg. After becoming involved in the group (eventually joining the
Führerschaft) he began patterning the group in Magdeburg after that of the Wandervogel and
maintained close ties with the Steglitzer EV.23 Another group, a short-lived girls’ group, was
formed in 1905—the Bund der Wanderschwestern. However since neither the AWV nor the
Steglitzer EV were willing to include girls at the time, they operated autonomously. While groups
attached to the AWV and the Steglitzer EV were forming elsewhere, the founding of the Bund
der Wanderschwestern and the Magdeburger Wanderriegen showed that the idea of Wandern
had begun to take on a life of its own and could be appropriated by anyone with the time and
interest to participate in the emerging youth culture.
As the AWV grew, so too did opinions about what the Wandervogel were about. In the
AWV a culture revolving around romanticized conceptions of the itinerant scholar, the
wandering journeyman and other poor and socially outcast Fahrendes Volk (travelling peoples)
had developed. Many youth had begun acting, writing and dressing as they thought these
migratory peoples from the Middle Ages might have done. Some groups began sporting dirty
clothes and a gruffer demeanor along with occasional displays of machismo. A growing force in
the movement, centered around the AWV group in Jena, took issue with what they considered a
false romanticism and artificial culture that they felt detracted from (and endangered) youth’s
capacity to develop a meaningful and autonomous sphere for themselves. Instead of this
increasingly prominent Kunden- und Vagantentum, the Jena group felt that the foundation of
their activities should be hiking, self-reliance and self-development. In order to achieve this
renewed focus on hiking and self-improvement and to make the AWV a more open organization,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
23

!The!Magdeburger&Wanderriegen&would!eventually!become!more!reformRoriented!and!in!1911!would!join!the!
Wandervogel!Deutscher!Bund,!which,!as!will!be!discussed!later!in!this!section,!was!the!group!most!interested!in!
questions!of!young!women!in!the!movement,!abstinence!from!alcohol!(and!later!tobacco)!and,!critically!for!the!
small!Magdeburg!group,!in!creating!a!reunified!Wandervogel&movement.!

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!

the Jena group introduced measures at the Bundeshauptversammlung on January 3rd, 1907 to
forbid alcohol on trips and to open the groups up to girls. Both of these measures were quickly
defeated, leading to the Jena group’s departure from the AWV. On January 20th this group
founded a new organization, the Wandervogel, Deutscher Bund (DB). Here again we see the
navigation of difference, with the meaning of Wandern and the Wandervogel contested at the
communal level resulting in diversification.
The founder of the DB, Ferdinand Vetter, was a girl’s Gymnasium teacher in his late 20s
heavily involved in the Deutscher Bund abstinenter Studenten (German League of Abstinent
Students, DBaSt). The DbaSt, more than any other outside influence, was able to inject its
doctrines into the otherwise forcefully independent Wandervogel with their cultivated
Programmlosigkeit. Among the reasons for their success were similarities in their perspective on
the necessity of youth autonomy and the formulation of a new lifestyle, the increasing
involvement in student groups by Wandervogel now in college and the ties they established with
reform-minded teachers in schools who welcomed their discussions of the dangers of alcohol.
The establishment of the DB thus marks the beginning of increasing ties between school age
youth and reform groups which, although they would never officially collaborate, nevertheless
exerted a large degree of influence over the directions the Wandervogel would take.24 Following
its inception, the DB recruited new Führer (often from the DBaSt or teachers at local schools),
opened up the group to girls, adopted a decentralized leadership structure ceding much more
authority to individual groups and rapidly grew into the second largest Wandervogel organization

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
24

!The!increasing!role!of!reform!groups!and!teachers!in!the!ranks!of!the!Wandervogel&was!not!always!welcomed!
and!was!pointed!to!by!the!Jungwandervogel&as!one!of!the!major!issues!in!their!decision!to!split!from!the!AWV.!The!
other!issue,!the!scandal!revolving!around!Wilhelm!Jansen!and!alleged!homosexuality!and!paedophilia,!garnered!
much!more!attention.!

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!

after the AWV. By the end of the year, 16 groups had joined the DB and several influential elder
personalities had joined their ranks, including Prof. Dr. Ludwig Gurlitt.
Hans Breuer, having joined the Steglitz group around 1899 and remaining heavily
involved with the Wandervogel since, joined the DB shortly after its founding in 1907 and, along
with close friend Hans Lißner (responsible for DB publications), would go on to lead the
organization and become one of the most influential members of the Wandervogel movement
until his death at Flanders in 1918. Breuer’s collection of Volkslieder, the Zupfgeigenhansl, first
published in 1909, was his most visible legacy—however his leadership saw the DB grow
dramatically and reinvigorate the entire Wandervogel movement with its renewed focus on youth
independence and self-improvement, an expanded autonomy for individual groups in the DB
and, of course, a renewed focus on authentic folk music.
Many of these decisions were the result of discussions at the “alte Pachantey,” a cooperative house in Heidelberg in which many older and prominent Wandervogel youth lived
together while at university (including, at the time, Breuer and Lißner). Their work towards
making the Wandervogel (and not just the DB) more open and inclusive and emphasizing
elements such as authentic folk music and a more introspective romanticism is a prominent but
characteristic example of the continuing involvement many youth had in maintaining the
movement after leaving for college and beyond. The Füchse, Scholaren or Eingetragene of one
age often would go on to become the Führer and, later, adult advisory members of others. In this
way the Wandervogel would build off of each subsequent cohort’s experiences. While this had
the effect of maintaining a continuing discourse and tradition and kept youth from becoming too
rebellious, which would certainly have had catastrophic consequences for the Wandervogel as a
whole given the social realities in which they existed (and the confusion that existed even then
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among the general population about the differences between the various organizations), it also
constrained individual expression and the diversity of perspectives that could exist harmoniously
within the organization as leaders across several organizations began working towards a
reunified Einigungsbund. This would itself have, perhaps inevitably, serious consequences for
the Wandervogel and the Jugendbewegung in general, especially in months before WWI.
In 1910, Hans Breuer (now Dr. med.) was elected the Bundesleiter of the DB and Hans
Lißner the Zeitungsleiter. In April of that year, the DB began attempts to create an umbrella
organization of Wandervogel organizations with the cooperation of the majority of the AWV. At
a meeting over Pentecost, the Sachsenburgtagung, attended by some 500 Wandervogel youth and
100 Führer from the AWV, DB and Steglitzer EV, the decision to create this organization was
agreed upon and in early January 1911, the Verband Deutscher Wandervögel (VDW) was
founded. Initially a confederation between the AWV and the DB, over the next two years most
other organizations joined the VDW as well. This umbrella organization was to be the first stage
in a more complete reunification of the various Wandervogel organizations into a single
Einigungsbund—a move that was completed in early January of 1913 when the DB, the
Steglitzer EV approximately two-thirds of the AWV and other smaller regional groups formally
dissolved and merged into the WVEV.

More Forks in the Road
Not all organizations saw reunification as a worthwhile project. While the 1907 split of
the DB was conducted relatively amicably, the 1910 split of the Jung-Wandervogel (JWV) was
anything but. Following Fischer’s departure in 1906, the much older Wilhelm (Willie) Jansen
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took over the title of Großbachant of the AWV, although shortly after his appointment, the
position of Großbachant was eliminated. He was then promoted to lead the Eltern- und
Freundesrat of a renovated dual chamber leadership structure comprised of the adult supervisory
council and a five-person leadership board of the Führerschaft, the young adult leaders of the
AWV.
The wealthy Rittergutsbesitzer Willie Jansen had encountered a Horde of Wandervogel
on and rapidly became involved in their activities. He quickly won over the affection of many of
the youth and became extremely popular within the organization. Already thirty-nine years old
upon entering into the organization in 1905, questions were raised about his intentions becoming
so directly involved in hiking and camping with Wandervogel youth, especially given
increasingly credible rumors of his alleged homosexuality and his public encouragement of
nudist culture. Jansen was a member of the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre[s] Kommitee, the gay
rights organization founded in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld dedicated to the repeal of Paragraph
175 of the Strafgesetzbuch outlawing homosexuality (grouped together in the eyes of reformers
reprehensibly with bestiality). In 1903 Jansen helped to found the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen,
another gay rights organization, to battle the oppressive official stance on homosexuality in
Germany. While he would terminate his involvement with both groups by 1908, it was already
too late to avoid controversy. The rest of Jansen’s story is, unfortunately, all too predictable
given the social realities in early 20th century Germany. On 30 March, 1908, Jansen stepped
down from the Eltern und Freundesrat after a picture surfaced of him nude in the woods with
two boys. The timing could not have been worse, coinciding with the much more well-known
Eulenburg Affair, the scandal revolving around alleged homosexuality in the highest ranks of the
Prussian military and aristocracy, the fallout of which precipitated nationwide homosexual witch
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hunts, including within the Wandervogel.25 The fear of homosexuality within the organization
following Jansen’s resignation in an already defensive AWV led to an internal witch hunt that
treated boys deemed to be too friendly with suspicion—a phenomenon which would spread to
other Wandervogel organizations as well, seriously threatening the close-knit groups as their
relationships suddenly became the subject of scrutiny. For his part, Jansen had proven to be a
charismatic and efficient leader (numbers more than doubled in his two years heading the AWV)
and he remained involved with the AWV in various capacities until sometime shortly before his
official 1910 expulsion from the organization, the result of comments he made supporting samesex relationships in the Wandervogel. Without any accusations from youth and without any
evidence that Jansen had acted inappropriately in his relationships with them, Jansen’s expulsion
by the AWV leadership was viewed by many adults and youth alike within the Wandervogel as
the apex of an overzealous persecution of homosexuality caused by a nationwide moral panic
that had no place in an organization purportedly committed to remaining free of outside
influence.26

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
25

!Including!Kaiser!Wilhelm!II!himself.!The!Eulenburg!scandal!was!essentially!an!exploitation!of!several!Prussian!
officers’!and!aristocrats’!sex!lives,!which!had!been!covered!up!for!years!before!the!affair!officially!broke!when!the!
information!became!politically!exploitable!by!those!opposed!to!Wilhelm’s!expansionist!foreign!policy.!The!public!
distaste!for!homosexuality!and!love!of!a!good!scandal!was!a!given,!and!the!trials!that!resulted!from!the!outings!
gripped!the!German!nation!and!remained!prevalent!in!public!consciousness!until!the!beginning!of!the!war.!While!
touched!upon!only!briefly!here,!the!Eulenburg!affair!was!of!great!importance!at!the!time,!as!it!opened!up!a!(mostly!
reactionary)!public!discourse!about!homosexuality!that!undid!years!of!work!by!gay!rights!reformers.!In!the!years!to!
come,!the!fallout!from!the!affair!would!help!to!fuel!(largely!false)!accusations!of!the!Wandervogel!fostering!a!
homoerotic!culture.!Indeed,!there!is!no!evidence!to!suggest!that!homosexuals!were!represented!in!any!greater!
proportion!in!the!WV!than!in!Germany!as!a!whole.!See!Richard!Mills’!“The!German!Youth!Movement!
(Wandervogel)”!in!Gay&Roots:&Twenty&Tears&of&Gay&Sunshine:&An&Anthology&of&Gay&History,&Sex,&Politics&and&Culture!
for!a!further!discussion!of!homosexuality!in!the!Wandervogel.!
26
!While!Jansen!was!never!proven!guilty!of!carrying!on!inappropriate!physical!relationships!with!youth,!he!did!form!
what!many!both!in!the!period!and!today!would!consider!far!too!friendly!romantic!relationships!with!several!boys.!
There!is!a!great!deal!of!confusion!in!the!literature!about!Jansen,!driven!largely!by!the!perspectives!of!those!writing!
on!him.!He!has!been!viewed!as!the!misunderstood!and!mistreated!gayRrights!champion!and!proficient!WV!leader!
that!many!want!him!to!be!and!as!a!predatory!pedophile!that!saw!in!the!WV!the!perfect!cover!for!his!activities.!The!
facts!point!more!towards!the!former!than!the!latter;!however,!given!the!partisan!nature!of!the!entire!affair,!an!
unbiased!account!is!nonexistent.!!!!!

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Jansen’s expulsion and the debate surrounding it was one of the primary factors in the
1910 split within the AWV that resulted in two separate leadership bodies. The first, after a
majority vote, saw the leadership relocated to Leipzig with the goal of reuniting with the DB and
other organizations. As a result, a new leadership was elected in Berlin comprised largely of
those supportive of Jansen and others that opposed this union. By the end of the year, both AWV
organizations agreed to reunite; however those groups and individuals loyal to Jansen or
dissatisfied with the actions of the AWV remained unconvinced. With Jansen’s funding, these
groups left the AWV and founded the Jung-Wandervogel. Like Fischer, Jansen was supposed to
withdraw from the Wandervogel following his official departure. Like Fischer, he did not:
Nach einer Bemerkung Frieses27 hatte sich Jansen bei seinem Ausschieden aus
dem AWV verpflichtet, sich niemals mehr um den Wandervogel zu kümmern.
Seine Anhänger aber gründeten am 15. Dezember 1910 in Hamburg den
Jungwandervogel in bewußtem Gegensatz zum Altwandervogel…Jansens starker
Einfluß blieb bestehen. Mit aller Kraft arbeitete er gegen eine Einigung der
Bünde, die sie wieder mit dem verhaßten AWV zusammengeführt hätte. Für sie
blieb Jansen der beliebte, weltgewandte, großzügige und persönlich
liebenswürdige Rittergutsbesitzer und untadelhafte Freund (Kneip 83).
The JWV were established to be an elite organization—they were highly selective and their
leadership largely suspicious of outside influence, the clear result of their past experiences.
Correspondingly, of all the organizations, the JWV were also most outwardly dedicated to
maintaining the autonomy of their youth given the danger they saw in such influence gaining
control of their organization, as they felt it had the AWV and DB. The JWV saw the influx of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
27

!He!refers!here!to!Hermann!Friese,!another!influential!WV!leader!and!close!friend!of!Karl!Fischer.!

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teachers into leadership positions in other organizations as evidence of a derailment of the
project of youth autonomy. To this end, no Führer over 25 years old was admitted and JWV
youth were given much more latitude in their activities (there was no prohibition on alcohol or
tobacco on hikes, although they were still expected to uphold the good name of the JWV given
these privileges). Homosexual relationships between youth, while rare, were tolerated under the
guiding principle that “der Junge sollte nicht Sklave eines Prinzips sein, sondern die Freiheit des
Entschlußes haben” (Kneip 84). While their perspective on youth freedom found resonance with
many other German youth, their elitism and close-knit structure made expansion difficult. The
groups were limited to forty youth or less. Still, by 1914, the JWV numbered nearly 1800
Scholaren and Führer in (intentionally small) groups across the Reich.
The JWV was not the only organization to be highly selective in its membership.28 While
many Wandervogel groups of the pre-war era generally espoused a cultural nationalism and
largely eschewed what many saw as the mindless militaristic nationalism that was a hallmark of
Prussian society, many others were much more engaged with the militaristic and völkisch
rhetoric of the time. In 1910 the Vaterländischer Jugendverband e.V. was founded in Berlin
comprised of youth and Führer that were particularly drawn to era’s “Stärkung des nationalen
Gedankens” (Kindt 1968 372). In 1912, Georg Baensch and Willy Cichon officially founded the
Wandervogel, Vaterländischer Bund für Jugendwandern (VB) within the Vaterländischer
Jugendverband. Both of these groups remained relatively small, as the early 1913 excerpt from
the VB’s periodical, the Wandervogel-Warte, shown below illustrates. Still, their numbers were
clearly growing with 668 total participants on 78 mostly 1-day hikes with an average attendance
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
28

!Most!groups!were!selective!with!their!membership!to!an!extent,!but!the!JWV,!with!their!selfRperception!as!the!
elite!WV!organization!were!much!more!so.!Still,!a!prospective!WV!youth!in!any!group!would!often!go!on!a!hike!or!
two,!and!if!he!or!she!fit!in!with!the!community!was!accepted!into!their!ranks.!

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!

of 8.6 per hike in 1912 (not individual participants—Edgar Hille for example would have been
counted 28 times in this total).

Figure 3: Youth hiking numbers for 1911 and 1912 in the Wandervogel, Vaterländischer Bund
für Jugendwandern, image source: Wandervogel-Warte, January 1913

In addition to espousing a more militaristic outlook, the VB also only accepted members
of German ethnicity and vocally promoted a völkisch ideology of racial purity.29 It is important
to note that while some other Wandervogel organizations had significant Jewish youth
participation and while many groups and individuals supported their involvement, völkisch
rhetoric was not confined to the VB—they were simply (at the time) the most vocal advocates of
it. While still a minority voice within the Wandervogel, those espousing an agenda of racial
purity nevertheless made their presence increasingly known. This, along with the alleged
homosexuality within the movement (the result of the Jansen affair and Hans Blüher’s
justification of Jansen’s actions through his interpretation of the Führer-youth relationship as a
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
29

!The!VB!tellingly!changed!its!name!in!1918!to!the!Wandervogel,&Völkischer&Bund.&

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homoerotic mentoring project in the third volume of his history), were to cause serious blowback
as the Wandervogel expanded and entered more fully into public consciousness.

Fourth Phase: The End of the Beginning
The VDW, which was officially founded on 8 January 1911 following the path set forth
at the May 1910 Sachsenburg meeting, made, despite an overwhelming mandate from both sides
to reunite, few strides towards a reconciliation between the DB and AWV in 1911 and 1912 due
to their inability to solve four key differences of opinion between these two largest Wandervogel
organizations. The DB insisted on alcohol (and later nicotine) prohibitions during all activities,
the inclusion of girls into the organization, opening their ranks up to younger students and a
decentralized leadership structure that gave more strength to the individual and regional groups.
The AWV still opposed all of these measures.30
The necessity of reaching a compromise was made even more salient as local and
regional AWV and DB groups were merging together into the new umbrella group, the WVEV,
independently of decisions made by their governing bodies. When the Eufrat of the AWV again
(narrowly) rejected an alcohol prohibition, a deluge of groups left the AWV and merged into the
WVEV. This clear rejection by AWV youth of the increasingly domineering influence of the
elder Eufrat council left the AWV with only a third of its former membership—approximately
1500 youth—a loss from which it never recovered.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
30

!The!AWV!were!not!proRalcohol!and!nicotine,!but!they!felt!that!a!prohibition!was!not!the!answer!to!the!problem!
of!alcohol!and!tobacco!consumption.!

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The founding of the WVEV in June 1912 was the culmination of over two years of
intense work and compromise. Ultimately, the question of alcohol and nicotine in the movement
was left to individual groups to decide (although for all intents and purposes this resulted in
prohibition), as were questions of youth under-14 participation. Girls were allowed into the
movement; however, mixed hiking was only allowed with the permission of the leaders of the
Gau to which the groups belonged (and many Gaue forbade it outright). The DB’s mandate for a
decentralized leadership structure, as evidenced by the great deal of latitude given to regional
and local groups, won out and formed the structural backbone of the new WVEV. While these
moves officially granted greater autonomy to the groups themselves, a shift in demographics
resulted in a very different constellation of power within the individual Wandervogel groups
themselves. Young teachers had often taken up positions in the Führerschaft in most
Wandervogel organizations before the Einigungsbund, but by the beginning of 1914, teachers
comprised well more than half of all Führerschaft positions in the movement. Their increasing
numbers were one of the main reasons groups like the JWV instituted an age restriction—the
presence of a teacher, no matter how sympathetic to the Wandervogel ideal, threatened the inner
autonomy of the group: “Mancher Junge wurde dadurch vom Beitritt abgeschreckt, weil ein
Lehrer die Leitung hatte. Andererseits strebten jetzt auch Jungen und Mädchen nur deshalb zum
Wandervogel, weil dort ihr Lieblingslehrer das Zepter führte oder weil sie sich schulische
Vorteile erhofften” (Kneip 108). The influx of students joining because of the presence of a
teacher (and the hopes of ingratiating themselves to them) rather than because of a desire for
liberation from scholastic authority was one symptom of Wandervogel growth. While the
movement’s numbers remained relatively low throughout the early 1900s, following the
establishment of the WVEV numbers skyrocketed. The public presence of the Wandervogel

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increased dramatically, and with this greater attention came increased pressure to conform to
social expectations.
The increasing presence of teachers involved directly in Wandervogel activities cannot be
read solely as a negative, as it also underscores the success of the educational reform movement,
which from the inception of the Wandervogel had played an important, albeit largely hands-off
role in their development. These teachers who led the new Wandervogel groups were not the
teachers of the past—they were largely dedicated to a broader conception of education in the
spirit of Langbehn, which also stood at the heart of the Wandervogel movement. The transition
from predominantly youth-led hiking to predominantly teacher-led hiking therefore can be seen a
continuation of the success of both the Wandervogel and educational reform movements in
reaching a wider demographic (although still confined nearly exclusively to the
Bildungsbürgertum) and of their continued symbiotic relationship to one another. Still, their
increasingly widespread and hands-on involvement was one salient marker of a dramatic sea
change in the Wandervogel that cemented the organization’s ties to educational reform at the
expense of their autonomy.
In light of the Jansen Affair and the third volume of Blüher’s history: Wandervogel als
erotisches Phänomen along with accusations of antisemitism, two major discussions took center
stage within the WVEV: the question of Jewish membership and the specter of homoeroticism as
a supposed guiding principle of the movement. As the movement further entered into public
consciousness and as its membership became more representative of bourgeois society generally,
the importance of addressing their official stance increased. The question of Jewish membership,
which had by-and-large remained a non-issue, was forced after a 1912 incident in which a 13year-old Jewish girl was denied entrance into the Wandervogel group in Zittau. The incident
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became the catalyst for a public scandal, although it is unclear whether her denial was the result
of her Jewish ancestry or because, as the group’s official denial of admittance suggested, she did
not get along well with the other members—a diplomatic wording concealing her rejection
“wegen allzu deutlichen Interesses an kleineren Jungen” (Kindt 1968 730).31 On 7 June, 1913,
more than a year after the event, the Berliner Tageblatt ran an article titled “Jugendpflege und
Antisemitismus” about the event painting the Wandervogel as an antisemitic Jugendpflege
organization. The situation was intensified by an independent but influential periodical, the
Wandervogel-Führerzeitung (officially unaffiliated with the Wandervogel but run by several of
its more radical völkisch leaders including Friedrich Wilhelm Fulda), that proclaimed the
Wandervogel were a nationalistic organization that had no place for non-Aryan elements. While
leadership in the WVEV quickly condemned these articles and distanced themselves from the
publication (even creating a separate periodical to discuss the issue), individual Wandervögel
joined the discussion for and against Jewish exclusion and the scandal escalated until an official
stance on the “Judenfrage” became essential. True to the WVEV’s position of fostering a
decentralized structure but publically regarded as an evasion of the question, the decision to
allow Jewish entrance was left to the local groups.
In response to these developments, an impassioned article written by a Jewish
Wandervogel who signed his name “Ratner,” and titled “Und wir Juden” in the January/February
1914 Wandervogels Rundflug: Gaublatt der Wandervogel in Südwestdeutschland appeared
criticizing the Führerzeitung and Jülsch’s article on the incompatability of Jews with the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
31

!This!event!illustrates!the!continuing!doubleRstandard!regarding!female!sexuality!and!continuing!bourgeois!
discomfort!with!the!idea!of!youth!sexuality!in!general.!It!must!be!concluded!that,!while!the!girl!in!question!was!not!
denied!entrance!solely!because!of!her!Jewish!heritage,!especially!as!she!went!on!multiple!hikes!with!the!group!
prior!to!the!decision!to!deny!her!admission,!the!WV!were!not!as!tolerant!or!free!from!societal!influence!as!they!
believed,!nor!as!autonomous!as!they!have!often!been!portrayed!in!WV!literature.!!!!

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Wandervogel. In an eminently level-headed response urging Wandervögel to be careful not to let
pure emotions on either side of the issue cloud their judgment, Ratner tendered his resignation.
“Wenn ich gegen den Ausschluß der Juden schreibe, so geschieht das wirklich nicht nur wegen
mir, denn ich bleibe sowieso nicht drin, auch wenn jetzt ein fauler Friede gemacht würde. Ich
gehe ab, weil ich mir eine andere Erinnerung an den W.V. mitnehmen will” (403). He closes his
plea for tolerance with the hauntingly poetic line “Jetzt gehen unsere Wege wohl auseinander.
Deshalb zum letzten Mal—Heil!” (403).32 Many groups continued to allow Jewish entrance, but
many others immediately implemented a ban. Jewish Wandervögel like Ratner, feeling no longer
welcome or indeed expelled, left the organization for the 1912 founded Jüdischer Wanderbund
Blau-Weiß, a Zionist youth group pattered on the Wandervogel which had issued a statement
urging Jewish youth to avoid the Wandervogel and join them. Ultimately, this decision by the
WVEV showed how inextricably tied to the events of their time the Wandervogel were, despite
the veneer of autonomy vis-à-vis political and social discourses and their mission to develop a
new type of German citizen.33
By 1913, many of those who had moved through the Wandervogel ranks had gone on to
university studies. The abstinence organizations, which along with their stance on alcohol and
nicotine also often advocated vegetarianism, pacifism, school reform, chastity and socialism held
a particular draw for former Wandervogel youth. Since the establishment of the DB, the activities
of school-age and university students had begun to overlap, and many began to work towards a
union of both age groups into an official umbrella organization of all like-minded youth. The

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
32

!“Heil!”!being!the!favorite!salutation!and!valediction!for!any!meeting!of!Wandervögel.!
!As!early!as!1902,!the!WV!were!approached!by!rightRwing!panRGermanic!organizations.!Many!leaders,!including!
Karl!Fischer,!were!intrigued!by!their!goals,!however!their!attempts!to!bring!the!WV!into!their!fold!were!resisted!by!
the!WV,!which!remained!true!to!its!mission!of!neutrality!and!detachment!from!the!adult!sphere.!(see!Stachura!29)!
33

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fruits of their labor would be the Freideutsche Jugend, officially established during the Erster
Freideutsche Jugendtag in 1913.
The Wandervogel are rightly seen as the precursors of the growing youth movement in
Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. But they would never officially join the collective
Freideutsche Jugend that organized following the Erster Freideutscher Jugendtag on 11 and 12
October 1913. Shortly before the event, the WVEV revoked its official attendance with the
justification that the presence of many reform organizations (both liberal and conservative)
threatened their avowed autonomy and desire to remain free of outside influence. This exclusion
of course held only for the youth themselves—Führer and older youth who had passed through
the Wandervogel ranks attended in large numbers. The JWV attended, but only after expressing
their continued dissatisfaction with the heavy influence of teachers and other reformers in the
youth movement’s ranks. This discontent ultimately led to their refusal to join the Freideutsche
Jugend as well.
The Erster Freideutscher Jugendtag was planned as a response to the centennial
celebrations of the Völkerschlacht, the Battle of Leipzig, which handed Napoleon his first defeat
and led to his exile on Elba. A momentous event in German history, the battle’s 100-year
anniversary was to be commemorated throughout the German Empire with lavish celebrations,
military parades and new memorials dedicated to the victory. In rebuttal to the militaristic
overtones of the planned celebrations and of the “saber-rattling” nationalistic fervor leading up to
the centennial, youth organizations planned to meet on the Meißner, a mountain southeast of
Kassel in central Germany to demonstrate their unity and dedication to the establishment of a
new youth culture.

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The weather was miserable during the day prior to the festivities, leading to low morale
among attendees who arrived on top of the mountain wet, cold and unsure of what the coming
day would hold. But the weather cleared and the atmosphere changed accordingly. Friedrich
Oldenburg cites a letter he received from Alfred Topfer, one of the last living participants of the
Jugendtag, who described the event: “Gefordert wurde ein schlichter, natürlicher Lebensstil in
Brüderlichkeit und Verpflichtung gegenüber der Allgemeinheit, eine kulturelle Erneuerung
sowie Achtung und Friede gegenüber den übrigen Völkern. Er herrschte eine ungewöhnliche,
jugendbewegte Hochstimmung” (Ille and Köhler 139). The congregated youth spent the day
singing, dancing, talking, debating and listening to the speeches of several invited dignitaries, the
highlight of which was the renowned educational reformer and director of the Freie
Schulgemeinde Wickersdorf and a leading advocate for the importance of youth culture Gustav
Wyneken’s call to action in which he called for careful reflection and deliberation in youth’s
loyalties and their responsibilities in fighting for a better future.
Prüft, ob der Krieg schon heilig ist, den ihr führt. Ob euer Krieg zugleich ein
Krieg ist für den Geist, ob er zugleich die ganze Menschheit weiterführt aus dem
Dunklen ins Helle. Gerade der Jugend steht es an, über die Grenzen des
Staatsinteresses und des völkischen Selbsterhaltungstriebes hinaus zu denken, der
Jugend, die noch nicht in der heißen Arbeit des Tages steht. Ihr Vorrecht der
Freiheit verpflichtet sie zur Freiheit. Ihr steht es an, immer und immer wieder
nach dem Höchsten zu trachten, nach dem Unbedingten, nach dem, was der Erde
letzter Sinn ist, was sein soll, unabhängig von den vorübergehenden
Interessen der Völker und ihrer Parteien (Kindt 504).

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Wyneken closed with a reworking of the tripartite motto of the French Revolution Liberté,
égalité, fraternité calling instead for “Freiheit, Deutschheit, Jugendlichkeit.” In Wyneken’s
speech is his recognition and wariness of the increasingly völkisch overtones he saw in the
Jugendbewegung, but above all it was an unmistakable endorsement of support and a hopeful
attempt to steer these youth away from those nationalistic and racist elements which threatened
to undermine the openness of the youth project.
The Hohe Meißner is remembered as the highpoint of the German Youth Movement. But
even during the event, a polarization of the youth movement was palpable. The more liberal
element called for tolerance and inclusiveness; the conservative element for racial purity. There
was to be no solution to this split. Still, one momentous proclamation came out of the weekend:
the articulation of the Meißner-Formel, the declaration of youth autonomy formulated by
Wyneken and the nearly 60-year-old poet Ferdinand Avenarius (who found the right words) and
ratified by the fourteen participating youth organizations which took part in the event. The short
declaration, which was amended at the insistence of the abstinence-oriented youth groups to
include the all-important alcohol and nicotine prohibition and left purposely vague due to the
many differences between the assembled youth (and in the spirit of the Programmlosigkeit that
had been a staple of the Wandervogel since its inception), stated:
Die Freideutsche Jugend will nach eigener Bestimmung, vor eigener
Verantwortung, in innerer Wahrhaftigkeit ihr Leben gestalten. Für diese innere
Freiheit tritt sie unter allen Umständen geschlossen ein. Zur gegenseitigen
Verständigung werden Freideutsche Jugendtage abgehalten. Alle gemeinsamen
Veranstaltungen der Freideutschen Jugend sind alkohol- und nikotinfrei.

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As revolutionary as the explicit formulation of the Meißner-Formel was (and in 1913 Germany it
was seen as quite radical), the declaration simply put into an official announcement the project
that these youth and their allies had been pursuing for years. The foundation of what the
Freideutsche Jugend was had already been established in action in the late 1890s with their first
aimless wanderings of the not-yet-Wandervogel around Brandenburg. The activities of the
Wandervogel had not changed much in the fifteen years since the first hikes, and despite not
knowing where they were headed, over time the repercussions of what they were doing became
evident—both to themselves and to wider German society.
The Meißner-Formel was the declaration of a maturing youth movement directed to
German society at large—the manifesto of a movement that had matured and developed the
confidence to express its demand to be heard and recognized. But Wyneken and his supporters,
even in their nebulous proclamation that youth demanded to take control of their own destiny,
had overplayed their hand. In his capacity as editor of Der Anfang, a journal loosely associated
with the Freideustche Jugend that began publication in May 1913 (after an initial four volumes
in 1911), Wyneken had allowed youth great latitude in their cultural criticism. The Anfang circle
was highly contentious from the beginning, articulating their grievances in fiery articles that took
issue with school and family life and the general tenor of societal controls restricting youth in
Wilhelmine Germany and in Austria (Berlin and Vienna comprised the two centers of the circle,
which would also set up Sprechsäle in these cities as well as in several other cities and university
towns).
Ultimately the Wandervogel, while not officially members of the Freideutsche Jugend,
were (correctly) grouped into the broader Jugendbewegung in the minds of those who began to
take notice. In an effort to distance themselves from more outspoken critiques such as those of
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the Anfang, a distancing which was influenced heavily by their desire to reconcile their name and
prove their good intention, the Wandervogel adopted an overall much less radical and more
culturally conservative demeanor in the months leading up to, during and following the war
(when the Wandervogel would largely fracture into the various Bünde). In the end, they
distanced themselves from Wyneken, and a more conservative element and tenor came to
dominate the organization.34
Even within the Freideutsche Jugend, there was significant backpedaling following the
proclamations on the Hohe Meißner. Critiques about the extent of youth dissatisfaction with
German society became commonplace, and the Freideutsche Jugend attempted to pacify these
exclamations. In the May 1914 Der Führer: Mitteilungen für Wandervogel, a JWV periodical,
Carl Ludwig Johann Wilhelm blasts the FDJ for their mollifying attempts at appeasement. After
an anonymous teacher in Bavaria published a brochure “Jugendkultur”, Dokumente zur
Beurteilung der “modernsten” Form “freier” Jugenderziehung, FDJ representatives were sent to
Munich in a “Protestversammlung.” Wilhelm summarizes the FDJ approach: “Ziemlich lahm
wurden die Angriffe zurückgewiesen. ‘Tu uns nichts, wir sind ja so brav’…das wars, was
allenthalben durchklang. Immer und immer wieder betonten die Vertreter, das weder die F.J.
noch die einzelnen Bünde eine Empörung der Jugend gegen Schule, Elternhaus und ‘Religion’
sei” (17). Looking back at the Meißner Formel, Wilhelm is struck by the phrase “innere
Wahrhaftigkeit.” He summarizes: “Neues wollen ist Empörung gegen das Alte. Warum war die
F.J. in München zu—politisch, das auszusprechen? Innere Wahrhaftigkeit? Die F.J. hat bei
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
34

!Following!the!war,!Wyneken!would!again!become!heavily!involved!with!many!of!the!more!liberal!Bündische&
Jugend&organizations.!In!a!certain!sense,!the!release!from!the!longstanding!attempts!to!reconcile!the!various!
strands!of!the!Jugendbewegung&was!liberating.!But!in!the!context!of!Weimar!Germany,!this!differentiation!quickly!
took!on!a!political!dimension!which!paralleled!the!major!combatants!in!the!political!arena,!most!problematically!
those!on!the!far!right!and!left.!!!

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!

diesem ersten ernstlichen Zusammenstoß mit den heute leitenden Mächten ihr begeistert
aufgestelltes Programm schnöde verleugnet” (17). In the coming months, the last before the
outbreak of war, this appeasement would become commonplace. While groups like the FDJ
would remain dedicated to the cause of youth autonomy, the vast majority of Wandervogel
groups, like the FDJ, attempted to calm their outspoken critics.
Following the declaration of war in July of 1914, Wandervögel of age were among the
first to enlist. They, like most Germans, were caught up in the nationalism of their day. And
although theirs was often a much more nuanced nationalism than that of their elders and peers, it
nevertheless led to the same place. Many volunteered for front-line positions and were killed in
droves. The reality of modern warfare was far from what their romantic notions of chivalry and
honor had led them to believe. They also came into close contact with the working classes of
Germans for the first time, who often revolted them with their coarse manners and crude and
violent nature.35 For all the talk of the dignity of the common man, their relationship to the
working classes had remained superficial and highly romanticized. Wandervogel soldiers were
often stolen from, given degrading jobs and were the butt of jokes and scorn by the
predominantly working-class fighting men. The letters they sent back home are filled with
disillusionment with the brutality of war and the nature of German society.
What then is the legacy of the early Wandervogel? The gradually developing agenda to
unite German youth and rewrite society had failed, partially due to their own inability to defend
it. The world they had created for themselves had been unmasked as a dream and the Germany
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
35

!For!discussions!of!Wandervögel&in!the!war,!see!Gerhand!Ille’s!“Jugendbewegung!und!Erster!Weltkrieg”!in!Der&
Wandervogel:&Es&begann&in&Steglitz!and!Laqueur’s!Young&Germany.!For!a!discussion!of!Wandervogel&conceptions!of!
nationalism!and!a!more!inRdepth!analysis!of!Wandervögel&wartime!experiences,!see!Anna!Mageras’!Nesting&the&
Nation:&&Youthful&Conceptions&of&Nature,&Culture,&and&Modernity&in&Wilhelmine&Germany.!

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!

that had existed before the war vanished in an instant. Looking back at the political, social, and
economic developments of the 1920s and 1930s, the youth movement’s ultimate goal of a united
German youth bound with “deepest sincerity” to the creation of a better society was bound to fail
from the beginning. Any earnest, emotional and outright critique of society, such as that of Der
Anfang, was guaranteed to be met with acrimony and contempt and ultimately contributed to the
socially conservative reaction against (and subsequently within) the broad Jugendbewegung,
including the Wandervogel. But that the youth movement existed at all, that it found resonance
with tens of thousands of middle-class boys and girls across the nation was testament to an
emerging urgency of youth to confront the alienating and boring effects of modernity in an
environment largely hostile to change. The systems that had constrained them were questioned
and their boundaries tested for the first time. In claiming and living out their autonomy,
Wandervogel youth created highly participatory spaces for youth to develop on their own terms.
And in their embracing of adventure and hope for the future as well as in the project of
Selbsterziehung and its focus on Wandern, they were for able to construct a way of living which
counteracted the disengaging present and futures they saw for themselves in modernizing
Germany which would stay with those who understood the message for the rest of their lives.

Reception of the Wandervogel
Since WWII, the Wandervogel have been the subject of a tremendous amount of
scholarship which, like the Wandervögel themselves, has sometimes stirred a great deal of
debate. With well over a century of inquiry into the WV, there is a tremendous variety of
scholarship that has shifted emphasis over time, especially in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

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Among other topics, inspections of the Wandervogel in discussions of youth culture, relation to
reform movements, abstinence from drugs and alcohol, education, nationalism, fashion,
environmentalism, sexuality, gender, racism and moral panic. Wandervogel fashion and the
development of a unique style, studies into the Wandervogel as a neo-romantic revival and
(relatedly) inspecting the Wandervogel as a back-to-nature turn away from modern lifestyles
form other tangents of scholarship.36 Still others have written on the prolific Wandervogel
compilation of German folk music and dance. The various Wandervogel groups have been
inspected individually and discussed in their relation to each other and across time. Beyond these
trajectories, the proper emphasis of analysis of the Wandervogel has been frequently and
heatedly debated—especially regarding the question of interpreting their activities in light of
National Socialism.
The role of Wandervogel fashion proves important in situating the project across from
punks. Wandervogel stylistic and aesthetic practices, while often different in expression and
form, served many of the same functions those of punk would in the 1970s. Discussions of
Wandervogel style stretch back to its earliest years as a distinct fashion began to emerge. It was a
mixture of practical clothing (still a controversial topic at the time for middle-class youth, when
looking presentable still trumped concerns for comfort) suitable for hiking along with stylistic
elements (which often referenced this practicality) that identified its wearer as belonging to the
group. Ulrich Linse gives a quick summary of Wandervögel Kluft in his article “Lebensformen
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
36

th

!In!matters!of!fashion,!the!WV!have!even!been!discussed!in!the!medical!community!as!part!of!the!19 !century!
turn!towards!rational!clothing!(the!turn!away!from!the!corset!most!perhaps!the!most!prominent!example).!Nike!
Breyer!discussed!the!rise!of!“A!new!‘lay!practice’!and!‘doRitRyourself’Rshoemaking”!in!Wilhelmian!Germany,!led!by!
the!WV,!which!“replaced!former!academic!programs!for!new!natural!footwear”!in!the!abstract!for!his!article!“No!
naturally!shaped!human!foot!would!end!in!wedgedRin,!pointed!toes"!(Knud!Ahlborn)!–!Wandervogel,!youth!
movement!and!movement!for!rational!footwear”!in!Medizin,&Gesellschaft,&und&Geschichte:&Jahrbuch&des&Instituts&
fur&Geschichte&der&Medizin!(2011).!!

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der bürgerlichen und der proletarischen Jugend” in the 1978 Jahrbuch des Archivs der
Deutschen Jugendbewegung. He notes that this ensemble consisted of a mixture of:
Stiefel, Schneeschuhe, Seppelhut, Gemaschen, Lodenpelerine, Lodenjoppe,
Kletter- und Wanderhose und natürlich auch das Damenwanderkostüm…Diese
Kluft wurde ergänzt durch Wanderstock, Dolch, Brotbeutel, Feldflasche,
Rucksack, Horden- und Abkochtopf, Aluminium-Schnellkocher, Zelt samt
Zubehör, Schlafdecke, ferner durch Rodel, Ski, Photoapparat und Fernglas (qtd.
in Grob 30).37
In her 1985 study, Das Kleidungsverhalten jugendlicher Protestgruppen in Deutschland
im 20. Jahrhunder, Marion Grob points out that the expense of many of these items also marks
the Wandervogel as a middle-class phenomenon, and indeed it was. But ostentatious displays of
wealth were discouraged, and several Wandervogel periodicals encouraged donating clothing
that had been outgrown or which had been upgraded to younger members of the group or lessadvantaged youth.38 In 1971, René König read Wandervogel fashion as an expression of
difference. In his Macht und Reiz der Mode. Verständnisvolle Betrachtungen eines Soziologen,
König posits that choices such as long hair (as opposed to the short Prussian hairstyles in fashion
at the time) served as an anti-fashion which implicitly critiqued Wilhelmine society.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
37

!Marion!Grob!notes!that!Linse’s!description!is!not!time!specific,!but!that!his!inclusion!of!the!
Damenwanderkostüm&(as!dismissive!of!the!stylistic!choices!of!female!Wandervögel&as!this!broad!term!is)!dates!the!
focus!of!his!analysis!to!sometime!after!1907!when!the!first!female!Wandervogel&groups!emerged.!!!
38
!As!will!be!discussed!in!Chapter!Four,!throughout!the!early!1910s!many!Wandervogel&youth!began!to!become!
more!concerned!with!their!appearance!and!attempted!to!maintain!immaculate!and!intricate!garb,!which!resulted!
in!frequent!debates!about!the!proper!appearance!of!the!youth!and!raised!the!question!of!whether!their!focus!on!
appearance!was!perhaps!too!similar!to!that!of!bourgeois!society!and!their!conspicuous!displays!of!wealth!and!
privilege.!!!

