Oktoberklub (English: October Club), initially known as the Hootenanny-Klub Berlin, was a political music group from the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The musical style of the group was a mixture of folk, chanson and rock music. Founded in 1966, the group disbanded in 1990. Occasional performances followed in 2002 and 2007.
The folk revival in the United States sparked a wave of folk music and protest songs in many countries worldwide in the early 1960s. The Canadian folk singer Perry Friedman had been organizing hootenannies in East Germany since 1960. A group of young people who became enthusiastic about folk music gathered around Friedman and the youth radio station DT64. With the support of the local FDJ district leadership they founded the Hootenanny-Klub Berlin in February 1966. The club was unusually informal by East German standards and everyone was encouraged to take part. Musicians such as Perry Friedman, Hartmut König, Reiner Schöne, Bettina Wegner and many others performed with the club. DT64, a radio station which played music predominantly for young people, regularly broadcast recordings of their performances.
During its 11th plenary session in December 1965, the SED leadership had decided to ban all critical art and youth culture, and in early 1967 staged a campaign against Anglicisms. As a result, the hootenanny movement in the GDR came to be officially referred to as the “FDJ Singing Movement” and was subsequently appropriated and promoted as a “model case” of socialist cultural policy. It was under these conditions that the Hootenanny-KlubBerlin renamed itself as Oktoberklub. The reason for the change of name was to associate the group with the October Revolution in Russia.
According to Reinhold Andert, one of the group's singers, the members of Oktoberklub were "one hundred percent red, convinced, honest" and wanted to actively shape society. Mixing politics and entertainment, they injected novelty and freshness into the ossified political culture of the GDR. In doing so, however, they forfeited their spontaneity, toeing the official political line and engaging in questionable activities (e.g. appearing in support of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968). This led to repeated disputes within the club, which resulted in the departure of some of its members, among them Bettina Wegner and Sanda Weigl.
In the early years the club met with a remarkably broad response, especially among young people loyal to the GDR, although others regarded it as a “propaganda tool of the SED”, the country's leading political party. In the 1980s its agit-prop songs were increasingly felt to be trite and hollow, which also had to do with the one-sided depiction of the group in the media. Following heated internal debates the members decided on a change of course in late 1986. The club subsequently took a more robust stance against attempts at regimentation, and its songs dealing with life in the GDR became more critical.
The club sang international political songs (partly in adaptations), traditional folk and battle songs as well as original creations. In addition to normal recitals with a mixed repertoire, they also performed revue-like programs from 1971 onwards (1971 FDJ-Nachtschicht, 1972 cantata Manne Klein and Liebesnachtschicht, 1975 Prenzlauer Berg).
The club was the principle organizer of a series of events such as the OKK (from 1970 the first permanent discotheque in the GDR, from 1977 the Kellerklub in the House of Young Talents), the Festival of Political Songs (1970-1990) and Ein Kessel Rotes (from 1979). The club also appeared frequently abroad, for example at press festivals of communist newspapers in Western Europe. The group received various awards, including the Gold Star of People's Friendship in 1986.
The club was an amateur group although at times it had a semi-professional core and the line-up changed frequently. Over the years, it had a grand total of about 180 members, although not all of them were artistically active. The writer Gisela Steineckert and the composer Wolfram Heicking played a mentoring role for the club for a long time. Important writers in the early years were Reinhold Andert, Kurt Demmler and Hartmut König, later Gerd Kern rose to prominence as lyricist and Fred Krüger as composer. From 1987 on, Michael Letz and Jens Quandt wrote many of the compositions, some of the lyrics for other songs being supplied in 1988/89 by Gerhard Gundermann, who was frequently accompanied at this time by Oktoberklub musicians.
The club was also "of great importance as a talent reservoir for youth-oriented music" according to Olaf Leitner. In 1973 several former members of the club established a professional musical group known as Jahrgang 49, which existed until 1980. Some club members also pursued artistic solo careers (Reinhold Andert, Barbara Thalheim, Jürgen Walter, Gina Pietsch, Tamara Danz among others), while others later worked in cultural institutions or industries such as radio, television, recording or served in the general administration of the Committee for Entertainment Arts. Hartmut König was Secretary of the Central Council of the Free German Youth movement for twelve years and Deputy Minister of Culture for a short time in 1989. The best known songs of the Oktoberklub include Sag mir, wo du stehst, Oktobersong and Wir sind überall. Other notable songs included Wir wollen Frieden, Haben wir diese Erde (a German version of the Argentine song Cuando tenga la tierra) and Rauch steigt vom Dach auf.
In 1968 Gitta Nickel portrayed the Oktoberklub in the DEFA documentary film Lieder machen Leute. In the 1990s, two television documentaries were made about the history of the club: Das Ende vom Lied (VPRO, Netherlands, 1992) and Sag mir, wo du stehst (Axel Grote and Christian Steinke, MDR 1993).
