The state had little influence on the repertoire in dance halls
A TU Dresden graduate has written an academic book on dance music in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between 1945 and 1961
Mathias Bäumel
Today in Germany, even the word Tanzmusik (in English: dance music) is enough to stir looks of confusion, since this term is hardly used any more among Germany’s youth… How would we translate Tanzmusik today? Then there’s the time period. From 1945 to 1961, the grandparents of today’s students were just starting their own families. Daily life was still overshadowed by war and shaped by its consequences.
The post-war economy in the West was getting back on its feet and the Marshall Plan supported the reconstruction of Western Europe, (known as the Wirtschaftswunder Germany) providing prosperity and affluence, and with it a growing leisure industry and entertainment culture. Meanwhile, the East suffered for years from dismantlement and reparations to the Soviet Union. It was this which also provided the basis for the strict ideological and political regimentation of daily life in the Soviet Occupation Zone (until 1949), otherwise known as the GDR.
There were therefore very different conditions for the development of dance and popular music in the two parts of Germany, which led to entirely different cultures surrounding them. TU Dresden Musicology graduate Simon Bretschneider investigated those conditions between 1945 and 1961 in East Germany for his doctoral thesis, using Dresden as the basis.
Today’s readers should know that going dancing at that time was a very popular leisure activity which could be pursued during the post-war and reconstruction periods in numerous dance halls, bars, houses of culture or clubs (some of which were attached to places of work) in the region in and around Dresden. Everywhere, bands played live, which set the tone (it was only much later that the importance of live music declined due to the drastic reduction in the number of dance halls and clubs) Initially, (vinyl) records and radio were much less important for dance music on than the numerous live dance evenings. Even television in the East played virtually no role initially in the distribution of dance music during the period in question. In June 1950, the television center in East Berlin broke new ground. At the end of 1952, experimental test broadcasts started with two hours of broadcasting per day from 8 pm. There were around 60 devices able to receive it in the GDR, all of which were in Berlin. On January 2, 1956 the trial program of the television center in Berlin ended and the next day, German Television Broadcasting [Deutsche Fernsehfunk (DFF)] began its program. By the end of 1958, more than 300,000 televisions were registered in the GDR.
As for the research itself, for his investigation, Simon Bretschneider assumes that the adoption of Afro-American characteristics in terms of interpretation, instrumentation and compositions in European dance music had become the norm from the 1930s in Germany – a trend fed by the USA. That led him to the question of whether and to what extent this internationalization of dance music continued to exist in East Germany after 1945. In doing so, Bretschneider recalled that after the Second World War, the East considered the West a “class enemy”. In view of the markedly strong economic conditions in the West and the political pressures in the East, he posed the question, “Did the cultural policies of the state in the East succeed in dominating the socialist musical landscape (analogous to Bourdieu’s field of cultural production)? Was a different, more nationalistic and socialist dance music produced and received in the Soviet Occupation Zone and early GDR than in West Germany?” To answer these questions, it was not enough for Bretschneider to “simply look at the repertoire and production of music by eastern and western groups and compare them.” Bretschneider shares the opinion that “music is primarily a social construct”. For that reason, the author is interested in the societal and political conditions which made the “existence of phenomena such as ‘socialist’ and ‘nationalist’ dance music as well as swing and jazz even possible.”
In a large, comprehensive and minutely investigated chapter, the author described the actions, reactions and cultural policy ideas and principles of the state and local institutions, i.e. the Soviet military administration to start with, then the SED [Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland (Socialist Unity Party of Germany)], the Dresden city council, the – initially called – Saxony Ministry for Public Education and the council for the district of Dresden. The chapter also examines the strategies of the Free German Trade Union Federation [Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB)] with regard to dance music, as well as cross-regional factors such as the State Broadcasting Company, western broadcasters, and the cross-regional music industry. The chapter features meticulous reference work with which Bretschneider succeeded in describing the framework conditions for the development of dance music in Dresden. That is a great help, particularly for young readers who have no frame of reference in their own experience to imagine the conditions at the time.
In a second comprehensive and equally meticulously investigated chapter, Bretschneider describes the strategies of the ensembles, as well as the fans, partly based on examples of bands and musicians such as Will Bellmann, Heinz Kunert, the Dresdner Tanzsinfoniker and Theo Schumann. Here, the focus is on performance permits as well as the chances of being broadcast on the radio (and previously recorded). Using the example of Will Bellmann, Bretschneider shows how musicians who did not wish or were not able to give up their orientation on the conventional salon orchestra music of the pre-war period collided with the new trends coming from the USA and how musicians feared for their livelihoods. Likewise, there are also examples of ensembles which found themselves in political difficulties due to their orientation toward US-American trends because they were accused of inciting the youth against the East German state.
Overall, this second section, enriched with numerous references such as recollections and interviews, is a treasure trove for today’s readers who would like to gain a detailed understanding of the bands, musicians, performances and incidents of that time.
The summary contains a thought that is well worth highlighting: “The cultural policy strategy documents in the files left by the local state institutions resemble … Don Quixote’s fight against windmills. They were able to enforce bans on bands and other ensembles, but in terms of the repertoire in the dance halls and jazz clubs, the state – even after the introduction of the 60/40 ordinance – had precious little influence.”
Simon Bretschneider
“Tanzmusik in der DDR. Dresdner Musiker zwischen Kulturpolitik und internationalem Musikmarkt, 1945–1961” [Dance Music in the GDR. Dresden Musicians between Cultural Policy and the International Music Market”]
Transcript Verlag Bielefeld 2018, 322 pages, 26.99 Euro
Simon Bretschneider studied Orchestral Music and Bassoon from 1998 to 2002 at the Dresden Conservatory of Music, then Musicology, Art History and Philosophy from 2003 to 2011 at the TU Dresden. There, he completed the “Magister Artium” with Hans Günter Ottenberg and Wolfgang Mende. Bretschneider then developed his final thesis on the cultural policies in the SOZ and GDR into a dissertation at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 2015 to 2018 under the supervision of Peter Wicke and Michael Rauhut.
This article was published in the Dresdner Universitätsjournal, issue 01/2019 on January 15, 2019. You can download the whole newspaper as a PDF file for free here. Please contact doreen.liesch@tu-dresden.de to order the Universitätsjournal as a printed newpaper or as a PDF file. For more information, please visit: universitaetsjournal.de.