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Grob greatly expands on König and provides one of the most complete treatments of
Wandervogel fashion to date. Her approach reads the Wandervogel as a protest movement in the
same vein as the 68er student protests, and her monograph sets up a comparison between these
groups. She sees commonalities in how what she calls Protestkleidung were used by both groups,
and that this style showed: “daß sie aus ihrem Protest gegen eine als erstarrt und für nicht mehr
als zukunftsweisend empfundene Gesellschaft heraus auch bewußt ein äußerliches Zeichen für
diese Abgrenzung setzten” (310). She also suggests that this style served a practical purpose as
well that ties back to their specific engagements with society. Further, their articulation of style
drew others with similar interests into conversation with these groups, and thus helped to draw
new members. Finally, she sees in their rearrangement of found and repurposed items and
outmoded styles expressions of bricolage: “Unter Nutzung bereits vorhandener Moden und
Materialien entwerfen sie ihren Vorstellungen gemäß aktiv ihre eigene Kleidung (‘bricolage’),
die in dieser Art zunächst einmalig und spezifisch für die Gruppe ist” (310). These outdated
fashion elements, when combined with the various badges, pins and other symbology adopted by
individual Wandervögel, juxtaposed with recent innovations in camping, hiking and
photographic technologies, ultimately served to express Wandervogel values.39 This fusion of the
romantic with rationalist modernity in Wandervogel style corresponds to a similar trajectory in
their construction of an identity not based on an anti-modern rejection of society but rather on
creating a new personhood able to navigate modernity without becoming caught in the cycle of
disengagement and boredom so many experience.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
39
!The!Wandervogel&used!symbols!heavily,!from!the!oak!leaf!to!Germanic!runes.!The!most!famous!
symbol,!however,!was!the!ubiquitous!silhouette!of!a!flying!bird,!known!unsurprisingly!as!the!
“Wandervogel.”!This!bird!in!flight!represented!the!greatest!ideals!of!these!youth:!fostering!a!visceral!
engagement!with!the!world!and!the!freedom!to!wander!and!search!unimpededly!both!through!nature!
and!life.!
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Plurality or Autocracy? Wandervogel Youth and Academic Reception
As we will see in Chapter Three, punk scholarship has acknowledged the plurality of
voices and opinions about what punk is—as a subculture which emerged piecemeal, it could be
freely interpreted by any who came in contact with it, especially in Western nations such as the
United States, Britain and West Germany, where youth had not only the motivation to seek
alternative ways of living, but also the free-time and social climate to experiment. This has not
precluded readings of punk as avant-garde, political, working-class, etc.—readings which have at
times read these elements too broadly onto punk in an effort to view it as a cohesive whole.
Wandervogel scholarship, with its much longer history, has suffered from even more leveling
and ideologically fueled inspection, but has also begun to address the Wandervogel as the
multifaceted subculture it was. This has allowed discourse to move past previous examinations
which rather flatly defined the entire Wandervogel phenomenon as an anti-modern, neoRomantic, escapist and often völkisch manifestation of bourgeois misgivings about German
culture and society in rapidly modernizing Wilhelmine Germany or alternatively privileging a
reading of the Wandervogel as a forerunner and flag bearer for the post-war Federal Republic.
The difficulty of reconciling the various ideological approaches to study of the
Wandervogel and other youth movements has been long established. In 1936, American Zionist
rabbi and educator Samuel Blumenfield wrote in “Can Youth Movements Save Us?” that:
Among the various expressions of social unrest in the last half century, the youth
movement has been one of the most favored but least studied of subjects. The
numerous volumes and articles that appeared on this question were written either
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by leaders and participants of youth movements, or by sympathizers and
opponents… The whole subject of youth movements has become a symbol to
swear by or swear at. One looks in vain for an objective treatment which would
describe and interpret the forces and the processes which enter into the making of
this form of collective behavior (255).
This crisp and still relevant description of the fundamental problem of interpreting and confining
youth movements to align with ideological agendas rarely espoused by these youth themselves
and rarely inscribed into them at the time remains a critically undervalued and ignored aspect of
research into not just the Wandervogel, but punks and many other youth cultures as well. The
plurality, diversity and complexity of the various youth drawn to nebulously defined,
intentionally open and endlessly interpretable youth subcultures is simply too multifaceted to
force reductive readings through particular ideological prisms. That renderings of the
Wandervogel can convincingly discuss the youth movement as a precursor to National
Socialism, Zionism, the Green Movement and the 68er student movement should be evidence
enough that such approaches are far too limited in scope to adequately describe these phenomena
in their entirety. While each of these approaches illuminates particular aspects of the
Wandervogel, they read far too much into them and apply far too rigid an interpretation to a
movement which, at its core, attempted to retain its autonomy and avoid entanglements in the
dominant social issues of their day. While one can (and should) discuss these affinities, careful
attention must be paid not to overgeneralize or ignore other readings.
In his 1982 study, Die Wandervögel, Otto Neuloh suggests that scholarship must return to
“die Grundwerte des Wandervogels…und ihre Wirkungen im Alltag, im Tun und Lassen, in den
Dankweisen und Lebensvorstellungen der damaligen Jugend” in order to provide something that
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can extend beyond the limitations of prior research, namely the “Dokumentation ohne System,”
“wirklichkeitsferne Behandlung” and the “viele widersprüchliche Interpretationen der
Entstehung und Entwicklung des Wandervogels” (13). Neuloh created a valuable series of
models which attempt to describe the Wandervogel program through their principles and
activities. He parses these around three core values: Freiheit, Freizeit and Gemeinschaft. Aligned
with the value of freedom, he sees “Selbsterziehung, eigene Sozialisation, Andersartigkeit” and
sees this play out in their pursuit of their own “Lebensform und Lebensstil” (20). Also ordered to
the core value of freedom are self-responsibility, autonomy and inner freedom, self-sufficiency
and independence. He sees these values as being expressed through their cultural productions,
namely in folk music, dance, performance and literature. In Gemeinschaft, Neuloh sees a means
to ground their ideal of freedom more firmly as a communal enterprise centered around the
recognition of individual strengths and the importance of relationships in nurturing this collective
individuality. Here he sees the creation of a community-wide consciousness fostered at the group
(Horde) level focused on equality (between age groups and between boys and girls) and
solidarity through social learning and a sense of the authentic self.
His model for leisure time is a bit less intuitive, but he attempted to break down their
activities into broad categories of “eigene Raumplanung und Gestaltung,” “Natur, natürliches
Leben,” “eigene Fahrtenplanung und –ausführung,” and “Abstinenz” (23). While Neuloh hits
upon the major ideals of the Wandervogel, his models seem somewhat arbitrary and forced and
too general to apply to all youth and groups. Still, his work, along with Zilius, provides a robust
sociological portrait of the Wandervogel combined with interviews from former members of preWWI Wandervogel groups and remains an excellent source of information and first-hand
accounts of the early years of the organization. His suggestion that scholarship should inspect the
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Wandervogel through their values and activities instead of through the application of
retrospective ideologies is especially important for this dissertation, and, while I find his models
to be an unnecessary attempt to order and structure the various activities of the Wandervogel into
some sort of rational whole, his focus on freedom and community as well as his recognition of
the importance of free time is laudable and remains vitally important.
But Neuloh’s attempt to redirect study to the youth themselves is bound up in the
contentious discourse surrounding the Wandervogel and (what is often regarded as) their neoromantic privileging of the visceral and the emotional as well as their construction of an
idealized agrarian German past (and its role in fostering a new German identity) on the one side
and a rationalist condemnation of this romantic worldview and suggestion that this orientation
served as a proto-fascist, irrational precursor to National Socialism on the other. Neuloh, who
was part of the post-war attempt to distance the Jugendbewegung from the discourse surrounding
the rise of Nazism, sought to chart a change of course by shifting the emphasis of inspection to a
focus upon the founding principles and modes of thought of the early 20th century
Jugendbewegung.
While this orientation has emerged as the more influential today, this has not always been
the case. One of the major themes of research following the end of the war in 1945 was the
search for antecedents to Nazi Germany. This belief in a so-called Sonderweg of German history,
which during the Nazi era was proposed in a positive sense by German historians to denote the
special evolution of the German state which led to the rise of National Socialism, was
reformulated following the end of the war into a search for answers to how Germany could have
committed such atrocities. The Wandervogel have been caught squarely in this debate, and the
perception that a line can be drawn between the Wandervogel and the Hitlerjugend and the rise
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of Nazism has led to an extremely contentious debate that continues to this day. The floodgates
opened with Walter Laqueur’s 1962 Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement
and Harry Pross’ 1964 Jugend, Eros, Politik. Both works contended that the youth of the
Jugendbewegung were emblematic of a catastrophic failure of bourgeois society to inculcate
youth against the irrational rhetoric of political extremism and, in the neo-romantic privileging of
the emotional, created generations of youth and adults easily susceptible to emotional appeals,
extreme political ideologies and charismatic pied pipers.
Christian Niemeyer’s 2013 book Die dunklen Seiten der Jugendbewegung: Vom
Wandervogel zur Hitlerjugend has dredged up the specter of National Socialism once again—
revisiting Pross and Laqueur, but also striking out on its own course. His work is not directed
solely against the Youth Movement itself, but also against the preeminent scholars of the post1945 era who worked to counter the attempts to trace their culpability into the Sonderweg
hypothesis, especially Werner Kindt and those who collaborated with him in his foundational
three-volume collection, published between 1963 and 1974, Dokumentation der
Jugendbewegung. The Kindt volumes remain the most detailed collection of primary documents,
dates and foundational writings on the Youth Movement available outside of an archive,
beginning with the emergence in 1896 of the group around Herman Hoffmann-Volkersamb in
Steglitz and the subsequent development of the Wandervogel. Kindt claimed to present a neutral
and unbiased collection of documents, but as Niemeyer rather convincingly shows in his
“detektivisch angelegte Arbeit,” the Kindt volumes appear to have systematically omitted
materials in order to deter future debate about the culpability and failings of the Youth
Movement, especially in the third and final volume, published in 1974, Die deutsche
Jugendbewegung 1920-1933. Largely absent are documents which might cast the Youth
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Movement in a contentious or negative light, particularly in the inter-war years.40 Also absent are
discussions of important figures who later joined the NSDAP. Niemeyer further suggests that
historians and publishers have since favored scholarship which promotes a benevolent and
progressive view while (potentially intentionally) neglecting to offer a corrective to Kindt’s
omissions.
Niemeyer’s work is provocative—he begins and ends the work with Nietzsche’s decree
“Verschwiegene Wahrheiten werden giftig”—and in exposing what he sees as an intentional and
systematic attempt to repress contentious narratives from scholarship, he has torn open a neverhealed wound. The omissions in the Kindt anthology were meant to protect the Jugendbewegung
from what Kindt and those around him saw as a witch hunt, but in their attempts to prevent a
reading too focused upon “die dunklen Seiten,” they ultimately fell prey to the same
ideologically-driven shortcomings they were attempting to allay. Niemeyer’s exposé is long
overdue, and any engagement with the Kindt collection will unquestionably need to be prefaced
with an acknowledgement of its incompleteness. But Niemeyer also greatly underplays the
continued impact of Pross and Laqueur’s readings on Wandervogel research and in lay
Wandervogel. The increasingly partisan and political Bünde of the Weimar period are well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
40

!The!Kindt!collection!includes!several!hints!that!a!völkisch&element!existed!within!the!Jugendbewegung!even!in!
the!Wilhelmine!period!–!for!example!Gustav!Wyneken’s!speech!from!the!Hohe!Meißner,!in!which!he!expresses!
being!unsettled!by!certain!nationalistic!elements.!The!collection!also!does!not!omit!descriptions!of!the!existence!of!
groups!with!a!völkisch&orientation,!such!as!the!Wandervogel&Vaterländischer&Bund&für&Jugendwandern&
(Wandervogel&V.B.),!which!in!1912!emerged!within!the!Vaterländischen&Jugendverband!E.V.,!a!confederation!of!
youth!groups!founded!in!1910.!Still,!the!section!on!the!Wandervogel&V.B.,!written!by!Kindt!himself,&does!not!state!
that!they!were!openly!völkisch,!which!a!reading!of!their!official!periodical,!the!Wandervogel&Warte!makes!clear.!
With!its!list!of!regulations,!including!specifically!a!prohibition!against!Jewish!entrance!(well!before!the!question!
was!addressed!by!the!larger!organizations,!to!which!the!Wandervogel&V.B.&did!not!belong),!there!is!little!doubt!as!
to!the!ideological!orientation!of!the!V.B.!Kindt!instead!writes!on!the!V.B.!that!these!youth!felt!particularly!
committed!to!the!“Stärkung!des!nationalen!Gedankens”!and!hoped!“diese!Absicht!im!Rahmen!eines!großen!
vaterländischen!Verbandes!besser!erreichen!zu!können”!(KIndt!1968!372R3).!In!light!of!Niemeyer’s!revelations,!
such!an!omission!must!now!be!seen!as!problematic,!if!not!deceptive,!especially!given!the!intent!of!the!volumes!to!
provide!a!balanced!collection!of!documents!in!order!to!foster!future!research.!!

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documented, and the potential abuses of the emotional engagement with the world bound up in
the romantic tradition and the critique of modern, rational, industrialized society are longestablished.41 For many even remotely acquainted with the Wandervogel, the connection to
National Socialism remains one of the most often repeated narratives.
The post-war German reaction against everything that could be seen as inspirational to
the Nazis thoroughly tainted the Wandervogel, and this conception has remained in the fore- or
background of popular perception and literature on the Wandervogel since. Kurt Sontheimer’s
“Das Gift der Blauen Blume,” a review of Pross’ Jugend, Eros, Politik in the 23 September,
1964 issue of der Spiegel illustrates this guarded orientation:
Die Jugendbewegung ist, bei allen positiven Leistungen im einzelnen, eines der
markantesten Symptome der Krankheit des deutschen bürgerlichen Bewußtseins
im 20. Jahrhundert; sie ist ein beredter Ausdruck der mangelnden Angepaßtheit
sozialer Formen an die Bedingungen der demokratisierten Industriegesellschaft.
In ihr sind wie in einem Brennspiegel vor allem jene geistigen Tendenzen eines
idealistisch verbrämten Irrationalismus zusammengefaßt, deren vulgäre
Ausbeutung Hitlers Massenerfolg zweifellos gefördert hat (Sontheimer).
This has remained one of the most prevalent conceptions of the Jugendbewegung since, and it
has colored their history brown back to 1896. Their critique of modern society and (supposed)
embracing of an idealized past in an anti-modern critique takes on a sinister element of
foreshadowed apocalypse and it becomes far too easy to see these youth as scapegoats. Scholars
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
41

!The!moral!panic!of!1913R1914!surrounding!the!Wandervogel&shows,!for!example,!that!emotional!appeals!have!
long!led!to!mass!condemnation!and!coalescence!around!a!perceived!threat.!To!force!onto!Wandervogel&youth!an!
obligation!to!transcend!emotion!represents!a!fundamental!misrepresentation!and!misunderstanding!of!their!
intent.!!!

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have attempted to recuperate the image of the Jugendbewegung since the ultimate failure of
many of those involved with the Jugendbewegung to resist National Socialism remains ever
present. In approaching the question of why the youth of pre-1933 Germany failed to resist the
rise of the Nazis, the debate should not center upon the potential dangers of an idealistic
romantic engagement with the world. Instead, we should seek to uncover why these youth were
discontented with life in modernity in the first place. Again, this is where this project seeks to
intervene. In the attempt to place blame on the “irrational” response to modernity that has
characterized youth cultures from the Wandervogel to punk and beyond, the alienating effects of
modern existence, of which the rationalist search for antecedents and influences to National
Socialism can be seen as a manifestation, exonerate themselves of blame.
The debate surrounding the Führerprinzip in the Wandervogel is another example of this
attempt to link the Jugendbewegung to National Socialism and has led to a tenuous connection
being made between the important role of older youth leading the younger in Wandervogel
groups and the blind obedience to authority cultivated under National Socialism. In Die
ideologischen und politischen Leitvorstellungen der Bündischen Jugend, Dirk Brandes gives a
description of the Führer-Gefolgschafts-Prinzip of the youth Bünde, the successors to the
Wandervogel in the Weimar Republic: “Jede Ortsgruppe eines Bundes besaß einen Führer, der
nicht auf formaldemokratisch regementierter Basis, sondern ebenfalls nach den Kriterien
Sympathie und Charisma gewählt wurde und nach den Prinzipien der Freiheit und des
Vertrauens jederzeit neu ernannt werden konnte” (10). This role was essentially unchanged from
the Wandervogel, with the exception that the Bünde were often much more ideologically
engaged with social issues and did not share the communal bond of the Wandervogel. The
Wandervogel ideal was not to inculcate blind obedience to a specific dogma or leader, but rather
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to provide a guide for younger youth in the methods of thoughtful reflection and modes of
engagement (with nature, with the self, with each other, with German society, with the past, with
the future). The debates surrounding the expulsion of one of the most influential members of the
Wandervogel, Karl Fischer, one of the group’s most engaged zealots but whose authoritarian
leadership style clashed with the Wandervogel desire for autonomy and reciprocal learning,
provides an example of the navigation of the desired role of a Wandervogel Führer in action.
This ideal of leadership formed the foundation of the open and adaptable Wandervogel mission
to become, as Laqueur writes, “integrated human beings…critical of a society that was not
conducive to the development of such men and women” (5). Inspections of this attempt to
become “integrated human beings” have been one of the predominant subjects of Wandervogel
scholarship since the early 20th century, when it was largely confined to pedagogical journals.
Today, discussion continues in this path, and has benefitted greatly from the recognition that the
Wandervogel were much more diverse and multifaceted than the romantic, nationalistic,
conservative escapists as which they have often been remembered.
In the body of English-language scholarship, the Jugendbewegung-National Socialism
connection has until recently remained especially prevalent, owing greatly to the aforementioned
work of Walter Laqueur. Laqueur provided the first history of the Wandervogel in English and,
he notes, only the second retrospective history anywhere, with the first being a study by Heinrich
Ahrens in 1939, Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung von den Anfängen bis zum Weltkrieg,
which read the Wandervogel through a National Socialist interpretation. Laqueur’s work remains
heavily cited today, and his analysis of the Wandervogel is often nuanced and perceptive. But
despite distancing himself from Ahrens, Laqueur’s study still maintained a similar linear
progression from the Wandervogel to the Nazis, although he carefully prefaced the work by
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noting the complexity of the situation. Among the most problematic passages regarding the
Wandervogel in my reading of Laqueur is the following:
If lack of interest in politics could provide an alibi from history the Wandervogel
would leave the court without a stain on its character. However, it has been
realized for a considerable time that lack of interest in public affairs is no civic
virtue, and that an inability to think in political categories does not prevent people
from getting involved in political disaster…and it was in this respect that the
Wandervogel and even the Freideutsche completely failed. (48)
The suggestion that, by not entering into the contentious political debates of the day,
Wandervogel youth became ill-equipped to oppose or even resist National Socialism decades
later is far too damning a statement for an organization that, at its pre-WWI height in 1914,
counted (at most) 25,000 youth members and—especially when compared with the millions of
youth involved in the ideologically-engaged Jugendpflege organizations which ranged from
communist to Catholic to overtly völkisch and anti-Semitic in outlook and agenda. While
Laqueur’s work begins to rehabilitate the image of the Wandervogel by foregrounding their
attempts to create an autonomous sphere for youth to articulate their own vision for the future, he
judges the Wandervogel for being something it never meant to be and, like Pross, applies an
unfair retrospective demand upon the youth movement of what he believes it should have been
as a group of influential middle-class Germans upholding a rationalist vision of progress.42

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
42

!Laqueur,!writing!in!the!early!1960s,!is!himself!an!interesting!figure.!A!Jew!whose!parents!perished!in!the!
Holocaust,!his!work!on!the!Jugendbewegung&is!grounded!in!his!own!experience:!“Since!in!this!connection!the!
author’s!approach!and!attitude!could!be!relevant,!a!few!personal!remarks!may!be!in!order.!My!own!origin!is!
GermanRJewish!and!I!have!recollections!of!the!youth!movement!dating!back!to!early!boyhood.!I!was!twelve!when!
the!Bünde&were!dissolved!in!1933.!I!came!to!know!at!an!early!age!and!from!the!side!lines!something!of!the!style!of!
life!developed!by!the!movement!and!some!of!its!leaders!and!members”!(xvi).!His!respect!for!the!Jugendbewegung&

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Wandervogel romanticism, idealism and nationalism have long been read as a neoconservative reaction to and rejection of modernity. Peter Stachura, who in 1981 provided a
history of the Jugendbewegung closely aligned with Laqueur’s and suffering from many of the
same limitations, writes that:
[T]he Wandervogel was a genuine social movement of profound idealism. It
wanted to create a realm of youthful endeavor based on new forms of a better,
more civilised, more humane society. It aimed to counter the sense of frustration,
alienation, and loneliness which mass industrial society induced, and to reestablish the personal identity of individual man who had become a cog in a huge,
bewildering machine age (17).
There is little to take issue with in Stachura’s analysis here, which begins to recuperate the
Wandervogel discourse in English-language research by more directly foregrounding this basic
(if nebulous) goal of Wandervogel youth to formulate a “more humane society.” This
interpretation of the Wandervogel engagement with modernity forms one of the foundations of
my project as well, but Stachura continues:
The Wandervogel is more recognisable as part of that amorphous but significant
movement usually referred to as the Conservative Revolution. A neo-romantic
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
shines!through!his!study,!and!he!places!himself!as!carefully!attempting!to!work!through!the!muddle!of!
perspectives!which!existed!in!the!postRwar!era:!“To!its!apologists,!the!youth!movement!had!no!responsibility!
whatsoever!for!the!rise!of!the!Third!Reich…;!whereas,!according!to!some!critics!the!German!youth!movement!from!
the!first,!knowingly!or!unknowingly,!paved!the!way!for!National!Socialism.!The!writer!believes!that,!although!the!
truth!is!not!necessarily!at!the!halfRway!point!between!these!extreme!positions,!it!happens!to!be!vastly!more!
complicated”!(xvii).!The!problems!which!have!arisen!from!an!overRreliance!on!Laqueur’s!work!are!ultimately!the!
result!of!its!reception!at!the!time!as!much!as!his!approach.!While!he!was!careful!not!to!condemn!the!youth!
movement,!his!work!and!its!reception!were!both!influenced!by!the!debates!raging!at!the!time,!with!the!popularity!
of!the!Sonderweg&hypothesis!leading!to!a!definite!slant!in!the!work’s!reception.!!The!seeming!lack!of!an!agenda,!
especially!for!a!man!who!had!lost!his!parents!in!the!Holocaust,!combined!with!the!lack!of!other!available!histories!
meant!that!his!work,!especially!in!EnglishRlanguage!scholarship,!remained!(and!continues!to!remain)!influential.!
The!result!of!this!has!been!the!perpetuation!of!his!unintentionally!biased!reading.!

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phenomenon directed against the ideas of the eighteenth century Enlightenment
and the French Revolution, the Conservative Revolution generally attracted
middle-class people who were dissatisfied with industrial society and virtually
everything associated with it, and who wanted to reconstruct society on
traditionalist foundations…the Wandervogel sought solace and inspiration in the
past, or, more specifically, in an idealised medieval Germany in which, it
believed, the Volk was untainted by modern impurities…Unwilling or unable in
its early stages to face its own time or the future, the Wandervogel consciously
encouraged the cult of the past” (17-18).
While there is no question that the Wandervogel “sought solace and inspiration from the past”
and constructed a largely fictive and idealized conception of German historical identity, the
contention that the Wandervogel lived in this past and were “unwilling or unable” to engage with
the present or future drastically oversimplifies the picture. It overlooks the extent to which the
Wandervogel readily adopted and experimented with many modern technologies and the
methods of self-education and self-cultivation (Selbsterziehung) through which they sought to
engage with German society on their own terms. It also sets up a false dichotomy of rational
progress in modernity versus irrational, romantic appeals to baser instincts and visceral rejections
of modernity. Far from being, as the most common perception of the Wandervogel long held,
escapists and daydreamers living in a fantasy world (or worse, as reactionary zealots standing in
the way of the future), Wandervogel youth were foremost engaged in formulating ways of life
which reconciled humanity and the individual with a highly rational and rationalizing
modernity—not in escaping or dismantling technological society in a bid to return to the past.

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John Williams has done a great deal to advance the Wandervogel image in Englishlanguage scholarship with his Turning to Nature in Germany, an analysis of naturist movements
in Germany in the 20th century. In reading the dramatic increase in urban Germans seeking
experiences in nature, which he reads as a development of popular culture in modernity and not
necessarily an environmentalist social movement, Williams shows how conceptualizations of
and engagements with nature both proliferated across all levels of German society, especially in
the Weimar era, and details how conceptualizations of nature became politicized across the entire
political spectrum of German society. This engagement Williams labels naturism. He writes:
“Although these movements differed in many ways, they were all galvanized by a new ideology
that I call naturism. This is not to be confused with ecological thought. Although proponents of
naturism were deeply concerned with the consequences of industrialization and urbanization,
their main concern was not with pollution, natural diversity, or sustainability but with social and
cultural crisis…Organized naturists attempted to reorient the German people toward nature, and
they hoped thereby the find solutions to the problems of modern society” (2). Further, Williams
importantly notes that, while this turn to nature was especially prominent in Germany as a result
of the magnitude of the perceived cultural crisis and strength of the romantic tradition, it was by
no means specific to the German condition and that, since the effects of modernization first
began to be felt, a “deep-seated ambivalence toward industrialization and urbanization has been a
powerful undercurrent in Western intellectual life” (3).
Williams quickly confronts the Sonderweg hypothesis in his work, rebuffing the notion
that naturist groups, as he quotes George Mosse, attempted to “escape from reality into a dream
world where time stood still, a world that pointed back to the past rather than forward to the

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future” (4).43 He rejects this, suggesting that the argument rests on a narrow reading of texts
written by ideological elites not representative of German society as a whole, a dismissal of more
moderate elements in German society, and a disproportionate focus on the far ideological right.
Critically, he also calls out the bias in what he calls the “naturism to Nazism” argument and the
contention embedded within it (which he sees as symptomatic of a long-standing confrontation
between Enlightenment and romantic values) that “any critique of industrial capitalism and the
burgeoning industrial metropolis was irrational” (5). In the attempt to read a rational, linear
progression from agrarian societies to modern Western society, Williams sees a bias which
clouds this analysis of the past and has often led to a blanket rejection of romanticism. Williams
takes issue with the rationalist viewpoint that has become dominant in the post-war era, and
offers a succinct rebuttal that aligns with the foundation of this dissertation’s inspection of youth
subcultural engagements with boredom in modernity:
Originating early in the cold war, this normative model of social and political
development offers an ideal narrative of progress from traditional agrarian society
to modern industrial society. The avant-garde of progress in this theory is the
capitalist middle-class working within the liberal-democratic state. Rationalism,
in the form of science, industrial technology, and the domination of nature, is a
key motor of modernization. These historians’ commitment to a specific capitalist
model of progress creates a scholarly bias against any historical attempt to
construct a different, less exploitative relationship between humanity and the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
43

!Interestingly,!Mosse!uses!many!elements!of!the!language!of!boredom,!discussed!in!Chapter!One,!to!describe!the!
Wandervogel&project!itself.!Suggesting!that!the!Wandervogel&existed!in!a!fantasy!world!where!“time!stood!still”!
and!that!looked!backwards!and!not!into!the!future!is,!in!my!reading,!exactly!the!opposite!of!what!these!youth!were!
attempting!to!accomplish,!which!was!to!create!the!conditions!to!explore!and!engage!with!the!world!–!not!close!it!
off!and!escape!from!it.!

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natural environment. It also leads them to underestimate how Nazism was, in its
own way, committed to an ideology of progress that combined pseudoscientific
rationalism, industrial technology, and the domination of nature. (6)
Rationalist assertions that equate any critique of modernity with a rejection of modernity create a
closed system with its own internal logic that turns the exploration of alternative forms of
engagement with the world into foreign and unwelcome intrusions. Again, I see the navigation of
boredom as the site where this conflict between romantic and modern/Enlightenment values is
contested at the individual level. Some will embrace one or the other, but others will seek to
synthesize elements of both. It is this synthesis which I argue has formed the major contribution
from both the Wandervögel and punks in articulating an engagement with the world that offers a
life less boring.

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CHAPTER THREE: THERE’S NO ACTION1
Halli, hallo, wir fahren, wir fahren in die Welt!
- Aus Grauer Städte Mauern (Wandervogel hiking song)
In Chapter Two we saw how the Wandervogel slowly spread and how it shifted over time
from its implicit rejection of Wilhelmine society in these youth’s claiming of semi-autonomous
spaces for themselves to a much more structured, codified and contested group of organizations
by the outbreak of WWI. We also saw the lengths to which these youth went in order to maintain
and maximize this tenuous freedom. Wandervögel walked a fine line and sought out spaces
where they could be amongst themselves (whether on Fahrt or in the Nest), away from the
prying eyes of a judgmental society which simultaneously held the keys to their freedom. In
contrast, punk spread into public consciousness seemingly overnight and, in Britain as well as in
West Germany, punks often intentionally sought to provoke ire while making their activities as
visible as possible to broader society. Such a confrontational stance would have been unthinkable
in Wilhelmine Germany, where, when youth did explicitly voice their dissatisfaction, as the
Anfang circle did in 1913 or as the Meißner-Formel articulated, the condemnation could be swift
and silencing.
Punk arose in West Germany in a time where youth enjoyed a great deal more individual
freedom, but conditions in which the silencing effects of modern society, especially in the realm
of cultural production and participation, had largely redefined this freedom. In West Germany,
with a popular culture that had increasingly become dominated by imported Anglo-American
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

!Cut(out!text!from!Hollow!Skai’s!Magisterarbeit.!Page!70.!

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productions, the disconnect between this popular culture and the everyday concerns and
experiences of West German youth had widened. With the growth of punk in West Germany,
beginning near the end of 1976, punks took as a goal the establishment of a youth culture that
they hoped, as had the Wandervögel at the advent of the century, would result in the
establishment of an atmosphere of cultural production which would be free not only from the
limitations of domestic West German society but could also contend with the increasing
influence of a globalizing mass culture. In this, punk shared with the Wandervogel a similar
articulation of an alternative cultural sphere that sought to ground itself in everyday encounters
and experiences relevant to the lives of German youth in the face of entrenched cultural
paradigms which discouraged this exploration.2
Defining punk in West Germany is a difficult proposition given the range of forms it
took. Detlef Diederichsen who, along with his older brother Diedrich, wrote about punk and the
Neue deutsche Welle for Sounds magazine in the late 1970s, attempts to define the events of the
late 1970s and early 1980s in the compendium to the 2002 punk and new wave exhibition Zurück
zum Beton: Die Anfänge von Punk und New Wave in Deutschland 1977-’82 at the Kunsthalle
Düsseldorf.3
“Es hat keinen Namen. ‘Punk in Deutschland’? Da denke ich an Buttocks,
Straßenjungs oder Big Balls. Das war aber eine andere Welt. ‘Neue deutsche
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2

!The!focus!on!the!German!language!and!an!accompanying!musical!style!and!rhythms!was!an!important!element!of!
West!German!punk.!While!many!of!the!earliest!punk!groups!such!as!The,Buttocks!sang!in!English,!groups!like!Male,!
which!formed!in!1976!and!is!considered!one!of!the!first!German!punk!groups,!began!experimenting!with!the!
German!language!in!their!music.!This!exploration!of!a!German!sound!would!come!to!dominate!the!West!German!
punk!scenes.!The!major!exception!is!Hamburg,!where!the!scene!oriented!itself!more!towards!British!punk!sounds!
and!styles!and!formed!the!most!vocal!opposition!to!the!subsequent!directions!punk!elsewhere!in!Germany!would!
take.!!
3
!Along!with!Jürgen!Teipel’s!Verschwende,deine,Jugend,!which!appeared!in!2001,!the!2002!exhibition!at!the!
Kunsthalle,marks!the!beginning!of!a!resurgence!of!popular!interest!in!representations!of!German!punk!and!of!
inspecting!its!repercussions!in!German!society!that!has!been!ongoing!since,!as!evidenced!by!a!remarkable!increase!
in!scholarship!in!the!last!decade.!!

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Welle’? So hieß es mal, ganz kurz, Anfang ’79. Heute denkt man dabei aber eher
an Nena, Markus und UKW—eine völlig andere Welt. Vor einigen Jahren gab es
einen Sampler mit dem Titel ‘UntergruNDW’. Man konnte sich immerhin
denken, was gemeint war. Aber ein schöner Name war das auch nicht. Bleiben
wir lieber bei ES.” (Diederichsen 111)
This “ES” is an acknowledgement of the proliferation of an undercurrent in punk which, while
transmitted through it, transcended the subculture. This is especially evident in the blurred
boundaries between punk and NDW.
The problem Diederichsen had in giving a name retrospectively to the explosion of a
youth-driven participatory impulse in West Germany that emerged first with punk, then quickly
transitioned into German New Wave before dispersing into various youth subcultures such as
techno and hip-hop was a combination of two very different processes. The first was a co-opting
of these subcultures by the mainstream that has altered their original meanings in popular
memory. The second difficulty in pinning a name to this undercurrent stems from the fluidity of
the idea itself. Punk, in a way, was dead as soon as it began—but its movement was just
beginning.
Reading punk in West Germany through boredom offers an alternative account to
supplement the dominant frames through which punk scholarship has viewed the phenomenon.
While the avant-garde tradition, the rejuvenating impact of punk on a fetishized and decadent
rock culture (and in West Germany the establishment of a prolific German-language scene and
sound) as well as the politicization and radicalization of many youth are vitally important
elements of the punk legacy, the scholarship in these areas has glossed over boredom, focusing

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instead on other emotions such as shock, lust, disgust, paranoia and self-loathing, which were
often more evident in punk cultural productions and formed the most visible part of their societal
critique. The encounter with boredom is sometimes acknowledged as an instigating factor to
these youth becoming involved with punk, but the exploration of this connection beyond a
simple recognition that many punk youth expressed an intense boredom with their society has
remained largely unexplored.
One of the main points of discussion at the 2012 German Studies Association panel on
punk, in which I presented an earlier version of this project, was the proper approach to
representing punk in scholarship. Among the most promising suggestions was that of Richard
Langston, who suggested a focus on the emotional to be one aspect of punk that offered an
approach that could distance punk studies from readings through overused theoretical
foundations, especially those of the Frankfurt School. To this end he posited hate as a potential
unifying affect through which to read punk. But as Mirko Hall rightly responded, hate was not a
universal sentiment within the movement, as sub-scenes of punk such as German Fun-Punk and
British punk pathetique were simply the most visible end codification of a growing divergence
from the vitriolic posturing of the Sex Pistols that had been ongoing since punk’s earliest days.
Punk rapidly diversified, expanding its (non)meaning and showing its applicability in disparate
cultures and social climates. Further, of the nations to which punk quickly spread, West
Germany, perhaps more than any other, explored punk’s participatory and creative potential in
ways that quickly moved beyond the initial punk explosion of pent-up emotions and explored
through punk a way of living which offered more habitable presents and the potential to build
more compelling futures. Still, the importance of hate, disgust, shock, paranoia, self-loathing and
other emotions in punk should not be ignored in the West German context, as many scenes, most
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prevalently Hamburg, oriented themselves towards the early British punk groups and favored an
aggressive, politically and emotionally charged approach which would lead to a lasting
contestation of what punk in West Germany should be.4 Many others, such as Deutsch
Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF) and the Berlin-based Geniale Dilletanten scene articulated
these emotions in styles of music (largely electronic based or using found industrial remnants)
which moved far beyond the sounds and aesthetics most commonly associated with punk.
Following its emergence in West Germany, punk retained much of its meaning but both
gained and lost a great deal in translation. “Die Inhalte von Punk in dieser ganz frühen Zeit
bleiben diffuse ; letztendlich bedeutete er fast jedem etwas anderes” (Archiv der Jugendkulturen
12). Hate was but one of the emotions at play (to various extents) within the punk scenes. So
while hate is perhaps insufficient as a structural unifier for punk, as part of punk’s focus on
negative affect and emotional response in general, it remains extremely important. Inspecting
punk through the emotional, however, offers a promising new direction that supplements the
paths punk scholarship generally follows. Still, emotions alone cannot (and certainly no single
emotional state could possibly) capture the entirety of a culture as diverse as punk. But in punk’s
reaction to society, I contend that the emotional should be given at least as much room as the
intellectual traditions through which it is often read. In this I am not attempting to estrange the
intellectual from the emotional, but rather to argue for a reading of punk, and by extension youth
in modernity, that approaches productive participatory subcultures as engaging in a struggle for
meaning and the importance of the subjective in modernity in its own right—a struggle
ultimately tied to boredom.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4

!Punk!elsewhere!in!the!FRG!likewise!embraced!negative!affect!as!an!expressive!potential.!However,!other!scenes,!
most!notably!the!other!two!major!centers!of!punk,!Düsseldorf!and!West!Berlin,!rapidly!moved!beyond!these!
emotions!in!favor!of!exploring!how!to!represent!West!German!and!globalizing!existence!through!their!cultural!
productions.!

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Alfred Hilsberg, through his position as a journalist at Sounds magazine and later as
proprietor of his independent record labels ZickZack and What’s so funny about… spoke of the
state of youth culture in the late 70s: “Es gab damals in Deutschland keine Jugendkultur…nichts
mehr, was noch irgendwas mit der Wirklichkeit von Jugendlichen zu tun hatte (Teipel 29).
Without a viable youth culture and with little to speak to the everyday concerns of West German
youth, and in what these youth saw as a profoundly boring environment, it is no surprise many
youth were drawn to punk and its charge to take action. In the West German context, this
boredom was, if anything, even more pronounced.
Viewing punk as a reaction to boredom in a society devoid of a relevant youth culture
through which to articulate themselves can help to explain why punk spread so quickly through
West Germany and why youth were motivated so strongly to create cultural spaces outside of the
commercial cultural production of the recording, film, and news industries. While groups like
Ton Steine Scherben, Can and Kraftwerk had found an audience in Germany, their influence was
not particularly far-reaching and their intent was never the establishment of a participatory
culture in the vein of punk. The vast majority of music was imported from England and the
United States, with international groups such as Abba embracing English as the standard
language of pop and rock music. This had the effect of adding yet another level of distance
between West German youth engagement with dominant cultural products, making them still
less relevant to their everyday experience (if their English was advanced enough to even
understand the lyrics).
As we will see in the next section, one of the key instigating factors of punk in the US
and Britain was a response to what was seen as a decadent and insular rock culture cut off from
everyday experience. The scene around CBGBs in New York saw itself as working to eradicate
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the distance between performer and audience, a dissolution which would become a defining
characteristic of punk as is evolved and spread. In West Germany, this distance was even more
pronounced, and one of the major projects actively fostered by many punks was to erase this
distance through the establishment of structures and scenes which could create a domain for
German youth to articulate themselves freely and without censure.
Seemingly ironically, the majority of West German youth first encountered punk through
the mainstream media, through which punk spread like a virus. For many, it was a wake-up call.
Youth, bored with waiting for the next thing, grasped that with punk they could make it
themselves—or at least try. Following the spread of the punk message, initially through the teen
pop magazine Bravo in 1976 and subsequently through increasing coverage by newspapers,
magazines, radio and television programs, receptive youth began to recognize the potential of
punk to confront a hateful, ugly, materialistic—and fundamentally boring—society.5 Punk
offered an alternative to this world through active participation. Franz Bielmeier expresses his
immediate enthusiasm for punk, writing that “Bei mir zu Hause herrschte ja blanker
Materialismus. Und ich war eben von Natur aus dagegen eingestellt. Deswegen war Punk genau
meine Richtung. Und ich wollte das dann natürlich auch gleich selber machen. (Teipel 32).
The participatory element of punk allowed it to be open to interpretation and helps to
explain the diversity of scenes, particularly in the West German context where different cities
fostered markedly different interpretations of punk. Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Berlin each
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5

!!Confronting!the!materialism!of!post(war!West!Germany!was!a!major!drive!of!punk.!Zines,!record!shops,!
recording!companies!and!concerts!were!(generally)!seen!within!the!scenes!not!as!means!to!make!a!living,!but!as!
part!of!a!communal!effort!to!create!autonomous!structures!upon!which!an!alternative!lifestyle!could!be!pursued.!
The!amateurism!of!punk!was!highly!prized,!and,!as!in!other!manifestations!of!punk,!for!example!in!the!US!and!in!
Great!Britain,!the!goal!of!mainstream!success!was!often!viewed!as!incompatible!with!the!punk!project!and!groups!
who!pursued!these!goals!(such!as!Big,Balls,and!Die,Straßenjungs,of!the!late!1970s!and!Die,Toten,Hosen,of!the!
1980s!onwards)!were!often!viewed!with!suspicion.!

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contained distinct punk scenes with different foci, and smaller scenes in Hannover, Munich,
Frankfurt and elsewhere similarly evolved along their own lines. This openness also allowed
punk to act as a springboard not just to explore punk, but to extend the punk DIY ethic into other
domains and carry its potential to engage and explore beyond the punk sound and aesthetic.
The popular punk slogan “Punk is dead!”—which became a common trope among punks
almost immediately after punk began—was more than just an empty nihilistic phrase. Since punk
continued to evolve, an evolution which continues to this day, the trope could more accurately be
written “Punk is dead. Long live punk.” This can be read in two ways. The first is that punk
ceased to be punk the moment it became co-opted by the mainstream. In this reading, it lost the
original authenticity it initially held and became itself an ordered world of signs and symbols
with concrete interpretations. In this, “Punk is dead, Long live punk” can be seen as both the
transition to a new, artificial and commercialized punk as well as serving as a memorial to the
now lost original punk moment. This interpretation of “Punk is dead!” can be seen in
Diederichsen’s discussion of punk and NDW in Germany being popularly remembered as
commercial acts such as Strassenjungs and Nena.
The second interpretation is that punk represented a new moment that, by its nature, was
meant to be utilized and discarded. One of punk’s many meanings is, after all, “trash.” In this
reading “Punk is dead!” refers to this initial charge and provocation, which made thousands of
bored and angry youth across the globe aware of their capacity to participate directly in the
creation of cultural spaces of their own, having worn out its utility. “Long live punk!” then refers
to how these youth (and those that came after them) carried on this punk ideal in their own way.
The spark carried by punk, which was never meant in this reading to become an institutionalized
and static culture, ignited a fire to explore and engage with the world in directions those involved
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in the initial punk moment may have hoped for but, in the open nature of this exploration, could
never have anticipated.
Both of these interpretations can be held simultaneously, and there is a degree of overlap
in both directions. In the co-option of punk, it can be argued that it becomes another ordered
product, but that youth have continued to find inspiration in the punk message promulgated by
commercial punk acts as well through the network of scenes which are often dismissive of these
groups as inauthentic. The spark remains a part of punk in its ability to inspire direct
engagement—regardless of what direction those who discover this potential subsequently take it.
Punk remains a starter culture, and one of its continuing contributions through its low barriers of
entry combined with its insistence on getting involved has been to awaken in those who
encounter it (predominantly, but not solely, youth) the realization that they have the capacity to
participate in a fundamentally different way. A critical aspect of punk in both of these
interpretations is this participatory impulse embedded in the punk moment, the continuation of
which I see as something that can be called, if not the punk movement, then punk’s movement.
Combined with previous attempts to foster this open engagement with the world, which in this
project we have explored through the Wandervogel, punk’s movement can be seen as part of a
project invested in fostering youth’s movement in navigating through and articulating their place
and futures in modern societies. This sense of movement also captures the alternative to the
stasis of boredom.6
The next section explores how both of these manifestations of punk played out in West
Germany in the late 1970s. I will begin with a brief excursion into punk’s proliferation in the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6

!This!movement!–!movement!in!the!sense!of!ceaseless!exploration!–!is!closely!aligned!with!the!idea!of!Wandern,
held!dear!by!Wandervögel.!Far!more!than!simply!a!search!for!novelty!and!distraction,!youths’!movement!in!this!
sense!becomes!a!search!for!means!to!compellingly!engage!with!and!explore!the!world.!!

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United States, Britain, and its spread to Germany. This discussion will help to illustrate both the
potential of punk to spread through mass communication channels (and its indebtedness to these
same channels) as well as the many interpretations punk had already been subjected to by the
time of its arrival in West Germany. Following this, I will detail the growth of the West German
punk scenes through a discussion of two of the major punk centers of Düsseldorf and Hamburg.
Using these scenes, I will discuss the activities and ambitions of early West German punks and
their attempts to create a German iteration of punk more relevant to their own encounters with
modern life in the Federal Republic. The relationship of these activities and ambitions to DIY
and expression as combative measures against boredom will be explored throughout.

Punk International
Histories of punk nearly always predictably begin, as this history predictably does, with
the story of Malcolm McLaren meeting John Lydon (later dubbed “Johnny Rotten”) in London
in 1975 at SEX—McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s S&M-themed clothing boutique on King’s
Road. This “origin” of punk, the story of the Sex Pistols, is as close to canon as punk is likely to
get. Anyone even passingly familiar with punk music has heard of the band if not their music,
and any punk or punk fan had best know their story.
The legend runs something like this: Once upon a time in England, there was a
disenfranchised man by the name of Malcolm who longed to stir things up. He dabbled in music
and fashion and had a thorough love for and understanding of Dadaism, Surrealism and
Situationism. He cobbled a band together from customers in his shop, all with rudimentary
musical skills. He outfitted them in outrageous clothing from the store and, through a keen
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understanding of marketing and the music industry, released the Sex Pistols upon the world
through the same channels that had traditionally been used to bring the masses the same old
boring mainstream drivel that he hated so much. The Sex Pistols, of course, caused an immediate
stir, just as this art movement aficionado had intended.
In 1979, before the dust kicked up by punk had fully settled, Dick Hebdige became the
first scholar to tie punk to these European art movements in the seminal Subculture: The
Meaning of Style. Since then, the rendering of punk’s origin as an “art-school” movement has
become one of the most compelling and reiterated themes in punk scholarship. In 1989 Greil
Marcus opened his “secret history of the twentieth-century,” Lipstick Traces, with a detailed
history of the Sex Pistols, tying McLaren’s management of the band to this undercurrent of
subversive thought beginning with German Dada, moving through Futurism, Lettrism and
Situationism before arriving in the late-1970s and the punk moment. Reading punk as part of this
long strand of history has had the effect of situating the movement as a part of a larger illustrious
past, but it has perhaps had the unintentional consequence of situating it too comfortably in this
narrative.
The Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren played an essential role in popularizing a punk
style and demeanor that persists to the present day. And without the shock tactics of the Pistols
and the national umbrage and scandal that their infamous two-and-a-half minute, unilaterally
drunken interview with Bill Grundy caused, punk might never have received the spark necessary
to catapult it to an international consciousness. But punk was not born when John Lydon walked
into SEX sporting a Pink Floyd t-shirt with “I hate” written over the band’s logo. Like the word
“punk” itself, which has meant everything from trash, ashes, incense, prostitute, homosexual, and
rowdy, the punk movement was influenced by and developed from many different sources. The
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first bands to be labeled as “punk” by critics were US garage bands of the 1960s and early 1970s,
with the term used largely disparagingly in the sense of “trash” referring to these groups’ general
lack of musical and lyrical substance. One of the first zines about the new movement that would
eventually label itself “punk” was the zine of the same name.7 Punk was first published in
January 1976 in New York and chronicled the burgeoning music scene centering around the
Bowery club CBGBs, opened in 1973 by Hilly Crystal, where bands such as the New York Dolls
(for whom McLaren briefly managed before being dumped and moving on to forming the Sex
Pistols), Television (with front man Richard Hell, whose style—ripped-up clothing held together
by safety pins, drawn-on t-shirts and spiked-up hair—would become heavily influential to the
punk look), Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads and, of course, the Ramones found enthusiastic
audiences and a developing scene.
Unlike the impetus behind the Wandervogel, the triggering charge of punk was, for many,
not a response to social conditions or western culture generally. Initially, it was a response to
rock culture. “Punk was shock-Rock, but its inventors realized that Rock itself had become so
insular that the whole mom & pop culture it had set out to dispel was now insignificant. Rock’s
self-fulfilling prophecy was a fait accompli, in other words. Now it was Rock culture that needed
puncturing” (Harrington 327). Punk rock was in this rendering a reaction to the overdeveloped
and highly structured music being put out by the industry, personified by later Pink Floyd, Led
Zeppelin and perhaps best by the Beatle’s magnum opus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
in 1967. Early punk music attempted to return to the more primitive and “the more subterranean
aspects of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Harrington 327). This return to the basics can be seen as the initial
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7

!As!is!the!case!with!much!of!the!early!history!of!punk,!whether!the!zine!Punk!was!the!direct!link!to!the!movement!
adopting!the!term!remains!shrouded!in!mystery!and!is!still!a!contentious!issue!among!some!punks.!At!the!very!
least,!the!zine!was!instrumental!in!forging!an!association!between!the!music!centering!around!New!York’s!Bowery!
district!and!the!word,!which!would!then!be!picked!up!in!Britain!and!elsewhere.!!

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impetus of punk. It was therefore highly appropriate that the punk movement repossessed and
applied to itself the derogatory moniker used by critics to dismiss garage rock in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. It was the prevalence of highly proficient, studio-perfected groups such as Pink
Floyd and Led Zeppelin that, despite the noise of garage bands, had silenced the nonprofessional
element of the genre by the early 1970s.
The elevation of rock to the domain of the highly trained and proficient was not the only
grievance forwarded by punks. The distance between the band and the public, made manifest by
the physical elevation of the band on stage separated by a no-man’s-land, spectacular special
effects and security guards further turned fans into mere spectators and consumers of a spectacle.
This was primarily the result of a star cult promulgated by marketing campaigns and a media
obsessed with the star as untouchable and set apart from the rest of society—a society that gladly
bought in to the pretense and bought millions of albums and concert tickets each year. This was
not a new phenomenon—Benjamin had warned about the dangers of the star cult in cinema in
the 1930s—but to see rock reenact the same story was more than many could stand. The
relationship between band and fan was, in many respects, a microcosm for the relationship
between the music industry and the public: raised up on stage, untouchable, removed and
egotistical. Rock as a popular culture had disappeared for many—in its insular world, it no
longer represented the public in any meaningful way other than mirroring the importance of
consumer capitalism. Participation in the cultural realm now meant little more than consumption.
The desire to change the soundscape and culture of rock music, at its roots, was the
longing to be heard. At its foundation punk was, and remains to be, dedicated to reclaiming
participation. That this impulse to produce was considered subversive in itself testifies to the
nature of the music industry and of a rapidly globalizing world in the mid-1970s. As Hilly
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Crystal said of Patti Smith, a regular performer and at the club by 1975: she was “determined to
make us kids, us fuck-ups, us ones who could never get a degree in college, whatever, have a
family, or do regular stuff, prove that there’s a place for us” (Szatmary 222). In the beginning,
this proving that “there’s a place for us” was the defining social charge of punk, a charge that
would persist wherever it travelled in the world.
Regardless of exactly where and exactly when punk “began,” by the live airing of the
notorious Bill Grundy interview on December 1st, 1976 a week after “Anarchy in the U.K.” was
released, the lure of punk was already spreading out from the United States and Great Britain,
and had already begun sowing seeds in Germany through imported records and news from
abroad. Still, the Grundy interview marked the moment when the punk leapt, like a virus, from
the underground to international prominence, wreaking havoc and riling up youth in conservative
Britain and beyond. The Grundy interview was punctuated by a few choice “rude words” from
Glen Matlock and Johnny Rotten, Grundy flirting with Siouxsie Sioux (of Siouxsie and the
Banshees notoriety) before being called out as a “dirty old man,” “bastard” and “fucking rotter”
by Steve Jones after being prompted by Grundy to “say something outrageous.” As the interview
closed, the camera caught Bill Grundy mouthing “Oh shit” off mic as the full ramification of
what he’d done dawned on him. The fallout of the interview saw Grundy suspended and punk
concerts banned across the nation in a widespread moral panic that only served to draw more
youth in.
Mainstream news coverage remained superficial and concentrated on the unexplained
danger the movement posed to the nation and its impressionable youth. Sensationalized reports
of punk concerts, clashes with police and out-of-control teenagers dominated headlines, with no
attempt made to understand what, if anything, punks wanted. As became quickly apparent, in the
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established media punk would never receive a fair trial. This reaction by the press and British
society only served to underscore for many youth the importance of establishing an arena in
which they could express themselves freely. The punk cry of “No Future” has often been
interpreted in the negative sense of youth that, because of a lack of opportunity (although this
point was often ignored), felt the need to revolt against all authority without thought for what
was to come. Punks, especially in Britain, where punk was initially a predominantly working
class phenomenon, were certainly prompted by a lack of viable options and punks certainly did
revolt against the status quo. But the notion that punks gave no thought to creating a better future
for themselves and society was largely propaganda promoted by both the media and, as a
provocation, by punks themselves. The punk posture of acting out as publicly as possible the
bleak and boring prospects of their social realities only served to reinforce the opinion that punk
stood for nothing and existed only to destroy and mock.
But punk was, from its inception, creative. As a phenomenon that began with barely
musically competent (at best) groups that just wanted to play and be heard, punk was nothing
new.8 What made punk different was a desire to go further into the realm of amateur cultural
production forged by the consequences of highly polished, rapidly globalizing and consolidating
media industries. That punk received the spark it needed to enter the mainstream from the very
entities punks despised was, while seemingly one of the great ironies of the movement,
unsurprising. Recording companies saw in punk an exploitable new gimmick—a new way to sell
music to youth. Further, the prevailing thought among music executives was that punk bands
required very little start-up to sign and would, compared to established acts, work for nothing.
Despite the dangerous façade of punk (or more likely because of it), the music seemed the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8

!The!US!garage!bands!denigrated!as!“punk”!being!a!prime!example!of!this.!

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perfect flash-in-the-pan fad to abuse and cash in on. That the monster they had helped unleash
might actually have teeth and could turn against them was likely of little concern—after all, they
were the only game in town.
If not for absolutely abysmal economic conditions in Britain, and drastically worse
circumstances for working class youth in particular, Britain might well not have provided such
fertile soil for the punk movement. The summer of 1975 saw unemployment reach heights not
seen since immediately after WWII. The global economic doldrums, characterized by high
unemployment combined with stagnant economic growth and rising inflation in the
industrialized world (a phenomenon which gave rise to the infamous portmanteau “stagflation”)
were made much worse by the 1973 oil crises, when OPEC constrained the supply of oil to
importing nations, causing shortages across Europe and the Americas and demonstrating the
potential pitfalls of an increasingly interconnected global economy. This interconnectedness
manifested itself not only in economic conditions. A global culture industry in which US and
British companies dominated the airwaves and movie screens was another reminder of where
power resided. Punk quickly set itself in opposition to this culture industry that had created
seemingly impenetrable barriers of entry through consolidation, efficient distribution channels,
licensing agreements and increasingly sophisticated (and expensive) production equipment. It
stood in opposition to this economic and cultural hegemony as it created, exposed and “took
advantage of ruptures, ‘nichtreparierten Stellen,’… in order to fill a gap for youth” (Shahan 2013
5).
In West Germany, participatory youth culture had decayed throughout the 20th century
since the collapse of the Wandervogel and of the Bünde under National Socialism and had
become in the minds of those like Hilsberg a toothless distraction imported and imitated from
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abroad. This collapse of youth culture coincided with the rise of hegemonic political and cultural
power structures that left youth once again voiceless and participatory culture bereft of any
cohesive philosophy.9 The brief resurgence of a (highly political) youth movement with the 68ers
itself collapsed with the failure of the Extraparliamentary Opposition (APO) and the rise of the
domestic terrorism of the Red Army Faction. By the mid-1970s, many youth were disillusioned
with society and, above all, bored. That yet another imported “fad” would contribute to a
renaissance of youth and participatory culture in West Germany seems to be, like so much about
punk, another paradox. In the next section, I will discuss the birth of punk in West Germany in
relation to the political, social and cultural reality of the Federal Republic and the major
similarities and differences between punk in Germany and in the English-speaking world. A brief
inspection of two of West Germany’s major punk scenes, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, will explore
the often violent contestation of what punk in the Federal Republic should mean.

Punk arrives in Germany
In the introduction to this chapter we saw Alfred Hilsberg’s sad appraisal of youth culture
in West Germany in the 1970s. Hilsberg, as much as any figure in West Germany, invested in
creating an autonomous German popular culture which would provide German youth the
opportunity not only to hear music and read about issues relevant to their lives, but also, and
most critically, to create it themselves. Hilsberg, in his early 20s in the mid-1970s, was a few
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9

!The!major!exception!here!is!the!Halbstarken,phenomenon!of!the!1950s,!which!shares!many!similarities!with!
punk.!Boredom!with!post(war!West!German!life!played!a!role!in!the!riots!and!public!posturing!of!these!youth,!and!
their!invoking!of!American!popular!culture!in!their!style!is!reminiscent!of!the!punk!aesthetic.!One!of!the!major!
differences!between!punks!and!the!Halbstarken,!however,!was!in!the!realm!of!cultural!consumption.!While!punks!
sought!to!articulate!a!youth!culture!which!focused!upon!exploration!and!creation,!the!Halbstarken,underscored!
the!increasing!lure!of!the!same!Anglo(American!cultural!productions!from!which!punks!would!attempt!to!distance!
themselves.!!!!!

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years older than the typical punk, but immediately saw in punk the catalyst he had been looking
for. Hilsberg, a journalist at Sounds magazine (who eventually brought about a shift in its
emphasis to punk and NDW from its former concentration on jazz, bluegrass, folk and prog
rock), was in a rather unique position to work through the potentials of punk and to articulate his
vision to a wide audience. This made him both loved and hated among the various punk scenes,
as Sounds increasingly came to be a major site for discussing what punk and NDW should mean.
His vision was not, by any means, universally shared. But in his efforts to create a thriving
German popular culture open to all, Hilsberg exemplifies the type of direct engagement which
can foster an alternative to boredom and served as an evangelist for this cause, attempting in both
word and deed to create a more compelling and engaged future for himself and for West German
youth.
Like in Britain and in the US, 60s counterculture was seen by the majority of West
German punks as a failure, and many of those involved in it as hypocritical sellouts. But this
irrational hatred of hippies belied their important contributions to punk. Jäki Eldorado, who
regarded himself as Germany’s first punk (he famously licked Iggy Pop’s leg at a concert in
1977, a photo of which circulated widely in the media) discusses Hilsberg’s contributions and
desire to get involved in punk:
Hier bei uns war wirklich jeder, der was gemacht hat, Hippie. Alfred Hilsberg war der
totale Hippie. Und der ist auch Hippie geblieben. Der hat sich ja nicht verändert. Aber er
hatte genau das richtige Alter, um die Wucht und die Energie zu erkennen. Und um das
dann auch umsetzen zu können. Der hatte dann wirklich sein Ding gefunden. (Teipel 28)

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This should not be taken as a embracing of hippie culture by Eldorado or within punk, but it is a
recognition of the importance of some individuals from this culture in punk’s spread and of a
significant overlap in their goals (if not their approaches).
However generally, in the West German context, punks rapidly oriented themselves
against the 68er student movement and hippie culture. Many punks condemned the 68ers for
buying into the capitalist, patriarchal system that they had initially opposed, doing little to
actually implement the change they demanded and for responding to the violence, intolerance
and hate endemic to this system with calls for love and peace—responses which many punks saw
as escapist self-deception in the face of a very different and unignorable social reality. This can
be seen in a comment by Franz Bielmeier, one of the co-founders of The Ostrich, Germany’s
first punk zine (as well as member of early punk/NDW groups Charley’s Girls, Mittagspause
and Fehlfarben). In an interview with Jürgen Teipel he articulates why he and many others in the
first generation of German punks were highly critical of the 68er movement and instead saw
more potential in exposing the darker, repressed aspects of society which they saw as more
honest and authentic: “Das kam daher, dass die Hippies immer behauptet haben, die Welt wäre
gut und alles wäre möglich. Wir waren davon überzeugt, dass die Welt schlecht ist. Dass aber
auch von dieser Seite her viel Potenzial drinsteckt. So etwa: Die Welt nicht vom Glänzen her
sehen, sondern dem, was darunter ist” (Teipel 38-39). This dismissal is well-articulated by
Hollow Skai, who alongside his many other punk credentials, began his zine, No Fun!, in 1978
and started the independent recording company of the same name in 1980. In a 1980 interview
with Sounds magazine Skai discusses his difficulties in distributing zines in bookstores run by
the new German Left: “Die Leute hatten angefangen, Musik zu machen, das war sehr wichtig.
Für mich war das die Zeit, mit meinem Fanzine Ernst zu machen. Denn ich wollte dadurch
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mithelfen, daß die neuen Gruppen ihre Musik auch aufführen können. Denn auf die Musik haben
die meisten Leute, vor allem die Linken, unheimlich panisch reagiert. Der alte
Faschismusverdacht. Und gegen solche Mißverständnisse wollte ich angehen. Ich wollte all den
linken Ignoranten klarmachen: das, was hier abläuft, ist im Grunde genommen das, wovon ihr
immer brabbelt” (Skai 1980 49). Punks such as Skai and Bielmeier sought to ground their
activities in the expression of everyday experience while simultaneously fostering a way of
living (what Skai called a new Lebenshaltung) and establishing a foundation for this new
engagement in the form of autonomous spaces where those who wished to could explore this
potential in a supportive and creative atmosphere without the barriers to entry which, in West
Germany, were especially pronounced.
While the emotional response against the 68ers and their hypocritical dismissal and
misunderstanding of punk often appeared to be one, punk was not simply a spiteful rejection of
society and embrace of nihilism, nor a simple rejection of past subcultures. The international cry
of “No Future!” was not meant as an apathetic disavowal of action—it was far more a call to
action—the recognition that society and the ways in which those living in it had been taught to
interpret the world ultimately offered little that could lead to fulfilling and worthwhile futures.
Those who had been drawn to 60s counterculture such as Hilsberg who understood punk as this
call to action saw the potential of it to bring about many of the same changes in society they
themselves had hoped for and quickly found their place within its communities.
While Sounds would prove to be the most influential magazine for working through the
meaning of punk in West Germany (along with Spex, which has since emerged from its origins
as a Cologne punk zine to become one of the leading periodicals on popular culture in Germany),
it was not the first encounter for most youth with the emerging punk phenomenon. Punk came to
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West Germany months after the British explosion and was initially largely imitative of the model
set forth by punks overseas. Although some discovered punk abroad or received records from
friends overseas, for the vast majority of youth in 1976, punk remained an unknown word. But as
was the case in Britain, punk would receive a boost from an unlikely source in the established
media. For youth in Germany, it was the teen magazine Bravo that in the summer of 1976 first
spread news of the events in England. This has been an occasionally unsavory distinction for
many punks, as the periodical would become in their minds the acme of pop sensationalism and
fad chasing. “Das zweifelhafte Teenie-Magazin konnte schon damals niemand wirklich Ernst
nehmen, es hatte zur rechten Zeit am rechten Ort einen eigenen Musikkorrespondenten, der sich
zum Teil auch im Umfeld der neuen Bands aufhielt, so dass es auch in den folgenden Monaten
und Jahren regelmässig Artikel über Punk-Bands in diesem Magazin gab” (IG Dreck auf Papier
9). The Bravo articles on punk, concentrating largely on the London scene, brought punk into the
homes of West German youth for the first time. Mike Stanger and Stephane Larsson, the singer
and drummer for The Buttocks, an early punk band out of Hamburg and whose first release, the
self-titled “The Buttocks” 7” is regarded as the first political punk album to be released in
Germany, gave an interview in 1981, part of which demonstrates the piecemeal arrival of punk in
West Germany:
Mike: Zuerst wußte ich noch überhaupt nicht, was Punk ist. Da gab’s nur ‘Bay
City Rollers’ und so zu hören. Un da hab’ ich dann von ‘nem Kollegen, der hatte
‘ne Schwester, und die hatte die ‘Bravo’ abonniert. Da in einer Ausgabe stand
drin, wie Punks so aussehen. Zu der Zeit gab’s noch nicht viel zu hören, eher so
Hardrock und Gefreake. ‘Ted Nugent’ und in der Richtung…Tja, und dann treff’

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ich ‘nen Kollegen auf der Straße und der sagt: “Komm’ mit zu mir, Alter. Mußt
du hören, tierische Scheibe.” (Stark and Kurzawa 185)
The “tierische Scheibe” in question was The Damned’s first LP. Upon hearing the song “New
Rose,” Mark remembers: “In dem Moment war der Fall klar” (185). Initial encounters with punk
such as this are common in recounts by West Germany’s first punk generation. Combined with
articles in Bravo, Sounds and elsewhere in the following months and along with increasing radio
play of punk from Britain, the 1977 Wolfgang Büld documentary Punk in London further opened
discourse on punk, although it too continued to view punk as an Anglo-American phenomenon.
Punk in Germany, for the most part, remained underground throughout late-1976 and 1977 as
scenes slowly emerged and began exploring what punk meant in the German context. The
January 1978 Spiegel cover story “Kultur aus den Slums: brutal und häßlich” explored punk in
Britain and the United States and, despite the sensational title and the over-the-top punk-stylized
collage cover, attempted to portray what punk meant both inside and outside of the subculture
while (for the most part) avoiding the scare tactics which would characterize its treatment in
other publications like Bild. While the article concentrates to a large extent on punk as a reaction
to rock culture and on economic factors—both the economic crises which helped to spawn punk
as well as the commercial successes of groups like the Sex Pistols—it also explored what punks
were attempting to express: “Äußerungen wie jene von Stanley Clark, 25, Mitglied der ‘Nervous
Eaters’ in Boston, haben fast alle Punk-Rocker schon einmal gemacht: ‘Wir haben mit hübschen
und weichen Sachen nichts am Hut, Mann. Wir haben's mit dem Leben zu tun, und das ist nun
mal häßlich und gemein. Wir sind Straßenmusikanten, und wir machen Großstadtmusik, die an
die primitivsten City-Instinkte appelliert’” (143). This acknowledgement that punks were
ultimately engaged in representing the realities of their lives hit upon the irreducible shared
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foundation punk was built upon. The article also brought punk to a wider audience, articulated its
limitations and intent and cemented the phenomenon more firmly in West German discussions of
youth culture.
Youth encounters in 1976 with the reportage from Bravo predated for many their
encounters with punk music. Punk styles were imitated without any understanding of the intent
behind them, although the provocation intended by these imitations was obvious despite a
disconnect between the physical style and the musical forms of British punk. This raised issues
of authenticity, with so-called posers adopting the punk look without an understanding of its
intent. As Franz Bielmeier described the situation: “Es gab Leute, die wurden als Poseure
bezeichnet. Als Poser. Die sahen wirklich gut aus. Die hatten teure Punkklamotten. BondageHosen von der Kings Road. Das hatten wir nicht. Das wollten wir auch nicht. Wir wollten das
nicht importieren wie irgendwelche Schwarzwaldandenken” (Teipel 75) The distinction between
the authentic and the imitative has been a major battleground for punks worldwide, but in West
Germany in the late-1970s, especially given punk’s spread through what these youth considered
very inauthentic and exploitative youth media and punk’s initial foreignness, exploring punk and
becoming personally involved was particularly important. The true litmus test of “punkness”
therefore rested in participation—be it through participation in a band, a zine, an independent
recording company or record store, in concert promotion or elsewhere. And in many West
German punk scenes, while British and American groups and developments were appreciated
and admired, the goal for them was not to imitate, but rather to take punk’s potential and apply it
to their everyday reality. Looks and consumption alone never guaranteed entrance into the punk

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community, and perhaps the only thing loathed by punks more than the mainstream and hippies
was a poser.10
While punk in West Germany was less the result of economic concerns than it was in
Britain, the economic and social climate in the FRG should not be dismissed as irrelevant.
Communications and media scholar Werner Faulstich highlights three major trends and events in
the West German economic history of the 1970s.11 First, the oil crisis of 1973 saw OPEC
constrain exports and the price of oil jump from $1.50 to over $10 a barrel. The crisis highlighted
West German dependence on imported energy, compounded the economic stagflation already
being felt in the nation, and contributed greatly to the recession that began in the fall of 1973.
The second trend was rising unemployment. From near-record lows in the Federal Republic at
the beginning of the decade, unemployment steadily rose throughout the first-half of the 1970s—
from 0.4% in 1970 to over 5% in 1976.12 From 100,000 unemployed in 1970, over 1.1 million
were out of work by the end of 1975. Chief among the causes of this rising unemployment in
West Germany was automation in manufacturing, which saw many jobs replaced by mechanical

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10

!The!vitriol!against!the!poser!extended!to!early!West!German!“punk”!bands!created!by!major!labels!CBS!
(Columbia!Records!(!today!Sony)!and!Teldec!(the!major!German(owned!recording!company!until!its!buyout!by!
Warner!in!1987),!which!many!punks!viewed!as!efforts!meant!only!to!exploit!and!cash!in!on!the!movement.!The!
two!major!bands!on!these!labels,!Straßenjungs,(CBS)!and!the!slightly!more!successful!but!still!oft(maligned!Big,
Balls,and,the,Great,White,Idiot!(Teldec)!exemplified!the!contested!boundaries!of!authenticity.!Detlev!Diederichson!
suggests!in!Zurück,zum,Beton,that!the!term!“poser”!was!not!part!of!the!German!punk!lexicon!at!the!time,!but!has!
since!been!applied!retroactively!to!those!who!attempted!to!buy!their!way!into!the!scene.!In!zines,!terms!like!
PlastikHPunks,!WochenendeHPunks,and!MöchtegernHPunks,are!used!to!disparage!those!viewed!by!others!in!the!
punk!community!as!inauthentic!or!trend(chasing.!!!
11
!See!“Gesellschaft!und!Kultur!der!siebziger!Jahre:!Einführung!und!Überblick”!in!(Faulstich!2004).!!
12
!In!comparison,!Great!Britain!saw!rates!rise!from!3.5%!at!the!beginning!of!the!decade!to!near!6%!by!its!close!and!
the!United!States!saw!rates!rise!from!4%!to!6%!in!the!same!time.!All!three!nations!saw!a!sharp!spike!in!
unemployment!in!1975.!By!today’s!standards!an!unemployment!rate!of!5%!seems!healthy,!but!represented!a!crisis!
in!the!1970s.!Since!a!brief!improvement!in!the!late!1970s!into!early!1980,!unemployment!in!Germany!has!
fluctuated!greatly!–!but!has!never!again!dropped!below!4%!and!has!generally!been!much!higher!(although!
reunification!has!led!to!difficulties!in!viewing!long(term!trends!post(Wende).!

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production. Not factoring in increasing sophistication of the machines, Faulstich reports a figure
of 135 industrial robots in 1974 leaping to 1250 by 1980.13
The final major economic trend in 1970s West Germany was the increasing reach, power
and importance of multinational corporations in the global (and domestic) economy—a trend
Faulstich points to as the beginning of the processes that have come to be known as
globalization. Jobs being moved overseas to income-poor nations further contributed to
unemployment in West Germany. In addition, the actions of many firms abroad resulted in
worldwide outrage over the excesses of corporate power, unfair trading practices and their
meddling in international affairs. Already in the 1970s, multinationals were being accused of
egregious acts abroad. Faulstich discusses two major events of the 1970s that underscored many
German’s concerns about corporate overreach. The US telecommunications firm ITT
(International Telephone & Telegraph), already embroiled in antitrust allegations after a scandal
at the 1972 Republican National Convention, allegedly helped organize and stage the 11
September, 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile. Closer to home, the Swiss Nestlé corporation was
under fire for their baby formula, which was pushed heavily (and often unethically) in lessdeveloped countries as an alternative to breast-feeding and contributed to the deaths of nursing
babies across the third world.
Economic concerns certainly played a role in youthful resentment of West German society
in the mid-1970s, and explorations of the perceived exploitative relationship multinationals
forced upon the world formed a common motif within punk music, zines and philosophy. With
poor job prospects and decreased spending power, the economic future looked bleak. Yet while
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
13

!Importantly,!West!German!punk!cultural!productions!often!thematized!the!technological!and!addressed!the!
social!realities!of!life!in!the!technological!age!in!songs!like!Abwärt’s,“Computerstaat.”!This!will!be!discussed!in!
detail!in!Chapter!Four.!

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economic forces may have contributed to the malaise felt by youth at the time, there were more
salient issues for kids to rail against beyond the somewhat dry and distant affairs of the economy.
Much more tangible for 1970s youth in West Germany was the lack of any definable youth
culture, their position at the front of the cold war, a continued need to create a new identity that
moved beyond Germany’s National Socialist past, and, of course, anger at those who had failed
to do so.
The youth of the 1970s had missed the 68er movement. Any catharsis that was achieved
from the 68ers’ attempt to engage with the actions of the older generations during National
Socialism was largely lost on them, as most who came of age when punk spread were small
children at the time. In the sense of having missed the defining moments of their day due to
being too young to comprehend their significance, they had something in common with their
parents, who were themselves generally still very young as the war came to a close. But while
their parents came of age in the immediate aftermath of Germany’s atrocities and in the rubble of
its cities in a culture of silence, youth in the 1970s grew up in a very different and much more
open social climate. While the student movement of the late 60s had opened up a dialogue about
Germany’s Nazi past, in the eyes of many youth it hadn’t in the end changed much. Jürgen
Engler, who would become the lead singer and guitarist of MALE, one of Germany’s first punk
bands, discusses the fallout of his unconventional fashion sense:
Bei mir kam diese klare Wandlung, so mit Haare selber abgeschnitten—einfach
mit der Schere rein und kurz schneiden—Anfang 77. Als ich zum ersten Mal mit
dickem Verhängeschloss um den Hals in die Schule kam, war das schon nicht so
easy. Aber wenn ich mit meinen abgeschnittenen Haaren und selber
durchlöcherten Hosen durch die Altstadt gegangen bin: Ich bin angepöbelt
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worden! Ich bin verprügelt worden! Und das waren Leute zwischen meinem Alter
und 60-jährigen Alten, die mir hinterhergeschrien haben: “Unter Hitler wärste
vergast worden.” Ich habe das oft erlebt. Das war normal. (Teipel 32-33)
This and many other accounts of intimidation and assault from across the nation illustrate the
pervasiveness of a forced and often violent conformity sensed and experienced by 1970s youth.
This is another striking parallel with the Wandervogel, who on occasion were also pelted with
stones, food and insults by members of a traditional society offended by their expressions of
difference. Franz Bielmeier provided a vivid metaphor for life in the 70s:
Damals war Deutschland vom Gefühl her so eine gepolsterte Wohnzimmerwelt
mit dem fetten, zigarrerauchenden Altnazichef darin. Wenn du auf irgendeinem
Teil gesessen bist, hast du gespürt, dass du auf Kunstleder sitzt, in dem
Schaumgummi drin ist. Und wenn der Typ mit dir redet, hast du gespürt, dass in
dem noch braune Grundsätze sind. Aber dass das genauso wenig durchkommt wie
der Schaumgummi durchs Kunstleder. Das war die allgemeine Atmosphäre. Nicht
nur von der Musik her, sondern vom ganzen Leben in Deutschland. (Teipel 42).
West Germany, complacent and conservative, was on the surface a comfortable enough place.
But just under the (on closer inspection artificial) upholstery of this “living room world,” nothing
had changed. For youth, this was especially visible in the schools. Abwärts drummer Axel Dill:
“Ich hatte so viel Ärger in der Schule. Das machte ja damals null Spaß. Das war nur Drill. Die
Lehrer, das waren die übrig gebliebenen Faschisten aus dem Krieg. Nur redete da keiner drüber.
Richtig gemeine Säue. Und gegen die habe ich rebelliert. Bis ich das totale Feindbild für die
war” (Teipel 15-16). Worse in the eyes of many youth, new teachers who a few years before had

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participated in the student protest movement were now working side-by side with these relics of
Germany’s less-than-illustrious past, adopting an (in the youthful interpretation of many soon-tobe punk students, at least) inappropriately authoritarian and serious persona. Jäki Eldorado
discussed the matter of 68er teachers in the schools and their often hypocritical and
uncomprehending seriousness: “Wenn du ein Hakenkreuz in die Schulbank geschnitzt hast,
hattest du prompt einen 68er-Lehrer an der Backe, der das völlig überinterpretiert hat und alles
furchtbar unangenehm fand. Und da habe ich schon früh gemerkt, dass ich mit dieser humorlosen
Ecke nichts anfangen kann” (Teipel 27). These new teachers, who had organized not a decade
before (in part) to attempt to bridge a gap between their and the older generations, now seemed
incapable of understanding those only a few years younger than them and the intent behind their
provocative rearticulation of Nazi symbols. The overly serious, uncomprehending majority of
68ers were for many punks ultimately just another example of what not to become. Beyond
providing subjects worthy of ridicule, neither extreme of the adult world—leftover fascist nor
humorless 68er—offered anything of value in the eyes of many punk youth.
As we saw earlier in the chapter however, many individuals of this old guard embraced
punk and served as some of its biggest proponents. The major issue punk youth had with the
68ers was ultimately not what they had done, but what many of them were now doing. The rigid,
inflexible and, above all, deadly serious ideological complexion of the New Left was just another
boring and well-explored path.14
Punk represented a direct, lived engagement that forced West German society to confront
its own absurdities. As the most salient example, Nazi symbolism still held a great deal of power,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
14

!Hollow!Skai’s!interview!in!Sounds,on!the!difficulties!of!getting!his!zine!No,Fun!,distributed!through!leftist!
bookstores!epitomizes!this!disconnect!between!the!two!phenomena.!

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especially in Germany. The practice of bricolage,15 the process in which items and symbols are
repossessed and given new meanings in their new contexts, was a favorite method of punks that
often led to misunderstandings by those still entrenched in the dominant discourses surrounding
these items and symbols. The New Left was, for many punks, all show (as their engagement with
punks in schools underscored). That the left tended to be among those most appalled by punk
and were, for a supposedly open-minded group, surprisingly unwilling to attempt to understand
it, was unforgivable. Instead of asking the question that punk bricolage demanded: “Why does
this make me uncomfortable,” they instead seemed too eager to judge and condemn. Detractors
of punk were, from punk’s point of view, unwittingly asking in their dismissal of the movement:
“What’s wrong with me?”
For many punks, the answer to this question was their alienated relationship to life in the
modern world. Cited in Hollow Skai’s thesis is a quote from Poly Styrene (who was herself a
hippie before her discovery of punk) from the second issue of the Wuppertal punk zine Undenk
from 1979: “Unsere Umgebung ist künstlich, deshalb schreibe ich darüber; es wäre verlogen,
über die Natur zu schreiben” (Skai 1981 33).16 Whether this interview actually occurred or
whether it was, as was common practice in punk zines, completely fabricated (or altered in
translation) to give the message more gravitas is, for this discussion, irrelevant.17 It represented a
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15

!Bricolage!was!first!introduced!to!punk!scholarship!by!Hebdige,!and!in!the!punk!context,!it!refers!to!the!
repossession!of!everyday!objects!such!as!toilet!chains,!Xerox!shipping!bands!and!safety!pins!as!well!as!more!
culturally(charged!symbols,!as!with!the!notorious!appropriation!of!swastikas,!RAF!badges,!Soviet!symbols,!etc.!
which!are!assembled!together!to!subvert!and!rupture!accepted!meanings!and!allow!new!interpretations!to!
become!manifest.!
16
!Poly!Styrene!(Marianne!Joan!Elliot(Said)!formed!the!British!punk!band!X(Ray!Spex!in!1976!after!seeing!the!Sex!
Pistols!in!concert.!Their!1977!“Oh!Bondage!Up!Yours!”!which!famously!began!with!the!spoken!verse!“Some!say!
little!girls!should!be!seen!and!not!heard.!I!say…!OH!BONDAGE!UP!YOURS!”!is!a!classic!of!the!early!scene.!She!
remained!a!champion!of!punk!until!her!death!from!breast!cancer!in!2011.!!
17
!While!I!have!found!no!exact!quote!to!attribute!to!this!translation,!it!is!certainly!something!Poly!Styrene!might!
have!said!given!her!articulation!of!alienation!in!an!artificial!world!in!songs!like!“Art(I(Ficial”,!which!opens!with!the!
lines!“I!know!I’m!artificial/!But!don’t!put!the!blame!on!me/!I!was!reared!with!appliances/!In!a!consumer!society.”!

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common theme of early German punk—the importance of focusing on (and dissecting) the
Western world’s new “natural” environment—the artificial city. In this, West German punks
found their engagement with the world not through a political ideology, but through expressing
their own encounters and conceptualizations of life in the Federal Republic.

Punk in West Germany: Düsseldorf and Hamburg
While tales of the exploits of punks in London were eagerly digested by West German
youth throughout the summer of 1976, it wasn’t until late 1976 and 1977 that the first punk scene
began to crystallize in Germany. The city of Düsseldorf would be the unlikely first capital of
West German punk. Although Düsseldorf had many art schools, a high concentration of youth
and a friendly dive-bar that would soon become a punk mecca, the same could be said for any
number of West German cities. That German punk was first put into practice in this seemingly
unremarkable mid-sized city further illustrates the versatility of the movement, but also the
continuing importance of a community of like-minded individuals in coalescing around an idea.
Of the major West German punk scenes, the Düsseldorf scene was regarded as the most
middle-class. There is a risk in discussing scenes through their class composition, especially as
the statistics on punk socioeconomic status are spotty at best (arrest records, discussed later in
this chapter, comprised the most detailed records available) and because there was significant
heterogeneity not just between scenes, but within them as well. Still, the perception that the
Düsseldorf scene consisted of a greater proportion of middle-class youth is backed up by the
number of art-school students in the scene and the number of other middle class youth in many

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Düsseldorf bands, with groups such as Charley’s Girls (and later Mittagspause and Fehlfarben)
and Male falling into this category.
Early punks in the scene congregated around the Ratinger Hof, a dive bar in Düsseldorf
with a clientele consisting of social misfits and students from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and
served as a meeting point for Joseph Beuys and his students. The similarity of Beuys’
performance art and desire to free cultural expression from the art world to punk’s call to direct
action is another example of shared purpose between some members of previous generations and
punks, and it is no coincidence that the Düsseldorf scene became one of the major centers for
cultural exploration in West German punk that sought to move beyond the initial limitations and
confinements of the punk sound and aesthetic while foregrounding the individual and communal
effort to create an environment conducive to this endeavor.18
The Ratinger Hof, located just outside of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, was the home of
many of West Germany’s earliest and most influential acts: MALE, SYPH (whose song Zurück
zum Beton became an anthem of West German punk and an articulation of its concrete
romanticism), Xaõ Seffcheque (who later wrote for Sounds and SPEX) , ZK (Zentralkommittee,
the precursor to Die Toten Hosen), KFC (Kriminalitätsförderungsclub) and Charley’s Girls
(named after the Lou Reed song and who existed for a time only in their minds and the stories
put out by Franz Bielmeier along with friends Peter Hein, Ramon Louis and other contributors in
their zine, the aforementioned Ostrich. As Martina Weith of Östro 430 described: “Keiner
konnte ein Instrument, aber jeder spielte mindestens in zwei Bands” (Skai 2009 37). This desire
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
18

!Beuys’!refusal!to!limit!the!size!of!his!courses!and!his!willingness!to!allow!anyone!interested!to!join!his!classes!
(which!contributed!to!his!dismissal!from!his!position)!highlights!his!attempt!to!encourage!individuals!to!explore!
their!own!creative!potential,!as!does!his!practice!of!omitting!his!own!works!in!his!courses!in!an!attempt!to!keep!his!
students’!exploration!and!expression!their!own.!

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to express oneself and be a part of the scene despite a total lack of musical proficiency or any
idea of how to begin characterized the early punk scene in West Germany.
The Ratinger Hof updated its interior to reflect its new appeal and function as a punk
venue: the walls were painted white and covered in mirrors, brightly lit neon lighting was added
and a stage was constructed composed of the bar’s pool tables pushed together and covered. The
basement was also repurposed as a practice space for local groups, purchases at the bar were
entirely optional and an atmosphere was fostered which encouraged a heterogeneous mix of
patrons.19 As the arguable birthplace of West German punk, its hastily thrown together new look
and multiple functions reflected the wider punk project of just going for it, even if (or especially
because) the sympathetic proprietor Carmen Knoebel was initially just as clueless as to what to
do as those who played and congregated there.20 The Ratinger Hof both embodied and fostered
the figure-it-out-as-we-go experimentation at the genesis of West German punk.
In this vein of full immersion and participation, numerous record labels were founded in
Düsseldorf, often by members of the bands themselves, in order to spread their music, sign
otherwise unsignable acts and to retain autonomy from recording labels (although at the time
major labels were reticent to sign punk and NDW acts). Among the most successful was the
label Ata Tak, initially established in nearby Wuppertal as Warning Records. Ata Tak was
founded in 1979 by members of the various punk/NDW/early-electronica groups based around
Der Plan and DAF (Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft). Ata Tak was an adaptation of the art
gallery/scene gathering spot Art Attack, founded by two of the label’s founders, Moritz Reichelt
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
19

!One!punk!remembered!rubbing!elbows!with!punks,!art!students,!RAF,sympathizers!as!well!as!skinheads!(Hayton!
114).!As!a!common!space,!the!Hof,was!open!to!all.!
20
!In!addition!to!providing!the!major!punk!venue!and!meeting!point!in!Düsseldorf!as!well!as!offering!the!basement!
as!a!practice!space!for!several!of!the!area’s!emerging!bands,!Knoebel!would!also!become!directly!involved!in!
helping!to!finance!records.!Like!Hilsberg,!Knoebel!is!another!example!of!an!important!older!influence!within!West!
German!punk.!!!

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and Frank Fenstermacher.21 Art Attack opened in Wuppertal in the summer of 1978 and, as
quoted by Skai, was “die erste New Wave-Galerie Deutschlands oder sogar der Welt” (52). The
opening was kicked off by a concert and mock demonstration through Wuppertal with
participants chanting, in a nod to fellow Wuppertaler Friedrich Engels, “Konsumenten aller
Länder, vereinigt euch!” The gallery quickly became another important meeting point for punks
in the greater Düsseldorf scene. Ata Tak went on to release albums from many of the now most
famous punk and NDW bands. Aside from much of their own work, they released albums from
SYPH, Minus delta t, Die tödliche Doris, Fehlfarben and, in their biggest and most surprising
success, a song from 16-year-old Andreas Dorau, who in 1981 reached number 21 in the West
German charts with the runaway hit Fred vom Jupiter.22
The incorporation of synthesizers, less stress on traditional rock instruments, a desire
to experiment with new sounds and lyrical content and a penchant for exploring everyday
experiences marked the Düsseldorf style. As they became more proficient and competent, their
music became more complex and refined. In this way, many of the bands from the Düsseldorf
scene exemplified an unrestricted direct engagement with exploring their world and their
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
21

!Fenstermacher!and!Reichelt!themselves!became!involved!in!the!scene!outside!of!their!artwork!as!they!began!
experimenting!with!a!Korg!MS(20!synthesizer!(the!legendary!and!first!relatively!affordable!synthesizer!which!
emerged!in!the!late(1970s!and!which!was!rapidly!incorporated!into!many,punk/NDW!groups’!sounds!and!styles)!
lent!to!them!by!DAF.!After!several!name!changes,!they!settled!on!Der,Plan!and!experimented!widely!with!sounds,!
eventually!pursuing!a!synth(pop!approach!(what!they!called!“elekronische!Schlager”)!of!catchy!beats!and!tongue(
in(cheek,!minimalistic!lyrics.!Their!1981!song,!“Wir!werden!immer!mehr”!for!example!opens!with!the!monotone!
recital!of!their!artist!statement!(first!in!French,!then!in!English!and!finally!in!German)!“Der!Plan!will!be!the!solution!
st
of!all!problems!in!the!beginning!of!the!21 !century”!before!launching!into!an!upbeat!song!which!begins!“Ich!weiss!
das!Leben!ist!manchmal!schwer/!doch!wir,!wir!werden!wir!werden!immer!mehr,”!which!then!trails!off!with!an!
increasingly!quickly!looped!and!distorted!“und!dann!und!dann!und!dann”!which!rises!in!pitch!as!the!lyrics!fuse!with!
the!synthesized!beat.!The!friendly!suggestion!that,!despite!life’s!difficulties,!an!alternative!was!growing!is!an!
example!of!the!hopeful!orientation!to!the!future!often!evident!in!these!participatory!projects.!Der,Plan’s,approach!
would!help!to!define!the!emerging!Neue,Deutsche,Welle,sound,!which!will!be!revisited!in!Chapter!Four.!!!!!
22
!The!song!is!sung!in!chorus!predominantly!by!a!group!of!girls!from!his!school,!Die,Marinas,!and!chronicles!their!
encounter!with!Fred,!an!alien!who!has!landed!on!Earth!after!running!out!of!fuel!and!who!they!contend!is!“der!
Traum!aller!Frauen.”!The!song!closes!with!Fred!(Andreas!Dorau)!expressing!what!a!great!time!he!had!on!Earth!and!
that!he!is!looking!forward!to!a!return!trip.!!

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individuality while rejecting the notion that punk had to be defined and protected. Through punk,
a whole range of exploratory potentials were opened. This exploration carried into other media
as well. Düsseldorf established a thriving zine scene, with The Ostrich being only the first of
many. Other Düsseldorf zines, among them Die neue Sachlichkeit, Preußen-Kurier, Spray,
Heimatblatt, Die Falschmelder and Die Düsseldorfer Leere would follow. Punk zines will be
discussed in greater detail in Chapter Four, but it is important to note here that zines served both
as a means of communication and synthesis about their creator’s encounters with punk as well as
provided an important organ through which to articulate and work through their emerging punkinflected identities.
While the iteration of punk in Hamburg emerged as a very different animal, the scene
there nevertheless thematized the same direct engagement that characterized Düsseldorf punk
experimentation. The Hamburg scene and the Hannover scenes overlapped, with bands like
Rotzkotz from Hannover being adopted by the Hamburg scene and groups like Hans-a-plast from
Hannover often playing in Hamburg despite significant stylistic divergences. The many zines out
of Hannover also often wrote on the Hamburg scene, and through some of these articles, the
perceived differences can be seen between Hamburg and elsewhere in West Germany. The
Hamburg scene proudly embraced a working class aesthetic, which partially explains their
orientation towards the British model of punk and the emerging sound of Hamburg punk, which
came to be labeled hardcore.23 The Hamburg punk scene tended to favor harder, simpler and
faster music that, in concerts, was accompanied by, if possible, even harder, faster and more
violent “dancing.” The pogo, which required at least a small amount of individual space in order
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
23

!In!addition,!the!legacy!of!British!bands!working!in!St.!Pauli!(The,Beatles,of!course,!but!also!many!other!bands!and!
individuals!including!Ritchie!Blackmore!and!Tony!Sheridan)!served!as!further!elements!cementing!the!connection!
between!Hamburg!and!British!influence.!

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to jump up and down and which maintained this space with the rigid, straight posture reminiscent
of a pogo stick, developed into full-blown slam dancing as punks crashed into each other as
violently as possible in the pit in front of the stage. It is perhaps for this reason that the Hamburg
scene contained far fewer women, a phenomenon noted by many early punks in Jürgen Teipel’s
oral history Verschwende Deine Jugend. Hamburg punk concerts often evolved into exuberant
brawls, which had the effect of turning off many who might have otherwise been interested in
the scene. While women represented a minority in the punk subculture generally, in Hamburg
this was especially pronounced. Still, women did become involved here as well, often proving
themselves as violent as anybody else on the dance floor, as the following anecdote from Bettina
Köster (Of Din-a-Testbild, Malaria and Mania D) describes. In 1979 at In die Zukunft, the
second major punk festival at the Markthalle in Hamburg organized by Alfred Hilsberg, Köster
saw first-hand the often violent nature of punk in Hamburg:
Ich war ja völlig schockiert. Ich bin da mit Din-a-Testbild aufgetreten. Ich war 18
oder 19—zum ersten Mal in meinem Leben auf der Bühne. Und die trugen schon
die Leute mit blutigen Gesichtern aus der Halle, bevor das Konzert überhaupt
anfing. Da gab es ein Mädel, die liefe mit einem Fleischerhaken durch die Leute.
Den zog sie einem anderen Mädel durchs Gesicht. Das haben sie dann
rausgeschleppt. Und andauernd flogen Sachen auf die Bühne. Ich wusste gar
nicht, wie mir geschah. (Teipel 164)
In Hamburg, then, the articulation of identity took an extremely different form that, for Köster
and others coming from different punk communities, was superficially unrecognizable to their
interpretation of punk. That Hamburg and Düsseldorf could both be contained within the concept
of punk showcases the diversity of forms it could engender in different locations and different
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communities. Similarly, Hamburg punk’s privileging of their interpretation of punk and disgust
with the experimental sounds coming out of other punk scenes in West Germany epitomizes the
protectionism, narrow-mindedness and increasing ideological fracturing which marked punk’s
spread around the world.
The aptly named venue in Hamburg, Krawall 2000, embodied this Hamburg punk
sensibility (or lack thereof). A small club which regularly packed hundreds into a room meant for
perhaps a hundred, Krawall 2000 was a place for Hamburg’s punks to let loose and blow off
steam.24 Schorsch Kamerun describes how the bar Kneipe zum Flohmarkt was transformed on
the weekend into Krawall 2000: “Das Krawall 2000 hieß eigentlich Kneipe zum Flohmarkt. Den
Laden hat man sich irgendwie angeeignet. Nicht wir, sondern andere. Dann wurden dort am
Wochenende Konzerte verangestaltet. Eigentlich schon etwas wie ein Club im Club” (Avantario
et al 54). The Hannover zine Gegendarstellung included a description of the venue in 1978 in its
first issue, noting the bar’s small size and rather non-punk atmosphere, along with the possibility
of an interesting and very punk death.
Ich hatte mir sonst was unter K 2000 vorgestellt, bloß nicht so’n kleinen Laden,
der auch noch wie eine x-beliebige Sperrmüll-alternative-atom kraft-nein-dankemüslifresserkneipe aussieht. Die Punks hinter der Theke, die am Freitag die
kneipe in eigener Regie machen…, haben auch schon reichlich Schwierigkeiten
mit denen, nach denen es hier aussieht. Es ist wohl Geld abhanden gekommen
und das wird zum Vorwand genommen, die Punks aus dem kneipen kollektiv
rauszudrängen. Die K-2000 Leute suchen schon mal nach größeren
Räumlichkeiten, den das Krawall ist vielleicht kein guten Laden, aber immerhin
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
24

!Andreas!Banaski!in!Sounds.!

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eine Auftrittsmöglichkeit, tROtZ der Bühne. Ein Pogo aud diesen Brettern und
man ist wieder auf dem Boden der Tatsachen. Da ist echt ein schöner Tod drin:
“PUNK-HEILIGER VON EIGENER ANLAGE BEGRABEN.” [sic]
Much like in Düsseldorf, in the early days of punk in West Germany, any venue was better than
none, even if it meant a hippie-ridden dive bar with a rickety stage.25 Attending a Friday night
concert in Hamburg at Krawall 2000 or other venues such as Easy or the Markthalle was often a
dangerous proposition which made the Ratinger Hof and the Düsseldorf scene look tame. The
music, initially in English but eventually often embracing German as well, which was played by
Hamburg-centered groups like Rotzkotz, The Coroners and Buttocks, adopted not only a harder
sound—many bands also evolved a highly politicized program oriented against both the peaceseeking and lyrical music of the 60s as well as against consumerism and fascism.26 And while
the lyrical content of groups like Mittagspause and Male from Düsseldorf expressed similar
sentiments, their differing aesthetic representation served to alienate them from many Hamburg
punks, who remained fiercely loyal to their scene and sound.27
Alfred Hilsberg attempted on several occasions to unite the hardcore Hamburg scene and
sound with the more experimental scenes in Düsseldorf, West Berlin, Hannover and elsewhere.
In his capacity at Sounds, which was headquartered in Hamburg, he articulated his vision of what
punk in Germany could be. In the influential three-part 1979 series of articles “Aus grauer Städte
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
25

!That!the!Hamburg!scene!would!evolve!into!the!anti(capitalist,!politically(aware!capital!of!West!German!punk!is!
yet!another!irony!given!the!tempestuous!relationship!between!these!groups!and!the!Hamburg!punks’!propensity!
for!violence,!but!it!is!yet!another!example!of!the!fluid!boundaries!between!punk!and!68ers!and!the!permeability!of!
ideas!across!time,!despite!radically!different!articulations.!!
26
!This!sometimes!made!recording!through!even!independent!record!companies!like!No,Fun,difficult,!as!the!anti(
consumerist!trajectory!of!some!groups,!similarly!to!Crass,in!England!(who!became!popular!in!the!Hamburg!scene),!
stigmatized!producing!music!through!a!commercial!enterprise.!
27
!Bands!pursuing!a!harder!sound!did!not!solely!come!from!Hamburg!–!the!scene!there!was!simply!much!more!
engaged!with!this!style!than!elsewhere.!KFC!from!Düsseldorf!is!an!excellent!example,!with!their!rougher!sound!
combined!with!a!penchant!for!assaulting!their!audiences!musically,!lyrically,!verbally!and!physically.!!

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Mauern,” the title of which was taken from the popular Wandervogel hiking song from the teens
and 1920s, he set forth an inclusive program he saw at the heart of the punk explosion in West
Germany. The song, which decries the negative effects of urbanization, industrialization, and
bourgeois convention, encourages the listener to fly free from gray cities’ walls, creating a binary
opposition between city and country.
In the first article of the series, which appeared in the October 1979 issue of Sounds and
was subtitled simply “Neue deutsche Welle” (which gave a name to the amorphous emerging
music scenes), Hilsberg immediately sought to differentiate the proliferation of West German
bands from the Anglo-American tradition that had inspired them. “Die ‘neue Welle’ ist schon
lange nicht mehr Anhängsel der angloamerikanischen Rock-/Punk-Tradition. Die
Auseinandersetzung mit sich selbst, mit dem Leben hier und heute, schafft neue Inhalte/Formen”
(20). Along with their shared active involvement, this focus on new forms and content to explore
life in West Germany was the unifying thread he saw between the various musical- and lifestyles being pursued by youth across the nation.
In an effort to showcase the diversity of the West German NDW scene and this common
desire to express their individuality and their engagement with life in the FRG, Hilsberg
organized a series of concerts in 1979 at the Markthalle in Hamburg which, as Bettina Köster’s
recounting of her experience at the second festival “In die Zukunft” suggests, were not free from
problems.28 The common theme among these three shows was to bring together bands from
across the country. The first show was “Into the Future” and took place on February 24. Tickets
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
28
!These!shows!also!helped!to!promote!Hilsberg’s!new!record!company!ZickZack,!which!produced!many!
of!the!major!albums!of!the!NDW!and!beyond,!including!releases!by!Frewillige,Selbstkontrolle,(FSK),!
Abwärts,!die,Krupps,!and,die,Zimmermänner,and!by!much!more!internationally!recognized!groups!
Einstürzende,Neubauten,and!Palais,Schaumburg,(as!well!as!some!productions!by!die,Tödliche,Doris,and!
Andreas!Doraus).!!!
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for the show sold out quickly, and hundreds were denied admission at the door. The festival was
a success, with punks from across the country mixing freely and relatively peacefully. The
second show, retitled in a nod to the rapidly proliferating importance of the German language,
“In die Zukunft,” was held a few months later on June 29. As Köster remarked, this show was
much more violent. The grudging acceptance which had characterized the first show had
evaporated, and Hamburg fans pelted more experimental acts like Din-a-Testbild with whatever
they had on hand. In an attempt to bring the two sides together, Hilsberg organized a third show
on the eve of the new decade. “Geräusche für die 80er,” which took place on December 29, was
a debacle. As Mike Hentz of Minus Delta t remembered:
Die Punks haben dann in den Pausen zwischen den Stücken immer die Sänger
verprügelt. Und zwar von wirklich allen so genannten Kunstbands, die vor uns
spielten—Salinos, Liebesgier und Tempo…Dann waren die alle schon vorne und
hatten Bier in der Hand, um es denen drüberzukippen. Einer von Tempo hat sich
dann unterstanden, jemandem den Stinkefinger zu zeigen. In der nächsten Pause
sind fünf Berliner Punks auf die Bühne gestürmt, haben den einfach voll
vermöbelt und ihm noch eine Flasche über den Kopf gezogen. Bevor wir
überhaupt anfingen, wussten wir schon: Wir dürfen keine Pausen machen. (Teipel
213)
Again, the mixing of scenes and styles is evident in the Berlin punks who stormed the stage in
Hamburg. But the idea of a punk community dedicated to respect for alternative articulations of
experience and meaning-making was shown to be a much less universally shared ideal on the
precipice of the 1980s. In this, punk evidences another commonality with the Wandervogel. The
splits founded upon disagreements about what punk should be hearken back to the same
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disagreements within the Wandervogel. And while many continued to pursue the goal of a united
punk/NDW alternative community, the two dominant styles of punk—the hardcore style rooted
in Hamburg and the experimental styles characteristic of many groups in Düsseldorf, West
Berlin and Hannover—drifted increasingly further apart. While it may seem to be a failure, this
diversification and articulation of difference, even within the punk subculture, was ultimately
necessary. The utopian vision that the entire punk community could rally together around a set of
commonly shared beliefs stood in stark contrast to their focus on individual expression and the
gritty depiction of life in West Germany. The differences that arose, in their own (rather punk)
way, evidence the maturation of local scenes in claiming their own identities and preferences.
Where punk began with the intent of rupturing the social fabric, it is only fitting that it rupture
itself along the way. Unfortunately, these splits in punk, like those of the Wandervogel,
ultimately were not enough. As Hardcore and experimental NDW and later Fun Punk
crystallized into defined genres, the capacity of these scenes to form a foundation based on
difference was fundamentally eroded. Choosing which group to align with dramatically limited
the potential for experimentation and adventure and, as Jeff Hayton insightfully notes, “in so
making a choice, punks shut down the possibilities of Anderssein” (348).
While punk initially emerged as a reaction to the commercialization and over-production
of rock and roll recordings, it, like the Wandervogel, developed into a vehicle for like-minded
youth to react against social conditions of modernity that they found unsatisfactory. Both
Wandervogel and punk evolved along trajectories that quickly lead to a diversification of the
movements. For the Wandervogel, this occurred largely through splinter organizations and
disagreements over issues such as the inclusion of women, homosexuality, and antisemitism.
For punks in West Germany, divergence was primarily a function of the different cultures of
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local, urban scenes, particularly in their make-up in terms of gender and class, the extent to
which students and artists were involved in the scene, and their affinity (or lack thereof) for
British punk.

Scholarly Reception of Punk
“It began in the guts, a boiling knot of feelings and impulses so strong that they seemed
to erupt out of nowhere: disgust at the state of contemporary pop culture, fury at the way
that the promises of the 1960s had been reneged upon, and above all a boredom so allconsuming by 1975 that it pushed those who suffered it out of depression and lethargy
into frenzied action. We hate everything, fuck you, let’s go” (Savage Aesthetic 146).

Scholarly inquiry into punk has, since the 1970s, been approached from numerous
directions by disciplines ranging from musicology, popular culture studies and art history to
sociology, social work and political science. The literature on punk has, like punk itself,
expanded and diversified over the years, but punk is still all too often read through distinct
narratives which ultimately, like the crystallization of punk scenes, has caused scholarship to
fracture along ideological and thematic lines along the boundaries of the disciplines which find
in it an object worthy of study. If punk represented a critique of modern life, its evaluation by
disciplines which arose as a part of the rationalistic Enlightenment project must be viewed as
potentially problematic. Hebdige noted this in 1979 when he suggested the subcultures he
studied would likely not see themselves reflected in his work and remained fundamentally
skeptical of its value to these youth. This is not to say that academic research on punk doesn’t
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have a critical place in working through punk’s legacy in raising questions about its meanings
and potentials. With the tremendous amount of engaged scholarship that has been and continues
to be written, there is no question of the value in refining current discourses on punk while
maintaining a degree of distance and attempted objectivity. But punk scholarship should also
constantly seek to free its object to look at it from fresh perspectives and through new
interpretations. And since one of punk’s chief critiques was oriented against the leveling,
rationalizing and categorizing effects of modernity, it is only reasonable that the lifestyles they
pursued in the attempt to create an alternative should be more fully explored in this spirit.
Not that punk lifestyles have not already been the subject of a great deal of research.
However these studies often focus upon one of many elements in punk’s modern critique: its
problematization of the culture industry and consumer society, its challenge to fashion, its voiced
political dissent, its aesthetic approach or its rejection of past subcultures among others. In the
focus on these individual manifestations of a broader criticism against the banality of modern
life, the major source of their alienation, a profound boredom with the internalization of modern
structures in promulgating a shallow and disengaged lifestyle, is fractured and viewed through its
localized expressions in style, politics, philosophy or its means of production.
This fracturing of the broader punk critique is evident in several trajectories of research,
through which the phenomenon can be better illuminated. Among the most significant of these
are punk philosophy—especially in terms of anti-consumerism, anarchism, liberalism and neoNazism—punk aesthetics, (foremost here, punk as manifestation of the avant-garde), punk’s
contextualization within rock and popular culture, and punk as response to major sociopolitical
and economic conditions locally, nationally and globally. The overarching picture of punk that
emerges from this research can be generally summarized along the lines of: punk marks the re168!
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emergence of an avant-garde, often popularized through the intentional creation of moral panics
in socially conservative post-war nations, updated for and wryly subverting consumer culture,
communist ideology and intrusion into private life, cold war politics, globalized power
structures, religious fanaticism or whatever social issues are considered most pressing and in
need of rupture while attempting to carve out independent niches in these societies.
The breadth and diversity of scholarship on punk illustrates that punk has proven to be
eminently adaptable to the many social, cultural, religious, geographical, political, and economic
contexts to which it has spread. The directions sketched above have been and continue to be
productive lines of inquiry, although the macropolitical focus has, since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, shifted away from the politics of MAD and towards issues of globalizing
consumer culture.29 I’ve selected the above four categories because each inspects an important
part of the broader punk project. When taken together, the limitations of their individual
emphases is largely overcome and the common themes of direct action, engagement/DIY and the
advancing of individual difference as a communal unifier become evident.

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29

!Historical!studies!of!punk!continue!to!provide!novel!interpretations!of!punk’s!influence!and!meaning!behind!the!
Iron!Curtain.!Two!valuable!recent!contributions!in!the!East!German!context!are!William!Seth!Howes!2012!
dissertation!Punk,AvantHGardes:,Disengagement,and,the,End,of,East,Germany,and!Jeff!Hayton’s!2013!dissertation,!
Culture,from,the,Slums:,Punk,Rock,,Authenticity,and,Alternative,Culture,in,East,and,West,Germany.!Both!projects!
provide!detailed!overviews!of!East!German!punk!scenes!and!a!wealth!of!information!about!punk’s!reception!in!the!
GDR.!The!2005!anthology!of!essays!on!alternative!music!forms!in!East!Germany,!Wir,wollen,immer,artig,sein:,Punk,,
New,Wave,,Hiphop,und,IndependentHSzene,in,der,DDR,von,1980,bis,1990!also!provides!a!diverse!collection!of!
scholarship!on!subcultural!expression!in!the!GDR!through!nearly!50!articles!running!the!gamut!from!inspections!of!
punk!venues!(often!churches),!Stasi!infiltration,!style,!inspections!of!local!scenes!to!punk’s!spread!from!urban!
centers!to!the!countryside!in!addition!to!topics!on!other!subcultures!including!hip(hop!and!electronica.!!!!

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The Punk Philosopher / The Punk Ideologue
Discussing punk philosophies and ideologies is anything but a straightforward process. It
is here that the diversity of punk perspectives is most evident, and any analysis must situate itself
within the particular relevant punk philosophies and ideologies at play in the specific contexts of
the era, location and particular manifestations of punk under study. Punk ideologies are closely
aligned with the numerous punk subgenres and scenes, and can vary extensively within these
communities. To use an extreme example, Nazi punk, which embraces neo-Nazism, differs
starkly from the liberal, anti-authoritarian stance of the majority of punk subcultures, especially
the anarcho-punk community. Still, even they are tied together by several general tenets that
have been the focus of a productive and longstanding trajectory of punk scholarship in both
academic and lay punk scholarship.
Where the Wandervogel attempted to remain unaffiliated with agenda-driven groups and
movements, this has often not been the case in punk. In “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics:
Skinheads and ‘Nazi Rock’ in England and Germany,” Timothy Brown traces the relationship of
rock and later punk music in the history of right-wing youth movements, beginning with the
skinheads in London in the 1960s (the so-called “hard mods,” influenced initially, rather
ironically, by the Jamaican “rude boys” transplanted in London from the ghettos of Kingston)
and culminating in the anti-Romani, anti-Turk politics of right-wing youth in Germany and
elsewhere in Western Europe explored through lyrics such as Störkraft’s “We're Germany's real
police, we'll make the streets Turk-free” (Brown 171).30 Brown summarized this history by
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
30

!While!Störkraft!is!a!notorious!example!of!Rechtsrock,,this!translation!of!their!song!“Deutschlands!Polizei”!utilizes!
the!more!extreme!verse!often!substituted!and!screamed!by!skinheads!in!concert!“Wir!sind!Deutschlands!echte!
Polizei,!wir!machen!die!Straßen!türkenfrei.”!The!actual!line,!while!the!intent!is!likely!the!same,!is!slightly!less!
provocative:!“Wir!sind!Deutschlands!echte!Polizei,!wir!machen!die!Straßen!wirklich!frei.”!!

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noting that “[f]rom the Jamaican reggae prized by the original skinheads, to the ‘Oi! punk’ of the
skinhead revival, to the ‘Nazi rock’ associated with skinhead violence in the nineties, popular
music has been the site at which ideas of subcultural ‘cool’ and ‘authenticity,’ notions of race
and ethnicity, and an increasingly radical politics come together and overlap” (172). Brown also
notes that these areas—punk politics and punk aesthetics—are quite fluid.
While Timothy Brown investigated the far right within the British and German punk
scenes, many more scholars have focused on punk as a means for left-wing action. While the
majority of punks (and punk scholars) are today left-leaning, it should be remembered that issues
of the political were unbound in the initial punk moment, which intended to provoke and offend
both the left and right in equal measure. One of the results of the evolution of punk has been that
the liberal elements of punk subculture appear overrepresented in the literature. This is part of a
general neglect of those elements of punk that do not reflect positively upon the subculture
(sexism, violence, crime, hate groups, etc). This likely has to do with many punk scholars
emerging out of the left-leaning punk community, which results in a privileging of those
elements which cast punk in its most positive light. In addition, this concentration on
progressive, liberal elements of punk can be seen as an attempted corrective to the reactionary
social and medial receptions in which punk has been all-too-often cast as worthless, degenerate
and dangerous. But focusing too heavily upon the progressive, anti-corporate, anti-statist
elements of punk today threatens to cement this discourse too strongly at the expense of other
elements and alternate renderings of punk which are deserving of study. Looked at in light of this
present study, punk ideologies often served as rallying cries around which like-minded
individuals could rally. However in the fixedness of these ideologies and the uncompromising
adoption of their tenets, ideological punks drastically limited the focus of their engagement
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These ideological tangents into which punks often organized are all connected by punk’s
fundamental commonality: the do-it-yourself ethos. Jon Savage noted that “By the mid-1970s,
the music industry promoted a state of passivity. In contrast, punk sought to erase the boundary
between performer and audience, whether ideologically (anyone can do it) or physically…It was
a self-starter culture, and as it developed it took in other areas of media practice: magazines,
concerts, shops, graphics, record labels” (Savage 2012 147). Savage focuses in this passage (as
in his work more broadly) on the effects of punk on mass and popular culture, but the DIY idea
went far deeper than simply rejuvenating popular culture—DIY became interpreted across
punkdom as a way of living in the broadest sense. 31 This DIY legacy inflected all aspects of
punk—homebrewed fashion, cut-up and rearranged bricolage zines printed on photocopiers,
music recorded on tape recorders or not recorded at all, the creation of record companies and
distribution networks, punk squats, cooking and on and on. But the danger of too narrowly
defining the direction of DIY, evident in the politicization and ideological fracturing of punk
above, seriously limited its potential as an open and fluid lifestyle.

Punk Aesthetics
A number of large-scale historiographies have been written that privilege punk artistic
and stylistic practices as well as more focused studies such as those which inspect one area of
punk cultural productions (zines, music, literature, fashion, collage, etc.). Punk aesthetics
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31

!This!translation!of!DIY!aesthetics!to!the!erection!of!DIY!(or!DIO:!do(it(ourselves)!social,!political!and!economic!
counter(institutions!is!also!applicable!to!the!West!German!context,!and!has!been!discussed!by!scholars!on!both!
sides!of!the!Atlantic,!with!Hollow!Skai’s!Alles,nur,Geträumt,!Jeff!Hayton’s!Culture,from,the,Slums!and!Cyrus!
Shahan’s!Punk,Rock,and,German,Crisis,all!detailing!in!part!the!foundation!of!alternative!centers!of!cultural,!social,!
political!or!economic!spaces.!
!

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generally eschew the traditional definition of aesthetics as a search for the beautiful in favor of a
negative aesthetics built upon the ugly, deformed, decrepit, shocking, violent and ridiculous,
with a focus on how punk aesthetic practices function within the subculture and in their larger
societal contexts.
Punk aesthetics play out in many areas of punk expression from fashion, music and
literature to language, dance and gesture (punk posing, gobbing (spitting), puking, defecating,
etc). This range of expression is subsumed under the category of punk style, a wide-reaching
category that is intimately connected with other discourses on punk, most notably its DIY legacy
and social commentary. The exploration of aesthetic dimensions of punk was also one of the key
means through which punks explored their individual and shared identity and formed a critical
element of their engagement with the world and modern society. The internationally shared
commonalities in punk fashion and artistic expression (leather, safety pins, dyed hair, etc.) were
supplemented with national, local, scene-specific and individual accompaniments which often
expressed difference as these levels, distinguishing a punk from Düsseldorf from one from
London, Hamburg or other punks in the Düsseldorf scene.
The DIY charge to become directly engaged in one’s life and to live as a subject and
participant rather than as an objectified consumer permeated all levels of punk, and their
aesthetic representation of this difference formed the most visible articulation of this
participatory engagement. Tying this more closely to boredom, by taking fashion and art into
their own hands, punks positioned themselves outside of the codified reception of these trends
and, through the pastiche of assorted elements with which they chose to adorn themselves
illustrated the inherent meaninglessness of these found objects and symbols—an example of the
direct action which opened discourse on alternative modes of expression and engagement and, to
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return to Anderson’s conceptualization of boredom in modernity, undid the “durable repeated
socialspatial orderings that form boredom” (747).
This relation between boredom and style has remained unexplored, but the ties between
style and punk DIY have not. The direct engagement and circumvention and reinterpretation of
established stylistic and artistic convention and institutions hearkens back to the various avantgarde art movements of the 20th century. Punk aesthetics are heavily indebted to the avant-garde
art movements of the 20th century from Dadaism, Surrealism and Futurism in the early years of
the century to the Letterist, Lettrist and Situationist Internationals which emerged following
WWII.32 Punk can be read as a popular and amateur radical avant-garde outside the conventional
confines of the art community dedicated to the same ideals of provocation through negative
aesthetics and the potential to re-contextualize and undermine the social, political and cultural.
The contentious and incendiary punk engagement with society is reminiscent of the original
martial connotations of the avant-garde as a self-appointed vanguard, and punk’s focus not upon
the intrinsic aesthetic value (and salability) of its creations but upon their effect upon society and
the individual marks it as belonging closer to the original intent of Dada than the Pop Art that
followed in the 1960s.
But many punks saw beauty in punk’s negative aesthetics beyond the ability to shock and
provoke. Still others have applied punk aesthetic practices to commercial art, and many bands,
following the example of the Sex Pistols, pursued major label contracts. Many more adopted
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32

!The!histories!and!philosophy!of!these!groups!is!far!too!complex!to!fully!elaborate!upon!here.!For!those!seeking!
more!information,!Dada:,Art,and,AntiHArt!remains!an!influential!reader!on!Dada!history!and!philosophy,!as!does!
The,Dada,Almanac,!both!of!which!contain!foundational!writings!on!Dada.!For!a!primer!on!the!Situationist!
International,!the!Situationist,International,Anthology,provides!an!English!language!translation!of!the!most!
influential!writings!of!its!members,!presented!chronologically.!The!2004!collection!Guy,Debord,and,the,Situationist,
International:,texts,and,documents,focuses!more!upon!the!writings!of!the!Situationist!International’s!most!
influential!contributor!Guy!Debord!and!interpretations!of!his!work!and!philosophy!by!contemporary!scholars.!

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punk style without understanding the ideology behind it (the so-called “poseur”). As with most
things punk, the lines are blurred and arriving at a distilled essence of “punk” (and who can be
called “punk”) remains elusive, if often hotly contested. Still, one of the key characterizations of
punk around the globe, even if punks themselves have often been unaware of this legacy, has
been the application of avant-garde expression and its potential to open up counter-narratives.
Tricia Henry discussed the affinity of purpose in 1984 in “Punk and Avant-Garde Art”:
Punk and all avant-garde art reacts against established theories and techniques of
art as well as against the society which produces them. Both prize the artist as
revolutionary and project themselves toward the future to what they consider a
more pertinent view of the world than that reflected by traditional values. They
also create an artist’s world—a social strata specifically oriented toward the arts.
‘Avant-garde’ is comparable to the punk idea of the ‘new wave.’ Both describe
active focus at the edge of change creating a new aesthetic. (Henry 30)33
Punk was rarely about formal elements of artistic expression (be it in areas of musical
proficiency, lyric composition, painting, or collage), but rather art in the service of dilettantism,
making a statement and experimenting with its ability to foster new ways of thinking and new
modes of engagement with the world. As such, punks’ aesthetic articulation of these ideals form
a major pillar of punk engagement as a counter to the disengagement and alienation they felt to
be endemic to modern life. Punk aesthetics are therefore one of the most important elements in
the punk attempt to reclaim the ability to act.
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33

!The!punk!conception!of!the!“new!wave”!is!related!to!the!musical!genre!which!emerged!out!of!punk!in!the!late(
1970s,!but!distinct!from!the!commercialized!turn!taken!as!New!Wave!groups!found!mainstream!success.!This!
distinction!holds!true!for!the!West!German!punk!and!Neue,Deutsche,Welle,as!well,!with!distinctions!drawn!
between!later!commercial!acts!like!Nena!and!groups!like!Abwärts,!Andreas,Dorau,,Deutsch,Amerikanische,
Freundschaft,(DAF),and!Freiwillige,Selbstkontrolle,(FSK).!In!the!West!German!context,!the!original!Neue,Deutsche,
Welle,project!is!often!used!synonymously!with!punk.!!!

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The importance of subcultural style and its relation to the social, cultural and political
contexts of punk has been at the center of punk studies since the first scholarly monograph on the
subject, Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Writing as part of the Birmingham
Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), Hebdige was part of the turn away from
viewing subcultures as a problem of youth deviants in need of rehabilitation and towards
appreciating and understanding these subcultures as part of an ongoing societal response from
the margins with their own demands for recognition, automony and agency. As Hebdige
summarizes: “Subcultures are therefore expressive forms but what they express is, in the last
instance, a fundamental tension between those in power and those condemned to subordinate
positions and second-class lives. This tension is figuratively expressed in the form of subcultural
style.” (132). For Hebdige, subcultural style is a manifestation not only of class differences, but
also of any group existing in the margins of society (such as youth, racial minorities, or
immigrants).

Punk Rock
Punk’s influence in rock culture and within the music industry has been enormous, an
influence which has been the subject of a large body of scholarship. Much of this scholarship
reads punk through its role as part of the history of rock culture as well as investigates how punk
diverged from this history. Of the many works published on punk in this vein, Jon Savage’s
England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond provides one of the most
enduring histories of punk and its fallout. In 1976 Savage began producing an early punk zine,
London’s Outrage, which led to him landing a job in 1977 for the British Sounds magazine,

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where he rose to prominence for his detailed coverage of the punk scene. England’s Dreaming,
which he researched throughout the late 1980s, was the result of his years of experience at the
epicenter of British punk and is enriched by countless interviews with some of punk’s biggest
players.34 It remains the definitive work detailing UK punk’s rise and fall and, in familiar
fashion, takes as its beginning the creation of the Sex Pistols and ends with their final show. But
Savage takes a somewhat different approach to his history—one that is founded on punk as an
answer to music industry complacency and the intentional creation of a moral panic in order to
restart a stagnant British youth culture. “’When we first met John Lydon [later to become Johnny
Rotten of the Sex Pistols],’ says Paul Cook [drummer for the Pistols], ‘I remember saying to him
how nothing was happening in music and how this whole youth movement needed something to
get them going again. After the Skinheads, Teds and Mods, everything had passed in a bit of a
lull since 1970 and it was now 1975. Five years had passed.’ None of the Sex Pistols was an
intellectual (neither was McLaren for that matter), but they didn’t have to be: they were already
immersed in this media/youth culture discourse and in the history of pop itself” (Savage 1992
165).
Punk is in many ways a victim of its own success. Punk utilized existing mass media
distribution channels like a virus to spread its message. Shock and disgust were utilized as tools
not only of self-expression, but also in order to garner attention and arouse curiosity. This
potential was quickly sensed by the British major labels, who rapidly signed punk bands such as

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34

!The!common!practice!of!approaching!punk!studies!through!those!most!involved!(for!example!the!Sex!Pistols,!The!
Clash!or!The!Ramones)!has!been!critiqued!for!failing!to!adequately!present!a!broader!portrayal!of!the!diversity!and!
disparate!manifestations!of!punk.!By!concentrating!upon!those!who!achieved!commercial!or!popular!success,!punk!
studies!that!limit!themselves!to!this!approach!in!a!way!commit!a!grievous!oversight!(or!at!least!severely!limit!
themselves)!by!reading!punk!as!those!elements!which!popular!culture!has!embraced!and!codified.!!!!!

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the Sex Pistols in anticipation of and in order to promote the new punk fad.35 As punk grew, so
did a backlash within many scenes against the major labels and their attempts to characterize,
define, monetize and profit from the emerging subculture. This anti-corporate, anti-mass-media
stance quickly manifested itself in punk productions—foremost in zines and lyrics—which
circled around to the desire and need to erect autonomous, alternative structures to create
platforms in order to be heard above the marginalizing and reductive definitions of punk churned
out by tabloid publications and morning talk-shows.
Little about punk was new, but nothing would ever be the same after. In the Fascist
Bathroom by Greil Marcus presents the reader with a pre-history of punk beginning with the
death of the idealism of the 1960s with The Rolling Stones’ 1969 album Let It Bleed, with songs
like “Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and then chronicles punk
until 1992, the year after Nirvana’s Nevermind, sometimes referred to as the year punk broke.
Marcus also notes that several pop and rock acts and albums, such as Fleetwood Mac and their
album Tusk, while not punk themselves, simply could not have existed without punk. Jon
Savage, re-emphasizing the importance of the punk project of the 1970s, despite its ephemeral
quality, closes England’s Dreaming with:

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35

!Precursors!to!punk!within!the!context!of!the!music!industry!abound.!Bands!such!as!Detroit’s!MC5!(who!in!1969!
opened!their!fast!and!gritty!“Kick!out!the!Jams”!with!the!screamed!line!“Kick!out!the!jams!motherfuckers!”)!and!
the!Stooges!(with!their!1969!3(chord!anthem!to!resignation!and!frustration!“I!wanna!be!your!Dog”)!epitomized!a!
sound!and!attitude!that!has!come!to!be!regarded!as!“proto(punk.”!Other!influences!included!Lou!Reed!and!John!
Cale’s!Velvet,Underground!(the!house!band!of!the!Factory!and!managed!by!Andy!Warhol),!Television!and!The,New,
York,Dolls.!Even!bands!like!The,Rolling,Stones,pushed!the!envelope!of!accepted!social!behavior!and!acceptable!
stage!presence.!Germany!laced!the!broad!base!of!musical!acts!of!the!US!and!Britain,!but!even!here!groups!like!Ton,
Steine,Scherben,and!Can,can!be!seen!as!highly!influential!on!West!German!punk.!Many!of!the!pieces!of!punk!were!
therefore!well(established!within!the!bounds!of!the!music!industry!by!the!mid(1970s!–!what!largely!set!punk!apart!
was!not!the!sound!or!the!antics!(although!one!could!argue!that!punk!differed!in!degree!or!intent),!but!rather!the!
scope!and!the!sheer!number!of!groups!that!emerged!out!of!the!democratization!of!these!possibilities!and!lifestyles!
for!the!dilettante!and!marginalized!(or!anyone!with!the!interest!to!become!involved).!!

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Punk was beaten, but it had also won. If it had been the project of the Sex Pistols
to destroy the music industry, then they had failed; but as they gave it new life,
they allowed a myriad of new forms to become possible. When Punk entered the
music and media industries, its vision of freedom was eventually swamped by
New-Right power politics and the accompanying value systems, but its original,
gleeful negation remains a beacon. History is made by those who say ‘No’ and
Punk’s utopian heresies remain its gift to the world (541).
This reinvigoration of the music industry—opening it up to those who historically had either not
considered it a possibility or whose sound never would have been acceptable—is one of the
major contributions pointed to by those who study punk’s relationship with mass culture.
In the West German context the debates about how punk should be understood vis-à-vis
the music industry and its fate as either a casualty of mass culture or re-invigorator of popular
culture has been a longstanding object of discussion between punks themselves and, more
recently, by scholars as well. Peter Tschmuck’s 2003 Kreativität und Innovation in der
Musikindustrie reads punk as part of an ongoing manipulation by a conservative but allencompassing music industry to dictate taste. He suggests that while the music industry has
allowed independent record companies to thrive (or created spin-off companies with the veneer
of independence), they still are able to exert a tremendous amount of clout when it comes to
which trends and sounds they will validate with mainstream approval and mass circulation. In
this, bands signing even to independent labels will work within an atmosphere largely dictated
from the music industry from above. His work complicates the picture of autonomy, reading the
taste-defining music industry as penetrating even subcultural spaces by privileging certain
sounds, looks and fads. His is a particularly bleak picture of the possibilities of artistic
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expression in modernity—a commonality his work shares with many who see punk simply as
another fad utilized, repackaged, refined and marketed by music executives.
Andreas Jakobs inspects punk improvisational aspects as contrived attempts to convey
notions of authenticity and freedom, reading punk into a line of affected improvisation stretching
back to composers of the 17th and 18th century in his article “Der Gestus des Improvisatorischen
und der Schein der Freiheit.” On punk, he writes: “im Punk wurde mangelnde Beherrschung
musikalisch-technischen Handwerks geradezu als Kennzeichen besonderer Authentizität gelesen.
Dass sich Gruppen wie die “Sex Pistols" in einer dezidierten Nicht-Handwerklichkeit
inszenierten und Gründungsmythen bemüht wurden wie das “Herumhängen" in der von
Vivienne Westwood und Malcolm McLaren betriebenen Boutique “SEX" bzw. (ab 1977)
“Seditionaries", diente als Ausgangspunkt einer Musik mit geringer harmonischer Komplexität,
großer Knappheit, textinhaltlicher gesellschaftlicher Opposition und postulierter Verneinung des
instrumentalen Könnens. Dieser Anspruch wird auf seltsame Weise konterkariert durch die sehr
“sauber" produziert und gespielt wirkenden (und überdies recht erfolgreichen) Studio-Alben der
Formation” (15). This characterization may hold somewhat for commercially successful groups,
but, like many who inspect punk within the context of the music industry, completely omits
those who did not achieve nor seek commercial success—which in punk is the vast majority. It
also neglects aspects of punk outside of music. Again, we find ourselves in muddied water—
punk was able contain both affected amateurism and the actual amateur—it was all a matter of
choice and intent. While some punks did affect dilettantism, many more were dilettantes. That
this fact was embraced, celebrated and represented in punk productions by youth in the emergent
DIY culture should not be read (only) as an affectation—especially given the extremely limited
means of production and the terribly low-quality of many recordings—but rather the result of a
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huge influx of the newly-inspired but amateur and uninitiated into the realms of cultural
production. This model for action, even if exaggerated, was certainly made much more salient by
the sometimes affected dilettantism of major punk bands. As Lawrence Lessig noted in a talk on
participatory culture when discussing the continuing importance of celebrating the amateur: “I
don't mean amateurish culture, I mean culture where people produce for the love of what they're
doing and not for the money. I mean the culture that your kids are producing all the time”
(Lessig 2007). Punk was, in its popular reception by youth, both a call to action (with bands like
The Clash and The Ramones from abroad or Big Balls and later groups like Trio in West
Germany showing the simplicity of self-expression) as well as an answer to a sterile mass culture
that instead celebrated the act of production itself.
This suggests that, while recording companies have manipulated and benefitted from
punk in both recruiting popular bands to their labels and in repackaging the sound and aesthetics
of punk to serve their goals of profit maximization and market control, punk has also
manipulated and benefitted from the music industry. While certainly those groups which have
pursued mainstream success have gained a great deal from the resources and channels available
through a major label contract, punk as a whole likely never would have spread to the bored
youth it reached had it not been for the far-reaching market saturation of the recording industry.
Further, as Rombes suggests, punk dramatically influenced the structure and composition of the
music industry, paving the way for groups which, while not punk themselves, could not have
existed without it.
The role of punk in mainstream popular culture has been likened to a virus: it is spread
through hosts (the music industry, news, moral panics) unaware, dismissive or indifferent to its
potential and allows those who encounter it to work backwards to the marginalized elements
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which were excluded or vilified to realize its latent call to action and become directly involved.
In this, punk is able to exist in the culture industry simultaneously as both a consumable product
in line with what Heidegger saw as standing reserve and also as a provocation for those who
encounter it to take its latent potential for self-expression and engagement to heart.

The Punk Political
Despite an initial aloofness from discussions of the social issues and political
developments that punk criticized hippies and the counterculture of the 60s of talking to death,
punk, like the Wandervogel, has always been intrinsically political.36 From its in-your-face style
to its in-your-face declarations (“I wanna destroy…passers-by!”), the initial punk provocation
and demand for recognition quickly moved beyond a pseudo-anarchic notion of simply tearing
down society into many disparate projects reflecting the desires, prejudices and perspectives of
those drawn to punk’s openness. This can be seen in the proliferation of various sub-subcultures
within the punk subculture itself following the splintering of the initial punk moment. The most
researched of these is likely the liberal anarcho-punk element, which positions itself as a
response not only to existing societal malaise, but also globalized corporatization and political
corruption. In an effort to present concrete ideas that moved beyond the initial punk rupture, this
trajectory of punk in many ways circled back to the previous student movements of the 1960s,
but with a much more radical call for direct action and participation in effecting change. Instead
of entering into society and reforming it from the inside, many punks began establishing parallel
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36

!These!phenomena!were!political!in!the!sense!of!their!provocation!for!direct!participation!and!implicit!rejection!
of!societal!convention,!not!in!any!intrinsic!political!orientation,!which!as!we!will!see!is!difficult!to!discern!in!the!
many!conflicting!ideologies!at!home!within!punk!and!Wandervogel.!!!

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institutions, distribution channels and even radical political parties, such as the Anarchistische
Pogo-Partei Deutschlands.37
The late 1970s and early 1980s saw what many youth perceived as increasing militarism
and cold war tensions after a period of relative détente in the 1960s and early 70s. The elections
of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
and revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua portended an era of heightened tension. The transition
within British popular culture saw the rise of New Wave, which following punk’s incursions
shifted to more readily accessible sounds often combined with concern for social issues. Artists
brought songs of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) protest to top 40 radio, as with
Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark in their 1980 song “Enola Gay” and Frankie Goes to
Hollywood, with their 1984 UK hit single “Two Tribes Go to War,” “a pounding exegesis of the
Cold War standoff replete with a video depicting Reagan and Chernenko wrestling in a bear pit”
(Worley, 68).
As the West German punk scene gave rise to the Neue Deutsche Welle, similar
mainstream successes arose, perhaps most famously Nena with the international anti-war single
99 Luftballons and Trio’s “da da da,” an example of pop music stripped down to its absolute
basics with a video accompanying the song showing the utter simplicity of the music. The
backlash within the original punk/NDW scene was intense, with Hilsberg and others
recommending boycotting the new NDW and the intrusion of commercial enterprise attempting
to cash in on the musical style built as a labor of love by thousands of dedicated youth.
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37

!The!APPD!has,!since!its!origins!in!1981!as!a!tongue(in(cheek!joke,!actually!developed!a!coherent!set!of!political!
demands!such!as!the!legalization!of!all!drugs,!a!youth!pension!(which!they!argue!makes!a!great!deal!more!sense!
than!waiting!until!retirement,!when!one!might!be!infirm!or!dead)!and!the!abolition!of!compulsory!education,!
police!and!other!bastions!of!authority.!These!exist!alongside!classic!punk!provocations!such!as!their!demand!that!
Germany!be!restored!to!its!borders!from!1237,!combined!with!the!call!for!the!ultimative,und,totale,
Rückverdummung,and!die,Balkanisierung,Deutschlands.!
!

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Differentiating between the two camps is however utterly unsatisfying, as the co-option of the
musical style pioneered by early NDW groups (once these groups had proven through
independent record label sales that the sound could be economically viable) was ultimately,
given the nature of the entertainment industry to absorb new directions, an inevitability.
Other songs, such as Fehlfarben’s song Militürk (written by Gabi Delgado of Deutsch
Amerikanisch Freundschaft) from their now-classic album Monarchie und Alltag irreverently
fused cold war tensions with fears of cultural intrusion in lines like “Kebabträume in der
Mauerstadt/ Türk-Kültür hinter Stacheldraht/ Neu-Izmir in der DDR/ Atatürk der neue Herr/
Miliyet für die Sowjetunion/ In jeder Imbißstube ein Spion/ Im ZK - Agent aus Türkei/
Deutschland, Deutschland/ Alles ist vorbei.” Many scholars have analyzed punk as a reaction to
cold war politics and social unease, as in Matthew Worley’s essay, “One Nation Under the
Bomb: The Cold War and British Punk to 1984.” In this study he explains the importance of
cold war politics noting that “[p]unk was quick to pick up on the resurgent Cold War tensions of
the early 1980s. The threat of a nuclear war was ‘the most important thing in our lives,’
Discharge's Bones said in a rare interview, and punk provided both a platform and a stimulus for
those who wished to respond” (Worley, 69). In another interview cited by Worley, The Sex
Pistols' Johnny Rotten matter-of-factly said, “If it offends you, stop it. You've got to or else you
just become apathetic and complacent yourself. You end up with a mortgage watching TV with
2.4 kids out in suburbia—and that's disgusting” (Worley, 69). 38
But punk proved itself to be adaptable to other social realities as well. Where the
differences between the social critiques offered by punks in Britain and West Germany are
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38

!This!interview!originally!appeared!in!Caroline!Coon,!"Sex!Pistols:!Rotten!to!the!Core,"!Melody,Maker,!19!
November!1976.!

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relatively minor, the capacity of punk to problematize whatever social reality it found itself in is
much more evident when encountering punk’s reception in Germany’s other cold-war half. Seth
Howes’ recent dissertation project, Punk Avant-Gardes, along with Jeff Hayton, provide to date
the most complete handling of the why punk was seen as a threat to the established order by both
East German youth and those in power. Howes reads punk disengagement as a counter-narrative
to the overarching East German ideals of an engaged citizenry moving always into a better
future. Through their aesthetic practices and simply by inhabiting public spaces, Howes suggests
that from:
punks’ transgressions of rules governing the uses (and usefulness) of bodies and
spaces emerged a theory of punk and of the vulnerability of East German public
spaces to punk’s transgressive visuality. This theory’s vehemence and
sophistication offer more compelling testimony to punk’s impact on the security
of East Germany than any of the East German punks’ own claims to represent a
political danger ever could. Indeed, merely by asserting their presence in public—
by producing punk spaces through the styling, positioning, and presentation of
their own bodies—punks disengaged these spaces from the broader cityscapes in
which they were emplaced, uncoupling punk sites from the ordered functioning of
East German spaces and performing an inscrutable, unruly departure for their own
benefit — and for the benefit of anybody who cared to look. (187)
I see a parallel between my project and Howes’ final remarks that it was not punk proclamations
about the threat they posed as an overt political danger, but rather simply their inhabiting of and
visibility in public spaces in the GDR which marked punk’s greatest impact upon East German
society. Howes’ conclusion on punk’s potential to unsettle accepted social discourses and rupture
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the socialspatial ordering of East German society evidences the importance of the engaged and
unbound worldviews at the heart of phenomena such as Wandervogel and punk, regardless of the
specific social conditions in which they swim.39

Towards a Synthesis
For West German punks, their boredom rested upon not simply the result of a largelyimported and inaccessible mass culture, a lack of political agency or cold war tensions. This
boredom also reached beyond school and family to all aspects of their lives which fostered their
disengagement from society. Similarly, the writings on punk have been diverse, which reflects
the incredible diversity of punk itself. Because of this complexity, inspecting a fragment of punk
(for example fashion, zines, music, or politics) and limiting this discussion to a specific time,
place and scene is often the only viable means of gaining a foothold on the topic. But this is not
without its limitations.
One of the most persistent dilemmas of punk, and one that has carried over into punk
scholarship, has been the tradeoff in defining punk and a punk identity with the fluidity and
openness that has characterized the punk project from its inception.40 Dick Hebdige recognized
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39

!That!these!socialspatial!orderings!lead!to!boredom!for!many!has!already!been!discussed,!however!it!would!make!
for!a!valuable!study!to!investigate!through!the!construct!of!boredom!the!specific!iteration!of!participatory!
engagement!in!the!face!of!modern!alienation!in!the!East!German!context.!
!
40
!Punk!scenes!have!of!course!also!been!exclusive!–!acceptance!within!a!specific!scene!is!earned!through!
participation!and!involvement,!not!simply!through!dress!or!style!(although!these!remain!important!markers!of!
belonging).!However!the!participatory!ideals!underpinning!punk!leave!it!open!to!anybody!and!to!different!
interpretations,!as!evidenced!by!the!various!subgenres!of!punk!which!have!emerged!from!and!often!coexist!in!
overlapping!circles!with!punk:!glam!punk,!horror!punk,!punk,pathetique,,hardcore!punk,!oi!,!riot!grrrl,!emo,!ska!
punk,!straight!edge!(the!clear(mind,!anti(drug!and!alcohol!set),!skate!punk,!Celtic!punk,!queercore,!taqwacore!(a!
portmanteau!of!taqwa,!the!Arabic!word!meaning!something!close!to!“pious,”!and!“hardcore”!–!taqwacore!is!a!
largely!US!based!punk!subculture!of!punk!which!promulgates!a!liberal!and!open!interpretation!of!Islam),!Christian!

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this tradeoff in 1979 when he wrote that “[i]t is highly unlikely…that any of the subcultures
described in this book would recognize themselves reflected here. They are still less likely to
welcome any efforts on our part to understand them. After all, we, the sociologists and interested
straights, threaten to kill with kindness the forms we seek to elucidate” (139). Even when entered
into with the best of intentions, scholarly inquiry into punk threatens to wear the ruts in the road
a little deeper, and makes it that much more difficult to view punk as something outside of
established discourses. Worse, in viewing punk through codified, institutionalized and leveling
discourses, themselves largely the result of modern rational approaches to the study of the world,
scholarship on punk threatens to turn its object of study into something it wasn’t. Punk risks
becoming reduced to another identity, another ordered system amongst many others perpetuating
its own narratives—one of the very things it sought to resolve. Critically for this project, such an
iteration of punk does not disclose the potential to move beyond the root causes of modern
boredom.
The codification of a punk aesthetic provides an excellent example of this compromise
between inspecting its uniqueness and the drive to explain and order it. While the tools and
trappings of the punk avant-garde remain, they have lost a great deal of their capacity to subvert
and shock. The word “punk” conjures up images of outrageously dressed belligerent kids with
brightly colored hair dancing violently to loud, fast-paced music played by equally outrageously
dressed bands barely proficient with their instruments. To an extent, the establishment of a punk
look and sound was inevitable and even necessary, as it allowed for those within the subculture
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
punk,!and!Nazi!punk!–!among!many!others.!Punk’s!legacy!in!the!sheer!number!of!subgenres!that!have!emerged!
(and!different!scenes!within!these!genres)!is!testament!to!its!elasticity!and!the!openness!to!interpretation!of!the!
punk!DIY!project.!The!punk!model!also!heavily!influenced!those!genres!coming!after!it:!specifically!the!various!
subculture!of!electronic!music!and!hip(hop.!The!general!idea!is:!If!you!don’t!identify!with!an!existing!scene,!start!
one!yourself.!!!!!!!!!

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to mark their difference both for each other and everybody else and allowed punk youth to
express their program and philosophy through their appearance. Hebdige recognized the great
limitation of this form of resistance: the ease of its recuperation. Subcultural style only retains its
power while relatively unknown by those on its outside. Once familiar, its capacity to outrage
and motivate is diminished and subcultural style can be reappropriated, marketed and sold to the
masses as a disarmed (if still edgy) fashion choice.
Through this process, what is understood as “punk” becomes enshrined as something that
it was meant to be for only a moment. The extent to which even punks themselves have
embraced this codification is evident in the earlier discussion of the Hamburg scene and is also
one of the major foci of Monica Sklar’s 2013 Punk Style. On the role of the media in the
popularization and codification of punk style, Sklar writes: “outsiders learned about punk
primarily through the media, and the new converts had an aesthetic shaped by what was
presented to them, thus creating a cyclical truth with the power to endure. The challenge with
creating a costume dubbed in punk is that it does unify people to a set of ideas; however, it lacks
some of its original intension of creativity, individuality, and antiauthority” (7).41 This picture is
further clouded when Sklar answers the question posed in the section’s title “Is Punk Style Still
Extreme?”, noting that “In the 1970s, punk style was an affront to conventional society,” but that
today “a debate rages over how edgy it remains now that the style has so vastly diversified and
been adopted by high fashion and mainstream repeatedly” (146). She finds that, while the era of
punk’s ability to nearly universally shock and disgust is over, it remains contextually extreme in
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41

!This!is!especially!true!for!West!German!punk,!where!pictures!and!accounts!of!the!London!punk!scene!were!first!
disseminated!through!youth!magazines!(especially!Bravo,!which!provided!many!of!those!who!would!later!identify!
as!punk’s!first!encounter!with!the!subculture)!well!before!a!vast!majority!had!heard!the!music.!Punk!style!existed!
for!a!time!in!a!vacuum!as!a!sort!of!unattached!curiosity!in!the!Federal!Republic!–!clearly!provocative,!but!out!of!its!
element!and!in!unknown!territory!amongst!youth!who!were!unsure!how!it!should!be!interpreted.!!!!!!!

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certain realms such as the workplace, school and those areas where punk never registered (for
example in Iraq, where she mentions a recent trend where “emos” have been subjected to torture
and killing because of their choices of style)—this, Sklar suggests, proves that “punk style
remains controversial” (147). It certainly does, but not (as Sklar is careful to note) in the same
capacity. While punk style has endured, it has done so at the inevitable cost of gaining new
social definitions, meanings and acceptance. This element of punk—the reception of its style and
the reciprocal influence of this popular reception on punk subculture itself—ultimately focuses
upon an element of punk which has been largely reconciled to dominant societal discourses.
Style remains extremely important, but in dwelling upon a codified and relatively static punk
style, the dynamic and disposable element of punk is discarded without recognizing the call to
direct action, discovery and innovation which inspired so many in the first place.
This focus is also evident in the other topics touched upon throughout this section.
Viewing punk as a response to rock culture for example constrains its focus to its influence
within this bubble. And punk ideologies reduce punk to a diverse but ultimately static system of
sincerely held beliefs, the adoption of which fundamentally limits the punk project of exploring
and expressing personal difference. As Hayton notes, it shuts down the potentials of Anderssein.
Punk scholarship has progressed from Hebdige in a variety of productive directions,
inspecting punk from a variety of angles, but it has often done so at the cost of cementing the
discourses used to define what punk was and is. Academic research into punk is all too often
received by punks themselves as “steif, systematisch und langweilig,” to quote the forward of
Berndt Hahn’s PUNK: die zarteste Versuchung, seit es Schokolade gibt.42 As a review by Tobias
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
42

!The!academic!medium!will!likely!never!be!something!which!everybody!will!engage!with.!It!suffers!many!of!the!
same!disengaging!limitations!endemic!to!modernity,!especially!in!its!foundational!rational!objectivity!and!mission!

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Schärtl for the 2008 Archiv der Jugendkulteren reprint of Hollow Skai’s Punk: Versuch der
künstlerischen Realisierung einer neuen Lebenhaltung began: “Wir brauchen keine Bücher über
Punk. Wir brauchen Punk-Bücher.” (Schärtl) These evaluations suggests an ongoing unease
about scholarly inquiry into punk, an unease which Hebdige had already perceived in 1979.
This is one of the major goals of this dissertation: providing an alternate orientation of
punk’s place as part of a longstanding confrontation of German youth with life in modernity,
specifically in the proliferation of ways of living which have fostered boredom. I hope that punks
(and present-day Wandervögel) do see themselves reflected in this work. This project is specific
to the (West) German context, but the prevalence with which boredom has been thematized by
punks across the globe and the problematization of boredom in punk cultural productions
ranging from music to zines to film across the world suggests that an in-depth inspection of
boredom in these other contexts might be fruitful. And as this study inspects punk and
Wandervogel youth reactions to boredom-inducing social realities which continue to exist for
many today, it is my hope that this analysis will contribute to a discussion of a critical but
understudied element of responses to the challenges of modern life. Viewing punk as a reaction
to (but not necessarily always against) boredom brings a new perspective to understanding some
of the reasons why punk spread where it did and why it and the ideas underpinning it have since
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
to!explain,!categorize!and!understand.!Writing!about!punk!(and!the!Wandervogel)!shares!many!similarities!with!
writing!on!boredom!in!modernity:!the!same!issues!that!gave!rise!to!boredom,!which!I!argue!was!one!of!the!major!
impetuses!which!in!turn!gave!rise!to!the!Wandervogel,and!punk,!exist!within!the!language,!structures!and!methods!
which!have!been!institutionalized!to!discuss!and!understand!these!phenomena.!Punks!have!attempted!to!establish!
a!punk!form!of!scholarship!since!the!early!1980s,!when!Hollow!Skai!wrote!his!Magisterarbeit,!titled,Punk:,Versuch,
der,künstlerischen,Realisierung,einer,neuen,Lebenshaltung,!which!took!the!form!of!his!zine!No,Fun.!With!its!
characteristic!pastiche!of!cut(outs,!collages,!articles!and!comics!mixed!with!a!well(researched!exploration!of!punk!
lifestyles!and!aesthetics,!Punk,remains!an!intriguing!attempt!to!fuse!punk!aesthetics!and!the!desire!to!constantly!
explore!and!push!boundaries!wherever!they!exist.!Skai’s!work!will!be!a!major!theme!of!chapter!four!of!this!
dissertation.!Bernd!Hahn’s!Punk:,die,zarteste,Versuchung,,seit,es,Schokolade,gibt,!quoted!above,,is!another!
attempt!at!this!fusion,!bringing!together!a!study!of!the!major!groups,!scenes!and!modes!of!thought!in!early!West!
German!punk,!combining!this!exploration!with!cut(out!zine!fragments,!newspaper!articles!and!pictures!in!a!
synthesis!which!makes!sense!of!both!the!academic!and!the!aesthetic!representation!of!punk.!!

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proven so adaptable and remained so popular. In addition, this project also serves to illuminate
an unstudied antecedent to punk in the Wandervogel, hopefully allowing punk to be
contextualized in new ways.
While both the Wandervogel and punk should rightly be understood in the context of the
major conflicts of the 20th century, my research into Wandervogel and punk youth cultures
suggests that these youth subcultures also belong to and deserve to be inspected through a less
evident discourse, one that is best characterized not by upheaval and disaster, but by profound
and often distressing sameness: boredom. With the cataclysmic events of two modern wars, the
systematic, industrialized murder of millions and the escalation of the cold war with its threat of
Mutually Assured Destruction—and with Germany squarely involved with all of these
developments—it is logical to view German youth as part of one of the most dynamic and
tumultuous periods of human history on record. And the role of and response by youth in and to
these events should be a major component of research. But there is also another important
trajectory that, likely due to its seeming triviality, superficially mundane veneer and disruption
by the disastrous events of the 20th century which have become the prime lens through which to
contextualize what has come after, has all too often has been lost in these political and social
upheavals. Life for many has increasingly become an exercise in staving off what Elisabeth
Goodstein marks as the “subjective malaise”—the boredom—of existence in modernity. A great
deal of effort has gone into thinking through the meanings, relevant influences and lessons of the
major historical events of the 20th century—but this (often all-consuming) thinking about has
done little to create more engaged and interested masses. Instead, a pronounced many have
become disengaged and disinterested spectators to the monumental events of big history.

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Ultimately, what was exposed in West German society with the arrival of punk was not
only the power of the (here: punk) spectacle to shock and outrage, nor the subculture’s capacity
as a vehicle to express dissatisfaction and contempt, or even its power to reflect and subvert
social norms by exposing their fixedness and arbitrariness in society—although all of these are
certainly important. These lessons had been demonstrated many times over during the previous
century, spanning from Dada to the Situationists. In the punk context, these all belonged to a
very specific moment: the initial punk rupture.43 While its style has of course remained part of
punk’s toolbox and identity, punk laid all its cards on the table with its emergence. In doing so,
the punk rupture served as a catalyst that, aided extraordinarily by sensationalist media coverage,
provided youth in a rapidly globalizing world with a blueprint to claim a repossessed agency to
do it all themselves. DIY was born out of the necessity of those wishing to express themselves
but not having a platform and illuminated not only a model to create such a platform, but also
cast into stark relief (aided of course by punk aesthetic practices) how boring the alternative of
globalized mass consumer culture, cold war politics and all the trappings of modern life were.
After punk, for those who had understood the lesson, there was no going back. DIY could be
applied anywhere, but in the creation of structures to explore and foster difference, its application
towards Anderssein, which functioned explicitly against the leveling and homogenizing effects
of modern life, DIY takes on an even greater importance.
Pete Shelley of The Buzzcocks put out a one-page zine in 1977 called Plaything. He
articulated in his single-page manifesto in Plaything NO 2 on the meaning of the new wave a
synthesis of DIY, personal exploration and the political across boundaries, writing:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
43

!Or!better:!initial!punk!ruptures.!As!Sklar’s!anecdote!about!the!torture!and!stoning!of!Iraqi!“emo”!youth!makes!
clear,!punk!can!inspire!similar!responses!in!any!situation!in!which!it!is!encountered.!But!again,!this!initial!rupture!
also!sets!in!motion!a!cycle!of!detournement!and!recuperation.!!!!

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It [the New Wave] has succeeded and failed…The success is due to action—the
failiure due to apathy…One wave does not make much headway up the beach. If
the tide is to turn then one wave must be followed by another and so on until the
cliffs start to crumble. This is just the new wave of the turning tide…The NEW
WAVE is not just about music. It is a challenge to Consider every thing you do,
think , and feel. For some it has meant a change in fashion and in life style. But
most of the fashion has become cliched and most of the groups have become
boring old farts…Politics is people & people is YOU I’m not on about party
politics not the NF or The Tories. I’m talking about PERSONAL politics. The
way that you react to the people around you…The NEW WAVE is like a spring
clean. You were prepared to throw out the rubbish in your wardrobe and your
record collection. So why not chuck out all the prides & prejudices cluttering up
your personality???? [sic].
This call for continued action and innovation reached beyond punk as a collective movement of
youth and into personal, individual life. Shelley issued a final rejoinder to end his tirade,
switching from typeset to scrawl in sharpie: “This is all I could think of. Keep the new wave
NEW.” The social currents unleashed by punk were meant to endure and contribute to future
waves of direct involvement once the punk wave had crashed. To continue Shelley’s metaphor,
the major failure of punk in this sense was that many rode the wave to shore and clung to the
debris it had brought with it instead of returning to the depths for another salvo.
This resting upon a past and tried forms of expression in punk was quickly problematized
by several zine writers in West Germany as well, who would rally for exploration of DIY
expression in other forms and directions and for the construction of more independent
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institutions from video clubs to independent record stores to venues, labels and tape exchanges.
Many, especially in the hardcore scene, saw punk as something sacred and defined. Others saw
punk as a starting point—an eye-opening awakening which could lead to self-exploration and the
search for personal meaning in a wide-open world. Punk had been a great adventure, but defining
oneself by punk’s heyday in the late-1970s became, for many, just as boring as anything else.
For punk to remain a living culture, in their minds it had continue to explore new modes of
expression and seek out new adventures—to become something other than punk as it was.
In the West German context, Cyrus Shahan suggests that “[f]raming punk as part of the
avant-garde makes understandable the internal logic behind punk’s unwavering devotion to
rupturing representation and to its continuous self-fracturing: punk was never concerned with its
own institutionalization, and its apocalyptic visions of the present sought explicitly to avoid
steadfast oppositions (of authentic or co-opted) out of the scramble of codes structuring society”
(Shahan 2013 6). Shahan goes on to critique German sociological research on youth and
subcultures, especially that of the 1970s and 1980s, which tended to view punk and other youth
subcultures as serving a relatively straightforward role as both trendsetters for mass consumer
culture and as hopelessly bound to this mainstream. While these studies do largely move beyond
viewing youth subcultures as a problem in need of rehabilitation, they force too narrow a view
onto them. Shahan cites Rolf Schwendter’s 1971 Theorie der Subkultur and rightly criticizes the
rigid methodological attempt to subject youth subcultures to strict categorization and his
neglecting to see in youth subcultures like punk a site of “resistance or refusal…that was central
to British subcultural theory” (Shahan 2013 14). Shahan continues that, since Schwendter, Dieter
Baacke’s 1987 Jugend und Jugendkulturen: Darstellung und Deutung and Peter Ulrich Hein’s
Protestkultur und Jugend acknowledge the importance of subcultural negotiation of the complex
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sociocultural and political issues at work in modern consumer society, but continue to resign
these subcultures to ultimate mainstream assimilation.
These studies serve to reduce youth subcultures to the workhorses of mass and popular
culture and overlook the diversity of these subcultures, the intent of the individual and the
selective assimilation and reinterpretation by their respective consumer mainstreams. In this,
such studies focus on only the most visible and salable comfortably confrontational subcultural
elements of these phenomena. They also ignore the inherent critique of mass consumer culture
and attempts to foster new engagements with existence embedded in many of these subcultures
and the foundational and motivational engagement with boredom which inspired so many youth
to take action. Such an approach also fails to explain punk in other contexts—such as in GDR.
Work in the vein of Baacke and Schwendter ultimately serves to describe only a small reconciled
portion of subcultural expression and to confine rather than open up discourse.
Still, there have been studies in the German context which have inspected subculture with
the broader net cast through the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS).
Foremost among these is Thomas Lau’s 1992 Die heiligen Narren: Punk 1976-1986. Lau’s work
was published as the inaugural monograph of Walter de Gruyer’s Materiale Soziologie series,
which sought to approach sociology through “konkrete kulturelle Lebensformen.” The series was
focused on presenting scholarship that aligned with the practical demand that “Beschreibung,
Deutung und Theorie müssen sich am Material bewähren, an der soziologischen Rekonstruktion
von Milieus, Stilen, kommunikativen Mustern, Handlungsfiguren und Sinnkonstruktionen des
gesellschaftlichen Lebens” (Lau 1992 II). Lau’s book, in line with this mission, attempted to
treat punk in West Germany and Britain in its totality with a focus upon the individual

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subcultures in their own right. Not simply viewing punk as a doomed-to-assimilation arm of
mass culture, Lau introduced subcultural expression as the articulation of difference and dissent.
Lau identifies three questions as especially important in his analysis. “Worauf reagiert
Punk? Wie ist eine Gesellschaft beschaffen, die derartige Reaktionen ermöglicht? Ist ‘Punk’
wirklich neu, oder besetzt ‘Punk’ nur eine freigewordene Nische?” (2). These questions are
similar to those of the CCCS, especially the work of Hebdige. It is no surprise then that Hebdige
is heavily cited and Lau’s book covers many of the same topics (a heavy focus on style) and
British subcultures (mods, teds, skinheads, rastafarians, etc). But Lau also brings this inspection
to the West German context. He valuably differentiates West German punk from its British
cousin with a demographic analysis of West German punks. In inspecting arrest reports, he
shows that West German punks came from a wide variety of backgrounds, not, as in Britain,
prevalently from working-class homes. “In einer…Untersuchung der Berliner Polizei 1981
werden 114 straffällig gewordene Punks erfaßt. ‘Von den untersuchten Punkern waren 51
Schüler, 31 Lehrlinge, 13 Arbeiter, 18 Beruf und einer Student.’ ’79 Punker…stammten aus
gutbürgerlischen Elternhäusern’” (Lau 14).
These figures are fascinating, but likely do not provide an accurate assessment of the
socioeconomic composition of punks in West Germany as they only account for those youth who
put themselves in the position to be arrested and who were most identifiable and targeted as
punks by police. In addition, West German punk scenes differed from one another substantially,
so the demographics of the West Berlin punk scene may well not be representative of punk
elsewhere. Still, the clear diversity of punks in these arrest records strongly suggests that a classbased reading of punk in West Germany is far less valid than it might have been in Britain when
Hebdige wrote The Meaning of Style. As Cyrus Shahan writes: “Punk in Britain was about the
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historical legacies of British class stratification; punk in the Federal Republic was about
historical legacies of German fascism” (Shahan 2013 16). I would amend both of those
declarations to read “partially about,” as while these broad statements do capture part of the
distinctiveness of these two incarnations of punk, British punk was about far more than an
expression of class and West German punk was about much more than a confrontation with
National Socialism.
Finally and most importantly for this project, in Lau’s discussion of punk precursors, he
draws a connection between the Wandervogel and punk which has remained unstudied since.
While he notes that “Eigene Druckerzeugnisse, gleichzeitige Präzenz von männlichen und
weiblichen Teilnehmern…, gemeinsames Wandern (häufig auch nach Geschlechtern getrennt!),
gemeinsame Feste mit Tanz und Musik, (versuchte) Distanzierung von der Elterngeneration,
szenespezifische Ausstattungspraktiken, künstlerische Aktivitäten (hauptsächlich im
graphischen, weniger im literarischen Bereich), verhältnismäßig geringe Personalstärke: die
Parallelen zu Punk sind groß” (Lau 123). It is then somewhat surprising that Lau then parrots the
dominant discourse of Wandervogel isolation and escapism to dismiss this connection in the next
sentence, writing “Wandervogel zieht sich aber—im Gegensatz zu Punk—vor einer
Konfrontation mit den gewählten Gegnern zurück und wählt die Isolation: als Gruppe flüchtet
man hinaus in die Natur, als Einzelner in sich selbst” (123). Reducing the Wandervogel to
escapists is the equivalent of reducing punks to anarchists and criminals—it serves only to
reinforce the dominant rationalist modernist discourses that have dismissed subcultures such as
the Wandervogel and punk as wild manifestations of irrational, base emotion offering no
alternatives for the future. Strangely, he also contends that the Wandervogel role of Führer, the
slightly older youth who led younger Wandervögel on excursions and guided their activities, did
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not exist in punk. While punks often proclaimed “No heroes,” to deny that they did not have
charismatic leaders and trendsetters (whether in music, philosophy, style, zines, etc.) that greatly
influenced the evolution of the various scenes is, to put it mildly, wishful thinking. The
tumultuous landscape of the Wandervogel Führer (as seen in Chapter Two) shares many
similarities with the various punk scenes and their many squabbles, well-documented in their
zines and captured in Jürgen Teipel’s oral history of West German punk Verschwende deine
Jugend.
Lau is instrumental in shifting focus to the articulation of difference through punk while
also noting the importance of communication technologies in creating a voice. But again, the role
of boredom with modern life broadly is left unarticulated in favor of discussing the specific
issues punks took with the manifestations of modern life. In this we see a similarity with
Wandervogel research, which has tended to focus on the rejection of school and family life,
alcohol consumption, militarism and Prussian bureaucratic structure among others. The next
chapter seeks to step back and view these youth cultures through a unifying construct—their
lifestyles and their emotional articulation of difference, working from this level down to its
manifestation in their cultural productions.

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CHAPTER FOUR: BOREDOM: THE DESIRE FOR DESIRES1
As was suggested in Chapter One, youth efforts to create autonomous realms of cultural
and personal development and to assert their visions for the future in Imperial German and in
Cold War West German societies were at once fostered by a freedom to explore and hampered
by rationalizing, objectifying, depersonalizing and leveling effects, both processes which largely
correlate with wider changes brought about by the effects of modernization. Wandervogel and
punk youth’s recognition of what they felt to be artificial, sterile and increasingly commoditized
and technologized societies resulted in their awareness of a deep-seated subjective malaise
permeating these societies. But the freedom and free time won by youth through the same
changes wrought by modernity also provided them the opportunity to explore ways of living
which they found more engaging and which, many of them hoped, could supplant the existing
cultural stagnation and in particular their lack of viable participatory forms of expression with a
dynamic, multifaceted, affectively-driven alternative.
For both groups, this alternative was rooted in and conveyed through individual
expression navigated at the group level in their respective cultural productions and in everyday
interactions. For the Wandervogel, this meant imagining a synthesis of the modern city and
technological development with the natural world in a fusion that worked to counter the
alienation, disengagement and boredom of life in Wilhelmine Germany. For punks, it meant
directly exploring the potentials of urban life and articulating this world as they saw it in a fusion
that worked to combat the same effects in the Federal Republic. One of the major differences
here between the two might be expressed as a shift from seeking outside inspiration and
exploring a largely forgotten engagement with the natural world in the Wandervogel to a turning
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1

!From!Leo!Tolstoy’s!Anna$Karenina!(1877).!

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inwards towards the urban in punk in an effort to explore, confront and disarm the sources of
modern alienation and boredom at play in cold war West Germany. This difference in focus is
well-captured in Alfred Hilsberg’s reworking of the hiking song “Aus grauer Städte Mauern” for
the title of his series in Sounds on West German punk and NDW. For the Wandervogel, the title
alluded to exploring the world beyond the artificial confines of the urban environment. For punk,
the “aus” changes meaning “outside of” to “out from,” shifting focus to inspecting life and the
self from within the artificial (but now perveived as natural) confines of this environment, with
an emphasis on the sounds and other cultural productions emerging out of the grey cityscape. In
both, probing the boundaries of their lifestyle and the potentials of personal engagement formed
the core of their cultures. Both developed cultures built around direct action to achieve these
ends—a hands-on, participatory engagement with the world best captured by their projects of
Selbsterziehung and DIY—as a means to claim agency, explore the world and the self, articulate
their difference and create structures and communities which could point the way towards more
humane and engaged futures. In this, I suggest that both were implicitly engaged in exploring a
way of living that moved beyond boredom and, contrary to readings of the Wandervogel as
escapist and noncommittal and the punks as nihilistic, with a concomitant misunderstanding of
expressions such as “No Future,” these groups were innately hopeful and oriented towards the
future. While these youth may have had strongly held opinions about specific agendas, the
futures made possible by Wandervogel and punk were not ultimately built around tangible goals
like world peace, the eradication of alcohol (or the legalization of drugs), the equality of all
people, the creation of a just government or the destruction of the culture industry. This lack of a
concrete political focus has contributed to the belief that in failing to articulate concrete solutions
to specific issues, they failed to offer compelling alternative visions of the future. Rather, punk

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and Wandervogel permitted and indeed encouraged exploration in any of these areas, evidenced
by the diversity of individuals drawn to both and the many interpretations they have engendered
in both popular and scholarly reception. But inseparable from these pursuits was a
conceptualization of the future that was selflessly selfish in the risk and reward that this
expression posed in expressing the potential of fostering the individual freedom to explore,
reflect and create in a world viewed as full of mystery and potential personal meaning—a mode
of experience which could be spread by example to others to create a much more interesting
future for everyone. By refusing to see themselves as engaged in an atomized fight against
injustice in particular instances, Wandervogel and punk struck at what many consider the source
of modern alienation: an endemic rationalistic conceptualization of the self and world that
compartmentalized and ordered, diminishing for many of these youth the possibilities for livable
presents and engaging futures.
Chapters Two and Three inspected the social and historical contexts of both groups,
traced their origins and discussed relevant scholarship that has tended to view these phenomena
through ideological narratives and narrow discourses which mask the underlying apolitical
projects these youth were engaged in and have overshadowed the foundational role of boredom
with and in modern lifestyles which made these pursuits of alternative lifestyles worthwhile for
these youth in the first place. The current chapter brings punk and Wandervogel back together
with a focus on the articulation of their conception of their respective societies, of themselves
and of their futures through an inspection of their cultural productions. Based on extensive
archival research conducted at the Archiv der Jugendkulturen in Berlin, the Wandervogel-Archiv
housed in the Ingeborg-Drewitz library in Berlin-Steglitz and the Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegung at Burg Ludwigstein, the primary focus of this inspection will be on their
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written productions. For the Wandervogel, this analysis covers the period from 1904, when the
Wandervogel Illustrierte appeared, until 1914 and the outbreak of WWI. The major sources
researched were (generally-)monthly periodicals published by the various organizations (AfS,
AVW, Steglitzer Wandervogel, DB, JWV, VB and the WVEV) and smaller Gaublätter from
regional groups. For punks, the major source on their writing being their zines, for this project
those spanning from 1977 when the first issue of the Ostrich appeared until just after 1980 and
the Geräuche für die 80er concert.2 Examples from their musical repertoires form an additional
repository, especially for punks, who forcefully articulated their critique of modern society and
demonstrated the potential of direct action both in and through their music—but also for the
Wandervogel, who, while less forceful in their critiques, nevertheless sought to awaken a love of
folk music as an alternative popular cultural force, although importantly one predicated on
recovering a cultivated past.
Following an excursion into the world of the print medium as utilized by both groups,
this chapter is divided into two major comparative sections, each focusing upon a different
aspect of these youths’ self-articulation. The first section documents the representations of their
respective societies and themselves as embodied in their cultural productions, illustrating how
Wandervögel and punks perceived and represented their respective mainstream societies and
expressed themselves, focusing on their application of DIY and Selbsterziehung towards an
emphasis on emotional experience and engagement embodied by the ideas of Wandern and
Anderssein. The second section focuses on the technologies of both groups of youth and how
they utilized these to voice themselves and create autonomous spaces. Picking up where the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2

!Working!with!well!over!15,000!pages!of!archival!material,!I!have!selected!texts!which!I!feel!best!exemplify!the!
Wandervogel$and!punk!reactions!to!society,!their!conceptualizations!of!themselves!and!their!activities!and!those!
pieces!which!best!portray!their!orientation!towards!a!desirably!unknown!future.!!

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discussion of the print medium leaves off, this section inspects their conception and
implementation of the technological in their projects of Selbsterziehung and DIY more broadly.
Both of these approaches take up the issue of boredom differently. In the first section, their
cultural productions provide examples of how their engagement with the world was constructed
in ways that maximized personal involvement and how these lifestyles were formulated against
dominant forms of engagement in their respective societies. In the second section, the analysis of
their engagement with the technological underscores how their understanding of the world and
incorporation of technologies differed from the relationship Heidegger explored in the concepts
of enframing and standing reserve in the technological age and point the way to an alternative
engagement with the world that hurdles the cycle of endless distraction through technology by
redefining it and prizing its potential to explore all facets of existence, including the affective. A
short epilogue following this chapter considers the future towards which these two movements of
youth worked, with a focus on their orientations to the possibilities of narrativity. Ultimately, I
argue that their focus on personal experience, the exploration of the self and on a hopeful vision
of a future society in which the individual could comfortably live for and explore possibilities,
formed a bulwark against the disengaging effects of modernity which produced millions of
bleak, depersonalized presents which I suggest have greatly contributed to the modern mass
iteration of boredom.

Creating a Voice: The Democratization of Print
The hands-on, participatory engagement with print was an integral part of both the
Selbsterziehung project of the Wandervogel and the DIY charge of punk. The democratization of

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the printed word was of enormous importance to both youth groups. Both utilized the means
available to them to amplify their voice, work through meaning, reflect on their lives and
communicate. The possibilities open to them both in terms of technology and in matters of social
control were undeniably different, but their incorporation of the medium served very similar
roles. This is evident in both their readiness and desire to utilize print as well as in their emphasis
in these productions on the importance of doing and experiencing in the wider context of their
engagement with the world. It is also an example of these youths’ willingness and desire to adopt
technological innovations and explore the possibilities of self-expression embedded in the
medium, which had long been guarded by various gatekeepers, whether through censure,
monopoly or prohibitive cost.
Print media were extremely important to both Wandervogel and punk. In addition to
serving as the major means of recording and spreading the folk music they encountered or
created, the medium also allowed Wandervogel to publish their own periodicals, although as we
will see not without limitations that restricted their expressive potential. Wandervogel periodicals
provide a wealth of information about the important debates within the organization at any time
and clearly express the Wandervogel worldview. They also often serve as a site of the sometimes
contentious disagreements between groups and individuals. Issues like the inclusion of girls,
appropriate attire and gear, proper behavior, the influence of reform movements within their
ranks, the use of nicotine and alcohol and more personal squabbles between youth all found
expression in their periodicals.
It is important to note that these publications were not meant solely for Wandervogel
youth themselves, but were beholden also to the adult supervisory committees and were read by
parents, teachers and other interested observers. Periodicals were available through individual
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Wandervogel groups, through the publishing houses which produced them and, often, in local
bookstores. Select titles were also sometimes advertised in other Wandervogel periodicals as
well, further opening up the potential for wider distribution.3 The social control exerted by the
adult sphere had to be respected not only in the publications of the organizations, but also in their
general comportment and in interactions with the public. Aufmuth notes that:
Im historischen Vergleich von Jugendgenerationen ist festzustellen, daß die
Eltern der Wandervögel noch weit zahlreichere und wirksamere Kontrollmittel
besaßen als die Eltern heutiger bürgerlicher Jugendlicher; der Faktorenkomplex
‘soziale Kontrolle’ besitzt daher für Jugendbewegungen der Jahrhundertwende
noch eine weit größere Bedeutung als für gegenwärtige Jugendbewegungen (178).
Due to the public nature and permanence of the medium, the self-censure necessitated by these
factors curtailed the possibilities of expression in printed publications to an even greater degree
than in personal interactions with society or when amongst themselves. When this self-censure
was ignored, as by Der Anfang, the condemnation of public reaction quickly revealed itself as a
powerful force.
Further limiting the capacity of youth themselves to communicate through these journals
was, of course, the editing process and the simple reality that printing everything sent to them
was impractical both in terms of space and finances. The limitations of Wandervogel periodicals
in fostering an unmediated discourse among youth themselves is (inadvertently) well-articulated

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3

!Punk!printing!was!distributed!through!similar!channels,!and!reflections!by!zine!makers!often!showcased!the!
difficulty!of!finding!bookstores,!record!shops!and!other!establishments!willing!to!sell!their!selfNproduced!
publications.!Mail!order,!distributing!to!friends!and!others!in!the!scenes!and!selling!at!concerts!served!as!major!
means!for!punk!distribution.!

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by Dr. Konrad Wislicenus, who wrote a sort of call to action in the January 1913 issue of the AltWandervogel$Monatsschrift für Jugendwandern:
Also auf! Ihr Wandervogel! Helft uns bei unserer Arbeit. Sendet uns, was Ihr
habt. Doch bedenket einiges dabei. Nicht alles, was Ihr schickt, kann brauchbar
sein. Wir müssen das Recht haben, auszusuchen und auszuwählen. Legt Ihr das
Porto bei, so senden wir zurück, was uns nicht geeignet schien. Wir schreiben
Euch freundlich dazu; eine Beleidigung ist eine höfliche Rücksendung niemals.
Bedenkt, dass auch die Erwachsenen stets damit rechnen müssen. Manches aber,
was Ihr schickt, ist vielleicht an sich gut, aber nicht gerade in der Form, in die Ihr
es gebracht hat. Ihr wollt doch meist noch lernen und habt noch viel zu lernen.
Benutzt die Gelegenheit dazu und seid nicht “empört”, wenn wir ein wenig feilen
und umgestalten. Erwachsenen sendet man solche Sachen zurück mit der Bitte um
Umarbeitung. Wohin sollen wir kommen, wenn wir es ebens bei Euch machen
wollten? Ein Recht, gedrückt zu werden gibt es ja zudem nicht. (2)
Calls such as this for greater participation by youth themselves, be it through stories, travel
narratives, poems, sketches, photographs or other productions by Wandervogel youth while also
reserving the right to edit and alter these productions was, for the time, an honest attempt to
encourage greater participation. It was also a bit of catch-up on the part of the AWV, whose
advisory council was considered overbearing by many members and who had to contend with a
drastic drop in numbers after many Ortsgruppen across the country had defected to the WVEV,
often citing exactly this concern, a concern shared with other groups, such as the JWV, who cited
the oppressive elder influence with the AWV years earlier as one of the major factors in their
split. Compared to the AWV, as shown in Chapter Two, the WVEV adopted a decentralized
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structure giving greater autonomy to Ortsgruppen to determine the direction of their
development. Still, the last line in the quote above summarizes the limitations of publishing in
Wilhelmine Germany: “Ein Recht, gedrückt zu werden gibt es ja zudem nicht.” This is perhaps
the most important difference in inspecting the cultural productions of the Wandervogel and
punk—the conditions youth in Wilhelmine Germany were forced to contend with in order to
voice themselves were far more restrictive than those of the 1970s. Regardless of these
limitations, Wandervogel youth did express themselves through their publications and their
critiques and self-conceptualizations can be seen embedded in everything from discussions of
travel and temperance to artwork composed on and personal reflections about their many
explorations.
In addition to articles written by Führer and Wandervogel youth themselves, their
journals often also included articles by those in the advisory boards. While early examples of this
in the Wandervogel Illustrierte often took the form of gentle chastisements about not ignoring
schoolwork or making time to include church visits on Sunday hikes, the majority of these
contributions were meant to foster reflection upon the activities of the youth themselves and
what Wandern and the Wandervogel meant.4 This guidance by sympathetic adults can be
regarded as evidence of the limits of youth autonomy. But as with punk, it also points to the
dedication of not just youth in cultivating the desired lifestyles, institutions and modes of
experience which could provide an alternative, but to the dedication of many individuals from
older generations as well, who hoped to provide a theoretical foundation for the movement and
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4

!See!for!example!the!January!1905!issue!of!the!Wandervogel$Illustrierte$Monatsheft,!which!includes!a!call!for!
attending!church!services!while!on!Sunday!hikes!(the!most!common!and!convenient!time!for!shorter!excursions).!
“Ein!Sonntag!ohne!Teilnahme!am!Gottesdienste!ist!ein!verlorener!Sonntag.!Ist!der!Ausflug!so!ausgedehnt,!das!der!
ganze!Tag!dadurch!in!Anspruch!genommen!wird,!so!muss!der!Leiter!den!Plan!so!machen,!dass!als!erstes!Ziel!ein!
Gotteshaus!ins!Auge!gefasst!wird,!wo!die!jungen!Waldvögel!auch!für!ihre!Seele!Erquickung!und!Stärkung!suchen”!
(17).!As!the!movement!embraced!its!mission!of!Programmlosigkeit$and!independence!from!outside!influence,!
intrusions!such!as!this!largely!disappeared.!

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guide these youth through their own accumulated experiences, wisdom and aspirations for what a
less alienated and more engaged society could look like. Youth formed in many ways the
battleground where debates about the future of German society played out, which drew and
encouraged others to get involved. In this capacity, the supervisory boards of the Wandervogel
evidenced themselves to be both a check preventing youth from overstepping existing boundaries
of social control, and also as a critical element in guiding youth to think through the deeper
meanings and possibilities of Wandern as an alternative engagement with the world.5
Several different types of publications were put out by the Wandervogel. First and
foremost were the national-level periodicals, among them the Wandervogel Illustrierte (AfS), the
Nachrichtenblatt des “Wandervogel” eingetragener Verein zu Steglitz bei Berlin (Steglitzer EV),
the Wandervogel Zeitschrift des Bundes für Jugendwanderungen “Alt-Wandervogel” (AWV),
the Wandervogel: Monatsschrift des “Wandervogel,” deutschen Bundes für Jugendwanderungen
(DB), the Jung Wandervogel: Zeitschrift des Bundes für Jugendwandern “Jung-Wandervogel”
(JWV), the Wandervogel-Warte: Zeitschrift des “Wandervogel” vaterländischer Bund für
Jugendwandern (VB) and the Wandervogel Monatschrift für deutsches Jugendwandern. This last
publication, colloquially called the Gelbe Zeitung due to its yellow cover, was a sort of
nondenominational periodical that served to discuss broader issues across organizational barriers
and became the central organ of the united VDW and later WVEV. The largest of the
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5

!The!efforts!of!advisory!board!members!in!maintaining!an!autonomous!Programmlosigkeit$can!be!productively!
contrasted!with!the!efforts!by!reformist,!political!and!other!ideological!groups!to!insert!their!aims!and!agendas!into!
the!Wandervogel.!!The!difference!in!approach!is!evident,!for!example,!in!this!passage!from!Dr.!Ludwig!Gurlitt’s!
article!in!the!September!1905!Nachrichtenblatt$des$“Wandervogel”$Eingetragener$Verein$zu$Steglitz$bei$Berlin,!in!
which!he!writes:!“Es!ist!unser!Wunsch!und!soll!unser!Wunsch!bleiben,!dass!die!Wandervögel!ein!so!grosses!Mass!
von!Freiheit!und!Selbststimmung!geniessen,!als!nur!überhaupt!mit!dem!Bestande!eines!solches!Organismus!
vereinbar!ist.!Dass!Zucht!und!Ordnung!herrschen!muss,!sieht!selbst!der!Neuling!aus!der!Quinta!ein.!Darüber!ist!
kein!Wort!mehr!zu!verlieleren.!Die!kleinste!Turnriege!fällt!sogleich!auseinander,!wenn!jedes!Mitglied!nur!seinem!
eigenen!Kopfe!folgen!will”!(49).!This!passage!evidences!the!attempt!to!allot!youth!as!much!freedom!of!exploration!
as!possible!while!grounding!this!freedom!in!a!communal!project!that!demanded!a!level!of!restraint.!

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periodicals, by 1914 it reported a circulation of 25,000 copies. In addition to these publications,
many more periodicals emerged at the regional and local level to serve the various Gaue and
Ortsgruppen. Sometimes as simple as a two to four page schedule of hikes and sometimes
rivaling the length and breadth of content in the national-level Wandervogel publications, and
with print runs from a few hundred to a few thousand, periodicals like the Wandervogel Gaublatt
für Sachsen, the Wandervogel Gaublatt für Schlesien und Posen, the Wandervogel Liegnitz
Fahrtenblatt and Wandervogel in Hessen und am Rhein and many others often worked through
the sometimes esoteric debates about the meaning of the Wandervogel that appeared in the larger
periodicals in ways more relevant and immediate to those communities they were made by.
Finally, there were periodicals meant for the Führerschaft. Among these was the
Wandervogel Führerzeitung, which was initially meant as a journal for Wandervogel Führer to
discuss the direction of the movement. But through the efforts of men like Friedrich Wilhelm
Fulda, it became increasingly antisemitic and began to attempt to spread its vision of the
Wandervogel as a purely Germanic movement. While leadership in the WVEV, JWV and
elsewhere immediately distanced themselves from the publication, declaring it to be unaffiliated,
the Führerzeitung demonstrates the lack of a monopoly on the Wandervogel name and the
relative ease with which ideologically extreme elements could insert themselves into the
Wandervogel discourse.6 In a strange way, the Führerzeitung and its efforts to indoctrinate a

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6

!One!example!of!this!distancing!from!the!Führerzeitung$is!the!periodical,!Die$Pachantei:$Meinungsaustausch$der$
Wandervögel,!which!was!created!in!response!to!the!Führerzeitung,!advertising!in!the!Gelbe$Zeitung$and!elsewhere.!
In!their!March!1914!issue!they!responded!to!the!Führerzeitung,$expressing!a!hope!that!the!Wandervogel$could!
remain!an!open!movement!and!cited!a!petition!passed!around!at!the!Hohe!Meißner,!writing:!“Die!Empörung!über!
das!unverartwortliche!Heft!11!der!Fuldaschen!Führerzeitung!veranlaßte!mich!zu!folgender!Erklärung,!die!ich!dann!
auf!dem!hohen!Meißner!herumgehen!ließ:!‘Wir!Unterzeichneten!wollen!hierdurch!weitere!Kreise!darauf!
aufmerksam!machen,!daß!die!im!Verlage!von!J.!MatthesNLeipzig!erschienende!Führerzeitung!in!keiner!Weise!ein!
offizielles!Organ!des!Wandervogels,!sondern!eine!rein!private!Unternehmung!F.W.!Fuldas!ist.!Wir!wenden!uns!
gegen!die!Versuche!der!Führerzeitung,!ihr!nur!aus!Einzelfällen!gewonnenes!Urteil!als!Urteil!des!Wandervogels!

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völkisch element into the organizations also demonstrates the openness of the Wandervogel
project in a way that mirrors the fracturing of the initial AfS into the diverse and complex web of
Wandervogel organizations that followed. The meaning of the Wandervogel was open to
interpretation, and the utilization of mass media to amplify one’s interpretation was shown to be
both a powerful and sometimes a divisive tool.
Like with other relatively small-scale periodicals of the time, these various publications
relied on regional printing presses that had proliferated throughout the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. While Wandervögel often critiqued the industrialization and urbanization of German
society, they also took advantage of the developments to emerge from this process—the print
media was no exception: “In denselben Zusammenhang der Industrialisierung des 19.
Jahrhunderts fällt auch die Industrialisierung der Medien. So entstand eine Massenpresse und die
Möglichkeit Bücher und Broschüren zu produzieren” (Moser 1). This freedom to publish greatly
enhanced the ability of the Wandervogel to organize across the Reich and to share ideas and
news while allowing local groups to publish their own periodicals tailored more towards their
individual realities.
While the content of these publications varied from organization to organization and from
Gau to Gau, they generally followed a similar layout. A title page with a short introduction and a
headline article was followed with a wide-range of articles, poems, artwork, itineraries and travel
narratives. Anything from camping gear, night hiking, discussions of recent or upcoming splits
or mergers, opinions about the role of alcohol in the Wandervogel, discussions of girls in the
groups, histories of the “early days” of the Wandervogel, the role of music, calls to action, news
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
überhaupt!hinzustellen’”!(4N5).!Again,!we!see!the!plurality!of!voices!within!the!Wandervogel$and!the!utilization!of!
the!press!as!a!vehicle!of!expression!and!for!working!through!important!issues!within!the!organization.!

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of upcoming major trips, hiking schedules, linocuts and silhouette cuts, sketches and
woodblocks, passages and poems from Romantic authors, discussions of philosophy, how to
properly take pictures—the breadth of content was extremely wide. Unfortunately, as was the
case with punk zines, attributing authorship to articles is often difficult or impossible, as authors
often wrote anonymously, under a pseudonym (often their nickname within their group) or
included only their first or last name.
The vast majority of periodicals relied on advertisements to supplement the costs of
printing.7 These ads provide an intriguing portrait of the products popular among Wandervogel
youth as well as point to the burgeoning industries that tailored their products to these youths’
needs and desires. Youth were encouraged to support the shops and companies that advertised in
their journals, but woe be to a shop that attempted to exploit the Wandervogel name or supply
low-quality merchandise. Critiques of merchants attempting to cash in on the Wandervogel could
also make their way into their periodicals as shops and brands to avoid.
In contrast to the realities of Wandervogel publishing, punk publications were largely
beholden only to themselves. The full-fledged democratization of print in West Germany made it
possible for anyone to walk down to a copy shop and print off a run of zines without any regard
for censorship. The first German fanzine, The Ostrich, appeared in 1977, the year following the
first zines in the United States (Punk) and England (Sniffin’ Glue). Essentially a magazine made
for punks by punks utilizing various stylistic nuances such as offset printing on photocopiers, the
zine served as a major communication artery of the punk movement locally, nationally and
internationally. Hundreds of other zines followed The Ostrich in West Germany in the next few
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7

!The!JWV!tended!to!include!fewer!advertisements,!again!likely!due!to!their!desire!to!remain!as!autonomous!as!
possible.!But!even!they!included!ads!for!staples!like!Maggi!bouillon!capsules!and!hiking!gear.!

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years, with a wide variety of colorful titles such as Attraktive preiswerte allgemeine
Volksverarschung, Dreck, Fuck Erzbischoff Ratzinger, Langweil, Spargel, and Xerox chic.
Nearly all relied upon the photocopier and various copy shops that sprung up throughout West
Germany in the 1970s.

Figure 4: Examples of early West German punk fanzines housed at the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen. Photograph by Matthew Sikarskie, image courtesy of the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen
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The costs of producing a zine were manageable and, compared to setting up a dedicated
printing press, miniscule. Still, these costs were not insignificant, especially for the often
impoverished punk. In order to inspire others to begin their own zines, Paul Ott, creator of the
Swiss/German zine Punk Rules, broke down the cost of producing 500 copies of a zine in a 1982
article: “Hier möchte ich noch aufzeigen, dass es neben etwas Mut und wenig Geld eigentlich
nichts braucht, um eine eigene Zeitschrift zu machen. Wenn auch die hohe Zeit der Fanzines
vorbei ist, so hat doch oft einer etwas zu sagen ohne etablierte Publikationsmöglichkeit. Die
Antwort darauf ist Eigendruck” (Ott and Skai 15). Ott arrives at a final cost of 420 DM (adjusted
for inflation in 2014 dollars, this is approximately $460), suggesting that “[u]ngefähr 80% der
Zeitschriften müβten also bei einem Verkaufspreis von 1,- SFr./DM abgesetzt werden, sollte sie
selbsttragend sein” (15). As evident here and elsewhere in punk productions, the goal of profit
was often rejected as part of the lifestyle they were resisting.8 Instead, punks attempted to use
their voices to show others how to use theirs.
They also often used advertisements to offset printing costs, with ads for upcoming
shows, newly released records, copy shops, tape distributors and exchanges, musical instruments
(including synthesizers), independent record companies, new venues and more gracing their
pages. Many zine authors also incorporated ads from major brands such as Persil, Coca-Cola,
Burger King, Disney and many others in collages and other critiques on West German consumer
society. An example from the Berlin zine T4 displays the repurposing of corporate advertising.
An article on the fattest people in the world (all American) is pasted over with images of obese
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8

!This!was!paralleled!in!the!music!scenes!as!well.!While!some!groups!aspired!to!musical!success,!the!majority!of!
bands!played!for!themselves!and!their!communities!in!their!free!time.!Many!never!played!before!a!crowd,!
although!they!might!record!a!tape!to!exchange!with!other!groups.!!

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individuals juxtaposed with candy bar logos and “MODERNE ERNAEHRUNG” written in pen.
This critique of modern foodways and their effects on the individual, a critique which has only
become more relevant since the zine appeared in 1978, shows in its seemingly oblique topic the
breadth of the critique against modern lifestyles punks engaged in.

Figure 5: “Moderne Ernaehrung,” image source T4, 1978, image courtesy of the Archiv der
Jugendkulturen

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Leaving such highly satirical collage practices aside, it remains important to note the
several similarities between Wandervogel and punk advertising. Both focused heavily on
technological advances which enabled both groups to more easily create autonomous spaces for
themselves. For the Wandervogel, this largely revolved around gaining physical distance from
dominant social discourses as well as fostering playing music, taking photographs and enabling
youth to be self-sufficient while on Fahrt. For punks, there was also an emphasis on music, but
instead of gaining physical distance, the advertisements in punk zines often affirmed the desire to
gain creative distance in other ways (namely reclaiming and working towards building sites of
autonomous participatory potential) while remaining within and exploring their local
environment.
The appearance of the punk zine was supposed to conjure a sense of “urgency and
immediacy, of a paper produced in indecent haste, of memos from the front line” (Hebdige 111).
But the intentionally clumsy appearance of the zine belied the amount of work that actually went
into its creation. Peter Hein, co-creator of The Ostrich and then employee for Xerox describes
the production process:
Damals waren die Kopierer noch geil, weil die nicht so gut waren, sondern
teilweise machten, was sie wollten…Der Horror war aber das Heften, denn die
Auflage von etwa 300 wurde unsortiert ausgespuckt, 60 Stapel á 300 Blatt. Die
Stapel mussten auf Händen und Knien im ganzen Betrieb ausgelegt und geheftet
werden. Das war eher Strafdienst. Wir waren ja nur drei Mann. (Teipel 39)
It is easy to forget how difficult creating an individual or communal voice was prior to the arrival
of the internet, where creating a community around shared views has become not only

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instantaneous and free, but also simple and mundane. And while the punks had far greater and
less restricted access to print than Wandervögel, it still required a great deal of effort. The fact
that hundreds across West Germany found it worthwhile to undertake the effort to create zines
underscores the extent of their belief that, through their labors, the invisible barriers that limited
the potential of the masses to fully participate in their society could be illuminated and,
ultimately, torn down.
The zines themselves were largely composed of interviews, song reviews and concert
recaps along with other news relevant to the punk scene presented in a collage style with cut-out
pictures, photos, drawings and symbols such as the swastika, RAF insignia, hammer and sickle
and the anarchy ‘A’. Much has been written on zine aesthetics by Dick Hebdige (as a British
example) and Hollow Skai (as a German example), among many others, and certainly there is a
great deal to learn from the ways that punks reinterpreted objects to create their own meanings.9
But for our focus, the zine served other important functions beyond the formation of a punk
aesthetic.
Especially for punks living outside of the major punk scenes of West Berlin, Düsseldorf
and Hamburg, the zine was a vital means of spreading the message and keeping those located
away from the action connected.10 In addition to keeping the community informed of recent
events in the various scenes, punk zines also served as a nexus for the cross-referencing of other
zines along with information about local independent recording companies, stores, clubs and
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9

!Zine!aesthetics!were!an!extension!of!punk!fashion.!The!same!pastiche!evident!in!the!free!mixing!of!symbols!in!
punk!attire!was!reflected!in!punk!publications!(zines,!concert!posters,!album!cover!art,!etc).!!!
10
!Importantly,!many!zines!were!created!for!the!immediate!friends!and!scenes!where!they!originated.!But!through!
zine!exchanges,!buying!a!copy!at!a!record!store!or!being!given!a!copy!from!a!friend!from!one!of!the!punk!centers,!
many!youth!outside!of!major!punk!scenes!were!able!to!remain!up!to!date,!and,!as!evidenced!by!the!many!zines!
that!appeared!outside!of!Düsseldorf,!West!Berlin,!Hamburg,!Hannover!and!other!large!cities,!they!also!inspired!
others!to!get!involved!as!well.!!

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other hangouts. Along with where to find the scene locally, from one zine bought at a local
record store or concert, a reader could find information on several other local, regional and
national zines: “[F]ür den interessierten Leser reicht meistens schon der Kauf eines einzigen
Zines, um sich in das Verteilsystem einzuschleusen, da fast in jedem Fanzine andere Zines
besprochen werden, meist akkurat mit Hinweisen auf Preis und Umfang, nebst der Angabe der
Bezugsquelle” (Lau 103). An example from the Augsburg zine ANTZ:

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Figure 6: An example of fanzine cross-referencing, image source: Antz 1980, image courtesy of
the Archiv der Jugendkulturen

This usually reciprocal advertisement between these various publications fostered a
greater sense of community within and between local scenes which, through the zine, formed a
broader web of linkages in a system similar to the cross-referencing of related websites through
hyperlinks in the internet. It was a simple gesture, but one that helped to greatly amplify and
connect the voices of punk throughout West Germany and to open up often emotional
discussions of what punk meant.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the zine also served as a platform through which
not just to explore punk as it existed, but to explore its potential and express the self in all areas
of life. While the creation of a shared punk philosophy that took the idea of “do-it-yourself”
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further to a group meaning of “do-it-ourselves” was an important function of the zine and part of
the effort of building a punk community, the potential that this community could become too
attached to a specific articulation of “punk” a real concern. There was a palpable fear that a punk
scene where everyone did the same things, believed the same things and acted the same way
would simply mirror mainstream social conformity and lead to a hegemonic group within the
punk scene. While certainly some form of group identity was necessary, what many aimed for
was a community of individuality, perhaps nowhere more forcefully argued for than in the zines.
Written publications formed a significant means of communicating and amplifying the
expressive potential of both punks and Wandervögel. For small subcultures of limited means, the
ability to reach each other, articulate themselves and work through the potentials of their
activities, the capability to self-publish was incredibly important. Combined with their music,
their written publications are also the richest source for studying these youth cultures through
their own words in an immediate way, unmediated by the passing of time and the careful
reflection of retrospective writing and oral histories. The alienating potential of modern
technologies and of technological society, however, was largely undone in the direct
involvement of youth in articulating their difference. Their implementation of technology in the
aid of more directly engaging with the world around them and in expressing themselves resulted
in a less alienated but more aware relationship with the technological, turning disengaged
reception into engaged creation.

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The Boredom of Modernity and the Modernity of Boredom
The reconception of the technological formed one element in Wandervogel and punk
rejection of boredom, but as evident in the previous section, the technological formed only one
of the many elements of their exploration. The technological interpreted as potential instead of
reserve, as an enabling tool instead of ordered system, was both a symptom of a worldview
predicated on direct action as well as a tool to enhance this worldview.
How did the Wandervogel conceive of and react to Wilhelmine society? Simply noting
that they rebelled against home and school and as well as against urban Blasiertheit, militaristic
nationalism, alcohol-fueled social interactions and many other conventional aspects of the
society (fashion, entertainment, travel, industry, commerce, etc) in which they lived fails to
capture the quintessence of what Wandervögel meant with their critique. This ultimately turns
inspecting, contextualizing and understanding their alternative into a sort of checklist of how
they responded to individual aspects of the world they lived in. While many Wandervögel did
take issue with these elements and more, they did so as part of a larger critique of the mode of
experience valued by their society which they saw as disempowering and depersonalizing and as
forming the foundation of modern boredom.
Though West German punks exhibit a few key differences from the Wandervogel, their
sense of disenfranchisement is shared. While a general focus on negative affect, a less restrictive
conceptualization of sex, drugs and alcohol complemented by a focused engagement with and
exploration of the urban sets it apart from the Wandervogel in application, their underlying
critique was similar in that it was not oriented against specific manifestations of alienated
modern life (the culture industry, school, politics, war) but rather against an all-encompassing

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way of living that both responded to and was complicit in maintaining this alienation. Returning
to the discussion of modernity in Chapter One, especially Heidegger’s critique of life in the
technological age, this assertion can be theoretically grounded as a response to humanity in
modernity, coming to view the world and itself in a capacity that devalues mystery, personal
exploration and emotion. This internalization of a rationalistic and (in the Heideggerian sense)
technologized worldview is largely responsible for the phenomenon of modern boredom and it is
against this experiential reference that Wandervogel and punk formulated their alternatives.
Wolfgang Thiel, writing about the motives of groups who pursue alternative modern
lifestyles helps to ground this orientation against leveling modern processes and towards the
embracing of personal involvement and direct engagement. And while he does not explicitly
discuss boredom as a consequence of the “expansiver zivilisatorischer Entwicklungsprozeß” or
these groups emerging as a reaction to boring presents and futures, his description of these
groups’ reactions aligns neatly with both the major causes of modern boredom and to proposed
alternatives suggested in Chapter One:
Das Bewußtsein und der Alltag der Mitarbeiter alternativer Projekte sind von
Prinzipien eine Lebensführung geprägt, die als praktische und moralistische Kritik
am expansiven zivilisatorischen Entwicklungsprozeß unserer
hochindustrialisierten Gesellschaft verstanden werden können. Die Alternativen
sehen die Industriegesellschaft geprägt von einem inhumanen Leistungsprinzip,
einer entfremdenden Sachorientierung und einer Ohnmachtsgefühle
hervorrufenden hierarchischen Struktur…Die zukünftige Entwicklung der
Industriegesellschaft wird ausgesprochen pessimistisch beurteilt. Im Unterschied
dazu wird die eigene Perspektive eher positivs gesehen. Es existiert ein
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ausgeprägtes Selbstvertrauen in die eigene Kraft, sich von destruktiven
Entwicklungen freizumachen und zu praktikablen, lebenswerten Alternativen zu
gelangen. (Bock 43)
The vague critique of industrial society by those seeking an alternative as inhumane, alienated
and fostering a sense of powerlessness combined with a pessimistic outlook regarding the future
as it appeared to present itself hearkens back to the words of Dubos in the early 18th century and
to the root causes suggested in contemporary literature on modern boredom. From Wandervogel
folk music played while hiking, around the campfire or to an audience in a city to a packed,
dingy barroom punk show, a home-brewed recording of a few songs on a cheap tape player to
appraisals of society and of themselves in the periodicals of the Wandervogel or in the zines of
punk—the sum total points inextricably to a search for a more authentic engagement with the
world and with the self that operates against the root causes of boredom in rationalistic societies.
The Wandervogel rarely used the words Langeweile or langweilig to describe Wilhelmine
society in their publications. Instead, they often highlighted the differences between their mode
of experience and their conception of the majority of society implicitly through their lifestyle.
Writing on the green, red and gold colors Karl Fischer introduced into the Wandervogel in its
early years, Rudolf Raash notes: “Die Farben Grün-Rot-Gold symbolisierten den revolutionären
Geist des Wandervogels. Es war ein antibürgerlicher Geist. Das wurde mehr gelebt als geredet”
(38). While the Wandervogel lifestyle was based on experience above all, it was expressed
throughout many elements of their journals as well, often unintentionally, as the self-reflective
worldview these youth espoused manifested itself both in the desire to write and through their
writing itself. They can be seen in explicit articles on industry, tourism, drinking and hiking to
representations in sketches, lino- and wood-cuts, poetry and photography as well as in heartfelt
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articulations of Wandern and calls for other youth to get involved. Punks were much more
forceful and public in voicing and acting out their “antibürgerlicher Geist.” Their overall
dissatisfaction and boredom with everyday life often erupted into angry emotional outbursts and
impassioned calls to resist the mindlessness of modern West German society in both their music
and zines. Punks tossed around the word “Langeweile” and “langweilig” a lot in zines—the
boredom of society often seemed poised to suffocate them.
If Selbsterziehung and DIY represented the “how” in advocating a worldview that held
hands-on participation and direct action to be more effective than passive reception, then
Wandern and Anderssein contained the “what” that Wandervögel and punks worked towards.
Both were projects without destinations and were expressions of their alternatives to the societies
and lifestyles they resisted. In a way, they were attempts to work through how the projects of
Selbsterziehung and DIY could be codified in ways that preserved their dynamic and explorative
potentials—replacing tried systems and channels with the idea that stepping off of these welltrodden trails opened up the potential for adventure and a more engaging existence. These were
not anti-modern projects, but rather attempts to think through the potentials that life in modernity
provided.

Wandern and Anderssein: Exploring Difference
Two excerpts from Wandervogel publications ground the idea of Wandern in the words
of Wandervögel themselves. Hermann Friese provides a poem in answer to the title question of
“Was ist ein Wandervogel?” in the December 1904 issue of the Wandervogel Illustrierte which
grounds the conception of Wandern as it existed at the time. A sometimes heavy-handed and
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forced lyrical style nevertheless presents an image of the Wandervogel as an autonomous,
engaged and adventurous individual. The last line “Zur Schule des Lebens
abgehendes…Individuum,” ties the entire poem, a list of specific examples of Wandervogel
engagement, to the articulation of individuality and the wider project of Selbsterziehung:

Figure 7: “Was ist ein Wandervogel?,” image source: Wandervogel Illustrierte, image courtesy
of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

The litany of characteristics of a Wandervogel, beginning with a is oriented around the ideas of
freedom, self-sufficiency, the desire to learn, the desire to experience and the willingness to
experience and endure difficulties. The final word—“Individuum”—retroactively completes
each line, situating what a Wandervogel is, and what Wandern is about, within the self.
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Another description of the Wandervogel, written four years later, eloquently describes the
continuing Wandervogel project and articulates extended metaphors for Wandern:
Alles Unsere tragen wir bei uns; jeder hat einen Löffel und eine Nähnadel, eine
Wurst…und einen Stock...Dem Stock gehört die Welt…Wir sind unsere eigenen
Kellner und Köche, Sänger und Photographen, Schriftsteller und Waschermädeln.
Wir sind auch unsere eigenen Sonnenuhren, und wenn der Schatten der Nase auf
den Mund zeigt, so lagern wir uns am Zaune…Wer uns da findet, könnte sich im
lyrischen Feldlager des trefflichen Lucullus oder im Zigeunerrancho glauben, aber
unsere weisen Gespräche würden ihn belehren, daß wir einen Bildungsgrad
genossen haben, und das unsere ramponierten Sohlen außer auf der Schurre und
steinernen Renne auch auf dem Asphalt und Parkett sich anmutig zu bewegen
wissen…Wer neue Freuden entdecken will, setzt dazu keinen Zylinder auf. Und
wir sind solche Abenteurer: Städter, die das Land entdecken. (155) (9569 in DB
folder)
In this reading, Wandern for the Wandervogel is depicted as a cultivated mixture of a mythical
and Romanticized past as a lens through which to explore the world without losing sense of the
self—in this instance (“Städter, die das Land entdecken.”) Wandern here also transcends an
orientation towards nature. The well-worn soles of their boots are equally at home in the most
remote areas of the country, in the asphalt streets of the city and in the refined halls of the
cultured elite. Both examples read Wandern as an opportunity to learn, discover, experience,
develop and above all find adventure in the world through their own engagement in any
situation. These two descriptions, however, also differ. Wandern meant something different to
every Wandervogel—it can be seen as an individual internalization, learned through the ongoing
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process of Selbsterziehung, directed towards one’s own interests and interpretations. But
underpinning these interpretations was an openness to the world and to experience that linked
Wandervögel across the German nation.
Anderssein in punk demanded a similar engagement with the world in order to articulate
individuality and difference. Hayton contends that Anderssein represents the most critical
element in understanding what punk meant in West Germany. Everything that emerged out of
punk’s reception in West Germany—even the ultimately commercialized and co-opted NDW
project and the thousands of punk squatters sitting around in city centers panhandling and
drinking their days away—originated in and is an extension of the ideal of Anderssein taken to
its extremes. The exploration of difference pervades punks’ cultural productions. While it was
often much more radically and violently expressed than Wandern, it rested on the same elements
of engagement with the world. The DIY project taken up by punks could be extended anywhere
and in particular in the exploration of the self, and Anderssein as a concept captures this well.
In an attempt to help Uwe Ramdohr, who had helped to found the Hannover zine
Gegendarstellung with Klaus Abelmann under the moniker “Face the Bass,” and who was facing
between one and ten years in prison for his alleged involvement in breaking into at least nine day
care centers, stealing food and setting one building on fire, the zine released a special issue as a
fund-raiser. While the zine doesn’t excuse his actions nor those of the others involved, it does
articulate a definition of Anderssein which, even in this extreme context, grounds the punk
project perfectly as an opposition to conformity and a brutalizing existence within existing West
German society.

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WIDERSTAND ZU LEISTEN HEIßT WEDER PUNK NOCH
ALTERNATIVER ZUSEIN/SONDERN ANDERS ZU SEIN/ ES HEIßT NICHT
ZU REDEN/ DENN VERÄNDERUNGEN FINDEN NICHT IM KOPF /
SONDERN IN DER REALTITÄT STATT/ VERÄNDERUNGEN
ERSCHÖPFEN SICH NICHT IM ÄUßERLICHEN/ SONDERN WIE MENSCH
SICH VERHÄLT (Gegendarstellung #3 unpaginated)
Punk was but one way of expressing one’s difference, and in expressing difference one was
implicitly resisting society. But in order to effect any real change, whether it be social, political
or, as this project proposes, change towards a new lifestyle, punks had to be willing to act and
engage with the world as it existed. The reality of the lives of the many punks in West Germany
who embraced lives of radical and violent political and social opposition is often glossed over in
an effort to present punk as a positive force for change, which it certainly was, but like the
attempt to gloss over the völkisch element in parts of the Wandervogel, this ultimately does more
harm than good. In exactly the same way dismissing punk as a crass and violent rejection of
society or the Wandervogel as racist precursor to National Socialism, disregarding or (worse
still) attempting to conceal the full range of interpretations Wandern and Anderssein elicited
erases the potential that it held and continues to hold to provide a way of imagining, thinking,
and working towards a more sincere and humane society.
Like Wandern, Anderssein is at first glance a simple idea—simply be open to the world
and engaged in life while striking off on one’s own path. Perhaps the best means of
understanding these two projects is through an inspection of their conceptions and articulations
of society—conceptions and articulations which often take the form of critiques which, in their
negative image, parallel the major pursuits of Wandervogel and punk. Both Wandervögel and
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punks explored these lifestyles in relation to their dominant societies and the manifestations of
the worldview they rejected. Wandern and Anderssein were oriented against superficial
consumption and were instead invested in direct engagement and discovery. For the
Wandervogel, the idea of Wandern fittingly found its inverse in the modern mode of travel and
the modern traveler—tourism and the tourist. For West German punks, the focus on creating an
autonomous and democratized space through the establishment of their own free media was
often contrasted with their view of a society saturated and obsessed with the limited and
confining offerings of entertainment media. Anderssein was often posited against what was
perceived as the phoniness and insincerity of popular music, television, tabloids, advertising and
a host of other leveling and alienating products. This next section transitions to the words of
Wandervögel and punks themselves.

Tourists and TV: Representing Modern Alienation
Following the split of the AfS, the Steglitzer EV began publishing their own periodical.
The first issue, in September of 1904, featured an article written by the author “a” titled “Unser
Kochtopf,” which provides a glimpse of the conceptualization of the tourist. “Es gibt zweierlei
Wandern: ‘mit Kochtopf’ heisst ‘als Wandervogel’; ‘ohne Kochtoph’ heisst ‘als Tourist.’ Die
ganze Lebensführung krempelt er um” (11). Here, the Kochtopf serves as a metaphor for modes
of experience. “Mit Kochtopf” demands an openness as to what can go into the meal as well as a
willingness to cook it. The pot is empty until whatever is discovered can be combined with
whatever they already have. “Ohne Kochtopf” limits movement to destinations which can
provide a meal. There is perhaps a choice in what restaurant to visit and what to order, but this

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freedom is already a freedom limited by the mode of travel. The metaphor is explored again four
years later in July, 1908 in another article from the Nachrichtenblatt des Wandervogel:
Eingetragener Verein zu Steglitz bei Berlin (Steglitzer EV), “Oratio pro domo.” It begins with by
cribbing from the 1904 article” “Es gibt zweierlei Wandern: als ‘Tourist’ und als ‘Wandervogel’.
Das stand uns seit jeher fest, und mit Recht wurde auch einmal gesagt, das hiesse: “mit
Kochtopf” wandern oder “ohne Kochtopf”; die ganze Lebensführung kremple das um” (37). The
(anonymous) author of this piece, however, explores the meaning of this distinction much more
thoroughly.
Tourist ist, wer mit sportmässigen, ästhetischen und anderen Ansprüchen an sein
Gebiet herantritt, wer als Kenner auswählt und zu seinem Zwecke ausnutzt…Der
Tourist geht sozusagen stets auf einem schmalen Bergrücken, rechts und links
weisses unbekanntes Land, das sich nicht lohnt…Sein Weg ist durch Führer und
Gasthöfe bestimmt, er will gutes Wetter, Aussicht, gute Bahnverbindung haben,
er will in seiner schlimmen Abart den Sonnenuntergang auf dem dazu bestimmten
Berge sehen. Wir unsererseits können und wollen behaupten: das brauchen wir
nicht. Das blosse Wandern gibt uns das höchste Hochgefühl des freien Menschen.
(SEV July 1908 37)
Travel here becomes a microcosm of life and how one experiences it. The desire to reach a
destination efficiently, experience good weather, carefully plan an itinerary revolving around
which towns to visit and in which hotels to stay while ignoring the infinite possibilities that
present themselves along the way is to reduce travel to another commodity and to situate oneself

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into this well-trodden path. The author turns towards the words of a young Hermann Hesse for
further clarity:11
Ich kenne niemanden der feinfühliger ausgedrückt hat, was es sich uns handelt,
als Hermann Hesse: “Ebenso wie eine Freundschaft oder Liebe, die man pflegt
und der man Opfer bringt, wie ein Buch, das man mit Bedacht auswählt und kauft
und liest, ebenso muss jede Vergnügungs- oder Studienreise ein Liebhaben,
Lernenwollen, Sichhingeben bedeuten. Sie muss den Zweck haben, ein Land und
Volk, eine Stadt oder Landschaft dem Wanderer zum seelischen Besitze zu
machen, er muss mit Liebe und Hingabe das Fremde belauschen und sich mit
Ausdauer um das Geheimnis seines Wesens bemühen.” (36)
Hesse’s call for an internalization of experience—to love, learn and devote oneself to an open
engagement with the unknown—is a charming articulation of the lifestyle encoded in the
Wandervogel notion of Wandern. The activity is, in itself, devoid of meaning; it is up to the
individual to create this meaning. The author, quoting Hesse’s proclamation that “Reisen sollte
stets erleben bedeuten,” goes on to qualify the possibility of finding experience anywhere:
“Selbst wenn ich die Eisenbahn benutze, kenne ich doch ihren Weg und verfolge ihn; die dient
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11

!Laqueur!notes!that!“[t]he!Wandervogel!had!no!great!literary!ambitions,!but!under!the!influence!of!students!of!
the!Freideutsche$youth,!the!leading!writers!and!poets!of!the!younger!generation!gradually!became!known!among!
the!youth!movement:!Stefan!George!and!Hugo!von!Hoffmannsthal,!Rilke!and!Hermann!Hesse,!Spitteler!and!Trakl”!
(48).!While!Laqueur!suggests!that!it!was!the!influence!of!the!universityNaged!elements!in!the!Freideutsche$Jugend!
following!1913!that!led!to!greater!literary!pretensions!among!Wandervogel$youth,!Wandervogel$writing!often!
displays!a!familiarity!with!these!authors!as!well!as!occasional!stylistic!affinities!with!the!avantNgarde!authors!of!the!
th
early!20 !century!well!before!the!supposed!widespread!popularization!of!these!authors!within!the!youth!
movement!during!and!following!the!war.!Taken!as!a!whole,!Wandervogel$writing!was!clearly!far!more!indebted!to!
the!Romantic!tradition,!but!sometimes!a!piece!such!as!this!points!to!emerging!influences!that!suggest!a!blanket!
critique!such!as!Laqueur’s!might!be!too!limited.!Wandervögel$could!explore!anywhere!and!anything,!and!to!level!a!
charge!that!these!youth!were!uninterested!in!the!literary!realm!is!another!example!of!the!often!regimented!nature!
of!Wandervogel$scholarship!in!exploring!only!its!own!wellNtrodden!paths!in!a!privileging!of!the!Wandervogel!
engagement!with!nature!and!Romanticism!at!the!expense!of!viewing!the!Wandervogel$project!as!a!much!more!
complex!and!individualistic!enterprise.!!
!

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mir nur so lange, als ich es will, sie fährt eigentlich meinen Weg” (38). The activity of riding on
a train itself offers possibilities to experience; however, the anticipation and focus of the
destination destroys a great portion of this potential. The author’s neighbors on a train passing
through Görlitz ask whether they’re finally approaching the city: “Je nun, sie hatten recht,
Görlitz das hiess für sie ein Bahnsteigschild und ein Seidel Bier” (38). The self-imposed
limitations on their interactions with the world shut down the capability of engagement. But the
boredom of the train ride (returning to Heidegger), manifested in impatiently waiting for the next
city and then the next until reaching the final destination, dissipates when the experience is
received and internalized as a part of an ongoing journey: “Der Tourist kann vielleicht aus dem
Wandern die Technik abziehen, die er mit der gleichen Miene überall in der internationalen Welt
pflegen kann. Wir suchen und gehen unsern Weg mit innerem Anteile, forschendem und
liebendem” (38). The juxtaposition of these two orientations towards life reveals two contrary
poles of engagement. In the tourist, we see a way of living which is diminished by the
internalization of a pervasive rationalistic modernity—the positioning of the self within this
system as consumer and consumed. In the Wandervogel, we see a way of living which remains
open, internalizing experience and cultivating a deeper and highly emotional relationship with
the world.
The tourist became a sort of generic placeholder for alienated life in modernity—a simple
way of comparing experience that most certainly oversimplified and reduced the vast majority of
people to broad caricatures for added effect. But it also illustrates the root causes of boredom in
exposing the ease of simply following along in the ruts in the road leading to some hoped-for
destination. The Baedecker travel guide came to epitomize this mode of existence: nose down in
a book while waiting to arrive at a highly recommended attraction, where one stood next to
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dozens of other tourists alternately looking around and reading about what they were seeing. The
foreordained and bounded nature of this closed system is startlingly similar to the critique made
by punks seventy years later.
The spirit of Wandern is evident in the travel narratives youth contributed to their
periodicals upon returning from Fahrt. A particularly poignant example that evokes the questing
and open engagement of Wandern comes from the inaugural 1912 issue of the Wandervogel in
Hessen und bei Rhein—a local Gaublatt. The short one-page retrospective “Maifahrt in die
Bulau” by a Wandervogel using the pseudonym “Lila,” which chronicles a day-trip to the Bulau
woods as spring is blossoming along the Obergermanisch-Raetischer Limes, the now UNESCOprotected path that once marked the division between the Roman provinces of Raetia and
Germania Superior.
Es ist ein wundervoller Maitag. Wir sind dem Limes entlang gezogen, haben an
einer Stelle gefrühstückt, wo einst ein römisches Kastell lag, und halten nun
Mittagsrast im Schatten der alten Klosterruine von St. Wolfgang. Wir liegen auf
dem Rücken im Grase und sahen hinauf in das grüne Blättergewirr. Wie fein sich
jedes einzelne Blättchen gegen den hell leuchtenden Himmel abzeichnet! Keins
rührt sich. Es ist ganz still. Nur von Zeit zu Zeit fegt ein Windstoß daher, wirbelt
alles durcheinander und überschüttet uns mit einem Regen durchsichtiger,
goldbrauner Blättchen. Es sind die Knospenhüllen, die die zarten Blattkeime im
Winter vorm Erfrieren geschützt haben. Jetzt ist es Mai, da haben sie das nimmer
nötig. Über uns kommt frohe Frühlingsstimmung; wir singen ein paar feine
Lieder. Aber die Freude in uns wird immer mächtiger, sie verlangt noch
Bestätigung. Wir wollen tanzen!” (4)
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Nature’s awakening inspires a similar awakening in this Horde of Wandervogel. Sadly, the
writer goes on, they are too few to dance but, in a true Wandervogelglück, they meet some local
Bauernkinder who, once having overcome their shyness, join in with the group and dance and
sing away the afternoon. These were the moments of synthesis that marked the high points for
youth on Wandervogel expeditions. When nature awakens their emotions, they break out in song
and dance, having prodigiously found camaraderie with the carefree children of local farmers.
This embodies the receptiveness and emotional engagement characteristic of the Wandervogel
conception of Wandern.
Publishing flowery and evocative prose on their travels and their exploration the beauty
of the world was a means through which Wandervögel exposed, in an albeit polite fashion, the
meaninglessness of the modern outlook; for punks it was often precisely the ugliness of modern
society they were most interested in engaging. From their style to the content of their music and
zines, punks worked through the cultural manifestations of their society, often reveling in the
uproar it caused—but also, in acting out an engagement from the perspective of one caught in its
embrace, revealing the disempowering and disengaging nature of everyday modern life. The
adoption and caricature of the modern persona—a generic, passive, unthinking, trapped
consumer—was a favorite method of West German punks in working through their own
individuality and difference, but also in relating and exposing the violence done to the self
through this modern lifestyle. The effect of this encounter with a pared-down and depersonalized
modern self, similar to the Wandervogel, was largely emotional. But where Wandervogel
focused on the alternative, punks often dwelled upon and lamented this meaningless modern
lifestyle. The emotions West German society evoked for punks were largely negative: anger,
hopelessness, fear, paranoia, sorrow, hate and above all boredom at the repetitious pattern life
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had become. Through this association with and embodiment of the modern self, punks illustrated
the lack of hope, adventure and future in this life and an inherent rejection of this mode of
disengagement. A particularly evocative example of this is a poem in the zine Propaganda titled
“DEN GANZEN TAG.”

Figure 8: “DEN GANZEN TAG,” image source: Propaganda, September 1980, image courtesy
of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen

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There is a freedom expressed in the poem—the lyrical subject stays in bed, stands around, listens
to music and watches television as long as desired—but this freedom is so paradoxically
restrictive to the point that it can hardly be seen as freedom at all. It is a freedom that, in its
extreme confinement, diminishes the potential of life and choice to a list of activities which lead
hopelessly to boredom: “den ganzen tag steh ich dumm rum / die langeweile bringt mich um.”
The repetition and reordering of words parallel the repetition and reordering of the limited
stimuli the author saw available in modern life—the freedom in West German society to choose
what show to watch or how long to lay in bed is disclosed as illusory—the modern subject is
essentially an animal in a cage with a host of entertaining distractions.
The limiting confines and monotony of modern life are explored in depth in punk music
as well. Mittagspause’s song Testbild works through the same repetitious pattern, but singer
Peter Hein’s inflections disclose various emotional reactions to this repetition. An excerpt:
“Sonntags morgens um halb zehn / Habe ich das Testbild gesehen
Montags morgens um halb zehn / Durfte ich das Testbild sehen.”
Sung against a simple, slow drum beat and a cacophony of guitar, Hein alternately sings, chants,
shouts or softly recites the lines, improvising alterations in both lyrics and delivery in live
shows.12 The first minute or so of the song is just the drum beat and random strums of guitar;
Hein only delivers the lyrical content of the song at its close, two minutes and two seconds into a
two minute and sixteen second song. These few brief lyrics only come once the superficially
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12

!A!live!recording!of!“Testbild,”!described!on!YouTube!as!from!their!December!26,!1978!appearance!at!the!
Dreiecksstube!in!Düsseldorf,!is!available!at!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inw2JkIgGiM.!!

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chaotic monotony, underpinned by the slow, steady beat of the drums has drawn the listener into
its internal logic. Hein breaks this monotony in the last line: “Freitags morgens um halb zehn /
Schon wieder das Scheiß testbild sehen!” closing the song in an emotional rejection. The drums
and guitar stop abruptly with the last syllable, and the song ends.
KFC’s “Wie lange noch” similarly plays with monotony, with the subject asking the title
question again and again in refrains throughout the song. Above all, there is a sense of waiting
and, in this waiting for something, a disengagement from life so strong that everything presents
itself as the same—time simply passes.
“Ich bin nicht dumm / Ich bin nicht schlau / Die Zeit geht an mir vorbei / und
wartet nicht auf mich / Ich bin nicht stumm / Ich bin nicht laut / Ich fühle mich /
und mir ist alles gleich / Wie lange noch? / Ich warte immer noch.” (KFC)
There is a sense of loss and hoped-for meaning that the “Ich” of the song desires, but has no
means of finding.
“Und ich frage mich / warum ich tue nichts / ich fühle nichts / ich denke nichts /
und ich bleibe stumm.”
Modern life has here resulted in paralysis—the stripping of all desire, thought and emotion.
Nothing is left but waiting, and waiting is impossibly inadequate. There is no redemption at the
end of the song, closing with the subject continuing to wait. But in the act of writing the poem
and of publishing it in a zine or in forming a band and working through these issues, these punks
implicitly articulate an alternative to the damaging and boring lifestyles they perceive around
them.
Together, the Wandervogel and punk characterizations of the alienated modern self reveal
the elements of modern life they found repugnant. For both, the modern self had given away its
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autonomy and, either willingly or unknowingly, subjugated itself to opaque systems and
superficial distractions while discarding any significant engagement with the world outside of the
comfortable limitations provided. The next sub-section considers these youths’ specific
articulations of engagement with modern life itself.

Engaging Modernity
The problematization of the urban environment was commonplace in Wandervogel
publications, but the conceptualization of the industrial and technological within the
Wandervogel was not always as simple as dismissive contempt. Shortly after becoming the new
AWV periodical following the split of the AfS into the Steglitzer EV and the AWV in 1904, the
Wandervogel Illustrierte includes its first article on a “technische Wanderung.” The Wanderung
along the Teltow Canal, in which a large group of 45 Wandervögel participated led by Karl
Fischer, explored the construction of the canal, experiencing for themselves the development of
the modern marvel being built in their own backyard.13 The article presents the canal in a
positive light, noting the important role it will play in opening up a dedicated route south of
Berlin and a description of its passage through the “Tal der Bäke,” which is cited as one of the
“am meisten photographierte Bäche Norddeutschlands” (88). The author describes the beauty of
the scene, but nowhere is there an indication that the canal has diminished this splendor: “Die
stattlichen Erlenbüschen, durch die sie dahinfloss, deren feinste Verästelungen das stille Wasser
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
13

!Fischer!is!not!named!directly,!but!only!by!the!abbreviation!“G.Bt.”—“Gross!Bachant,”!an!indication!of!the!leading!
role!he!took!for!himself!in!the!Wandervogel!which!had!led!to!their!first!major!split.!As!one!of!the!founders!and!
editors!of!the!Wandervogel$Illustrierte,!he!took!the!periodical!with!him!into!the!new!AWV.!Since!the!article!
mentions!that!the!other!editor,!Fritz!Meyen,!was!sick!and!unable!to!lead!the!group,!it!is!likely!that!it!was!written!or!
at!least!edited!by!Fischer!himself.!!
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wiederspielte, die seitwärts einfallenden Lichter, eine zierliche Brücke in der Ferne und ganz am
Ende ein Ausschnitt sonniger Landschaft gaben ein Bild von malerischem Reiz” (Fischer 88-89).
The short article includes two photographs as well, not of the scenic beauty of the valley, but of a
steam pump at work and of a steel bridge. The overall tenor of the article is one of experiencing
the canal as it presents itself: as a fusion of the natural and the technological. Due to a suggested
lack of space, the article ends with a short overview of the trip:
Leider mangelt es uns an Raum, um eine eingehende Schilderung unserer
Wanderung zu geben; es sei nur noch erwähnt, dass wir von Teltow (bezw.
Schönow) aus über Klein-Machnow, wo die Schleuse besichtigt wurde, bis zum
Griebnitz-See gingen, und dass diese eigentlich erste ‘technische Wanderung’,
Dank der grossen Beteiligung bei allen Teilnehmern, in dauernder Erinnerung
bleiben wird. (89)
The trip to the Teltow canal illustrates the broad nature of Wandervogel exploration, even in its
earliest years, and the openness to experience inherent in their conceptualization of Wandern.
Another example of the continuing openness of the idea comes from an October 1913 article in
the Wandervogel Gaublatt für Schlesien, “Die Industrie und wir.”14 The author, F. Theile, wrote
on the aesthetic and experiential potential even in the industrial that moves beyond a simple
rejection of this environment:
Die Zeiten sind glücklich vorbei, in denen man es für seine Pflicht hielt, über
jeden Schornstein in der Natur zu schimpfen, in jedem Gebäude auf dem Lande,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
14

!Silesia!was!seized!by!Prussia!in!the!War!for!Austrian!Succession!in!1742,!was!incorporated!into!the!Reich!in!1871!
and,!following!a!narrow!vote!in!Silesia!after!WWI!organized!by!the!League!of!Nations,!chose!to!remain!a!part!of!
Germany!until!the!Silesian!uprising!ended!with!the!eastern,!predominantly!Polish!areas!of!Upper!Silesia!defecting.!
Following!WWII,!the!border!of!Germany!was!of!course!redrawn!and!today!the!vast!majority!of!Silesia!belongs!to!
Poland.!

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das nicht gerade Wohnhaus oder Scheune war, eine Verschandelung der Gegend
zu sehen. Wir wissen es jetzt: es kann auch eine Ziegelei mit einem großen roten
Schornstein mitten in einem grünen Waldtal sehr hübsch aussehen. (85)
For those who see in the Wandervogel a rejection of modern society and an escapist trajectory
only towards nature, this concession may seem extraordinary. But the critique Wandervögel were
engaged in was not a wholesale rejection of modern life, but rather its effect on the self. They
certainly believed that urban existence could serve to alienate the self from an engagement with
the world and that through the reaffirmation of the natural and emotional a less complicated and
more organic relationship with their reality could develop, but in the end their intent was not, to
adapt a favorite punk maxim, to tear the modern project down and start again. Instead, the ideal
emerged to apply this reflective engagement to all aspects of life. What they did want to tear
down was the boredom-inducing tediousness of the way of living fostered by modernity; in their
wanderings they sought to find a clarity and reciprocal engagement with the world that could
replace the alienated engagement they saw as dominating their society with an engaged approach
to all aspects of life as an adventure. This engagement was both communal and individual, as
shared experience fused a sense of togetherness and shared purpose, but it was ultimately up to
the individual to internalize the meaning of Wandern for the self.
While punks explored an engagement with the urban landscape in much greater depth,
the Wandervogel could and did turn their explorations here as well. Theile, in his article, goes on
to suggest: “Wir Wandervögel sollten viel mehr in diese sogenannten öden Fabrikgegenden
wandern, einmal auf frische Waldtäler und erhabene Berge verzichten und umher schauen, ob
nicht doch auch auf Gemüter, die durch andre Naturgenüsse verwöhnt sind, dieser einfache und
zugleich mächtige Rhythmus einer arbeitenden Fabrik Eindruck macht” (86).
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While romantic depictions of the countryside, woodlands, small villages and other
picturesque visions of uncomplicated life (such as that of Lila in the previous section) also
evidence their relationship and interactions with the world, it is in the infrequent articles where
Wandervögel describe their engagement with industrial modern life where these differences are
most striking. Following Theile’s suggestion that Wandervögel should receptively experience
industrial areas for themselves, the next article in this issue of Wandervogel Gaublatt für
Schlesien und Posen, “Oberschlesien,” a travel narrative of two Wandervögel, does just that. The
author, D. Schindler, and his friend Schnauzl demonstrate the Selbsterziehung project in action,
taking it upon themselves to explore the world beyond the confines of their town, certainly, but
also beyond the typical bucolic world most favored by the Wandervogel, bringing their engaged
worldview to bear on the industrial district outside of their city center while further reflecting
upon the experience in their Gaublatt.
“Du, wir solln was fürs Gaublatt schreiben über Oberschlesien, seine Industrie
und…Na, Du weißt schon, was ich meine.”
“Ja, das ist ‘ne faule Sache. Wovon sollen wir erzählen?”
“Sehr einfach. Wir machen eine Fahrt durch den Industriebezirk, da, wo die
Schornsteine am dicksten stehn.”
Sonnabends, sofort nach der Schule, brechen wir auf, Schauzl und ich. Bald sind
wir mitten drin in der Gruben- und Hüttenlandschaft. Ihr eigenartiger Reiz
umfängt uns. (87)
There is a certain stylistic affinity with punk zines in this piece, written by a school-age
Wandervogel, with its immediacy, intimacy and informality in the service of conveying
experience directly. The turning of the Fahrt towards the industrial in order not just to
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experience their immediate environment for themselves, but also to describe it for others,
exemplifies Selbsterziehung and participatory engagement in action. With open minds (or, as
Wandervögel were much more apt to say, “mit offenen Augen und Herzen”), the pair took off.
The conventional notion that the Wandervögel found beauty only in unspoiled nature and applied
an anachronistic and judgmental lens to their engagement with modern society is wonderfully
punctured by passages such as this: “Hohe Hallen aus Eisen und Stein mit Wellblechdächern,
dunkle Mauern der Gebäude, dazwischen der Turm des Zechenhauses, Eisenbahnwagen,
Eisengerät, Kippwagen, eine Drahtseilbahn mitten hindurch, daneben große Kohlenhalden - - ein Durcheinander von Eisen, Stein, Kohle und wieder Eisen. Und trotzdem bildet alles ein
geschlossenes Ganzes” (87). The environment might be different from the natural world the
Wandervogel are most remembered for exploring, but their approach is the same: allowing the
landscape to present itself and be felt through them. The travelogue closes simply: “Lange
schauen wir hinab ins Land der Arbeit und konnten uns nicht satt sehen. Langsam treten wir den
Heimweg an” (89). No rush to leave, no judgments of the unpleasantness of the environment—
just a slow walk home.
Articles focused on the industrial such as these are admittedly a rarity in Wandervogel
publications, as the focus of their activities was most certainly oriented towards nature, an
orientation reflected in their periodicals. But the existence of such narratives in their publications
provides a glimpse at the broader worldview embraced by many of these youth and illustrates
that for many, their engaged exploration did not stop when they returned from Fahrt. If engaged
Wandern could be applied to an industrial area, it could be applied anywhere. These two
Wandervögel, on their own initiative and independently of any organized outing, applied the
worldview fostered by the Wandervogel to their own experiences, pointing to an internalization
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of the value placed on emotional reception and openness to experience, two of the keys to
confronting boredom. Further, they found adventure where others (including perhaps other
Wandervögel who held different interests) might have overlooked the possibility as a mundane
or ugly symbol of industrialization. Much like the many splits within the Wandervogel, the
decision to explore new environments, expanding the range of their exploration, demonstrates
the evolving and interpretable nature of Wandern. In this, they evidence a commonality with
punks, who applied the same emotional engagement embedded in Wandern in their explorations
of their immediate environments and to their own conceptualizations of punk.
While punks often problematized modern life as well, they did so with a far greater focus
on the urban, though there were many punks in the countryside as well. Rocko Shamoni’s
autobiographical novel Dorfpunks details a fictionalized account of his youth in Schmalenstedt
an der Ostsee in the late 1970s: “Fünftausend Einwohner, CDU-regiert, nächste größere Stadt:
Kiel. Viel Wald, Bäche, Seen, Hügel, eine Endmoränenlandschaft, geformt in der Eiszeit. Man
nennt es die Holsteinische Schweiz, idyllisch, relative unberührte Natur, das meiste Land in
Adelshand. Und totaler Totentanz” (9). The fictionalized reimagining of his hometown of
Lütjenburg, Schmalenstedt would have been a natural destination for the Wandervogel. But for
Schamoni, this outlet didn’t exist. For him, Lütjenburg was simply boring and inertia producing.
What eventually arrived was punk, and through punk he was inspired to do something.
Introducing the novel, Schamoni writes:
Ich war Roddy Dangerblood. Bis ich 19 war. Dann wurde ich zu Rocko
Schamoni…Ich komme von der Ostsee, ich war SH-Punk. SH steht für
Schleswig-Holstein. Dies ist eine Geschichte von Ufern. An die Wellen schlugen.
Sie kamen aus England, breiteten sich dort sehr schnell aus, sprangen aufs
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Festland über, setzten die Großstädte unter Wasser und flossen von dort aus
weiter, um später in der Provinz zu verebben. Jahre später. 1975 in England
ausgebrochen, 1981 bei uns verebbt. Ein Jugendtsunami. (7).
Punk registered across Germany, resonating with life in its own way wherever it was received
and understood. One could be punk, be different, anywhere—all that mattered was doing it. So
where Wandervögel left the city to find themselves in nature, punks in small towns and in the
countryside adventured into the city to experience punk in its “natural” environment. These
experiences inspired many to bring punk back to their hometowns. The zine Antz out of
Augsburg—not exactly a small city but never a punk mecca—provides an example of a
dedicated zine that brought punk news to their small scene.

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Figure 9: Cover of Antz #3, the self-proclaimed “First bayrisch-schwäbisch Fanzine,” image
courtesy of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen

Calling itself the “First bayrisch-schwäbisch Fanzine,” Antz, provided news of upcoming
concerts across West Germany and Switzerland and provided frequent reports about concerts and
scenes across the nation. Other zines such as Der aktuelle Mülleimer out of Böblingen, Alles tot
from Rinseln, Marionett in Regensburg and dozens of others from small or remote towns and
cities across West Germany in the late 1970s and into the 1980s testify to the reception of punk
outside of its major centers and the resonance it found across the nation.
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While punk was concentrated in the city, its major source of inspiration in working
through modern alienation and boredom, it wasn’t oriented against the city per se, but rather
against an artificiality internalized in the self which the artificiality of the city, as a cipher for
modernity, fostered. An embracing of the artificial and the effort to find inspiration in the manmade became one of the greatest unifiers of the punk project. One of the most famous punk
anthems, “Zurück zum Beton” by SYPH, reworks Romanticism towards the artificial:
“Ich glaub, ich träume / Ich seh nur Bäume / Wälder überall / Ich merk auf einem
Mal / Ich bin ein Tier hier / Ein scheiß Tier hier! / Da bleibt mir nur eins: / Zurück
zum Beton / Zurück zum Beton / Zurück zur U-Bahn / Zurück zum Beton / Da ist
der Mensch noch Mensch / Da gibts noch Liebe und Glück / Zurück zum Beton /
Zurück zum Beton.”
Reworking Rousseau, SYPH calls for a return the natural environment of modern life: concrete.
Similar to Poly Styrene’s supposed proclamation that “Unsere Umgebung ist künstlich, deshalb
schreibe ich darüber, es wäre verlogen, über die Natur zu schreiben,”15 SYPH articulated the
focus of punk in a two-minute tirade that quickly became a punk anthem. In the city, the modern
self is admittedly alienated from nature, but in this new environment, the same potentials for
engagement and expression present themselves; it is up to the individual to find them.
“Ekel, Ekel, Natur, Natur / Ich will Beton pur! / Blauer Himmel, blaue See /
Hoch lebe die Betonfee! / Keine Vögel, Fische, Pflanzen / Ich will nur im Beton
tanzen!”
The act of dancing in their concrete surroundings—of exploring the possibilities of the
environment at hand—can be read as a turning of the Wandervogel project inwards. Where
Wandervögel found far greater potential to experience and work through their freedom outside of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15

!Cited!from!Undenk!in!Hollow!Skai’s!Magisterarbeit.!

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the socially restrictive confines of the city, West German society allowed youth the freedom to
explore this environment as well, although not without limitations. Where Wandervögel
contributed thoughtful poems about their engagement with nature, descriptions of Fahrten and
reflections on the meaning of Wandern, punks spoke of their engagement with police, aggressive
or mindless passersby and the need for others to get involved in doing their own thing, whether it
be a band, a zine, performance art, founding a label, opening a record shop or venue—anything
but meaningless consumption or imitation.
What is the action taken to counteract boredom? Publishing zines was one avenue toward
direct action, and indeed the first issues of zines often explore why the creators are undertaking
the process of publishing. Many hoped that their zines would provide emotional uplift for
readers, or inspire readers to participate in the punk lifestyle themselves. The first issue of
Gegendarstellung in 1978 provides such an example on the inside of the cover, scrawled upside
down in felt-tip pen by “Face the Bass” (whom we saw earlier in this chapter in prison for
alleged arson):
Nu ja, vor ein paar Wochen hatten wir den Klaus und ich eine andere Idee: Ein
Fanzin zu machen mit allen möglichen Leuten Leuten jeder sollte etwas schreiben
oder sonst was machen was wir dann zusammen fassen und drucken wollten.
Daraus ist nichts geworden weil die die wir ausgesprochen hatten zu faul waren/
zu blöde waren irgendwas zustande zu bringen! JAH Machen wir endgültig unser
eigenes Fänzine!

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Figure 10: Inside cover of Gegendarstellung #1, image coutesy of the Archiv der Jugendkulturen
The zine provided detailed write-ups of punk concerts and discussions of the meaning of
Anderssein and examples of it in action. In the same issue: “Neulich wuste ich mal wieder nicht
was ich in diesre [sic]Scheisstadt machen soll, da plötzlich fiel mir etwas im Schadelfalter auf.”
The event, a mixture of concert and poetry reading, is described vividly and viscerally: “So dann
ging’s los! Zuerst eine verzerrte Gitarre und dann Vorhang auf und tjä Alice Dee, Gedichte,

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Christian, Gitarre und Claudius, Schlagzeug. Ich kann mich einfach nicht erinnern mehr daran
was LSD [Alice Dee] da am Poesie(ürgs) vorgelesen hat es hat mich aber fast vom Hocker
gerissen, auf jedenfall so begeistert, das ich nach dem 2. oder 3. Gedicht nicht mehr aus dem
Beifall klatschen herausgekommen bin.” The (unnamed) author focuses not on the meaning of
the text, but rather on the emotional and inspirational effect it had. This emotional effect and the
hope to inspire others to explore this lifestyle themselves and to help grow the scene is at the
heart of many zines.
Concentrating here on the Hannover scene, the growth of punk and the various directions
individuals pursued as part of it is well-articulated in the first issue of Musak. In the issue is an
introduction to the 1980s beginning: “Wer, oder was ist das, die 80er Jahre?” It is presented as a
sort of coming-of-age:
ich war auch schon immer der meinung, daß die zeit in sprungen verläuft, also
nicht stetig/kontinuierlich, das ist etwa so wie mit dem 18. geburtstag: plötzlich
bist du intelligent, kannst deine meinung sagen, kannst sogar deine stimme für
jemanden abgeben, aber nur einen tag vorher, da warst du nur der kleine junge,
der noch zur Schule gehen muß und fleisig lerned [sic] und maul halten und artig
sein und so weiter, aber dann, am tage der volljährigwerdung, da biste plötzlich
wer…wers glaubt wird seelig!
Following this introduction, the author thanks all those in the Hannover scene, describing their
contributions individually, but summarizing the punk project into the 1980s with three evocative
lines: “fanz to alle leute, die the gut fanden / fanz to alle leute, die the schlecht fanden / fanz to
alle leute, die zu spät kamen.” The ongoing punk project is summed up in the contributions of its

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individual parts. The search for a worthwhile life is viewed in itself as worthwhile, and the
dedication and involvement of those who had made the Hannover scene what it had become
were sincerely thanked.
The hope to keep the punk movement a dynamic and individually articulated open
movement was, from its inception, one of the greatest ambitions of many punks. Along with
critiques of West German society, the culture industry, consumerism, school, politics,
representations of punk in the media, representations of other punks, representations of the self
and whatever else the author chose to write about, punk zines are filled with calls to explore
punk outside of its accepted borders—calls to apply Anderssein everywhere, even, and perhaps
especially, to punk itself—otherwise, like only hiking in summer, it would itself quickly become
boring. As suggested by the excerpt “Verwirrte Kinder” from Gegendarstellung presented in
Chapter One, this expression of difference was not easy and the toll it took to pursue one’s own
vision in the face of an uncomprehending majority could easily lead to resignation. In spite (or
perhaps because of) the difficulty, the fight for alternative visions of West German society and
the future were deemed by punks as worthwhile, and working through the potentials of this
alternative formed one of the most binding commonalities shared among punks, whether they
agreed with each other or not.
In this call to action from The Ostrich, “gray” (dory ann gray) argues for a continuing
reappraisal of punk oriented around the self-expression, exploration and a do-it-yourself
participation in creating an open punk society.

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Figure 11: “sitz nicht rum und glotz blöd,” image source: Wir waren Helden für einen Tag

Appearing in 1977, early in West German punk’s history, the emotional plea in gray’s article to
escape the boring confines of West German conformity and the plea for active participation and
individuality are pushed further than simply getting involved with the punk scene as it exists.
Instead, gray calls for involvement that moves beyond the static culture punk threatened to
become: “macht was IHR wollt, last euch nicht herumkommandieren!! SAGT eure meinung,
glaubt nicht, was die clash, charley’s girls, saints und die anderen können, das könnt ihr nicht.”
Anderssein meant more than creating and maintaining the same difference. A rejection of and
anger at those in power (“den reichen wixern”), this manifesto puts into basic terms the ultimate
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aspirations punks to win a hard-fought independence from social conventions and pressures,
calling for resistance to conformity from wherever it might spring.16
The search for the clarity Wandervogel youth were attempting to find was built around
personal engagement and the reappraisal of life in German society across the board as well. They
found this potential maximized in the Programmlosigkeit of Wandern, where keeping an open
and unclouded receptiveness was cultivated as an alternative to the conformity and stagnation of
modern Wilhelmine society. In this light, the question concerning alcohol and the Wandervogel
tendency towards abstinence becomes much more understandable. Hans Blüher, whom we
briefly encountered in Chapter Two as the author of the first Wandervogel history, remains to
this day a controversial and complex figure. While it might be imagined that his defense of
homoerotic relationships between youth marked him as belonging among the most progressive
elements of the 2nd Reich, his antisemitism and reluctance to allow girls into the Wandervogel
muddle the picture.17 18
But in the January 1912 issue of Jung-Wandervogel, Blüher contributed a retrospective
on a New Year’s celebration he attended with a group of Wandervögel titled “Der
Silversterpunsch.” Looking back at the night, he tied the role of alcohol in German society to the
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16

!This!excerpt!also!illustrates!the!difficulties!of!separating!punk!style!from!punk!philosophy!and!from!the!media!in!
which!punk!was!disseminated.!Although!it!was!not!universal,!Kleinschreibung!was!often!incorporated!into!zines.!
Combined!with!often!intentional,!or!at!least!intentionally!uncorrected!grammatical!mistakes!and!a!widespread!
adoption!of!English!loanNwords,!the!refusal!to!abide!by!conventional!rules!of!orthography!mirrored!the!general!
refusal!of!unquestioned!authority!by!West!German!punks!and!formed!a!further!articulation!of!their!difference.!
17
!Like!Karl!Fischer!before!him!(who!was!one!of!Blüher’s!heroes),!he!believed!that!allowing!boys!and!girls!to!
intermingle!led!to!gender!confusion!and!an!inevitable!feminizing!of!the!boys!and!masculinizing!of!the!girls.!!
18
!Having!joined!the!AfS!in!Steglitz!in!1902,!shortly!after!the!official!birth!of!the!Wandervogel,!he!was!at!the!center!
of!the!earliest!controversy!surrounding!the!group!as!well,!when!Siegfried!Copalle!sent!him!home!after!an!alleged!
relationship!with!another!Wandervogel$came!to!light—the!fallout!from!which!contributed!to!the!dissolution!of!the!
AfS!into!the!Steglitzer$Wandervogel$and!the!AWV.!He!remained!heavily!involved!with!the!Wandervogel,!especially!
with!the!JWV!following!their!split!from!the!AWV!in!1910.!Their!more!vocal!and!radical!critique!of!Wilhelmine!
society!suited!Blüher—then!in!his!early!20s—perfectly,!and!he!frequently!helped!to!articulate!this!critique!in!the!
organization’s!main!journal,!the!Jung$Wandervogel:$Zeitschrift!des$Bundes$für$Jugendwandern$“JungM
Wandervogel.”!

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larger issue of a stagnant and backwards-looking culture while suggesting that those in the
abstinence movement, with their insistence on their own agenda based on rational science and
moral righteousness, were not the answer either. Celebrating the New Year in a “mussiges
Massenquartier” surrounded by wet clothing from the day’s trek and surrounding a large
cauldron of alcoholic punch, Blüher situates the Wandervogel between two groups of people—
“die Durchsehenden” who see in alcohol “ganz bestimmte nicht zu unterschätzende Werte” and
the abstinence movement. Answering the question he poses himself, “ist der Wein etwas Wert
oder nicht?,” Blüher sees in a focus on alcohol a part of an outdated way of living. He writes:
“Es hat eine Zeit gegeben, wo es selbstverständlich war, daß man trank” (3). This time, he
suggested, had passed. The Burschenschaften and others who clung to the drink gained nothing
from it, and were trapped in a past which held little promise for a better tomorrow. In this,
alcohol served as much as a means of escape as it did a communal activity. But in the abstinence
movement, he saw an equal danger in their moral quest combined with their “eisiger Logik und
abweisbarer Treffsicherheit,” suggesting that “[e]s gibt keine moderne Geistesrichtung, die mit
so klaren, wissenschaftlich scharf begründeten Werkzeugen zu arbeiten imstande ist, wie die
Abstinenzbewegung” (2). But neither their cold logic nor moral arguments for prohibition
offered a better vision. Blüher, naturally, situated the Wandervogel between these two extremes:
Ich denke an den braunen dumm plumpen Punschtopf zurück, der in der
Silversternacht in unserer Mitte war und in dem noch am Morgen ein ziemlich
tiefer Rest des dünnen kalten Gebräues stand. Wir waren so kraftvoll diese Nacht,
daß wir ihn nicht einmal ausgetrunken haben. Wir brauchten ihn gar nicht! Keiner
von uns war abstinent, und niemals ist der Alkohol wohl besser “historisch
überwunden” worden als damals…Kaum schreib ich diese Worte, da sehe ich
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auch schon die kleinen fanatischen Abstinenzgeister vor mir erstehen, mit ihren
gewählten Paradorien auf dem Gesicht und dem ausgesuchtesten Wohlgefallen
daran, den größten Teil der Kulturmenschheit bei ihren gemächlichen Freuden als
unmoralisch abzustempeln.” (3-4)
In Blüher’s view, neither seeking escape through and building a culture around alcohol nor
forcing a moralizing judgment on it justified by objective scientific findings was a proper means
of engaging with the issue. Far better to approach the question responsibly and openly,
recognizing both the cultural and historical importance of alcohol and the dangers implicit in the
decision to drink and then to decide one’s position individually. This mixture of appreciation for
individual experience with a respect for empirical evidence, (even in an issue like alcohol, which
the majority of Wandervögel agreed should be avoided), captures succinctly the engagement
with all aspects of the world which formed the foundation of the Wandervogel lifestyle. In the
June 1911 issue of the Jung-Wandervogel, Hans Falk engaged with the problem:
Viele fassen die Frage der Alkoholenthaltsamkeit als eine Frage der
Weltanschauung, betrachten ihre Weltanschauung natürlich als die bessere und
die übrige Menschheit je nachdem als unheilbar Entartete oder als Rohstoffe der
Bekehrung: “Prophetennaturen.” Diese Sorte Leute kamen auch in den
Wandervogel und prägten folgerichtig den Kampfruf: Durch den Wandervogel
zur Abstinenz. Selbst der Deutsche Bund Wandervogel hat erkannt, daß diese
Leute den Wandervogel zu ihren Zwecken—es gibt keinen andern Ausdruck—
mißbraucht haben, mochte ihr Streben sonst auch groß und vortrefflich sein; und
jener Bund hat dementsprechend geredet und gehandelt. Der Wandervogel ist
keine Vorschule für irgendwelche Reformbestrebungen, sondern hat eigene Ziele,
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die allerdings in vielen Absichten der Enthaltsamkeitsbewegung verwandt sind.
(101)
These related goals were part of the larger reconceptualization of the self in the Wandervogel—
the belief that through Selbsterziehung and personal engagement, youth could come to appreciate
the world and their role in it more authentically, individually and purposively. Demanding
conformity and setting rigid moral standards, no matter how in-line with the majority of
Wandervögel beliefs those standards may be, was seen as a dead end in groups like the JWV
that, because of its parallels to the regimented adult world, ultimately resulted in in the same
boring monotony which they felt already existed in Wilhelmine society. The increasing attempts
of the abstinence movement to use the Wandervogel as an extension of their own agenda,
especially in the DB and later the unified WVEV, was pointed to by the JWV as one example of
the attempted (and sometimes successful) hijacking of the Wandervogelbewegung by those with
a clear ideological agenda.19
In reaching for an understanding of modern society that moved beyond a rationalistic
understanding holding reason and logical analysis as a dominating structure, both Wandervögel
and punks turned towards the emotional impact of their interactions with technological society.
In their efforts to arrive at a more visceral and reflective engagement with the world, both groups
often expressed an understanding of the sublime—the effect of the immensity and
incomprehensibility of the world on the individual. For Wandervögel, it was a natural sublime
that often inspired them and aided in their understanding of themselves and their relationship to
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19

!Another!example!which!JWV!pointed!to!was!the!increasing!age!of!the!Führer$and!the!predominance!of!teachers!
in!their!ranks!of!these!other!branches.!As!discussed!in!Chapter!Two,!the!JWV!sought!to!maintain!the!vision!of!
youth!autonomy!against!anybody$who!attempted!to!force!their!own!ideologies!onto!vulnerable!youth!and,!more!
than!any!of!the!other!groups,!sought!to!maintain!the!focus!on!individual!experience!and!development!which!the!
Wandervogel$had!been!built!upon.!!!

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the world. But they also occasionally worked through the effects of an industrial sublime. For
punks, it was this industrial sublime which often came to the surface in their cultural
productions—along with a post-industrial sublime that focused on the ruins of modern society.
The industrial sublime is an adaptation of the natural sublime, the search for transcendent beauty
or awe at the power of the natural world, which the Wandervogel carefully cultivated. Both can
be seen as part of the broader romantic project and the larger romantic sublime (which is often
used synonymously with the natural sublime).20 Both cover a range of emotional response from
delight to terror, and in this focus on emotional affect in its full range as a mode of engagement,
Wandervögel and punks were able to ground experience and exploration in ways that made their
lives more meaningful, or at least much more interesting. In the search for the sublime, the
mundane modern world became fractured and existence revealed itself in new and exciting ways.
The industrial sublime can be seen in both word and image, such as this woodcut from the
December 1914 issue of the Wandervogel Westfalengau, with its depiction of modern industry
with a smoke-spewing factory foregrounded before a barren and monotonous hillscape, titled
with a provocative nod to expression through song, a juxtaposition against the impassioned and
emotional music the Wandervogel collected, wrote and played.

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20

!See!William!Vaughn’s!Romanticism$and$Art!(1994).!

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Figure 12: “Ein Lied der Arbeit,” image source: Wandervogel Westfalengau, December 1914,
image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

The article that the illustration accompanied, “Industriebilder aus dem Siegerland,” vividly
describes the production of iron as a fight between raw metal, man and machine. The author,
Schatzki, focuses on the experience from a block of iron’s perspective. Among the more
descriptive passages is the following:

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Bald danach kam unser Block wieder heraus, jetzt in hellster Glut, um auf eine
lange Rollbahn geschoben zu werden. Zwei wuchtige Walzen ergriffen ihn und
quetschten ihn zwischen sich durch. Dort das neue Walzenpaar nahm ihn recht
derb in die Arme und preßte ihn nach Herzenslust. Schon war der Block
bedeutend zierlicher geworden, doch nicht genug des grausamen Spiels. Er
näherte sich einem neuen Ungetüm, das schon bedrohlich die Zähne knirschte, als
freue es sich auf den Fraß. Dem Block schien es unheimlich zu werden, er
sträubte sich, aber es half ihm nichts. Das Ungetüm zerbiß ihn mit solcher Kraft,
daß er seine stämmige Form völlig verlor…dann sah er sich ängstlich um, ob
nicht wieder neue Feinde auf ihn lauerten. (447)
There were, of course, several more enemies that shaped the poor piece of iron into its final
usable form. After the block of iron had met its final fate, Schatzki returns to the machines: “In
der Halle aber rasselten, knarrten und brüllten die Maschinen weiter” (447). The author never
judges the process explicitly, however this description is contrasted with another factory visit. In
this other visit, Schatzki is accompanied by the Hochofenmeister, a “prächtigen, alten [sic]
Siegerländer” (446). The iron, in its fight with the worker, is left to meet a similar fate. After
being poured into a form, the iron begins to cool: “Allmähig kühlte sich der Zorn des Eisens.
Sein eben noch blitzendes Gesicht verlor immer mehr den wilden Ausdruck…Jetzt wird es wohl
einige Tage Ruhe haben, bis der grausame Mensch es von neuem zwingt, sich seinem Willen zu
beugen” (446). Looking back on Heidegger’s conception of enframing (Gestell), the roles of the
iron, the worker and the machine can all be seen as part of the same process of standing reserve.
Each has its function as part of a larger whole, and this factory represents only a small part in a
long chain from unmined ore to whatever product it ends up as a part of.
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But Schatzki has not described the process in rational terms; in Schatzki’s depiction, it
seems that he ultimately has more in common with the block of iron than he does with the
machines and men that process it. Instead, he has inverted the roles, anthropomorphizing the iron
and expressionistically reading the process through its imagined emotional reactions to man and
machine, both of which he tellingly describes as grausam. In this gesture, he reveals a way of
viewing and describing the world that stands in sharp contrast to both readings of technological
progress and sociological depictions and rational critiques of industrialization that focus on
negative consequences such as pollution, health hazards or the exploitation of the worker. In
foregrounding the emotional experience, even in something as seemingly emotionless as the
fabrication of iron rods, and in the complete absence of any discussion about the merits or
dangers of the technological, the author ties the experiential perspective to all aspects of
existence in a highly expressionistic, emotionally-driven style.
The punk song “Risikofaktor 1:x” by MALE expresses a similar vision of an
industrialized world brutalizing humanity. In an interview in Alfred Hilsberg’s first installment
of “Aus grauer Städte Mauern” in Sounds, MALE member Jürgen Engler describes the
inspiration for the song: “Der Song ‘Risikofaktor 1:x’ ist entstanden, als wir im Kaufhaus eine
Frau gesehen haben, die umgekippt ist und mit den Haaren inner Rolltreppe hängenblieb” (23).
Witnessing the senseless brutality of a woman helplessly caught in an escalator gave birth to one
of West German punk’s defining songs. The short song that they wrote about the experience is
only six lines, but it evinces uncanny similarities with Schatski’s impression of an iron block
moving along a conveyor belt:
Rolltreppe, Rolltreppe, Eisen und Stahl
Rolltreppe, Rolltreppe sinnlos brutal!
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Hochofen, Hochofen, Hitze und Glut
Hochofen, Hochofen, Schweiß und Blut!
Risikofaktor 1:x
Die neue Zeit kommt gewiß!
Sung in a cheery refrain that belies the critique of the costs of industrialized life, “Risikofaktor
1:x” explores the industrial sublime in a similar way to the image of the block of iron
inescapably caught and shaped by malevolent, anthropomorphized machines in Schatzki’s
factory visit. The style of MALE’s expression, however, reflects a detachment while Schatzki’s
style reflects an engagement with the expressionistic style emerging in the early 20th century.
This points to aesthetics in both Wandervogel and punk as operating in the service of expression
and as another point of exploration in their direct engagement with their respective societies.
The characterization of humanity as stuck in a technological trap, beholden to opaque and
meaningless systems is a fairly dire condemnation of society. Although this interpretation of
modernity was often disheartening, the alternative of taking action and asserting one’s own
vision worked to provide hope for the future along with an interesting and engaging open road to
this more humane society. The unmade path into these futures was exactly what made them
worthwhile.
These youth created an engagement with the world that was critical of the social,
commercial and industrial effects of modern life, but they were also enthusiastic adopters of
many of the products brought about by technological innovation. Putting these technologies to
work in the service of voicing their difference and in gaining autonomy, punk and Wandervogel
youth created spaces allowing them to move beyond the boredom of a rationalistic,

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technologized worldview to imagine and work towards more humane, diverse and open futures.
In interpreting the technological as an enabling tool for adventure, autonomy and self-expression
instead of as a restrictive and limiting ordering of existence and the world, the Wandervogel and
punks explored the potential of modernity to foster diversity, self-development, creativity and an
open engagement with the world.

Reclaiming Engagement: The Redefinition of the Technological
Earlier in this chapter we saw the importance of the print medium to both Wandervögel
and punks. But their engagement and autonomy was also aided by technology in other areas. For
the Wandervogel, innovations which allowed them to gain physical distance from the city—the
site and symbol of their alienation, limited agency and boredom—were embraced as means to
facilitate their freedom and alternative worldview, encoded in the meaning Wandern took on.
These technologies had to do, in one way or another, with movement. Vital for a group that
sought to experience as much of the world as possible was the train. It linked not only major
metropolitan areas to each other, the regional networks allowed Wandervögel to reach remote
areas across Germany and sometimes beyond. It is telling that Hans Blüher, following a detailed
discussion of the particularities of Steglitz, its surroundings and the influence of Ludwig Gurlitt,
introduces the Wandervogel in his history with the depiction of a group of Wandervögel waiting
at the train station on a Sunday morning:
“Des Sonntags, morgens um sieben Uhr, sah man in Steglitz gewöhnlich nur ein
paar Gendarmen auf und ab gehen, oder Milchjungen und Semmelfrauen frostig
von Tür zu Tür laufen…Aber noch etwas: am Bahnhof versammelte sich eine

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bunte und merkwürdige Schar. Man hörte einen einzelnen von weit her durch die
totenstillen Straßen stampfen, dann ein Pfiff, der sich öfters wiederholte” (40).
The meeting point in this sleeping city, the train station, was the site which delivered these “vom
Alter gekränkte Jugend” (40) from their confines.
The train was the single most important and symbolic technology in giving the
Wandervogel the freedom to explore. The physical distance put between the city and the farflung woodlands, meadows and villages Wandervögel most favored was symbolic of the freedom
they gained from the institutions and lifestyles they were leaving behind, oriented towards an
open world waiting to be experienced where the goal was not the destination but the journey.
That the rail system—one of the most powerful manifestations of the efficiently organized space
and time characteristic of modern society, running in set paths at set times—could also make
possible these youths’ aimless exploration of the world is one of the least appreciated and a
manifestation of one of the most important factors in understanding and contextualizing the
Wandervogel project in modernity. Critically, the rail system’s implementation of standardized
time zones to replace the local time kept by the movement of the sun was instrumental in
creating a standardized conception of time around the world. Central European time
(Mitteleuropäische Zeit) was adopted by railroads in 1890 and officially in German states
throughout the Reich by 1893. The relationship towards time and the organization of society
based around it has been one of the hallmarks of modern life. The ideal of Wandern as an
aimless and leisurely pursuit worked both through and against this conceptualization of time in a
similar way to their engagement with other manifestations of modern life.

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Far from a rejection of modernity, the Wandervogel engaged in a reworking of
modernity, and a critical element of this reworking of modernity was a reworking of their
engagement with the technological. In enabling the physical manifestation of the
Programmlosigkeit of the Wandervogel, the train was received by Wandervogel youth in a way
that helped to move beyond boredom. Heidegger’s illustration of a form of boredom in waiting
for a train finds a striking literal affinity in the Wandervogel. With them, the dead time of
“waiting for” the train was replaced with anticipation of and an appreciation for the prospect of
adventure and discovery that the rail network made possible. As a microcosm of the lifestyle
they rejected and the lifestyle they embraced—waiting for a train and waiting to arrive at a
destination versus anticipating possibilities and moving constantly into the open and unknown—
their engagement with the rail system is a near perfect example.
In their reception of other technologies, the Wandervogel exhibited the same orientation,
putting everything from the postal system to bouillon capsules in the service of their exploration
and as objects to explore and experiment with in their own right. The postal system was often
used to send supplies ahead to remote and ill-equipped villages on long hikes, making monthlong trips possible and more comfortable. While physical activity and health were extremely
important and highly prized, grueling marches with heavy pack as tests of endurance were not
usually the ideal of the Fahrt. The ideal of Wandern was to aimlessly explore, to discover, learn
and create a meaningful engagement with the world.21 Thus, keeping a light pack-weight was
extremely important—it is much more difficult to enjoy the camaraderie of friends or be inspired
by a red-lit meadow at sunset when lugging around 40 pounds of gear. So (usually) they didn’t.
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21

!Some!Führer$and!groups!were!more!interested!in!miles!marched!than!others.!Karl!Fischer!increasingly!pushed!
groups!on!Fahrt,!yet!another!grievance!many!other!Führer$such!as!Copalle!had!with!his!vision!of!the!Wandervogel.!
Wandern$emerged!as!an!engaged!and!cultivated!aimlessness,!not!a!test!of!physical!ability.!

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Sending food, fuel and even dropping dirty laundry at a cleaner to be sent ahead when possible
meant less baggage, and less baggage meant experiencing the world in a different way. Still,
testing endurance could be an interesting experience as well—the feeling of making camp after a
long, shared hike could be as fulfilling as a directionless day hike with nothing but a packed
lunch and some water.
Food was another important consideration. When out for multiple days at a time, living
off the land wasn’t practical or, depending on the season, even possible. Expecting a farmer
whose barn they were sleeping in for the night to have the capability to feed a dozen or more
hungry adolescents was absurd. Picking berries, buying some apples or potatoes from a farmer’s
orchard or garden or getting a slab of pork from a butcher were causes to celebrate, but on their
own were inadequate and incomplete. Many Wandervögel brought alcohol-fueled, single burner
stoves with them on multi-day hikes, although these were often replaced by or supplemented
with the Kochtopf, a large pot brought along in which a stew of available ingredients was
concocted. In addition to whatever was available on hand, Wandervögel relied on long-tested
foods like dried beans, chocolate, grains, spices, smoked and cured Wurst and other meats that
were lightweight and relatively shelf-stable, but they also explored the possibilities of
industrialized foods, with dehydrated powders, bouillon capsules and vitamin tablets providing
maximum flavor and nutritional value with the lightest weight. Companies like Maggi pioneered
industrialized food production. Julius Maggi began experimenting with mechanically and
chemically separated legume extracts in the late 19th century, bringing his Suppenmehl to Swiss
families and ushering in a revolution in foodways. Maggi relocated and opened a factory in
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similar to meat at a fraction of the price, provided convenience, nutrition and value.22 For the
Wandervogel, they also offered autonomy and freedom. Making food was an experience, and
although fending for oneself off the land might be interesting for a day or two, the ability to
easily and consistently experiment with local ingredients supplemented with nutritionally
complete, processed food was highly valued and unproblematically embraced by Wandervögel.
In the first issue of the first Wandervogel publication, the AfS Wandervogel Illustrierte,
the Dr. Volkmar Klopfer Nahrungsmittelfabrik ran an ad for their Suppentafeln and Erbswürste.
Erbswurst was one of the first industrial manufactured foodstuffs, emerging around the founding
of the German nation state. The tablets, which when mixed with water and heated produced a
nutritious and quick meal, were quickly integrated into military rations and household pantries
alike. Of the many different products advertised in Wandervogel publications, industrial
foodstuffs were among the most represented. A few examples from various publications are
reproduced here:

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22

!For!information!about!the!history!of!the!Maggi!company,!see!their!compendium!Magginalien$von$A$bis$Z.$100$
Jahre$(1996).!

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Figure 13: “Maggis Suppen sind der beste Proviant für Wandervögel!,” image source:
Wandervogel Illustrierte, March 1914, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen
Jugendbewegung

Figure 14: “Türk & Pabst’s,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December 1913, image
courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
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Figure 15: “Appels Delikatessen,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December 1913,
image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

Figure 16: “F. Kiels Fleisch=Ersatz,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December
1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung
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Figure 17: “In jeden Rucksack,” Wandervogel Monatsschrift, June 1914, image courtesy of the
Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

Everything from Erbswurst to tubes of meat and cheese to powdered coffee was
purveyed through Wandervogel publications and enthusiastically adopted as practical, affordable
and nutritious means of fostering their exploration of the world. But even their relationship with
nonprocessed foods was grounded in scientific analysis. For example, in the August 1904 issue
of the Wandervogel Illustrierte, a short unattributed piece titled “Obst als Durststiller” urged
Wandervögel to replace when possible drinking water with eating fruit, noting that “es sind nur
wenige Dinge, die vor den strengen Augen eines modernen Hygienikers volle Gnade finden; zu
diesen gehört aber in erster Linie frisches Obst. Die chemische Untersuchung zeigt…,dass die
saftigen Früchte eigentlich keinen grossen Nährwert besitzen, weil sie aus wenig mehr bestehen

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als aus Zellstoff und einer Lösung von Zucker” (67). Following a list of the sugar contents of
various fruits, the author praises their high water content and delicious taste.

Figure 18: “Obst als Durststiller,” image source: Wandervogel Illustrierte, August 1904, image
courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

The discussion of food through the language of nutritional analysis and the popularity of
chemically and mechanically produced products marks yet another instance of Wandervogel
adoption of modern innovations in the name of autonomy and freedom. The reception of modern
foodstuffs was also, like the train, oriented towards the experience. Wolfgang Meyen, the
Wandervogel who first suggested the name of the organization, now a Bachant (the earlier title
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of what later became the Führer) in the AWV, contributed an article in the November 1904 issue
of the Wandervogel Illustrierte, “Ein Abkochen im Regen,” which details an episode of
Wandervogel culinary experimentation, from the retrieving of water to the attempt to prepare a
simple Erbswurst in a downpour. It reads as a sort of recipe, however in an informal, lighthearted
and typical Wandervogel articulation, the ingredient list of this recipe is rather a list of
experiences:
Also zuerst mal Wasser geholt zu einer kräftigen Erbsuppe! Das Wasser scheint
zwar durch den Regen etwas aufgerührt und trübe zu sein, aber das macht weiter
nichts. Also einen tüchtigen Topf voll mitgenommen! Nachdem man unterwegs
über einen Maulwurfhügel gestolpert und gegen einige Bäume gelaufen ist,
kommt man mit dem halbgefüllten Topfe am Platze an. So, nun kann endlich die
Kocherei losgehen. Beim Einbrocken der Erbswurst bemerken wir zu unserem
Entsetzen einen schönen grossen Wasserkäfer munter auf unserer Suppe
umherschwimmen. Nach Entfernung des Eindringlings warten wir einige Zeit
ebenso geduldig wie vergeblich auf das Kochen der Suppe. Daes aber inzwischen
aufgehört hat sachte zu regnen, heisst es erstens eine Zuflucht vor unfreiwilliger
Verdünnung der Suppe suchen. Schell packen wir unsere Siebensachen wieder
zusammen, verbrennen uns vorher erst noch die Finger und suchen dann unter den
Bäumen Schutz. (101)
The adventure of cooking in a downpour, replete with collecting and spilling water, fishing out a
stowaway beetle and burning fingers in an attempt to escape the rain takes on a new dimension
of meaning. Other Wandervögel experience similar difficulties, including one youth who has
complicated matters by adding salt instead of sugar to his rote Grütze. Another has issues with
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pine needles and dried leaves finding their way into his Eierkuchen, which has naturally also
been watered down by the rain. Despite all of these setbacks, or more likely precisely because of
them, the Horde emerged in high spirits: “Aber trotz alledem schön war es noch—das Abkochen
im Regen” (103). The challenges to be overcome and the lessons learned are a superb and
unassuming example of the project of Selbsterziehung in action. In the trial and error approach to
cooking, the same engaged amateurism which characterized the lifestyles of both Wandervögel
and punks is emphasized—in any activity there existed the potential for exploration and
adventure, and in viewing even the most mundane tasks as something to be experienced, the
world the Wandervogel made for themselves emerged as much less boring.
In this mission, technologies were incorporated unproblematically as a supportive tool,
further evident in the hiking and camping gear used by Wandervogel youth. In addition to the
Spirituskocher, the single-burner compact stove, a wide variety of gear and clothing was adopted
by Wandervögel. On the occasion of the publication of Blüher’s second volume of his
Wandervogel history, the Jung-Wandervogel Zeitung published a piece in March 1913 by
Ludwig Gurlitt. In “Sollen wir unsere Kinder am Wandervogel teilnehmen lassen?” Gurlitt
reflects on the meaning of the Wandervogel more than ten years after its founding. Gurlitt at one
point turns his eye to Wandervogel gear and fashion: “Zunächst eine stilvolle Tracht. Stilvoll, das
heißt: dem Bedürfnisse angepaßt. Eine Anlehnung an die mittelalterlichen fahrenden Schüler und
Benutzung aller technischen Fortschritte in Kleidung und Gerät” (42). The style of the
Wandervogel, as discussed in Chapter Two, can be seen to express the fusion of old and new that
Wandervogel youth brought to all aspects of their engagement with the world. The
Selbsterziehung project was marked by a synthesis of their respect for the traveling cultures of
Germany’s past and an appreciation for the advances that opened the world up to them in
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unprecedented ways in the present. Even more so than in the realm of food, advertisements in
Wandervogel publications relating to the multitude of watertight clothing, reinforced hiking
boots, backpacks, sleeping bags, utility knives, pedometers, lanterns, first aid kits and even
battery-powered flashlights dominated. Wandervögel pioneered the use of outdoor recreational
technologies, although they most certainly would have objected to the use of the word
“recreational,” as these items and others were incorporated into a way of life that sought to view
life as a totality, not as compartmentalized realms of work, family and leisure. From hundreds of
ads printed in periodicals from 1904 to 1914, here a few representative examples:

Figure 19: “Deutschlands Jugend trägt,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December
1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

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Figure 20: “Wandervogel-Messer,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December 1913,
image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

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Figure 21: “Porös-wasserdichte, wetterfeste Loden,” Wandervogel im Hessen und am Rhein,
November 1913. Image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

Figure 22: “Ventilations-Wäsche,” Wandervogel Monatsschrift, December 1913, image courtesy
of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

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Figure 23: “Argus Touristenglas,” image source: Gaublatt für Sachsen, March 1911, image
courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

Figure 24: “Carl Gustav Nowack in Leipzig,” image source: Wandervogel Monatsschrift, July
1913, image courtesy of the Archiv der deutschen Jugendbewegung

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Discussions of gear were extremely common in articles as well. The inaugural April 1907
issue of the DB’s publication (“Blätter für den Wandervogel, Deutscher Bund für
Jugendwanderungen”) about the importance of equipment: “Für alle Wanderfahrten, kleinere wie
größere, ist es von der größten Wichtigkeit, daß die Ausrüstung eine möglichst praktische und
zweckdienliche ist. Eine falsche gewählte, unpraktische Ausrüstung kann leicht dazu dienen,
dem Wanderer das Wandern zu erschweren, ja völlig zu verleiden” (3). The practical questions
of hiking were of enormous concern for Wandervogel youth, and working through the best
equipment for specific outings was frequently explored on Fahrt and described in their
periodicals. While an open-collared shirt (the Schillerkragen) and shorts along with a hat, a pair
of hiking boots and a spare pair of Turnschuhe were ideal for summer hikes, hiking in other
seasons, especially winter, required special consideration. But nearly as important as the
practical element of Wandervogel gear was its expressive element. As the Wandervogel grew,
many groups began cultivating a sense of style that ran counter to what others felt its aims should
be. The dirty kid in patched-pants and a grass-stained shirt, the ideal of Karl Fischer and many
others of the first generation gave way to a cleaner and more practical style. But as the
movement grew, the outfits of the Wandervogel became increasingly refined and youth took
increasing amounts of pride in their garb. This led to occasional discussions of whether, in the
attempt to one-up each other and maintain a pristine wardrobe, some Wandervogel groups might
be betraying the very ideals of the Wandervogel. If the Wandervogel aesthetic—the ready-foradventure fahrender Scholar combined with the cutting-edge of technological innovation—
reflected the Wandervogel ideal embedded in Wandern, the carefully manicured and painfully
overwrought peacocking of some youth reflected a very different rearticulation. In some groups,
this preening and careful maintenance became so predominant that the issue was taken up in

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their periodical. The September 1911 issue of the Gau-Blatt für Niedersachsen und Westfalen
earnestly asked the question of “Darf der Anzug geflickt sein?” In it the author questions the
motives for the insistence on clean, never patched clothing:
Alles soll heute tadellos sein: Halskragen in der Stadt, Kniee bedeckt, Anzug nie
geflickt und vor jedem Bauernkotten gebürstet. Einige haben sogar Angst vor
Zwölflitertöpfen…Steckt nicht etwas sozialer Hochmut in dieser Sucht, sich
immer an der Kleidung durch lächerlichen Zwang als den Vertreter “besserer”
Stände kenntlich zu machen? … Trage lieber ruhig Eure fünfmalgeflickte Hose
auf, wenn Euch der Vater keine bessere zur Fahrt bewilligt. Am Benehmen
erkennt man in erster Linie den anständigen Wandervogel, nicht am Alter der
Hose.” (87)
The style of the Wandervogel as representative of its meaning is illustrated plainly in this text.
The fear of getting dirty was tantamount to a fear of engagement and, perhaps worse for many, a
manifestation of the high-brow society from which they were supposedly attempting to distance
themselves. Further, the talk of self-sufficiency and autonomy was symbolically undermined
when youth, who were prohibited from holding jobs and were beholden to their parents for
spending money, hiked through a village wearing immaculate, ostentatious and expensive outfits.
This demonstrates another parallel to punk, where youth who imported their fashion from
London to look as punk as possible ended up being viewed as inauthentic, leading to their being
rejected as poseurs. Both styles emerged organically and conveyed the inner meanings of their
lifestyles. This expression was certainly very different, except for footwear, which both groups
prized (although while Wandervogel youth were interested in sturdy and comfortable footwear

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for long hikes, many punks were more interested in the ability to make a quick escape and not to
break their toes at a concert). But ultimately both styles communicated the critiques of modern
society, Fittingly, both styles met where the boot hit the ground, evidencing a similar practicality
and desire to represent oneself. Style therefore represented a very personal visual articulation of
these youths’ engagement with the world wrapped up in ideas of Selbsterziehung and DIY and
oriented towards expressing their postulated difference embodied in the ideals of Wandern and
Anderssein. Of course, the Wandervogel who refused to wear patched pants or get dirty or the
punk who imported a bondage suit from King’s Road were expressing themselves as well, but
what they were in the end expressing to other Wandervögel and punks was that they didn’t
understand what these cultures were about.
There was an element of the appearance of disengagement (or, perhaps better,
misengagement) in each group. For the Wandervogel, this largely occurred when concern for
appearance took precedence over enthusiasm for hiking through a thorny field or cooking a
potentially sloppy meal. For punk, the limit was reached when style trumped content as well—
when buying a certain look or copying a popular trend became the focus of engagement rather
than an expression of it. Both were dependent largely on affective reaction and communal
interpretation, underscoring the extremely subjective nature of their respective projects of
Wandern and Anderssein—a subjective and emotional reaction which was reflected, but did not
originate in, their style. So while style is certainly the most visible aspect of subcultural
expression, in the end it should be seen as only a small part and perhaps even a largely
unimportant aspect of their overall projects of engagement. Lewin and Williams decry the
overemphasis on subcultural style in research:

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Research on subcultural authenticity has focused primarily on style and stylistic
preference. Overemphasizing style fetishizes material culture and its consumption
as indispensable dimensions of youth subculture…Alas, subcultural style, so
salient and intriguing to the sociological eye, has become the most commonly
analyzed dimension of subculture studies. Scholars have framed, interpreted, and
defined subcultures through the lens of style, despite claiming to have overcome
their homological heritage. (68)
While style can often reflect the inner motives and desires of these youth and thus provides
evidence of the larger ideals underpinning the engagement of both youth groups, it proves
confining when used as a primary lens through which to analyze punk and Wandervogel. Style is
still valuable as an object of study within the scope of this project, however, because both groups
used style as a means of in-group indentification and differentiation from mainstream adult
society. One of the aims of this project, then, is to rehabilitate the place of style within
scholarship of youth cultures, reading style as critical to youth’s self-expression while at the
same time recognizing that style is not their raison d’être or sole means of expression.
Where Wandervogel engagement with the technological highlighted and encouraged
physical movement in the pursuit of Wandern, punk engagement with the technological, to a
much greater extent, emphasized the role of communication technologies in pursuit of
Anderssein as a critique of modern West German society. The importance of autonomous and
direct communication had, by the 1970s, become a much greater issue as the disengaging and
leveling effects of mass culture were broadcast across the world, threatening to erase national,
regional, community and individual forms of engagement and expression not just in the city. So
while Wandervogel youth utilized their access to technological innovations to create distance
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from their contemporary center of modern disengagement and boredom—the city—punks
implemented technological innovations to create distance from a disengaged boredom diffused
throughout modern society through radio, records, television and cinema. The critiques made by
both Wandervogel and punks reflected these different foci and locations of disengaged life, with
Wandervogel often problematizing disengagement in movement (travel) while punks often
articulated this disengagement through mass media (popular music and television).
While the debt to the democratization of technology has been explored in punk to a
greater extent than in the Wandervogel by several scholars,23 a brief inspection of the West
German punk scene reveals several parallels to the Wandervogel relationship with the
technological. While we have already discussed the importance of the photocopier in Chapter
One, four other significant developments help to ground the participatory engagement of punks
through the technological. First, the cassette represented a major advancement in the
democratization of recording technologies. The compact cassette and cassette players, which
exploded in popularity in the late 1970s, had been introduced in Europe in 1962 and were
initially marketed to children. Early tapes and recorders were of low quality and were barely
adequate for simple dictation, due to the amount of magnetic interference (‘hiss’). The
technology to make musical recordings viable on cassette first arrived in 1970 with Dolby’s
noise-reduction system, when “the cassette truly began its transition from a toy to a serious highfidelity instrument” (Morton 163). The compact cassette medium, “which emphasized simplicity,
low cost, and ease of use” (Morton 162), was, like the photocopier, an ideal technology for punks
to utilize in their efforts for autonomous production and exploration.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
23

!See!Simon!Frith’s!“Art!versus!technology:!the!strange!case!of!popular!music”!and!Rubén!Ramirez’!“From!Zines!to!
MySpace:!A!Case!Study!of!Media!Infrastructures!and!CounterNpower!in!the!Puerto!Rican!Underground!Punk!Scene”!
and!Frank!Apunkt!Schneider’s!Als$die$Welt$noch$Unterging.!!!

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Figure 25: “Hören und gehört werden,” image source: Fuchstrott 1980, image courtesy of the
Archiv der Jugendkulturen
Cassette exchanges and an independent cassette scene emerged in full force in the early 1980s,
but punks had begun experimenting with the medium as early as 1977. Discussing the growth of
the burgeoning cassette culture of the 1980s, Frank Schneider remarks on their earlier reception:
“Im The Ostrich-Fanzine wurden bereits im Frühjahr 1977 Kassetten von CHARLEY’S GIRLS
angeboten. In Hannover startete im Sommer 1979 auf Anregung von Hollow Skai das Projekt
‘Jedem seinen eigenen Radiosender’” (130). The simplicity and openness of the medium are
reflected in the “Jedem seinen eigenen Radiosender” project—anyone could do it. It was also
affordable and immediate. In contrast to the sustained costs and production time of creating a
record, cassettes could be recorded anywhere and copied in runs as small or large as needed.
Punk zines began including advertisements for cassette exchanges and calls for groups and
individuals to send in their recordings. The versatility of the cassette meant it could be taken into
spaces other media couldn’t. For example Einstürzende Neubauten, pioneers in the Geniale
Dilletanten scene in West Berlin that often explored found industrial sounds, also explored the
potential of the cassette, recording their first album in a small underground space under a busy
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road.24 The name and methods of the Geniale Dilletanten sum up the punk DIY project—anyone
with anything to say could, regardless of proficiency and now regardless of connections or costs.
Where the Wandervogel played music while on Fahrt or gave impromptu performances in a
village or in the city, punks brought their music to the site of their freedom and autonomy—now
the city itself. With the cassette, they were further able to explore and easily share music
recordings, where the shared music of the Wandervogel was limited to personal contact when
one group encountered another, through musical notation and in print periodicals to share music
across groups. The cassette opened up the possibilities of the recorded media for all, and the
same sense of adventure and exploration evident in Wandervogel explorations of the natural
world was given a new outlet through which to engage with and express themselves. In bringing
the cassette into the urban environment directly, some groups and individuals even used the
medium as a sort of aural camera and recorded to listen, exploring the effects of the environment
on the acoustic and creative atmosphere evoked by these spaces.
Independent record labels served as another important development in creating an
alternative voice and another avenue to explore. Cassettes were traded across West Germany, but
independent record companies like ZickZack, No Fun and Ata Tak created the possibility to be
heard and recognized by a much larger population and helped to create an autonomous space and
channels within West Germany in which those who wished to explore could. While those who
created independent labels were, from a practical perspective, working towards the creation of
autonomous production channels which allowed for the scenes to thrive and produce
autonomously, like producing a tape or a zine, running a recording company was also an
adventure in its own right.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
24

!See!Wolfgang!Müller!and!Blixa!Bargeld’s!Geniale$Dilletanten!for!a!discussion!of!the!scene!and!its!approach!to!
musical!production.!

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Finally, the exploration of new instruments and new sounds allowed punks to explore the
realm of rock and popular culture in new ways. While the familiar guitar, bass and drum setup of
rock provided one direction to explore, experimenting with electronic or industrial sounds
formed another. While the Wandervogel repopularized the guitar as an expressive medium at the
beginning of the 20th century, punk youth explored the potentials of the electric guitar or, like
groups like DAF, sought to distance themselves from them entirely. In an interview, Gabi
Delgado of DAF recounts their thoughts on the instrument: “Wir haben Gitarren inzwischen auch
richtig gehasst. Wir konnten keine Gitarren mehr sehen. Das war wie der lezte Rest der Alten
Welt. Das musste eliminiert werden” (Teipel 293). In their place, electronic music—the direct
exploration of the modern machine—caused a sea-change in popular music, ushering in entire
new genres, but it also opened up the possibility to explore and express the self and the
relationship to the technological in redefined ways. As Schneider notes, while the now traditional
rock setup remained a fixture, “[d]as Massenmedium der Neuen Wellen schlechthin…war der
Synthesizer” (Schneider 153). What had remained throughout the early 1970s prohibitively
expensive technology was suddenly democratized: “Doch plötzlich gab es billige und sehr billige
Modelle für den Hausgebrauch. Der Casio VL-Tone bzw. Casio VL-1—bekannt aus TRIOs ‘Da
Da Da’—kostet um die 150 DM und war als Einstiegsinstrument für Kinder und als Spielzeug
konzipiert” (Schneider 153). The simple device was rapidly embraced by punks, who, like the
kids to whom it was marketed, found a machine they could explore and through which they
could express themselves. The limited capabilities of the device, however, meant that its range of
sounds was limited. The cassette scene quickly showed that too much of the same thing limited
its appeal: “Da das reine Dilettieren am ohnehin musikalisch limitierten Casio und
vergleichbaren Instrumenten auf immer die gleichen Geräusche und Geräuschekonzeptionen

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hinauslief, erstarrte und erstickte die Casio-Revolte relativ bald gewissermaßen an ihrem
Erbrochenen” (Schneider 153). But for the individual, it represented a powerful tool through
which to begin learning and exploring.
Those who wanted to delve deeper into the possibilities of the synthesizer found the
perfect mix of capability and affordability in the Korg MS-20, released in 1978. At 1,200 DM, it
was a significant investment, but was a bargain compared to previous models. And in its ability
to fabricate an endless number of sounds, the MS-20 opened up the possibilities of musical
experimentation and expression. The MS-20 has remained extremely popular today, with its cost
reduced to $29.99 as the KORG iMS-20, a digital recreation of the MS-20 available through
iTunes. One reviewer of the app demonstrates its continued potential for discovery:
This app was my introduction to the world of synths, sequencers and drum
machines. It’s spare, retro minimalist interface is starkly beautiful and amazingly
functional. The tone is rich and gorgeous…I will say that learning to control the
power of this app takes time…but the iMS-20 will reward you for your efforts.
After almost 3 years of continual use, I am still discovering new techniques. [sic]
(Davideo)
This review illustrates the continuing participatory engagement fostered by both the
Wandervogel and punk, and the further technological democratization of this exploratory
potential means that almost anybody with the desire can easily and immediately get involved.
On their own, these projects of Selbsterziehung and DIY lack direction. Do-It-Yourself
fails to mention what “It” is. Wandervogel and punk’s relationship with the technological sought
to enhance the possibilities of their engagement with the world and their respective interests,
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cultivating this “It” through unbound engagement. Their creation of autonomous cultures which
sought to foster an engaged, aware and adventurous reconceptualization of the self were further
enhanced by their relationship towards the technological. This tendency towards exploring the
technological in pursuit of the reimagining of the self, embedded in the ideals of Wandern and
Anderssein, was itself also a manifestation of these ideals of openness and discovery.
Heidegger’s proposition that the essence of technology—enframing—contributed to modern
boredom was, when applied to the projects of self-exploration and articulation these youth
pursued, largely overcome.

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EPILOGUE: BEYOND BOREDOM
As this dissertation has attempted to demonstrate, the boredom sensed by many
Wandervogel and punk youth was not caused by their own internalization of the technologized
worldview and its lack of mystery and affective potential, but rather by their recognition of this
worldview as a dominant mode of experience in their societies. Their boredom was, as the title of
this dissertation suggests, a boredom caused by recognition of their imminent place in what they
saw as depersonalized societies – the prospect of which deeply troubled many of them. Their
response to this dawning awareness was the same: get involved and try to create a more
interesting world. These youth, bored with the prospect of boredom, instinctively sought to
replace it with a world which maintained the mystery, freedom and sense of discovery and
adventure of youth. This is of course not to say that their historical moments were identical, nor
that the two movements drew the same conclusions about the ultimate possibilities for successful
reversal of the status quo in their respective societies. A comparison of two texts, one from each
movement, serves to illustrate this point in the ways both groups write (or refuse to write)
themselves into history.
In the May 1909 Nachrichtenblatt of the Steglitzer EV, an article appeared entitled “Von
der eilenden und weilenden Welt.” Penned by a W. Schottky, this text characterizes the
Wandervogel worldview through comparison with a scientifistic, rationalistic encounter with the
world. “Es ist ein Unterschied zwischen der eilenden und der weilenden Welt. Die eilende Welt
hat nichts als sich selbst; wo sie auch hinkommt, sie ist überall dieselbe, sie umfasst eine
beschränkte Anzahl von Freuden und Merkwürdigkeiten, und ihre Herrlichkeit ist rasch
erschöpft” (25). The world of hurried, harried activity effectively collapses the possibilities for
experience and reflection. In the “weilende Welt,” by contrast, the world opens through a
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receptive engagement with the world as it presents itself. The “eilende Welt” pushes forth a
worldview which constrains the individual to set paths, while the receptive relationship to the
world evidences infinite possibility. Schottky proceeds to recount a tale (whether real or
imagined is unclear) of two archetypal figures on a Wanderung: a geologist who “ist nun bloss
mit halben Sinnen in der Gegenwart” and whose thoughts “durchflieg[en] in einem Augenblick
die ganze Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bodens, den er betritt, von unvordenklichen Zeiten an”
(26). The other, a historian, “ein kleines dickes Buch in der Tasche und Kanonenstiefel an den
Bein,” recounts to the Horde a history of the area they are exploring: “Eine ganz interessante
Stelle hier, wo ich euch finde! Dort hinunten an der Wegkreuzung – ich habe eben noch einen
alten Grenzstein festgestellt – laufen die Territorialgrenzen der ehemals markgräflichen,
erzbischöflichen und fürstlichen Länder zusammen” (26). The hidden world these two reveal
humbles the Wandervögel, but also inspires them with its expansive unknown. The historical and
scientific facts that seem so dry and monotonous when learned about in a book, disengaged from
the world, reveal in this setting the potential for an even deeper engagement with a place when
experienced and felt firsthand. In the visceral, directly present interaction with the world,
boredom dissipates. The world is revealed to be even more open than it seemed moments before,
and Schottky closes his anecdote with an appeal to this infinite potential:
Aber es ist wahr, reich muss die Welt sein und geheimen Lebens voll, wenn schon
ein armes Stück Kiefernwald so viel zu suchen und zu denken gibt! Wenn wir
jetzt weiterwandern, so scheint uns die ganze Erde von Rätseln und Geheimnissen
durchtränkt; nichts ist begrenzt und bekannt, nichts “wissen” wir. Ohne dass wir
suchen, drängen sich überall die Fragen und Gestalten an unsern Weg, und täglich
neu offenbart sich das Leben. (27)
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The modern search for knowledge is viewed here as ultimately reconcilable with the ideal of
Wandern. Each of these academic fields - geology and history - offers in themselves a new
domain through which the world can present itself and a new potential site to explore. In their
historical moment, the Wandervögel discovered a means to engage with the world which
removed the dissonance between the appreciation of the institutionalized knowledge of the
scientist with the affective and aimless Programmlosigkeit of Wandern. In this turn, these
Wandervogel claimed an individual future, but one importantly still bound to the events and
narratives of the past. Wandervogel youth situated themselves within history, and their
preoccupation with their own history (often heavily mythologized as we saw in Blüher’s work)
reinforces their belief in a continuing historical narrative.
The gesture of reconciliation performed by Wandervogel youth had, for punk youth in the
late 1970s, become an absurdity. The faith in a historical future and also of the ability to
conceive of themselves as part of a continuous past had dissipated for many punk youth, the
room for naïve optimism having shrunk considerably in the face of a disastrous past, itself the
result of an inability to escape the historical prejudices of another iteration of German history. A
particularly intriguing exploration of the limitations of historical narrativity is included in Issue 6
of the 1979-1980 punk zine Musak in the article “Aus Wissenschaft und Technik.” The authors,
going under Prof. Dr. Engerling and Dr. Phil Albrzx, provide “3 Versionen über die Erfindung
des BUCHES” which analyze the potentials of historical agency from a tongue-in-cheek punk
perspective:
A) Wann wir in das Jahr 2000 v. Chr. hineingucken, sehen wir einen Buchbinder,
einen Alten sehen wir, er ist sehr alt, denn es ist das 2000 v. Chr. Er hat Papyrus
entdeckt. Wir kennen es auch als Papyrus, denn es heißt so. Nun bindet er ein
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Buch, in das Papyrus nämlich. Nun nennt er sich Buchbinder, denn er ist sehr alt,
nicht wahr? So war das damals. Später kam ein Mann und er-fand das Buch [weil
er gern drin las] und er nannte es Buch. Er wird berühmt und stirbt – komisch und
wahr. Heute ist das ganz anders; da alle Bücher schon eingebunden, ganz fest.
Das tut gut.
B) Das Buch hat viele Seiten, die beschmiert sind. Wer das tat weiß keiner mehr.
C) Das Buch wurde aus Zufall entdeckt. Da war mal eine Papyruspflanze. Da kam
der Zufall und machte eine Papyrusrolle daraus.
In the first history, traditional historical narrativity is explored and lampooned. History has actors
that propel it forwards - whatever. Agents are named, dates are chronicled and discoveries
labeled – things got called things by someone sometime. The belief in history as chronological,
purposive and teleological direction (or directions) is held up as an absurdity (“denn es heißt so,”
“komisch und wahr”). This history closes with an image of all books having been bound – there
are no new stories. This first form of history is itself ultimately confined to history – it is fixed,
unchanging and unchangeable. It has been told, but the authors suggest that this era is past (“Das
tut gut”). In the second history, meaning has now broken down. Something of this past exists, but
any entrance to this knowledge is blocked – the language of this past is no longer legible. This, I
would suggest, is the language of boredom. The authors of history are dead – there are no
bookbinders here. In this late-modern expunging of narrativity, agency is lost, but there is not yet
a new language through which to parse experience. There is no future in this iteration of the past.
The third history recovers agency, or at the very least self-awareness, while maintaining an (at
best) ambivalent posture to the past. This relation to the past dispenses with any possibility of
factual (rational) historic narration – everything is happenstance – while maintaining the dignity
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of the actors within it. History, these young punks seem to suggest, is an amorphous and
unrecoverable series of moments, and the only possible futures that can emerge out of this past
are those where its actors are both aware of the past’s ultimate insignificance and dangers but
also dedicated to discovery and adventure if for no other purpose than discovery and adventure.
But can the same be said of the Wandervogel?
The answer here is likely no, but with a caveat. The Wandervögel who, in appreciation of
the geologist and historian, re-animated their world in and through immediate experience and
engagement, saw themselves as inheritors and re-instatiators of a heavily romanticized past. But
the punk project here seemingly cuts off the chance to re-engage with history. This is not simply
nihilistic or playfully naïve, but rather an illumination of the limitations of reason (and the
inevitable intrusion of the subjective) and, by contrast, of the importance of recognizing the
irrational, visceral and emotional (and acknowledging the role they have always played) in
maintaining an engaged interest in the world. This is of course not entirely absent in the
Wandervogel text, with its closing proclamation that “nichts ist begrenzt und bekannt, nichts
‘wissen’ wir.” Even with the espoused respect for the past, there is also a healthy skepticism
here. But ultimately, while both punk and Wandervogel formulated similar lifestyles based on
experience and action, they importantly diverged in their conceptualization of the past and their
potential place in a continuing narrative.
Still, for both the future opens up as unwritten, and in this future one’s own actions
become all the more vital. The charge for engagement and reflection inherent in the
Selbsterziehung and DIY projects emerged for these youth as answers to the boredom of modern
rational life and the set paths it offered and pointed the way to reclaiming personal agency in an
opened world. The effort to create individuals in societies which valued constant reinterpretation
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while maintaining an atmosphere where individual exploration was prized was an idea shared by
both of these youth cultures, regardless of their orientation towards the past.
In the post-script to his poem “Verwirrte Kinder,” the punk poem discussed in Chapter
One, author Achim laments: “Wo ist die Zukunft,/eine Zukunft,/in der ich meine jetzige Freiheit
vollkommen erhalten kann!??” The answer was not to be found within society as it existed. It
was rather located in the self – working towards constructing a new worldview and working
towards the possibility of its realization. Achim recognized the freedom he currently enjoyed, but
seemed to fail to realize that this freedom had nothing to do with the society he situated himself
against. But Achim was also the author of the impassioned speech on Anderssein in the
fundraiser issue of Gegendarstellung for Face the Bass. Here he expresses individuality and
difference, combined with the capacity and resolve to act, as a means of resistance and offers a
hopeful vision of the future in the face of a disengaging and hostile Alltag. And in the act of
writing, Achim claims autonomy and agency, asserting the potential of individual action in the
face of established systems to create a better future.
Looking back to 1976, the initial punk explosion and the subsequent development of a
thriving punk community in West Germany by 1980, the future could open. But it remained
limited if it looked back to this initial moment and what had already been done. The fall 1980
issue of the Regensburg zine mariouett synthesizes this orientation towards constant
reinterpretation and reorientation upon what has already been done:
Wir Punks (Punker,Punkrocker) wir sind schon manchmal sehr überzeugt von uns
ne? Einige meinen, wir sind die einzigen die nicht clean, angepasst und
konsumfreudig sind. Wir sind es sicher nicht in dem Maß, wie z.B. die Müslis,

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ganz zu Schweigen von den Discoaffen und Popperschleimern. Aber wir hängen
genauso drin, wie alle anderen. Da leben manche von uns noch in Ihrer 76er
Traumwelt, Ohne zu bemerken, daß diese Welt um sie verreckt ist. Punk als
solcher ist tot. Das Kategorisieren muß aufhören. Jeder kann Punk sein, solange er
es für sich alleine ist. Wenn er dann jedoch von einer Punkbewegung spricht, wird
das lächerlich. 76 ist eine Scheinwelt geworden. Wir unterscheiden uns in nichts
von den Müslis – dann nämlich, wenn wir nicht aufhören, dem nachzulaufen.
Neues muß geschaffen werden in unserem allseits verhassten Land. Hassen, dazu
braucht es wenig Anstrengung, keines Nachdenkens. Was zählt ist creative
Erneuerung/Veränderung in eine wenigstens teilweise bessere Zukünft.
For the author of this manifesto, punk died the moment it was categorized and categorized itself
– when it confined itself to history. Becoming an ordered system meant stagnation. Stagnation
created a scene with the same shortcomings as any other that came before it. The way forward
was in continuous evolution – in never staying still. In a word, in Wandern.
The foci of punk and Wandervogel lifestyles were, mildly stated, superficially dissimilar;
the language and aesthetics they used to express themselves often more so. Where Wandervögel
used expressive and poetic language to describe their experiences, punks favored terse, short
utterances that got to the point. Both groups of youth wrote about what was immediately salient
to them. But they are both youth movements who were inspired by their direct engagement with
their worlds and saw in this mode of experience a better future. In their simplicity, the
Wandervogel and punk projects found a means of reconnecting with the world that restarted the
stopped time of boredom and pointed towards futures filled with opportunity and hope. Life
became an adventure, and, as suggested in the discussion on boredom in Chapter One, a life
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lived for uncertain possibilities focused on experience can dissolve the conditions for boredom.
From disengaged and bored youth at opposite ends of the busy 20th century, the same answer
emerged: maintain the sense of openness and adventure of youth. Look for adventure in every
small moment for yourself. It was a tenuous and fragile solution, as the crystallization of punk
into Hardcore and the external pressures which pushed the Wandervogel into making
concessions showed. Ultimately, punk and Wandervogel both fell short of spreading the
widespread revolution of the self they committed themselves to. What began as endlessly
interpretable excitement and adventure was derailed by attempts to unite, define and limit
themselves. It wasn’t ultimately the co-option of either by their respective mainstreams which
caused them to fall short of their aspirations, but rather their own defining of themselves through
the same limiting, leveling and historicizing they were supposedly resisting.
As an ideal, the idea of Wandern – of never settling down and getting stuck in one place
physically or mentally – was perhaps the most earnest critique of and solution to alienated and
internalized rationality to emerge out of the 20th century. Movement is certainly the right word
here; in their own ways, punk and Wandervogel put forward examples of an engagement with the
world that embraced movement – direct action and constant exploration – as a core tenet of a
worthwhile life. What punk and Wandervogel both illuminated was the degree to which we
continue to struggle with our humanity and seek meaning in experiences that supercede
language. That modern societies are not often conducive to this lifestyle nor fair to its expression
is ultimately the greatest vindication that punk, Wandervogel and other emotionally charged and
engaged expressions of the self are critically important to our future.
Ideas and communities like the Wandervogel and punk have provided much needed
interventions in their societies which have given hope to millions of youth that there is
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something more to existence than following the worn ruts that lead to an all-too-certain end.
They suggest that humanity in modern societies has cemented over an entire aspect of being that
demands to be heard. The punks and Wandervögel were leaks of this desire, longing, and above
all hope that the world could be a more interesting place than what was presented to them. They
unfolded organically from the youngest generation as a participatory, exploratory engagement
with the world; and while those who got what these phenomena were about kept the lesson with
them, this mode of existence has remained in the minority.
The question of how we think our world is raised by movements like the Wandervogel
and punk. Unpopular with millions who did not understand them in their own times, both have
often also suffered in historical memory. The question of the Wandervogel influence on National
Socialism remains a powerful narrative in the histories told about the Jugendbewegung. Punks
have all too often been dismissed as brutish and nihilistic or as offering no alternative for the
future, and the continuing presence and occasional condemnation of street punks as well as the
racially and politically extreme groups who have embraced punk have certainly continued to
color punk’s wider reception. Both groups of youth illustrated something that made their wider
societies fundamentally uncomfortable. Fixed modern life has often caused us to remove
ourselves from the alternative of unbound movement bit by bit. Connecting the world – fostering
rapid travel and the immediate exchange of ideas and images – has counterintuitively only
encouraged this drive. Yet the instinct to explore and wander remains.
Hans Heinrich Bormann, shortly before the events which proved to have such a
devastating impact on the Wandervogel, wrote a piece in the January 1913 Alt-Wandervogel
Monatsschrift titled “Nachklänge: Eindrücke und Stimmungen einer Sommerfahrt.” In it,

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Bormann provides one of the most impassioned articulations of the hopefulness the adventurous
worldview engendered, but also showed his connectedness to the past:
Als wir staunend durch die hohen, weiten Säle schritten, und vom Altan und
durch die hohen Bogenfenster einen Blick hineintaten in das Land und das Leben
da. Das war so ganz deutsches Wesen: Da unten das Alte, Liebgewonnene in
seiner Vertraulichkeit. Daneben Sinn für den Fortschritt, für das Jetzt. Und dazu
noch der Wanderbetrieb in der Brust, die Sehnsucht nach der Ferne, die suchen
will, ob das Glück, das grosse, schöne Glück vielleicht fern in den Bergen, fern in
den Weiten sei…” (8)
A synthesis of the past and the present and a hopeful vision of a wide-open future, yet still a
future inflected by a past Bormann called ‘that so very German character,’ these words capture
the potential of the Wandervogel reconceptualization of Germanness as a dynamic and futureoriented outlook that prized individual experience while acknowledging the importance of the
past. Over 60 years later, in the fight to establish a rejuvenated popular culture out of the punk
moment, punks in West Germany reclaimed the German language to speak (greatly enhanced
with their inflection of the technological put to new and democratized uses), but simultaneously
rejected any responsibility for any “German” past, all while holding up a caricatured pastiche of
this past in a jumble of swastikas, hammers and sickles, RAF insignias, safety pins, leather and
Xerox shipping bands. In their self-expression, West German punks symbolically moved beyond
any specific alternative vision of the past, proclaiming nothing to be fixed or knowable – an idea
Wandervogel youth occasionally hinted at in articles like “Von der eilenden und weilenden
Welt,” but which was largely overshadowed by appeals to a mythologized German past and a
firm belief in its importance for the future.
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Both the Wandervogel and punk engaged with Germanness. But the Wandervogel saw in
the idea a still valuable and romanticizable narrative. Punks such as the authors of Musak above
certainly acknowledged this past as well, but instead of embracing it recognized the impossibility
of escape while also firmly rejecting its meaningfulness for the future. In this conceptualization,
it may still be that some elements of the past are valuable, but privileging certain narratives
because they are somehow one’s own narratives reveals itself through punk’s aspired-to
openness to be a self-confining and limiting effort. While both Wandervogel and punk youth
developed similar worldviews and orientations towards living which dissolved the structures of
boredom, punk spread to and grew in a society much different than Wilhelmine Germany, in a
present in which the once seemingly naïve beliefs in the importance of the past and nationalistic
pride in the idea of Germany had revealed themselves to be as toxic as they were alluring. For
many punks, even if they saw a way to reclaim a past in the future, there was no longer any past
worth deluding oneself to reclaim.
Much like Wandervogel and punk youth argued that their societies and even their own
subcultures should be constantly re-examined and questioned, so too should scholarship about
them. This is not a new idea, but as traced in the discussions of scholarship on the Wandervogel
and punk that closed Chapters Two and Three, research has often remained too closely tied to
previous established discourses surrounding questions of aesthetics and politics. To take the most
salient example, the reading of Germany’s National Socialist future (in the case of the
Wandervogel) and past (in the case of punks) is undeniably important. But reading youth
movements in the German context disproportionately through this and other narratives is, much
like hiking only in the summer or choosing when to watch television or listen to music, far too
confining. This project represents one attempt to engage with the Wandervogel and punk youth
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cultures in much the same spirit with which they engaged with their contemporary societies and
surroundings: not with expectations for completeness or closure, nor with the desire to answer
the contentious and polarizing questions that have often overwhelmed the larger field of German
Studies, but rather with a commitment to active engagement, participatory inquiry and an
adventurous mentality. Driven by the raucous and often dissonant voices of both movements’
participants themselves as they emerge from the archival sources, it is my hope that this
comparative study has prepared the way for further scholarship that acknowledges the unbound
worldview these youth were engaged in creating for themselves, and that might offer a model for
German Studies scholarship that more actively fosters the re-evaluation of its own discourse, and
truly moves beyond boredom.!

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WORKS CITED

297

WORKS CITED

Archives
Archiv der Jugendkulturen, Berlin.
Wandervogel-Archiv, Ingeborg-Drewitz library, Berlin-Steglitz.
Archiv der Jugendbewegung, Burg Ludwigstein.

Punk Fanzines
Der Aktuelle Mülleimer
Alles tot!
Anschlag
Antz
Attraktive preiswerte allgemeine Volksverarschung
Bericht der U.N.Menschenrechtskommission über Menschenrechtsverletzungen
Death Trip
Dreck
Du mich auch
Die Düsseldorfer Leere
Die Endlösung
Fuchstrott
Fuck Erzbischoff Ratzinger
Gegendarstellung
Ich und mein Spiegelbild

298

Khomeni
Langweil
Marionett
Mode + Verzweiflung
Musterexemplar
Muzak
The Ostrich
No Fun
Plastik
Plaything
Pretty Vacant
Propaganda
Provinz Blatt
Punk
Punk Rules
Search & Destroy
Schwantz
Shit-Bolzen
Sniffin’ Glue
Spargel
T4
Undenk
Ungewollt

299

Die Welle
White Riot
Willkürakt
Xerox chic

Wandervogel Periodicals
Alt-Wandervögel Monatschrift
Asgard
Der Fahrende Schüler
Der Führer: Mitteilungen für Wandervogel
Gau-Blatt für Niedersachsen und Westfalen
Jung Wandervogel: Zeitschrift des Bundes für Jugendwandern “Jung-Wandervogel”
Keine Zukünft war Gestern
Monatsschrift für moderne Jugendbestrebungen
Nachrichtenblatt des Wandervogel: Eingetragener Verein zu Steglitz bei Berlin
(Steglitzer EV)
Nordmark Gaublatt niederdeutscher Wandervogel
Die Pachantei: Meinungsaustausch der Wandervögel
Wandervogel Führerzeitung
Wandervogel Gaublatt für Sachsen
Wandervogel Gaublatt für Schlesien und Posen
Wandervogel Illustrierte Monatsschrift
Wandervogel in Hessen und bei Rhein
Wandervogel Liegnitz Fahrtenblatt

300

Wandervogel: Monatsschrift des “Wandervogel,” deutschen Bundes für
Jugendwanderungen
Wandervogel Rundflug: Gaublatt der Wandervogel in Südwestdeutschland
Wandervogel-Warte: Zeitschrift des “Wandervogel” vaterländischer Bund für
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Wandervogel Westfalengau
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KFC. “Wie lange noch.” Letzte Hoffnung. Schallmauer, 1981. LP.
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Trio. “Da-Da-Da.” Live im Frühjahr 82. 1982. LP.
X-Ray Spex. “Oh Bondage, up Yours!” Oh Bondage, up Yours! Virgin, 1977. LP.

Films
Büld, Wolfgang. Brennende Langeweile (Burning Boredom). 1977. Film.
Büld, Wolfgang. Punk in London. 1977. Film.

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