Commons: Oktoberklub – Album with pictures, videos and audio files
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a country in Central Europe that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally viewed as a communist state, and it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". Before its establishment, the country's territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces with the autonomy of the native communists following the Berlin Declaration abolishing German sovereignty in World War II; when the Potsdam Agreement established the Soviet-occupied zone, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The GDR was dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), a communist party from 1949 to 1989, before being democratized and liberalized under the impact of the Revolutions of 1989 against the communist states, helping East Germany be united with the West. Unlike West Germany, SED did not see its state as the successor of the German Reich (1871–1945) and abolished the goal of unification in the constitution (1974). Under the SED rule, GDR was often judged as a Soviet satellite state; most scholars and academics described it as a totalitarian regime.
The culture of East Germany varied throughout the years due to the political and historical events that took place in the 20th century, especially as a result of Nazism and Communism. A reflection on the history of arts and culture in East Germany reveals complex relationships between artists and the state, between oppositional and conformist art. In four decades, East Germany developed a distinct culture and produced works of literature, film, visual arts, music, and theatre of international acclaim. Popular culture specialities included among others a high popularity of nudism in Eastern Germany.
Hannes Wader is a German singer-songwriter ("Liedermacher"). He has been an important figure in German leftist circles since the 1970s, with his songs covering such themes as socialist and communist resistance to oppression in Europe and other places like Latin America. He both wrote new songs and played versions of older historical works.
Berliner Fussball Club Dynamo e. V., commonly abbreviated to BFC Dynamo or BFC, alternatively sometimes called Dynamo Berlin, is a German football club based in the locality of Alt-Hohenschönhausen of the borough of Lichtenberg of Berlin. BFC Dynamo was founded in 1966 from the football department of SC Dynamo Berlin and became one of the most successful clubs in East German football. The club is the record champion of East Germany with ten consecutive league championships from 1979 through 1988. BFC Dynamo competes in the fourth tier Regionalliga Nordost. The club enjoys a cross-city rivalry with 1. FC Union Berlin and a historical rivalry with SG Dynamo Dresden. The rivalry with Union Berlin is part of the Berlin derby.
Rundfunk der DDR was the collective designation for radio broadcasting organized by the State Broadcasting Committee in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until German reunification in 1990.
Erika Pluhar is an actress, singer and author from Austria and was born on 28 February 1939 in Vienna.
Deutscher Fernsehfunk was the state television broadcaster in the German Democratic Republic from 1952 to 1991.
Günter Kochan was a German composer. He studied with Boris Blacher and was a master student for composition with Hanns Eisler. From 1967 until his retirement in 1991, he worked as professor for musical composition at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". He taught master classes in composition at the Academy of Music and the Academy of Arts, Berlin. He was also secretary of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts from 1972 to 1974 and vice-president of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR from 1977 to 1982. Kochan is one of eleven laureates to have been awarded the National Prize of the GDR four times. In addition, he received composition prizes in the US and Eastern Europe. He became internationally known in particular for his Symphonies as well as the cantata Die Asche von Birkenau (1965) and his Music for Orchestra No. 2 (1987). His versatile oeuvre included orchestral works, chamber music, choral works, mass songs and film music and is situated between socialist realism and avant-garde.
"Kein schöner Land in dieser Zeit" is a popular Volkslied in German. It goes back to a song by Anton Wilhelm von Zuccalmaglio, first published in 1840 in a folk song collection. It gained popularity in the 1910s in the Wandervogel movement, and is now part of most song books in German. It has been set to choral music and modern songs. The beginning of the first line has been used as the title of books, a play and television series.
Hermann Weber was a German historian and political scientist. He has been described as "the man who knew everything about the German Democratic Republic".
Barbara Thalheim is a Berlin-based German singer and songwriter. She celebrated the fortieth anniversary of her first stage appearance in 2013.
Sonja Kehler was a German actress and chanson singer, known internationally for her interpretation of works by Bertolt Brecht, first playing his characters on the theatre stage, then focused on singing his songs and those of others in solo programs. She also taught acting in Danish at the theatre academy in Odense, appeared in films, worked as stage director and presented literary programs.
Wolfgang Lesser was a German composer and music official of the DDR.
Eberhard Rebling was a German pianist, musicologist and dance scholar as well as an anti fascist.
Regina Scheer is a German writer and historian.
Gustav Schmahl was a German violinist and university lecturer. He was the only student of David Oistrach from the GDR. Schmahl worked at times as concertmaster of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and from 1973 to 1984 as rector of the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig.
Wolfgang Hütt was a German art historian.
Andre Asriel was an Austrian-German composer.
Joachim Werzlau was a German pianist, radio consultant and composer. He belonged to the first generation of composers in the GDR, where he was also active in organisations and politics. As a pianist, he played for the theatre, for Mary Wigman's dance school, and a kabarett, among others. He composed popular songs, music for audio plays, film scores, incidental music, and three operas. With films such as Nackt unter Wölfen and Jakob der Lügner, he was the most popular film composer of the GDR of his time.
The Leipzig Beat Revolt, in German also called Leipziger Beatdemo, Beatkrawalle or Beataufstand, took place on 31 October 1965 in Leipzig-Mitte. The demonstration was an expression of youth emancipation in the GDR, directed against the state ban on beat music and numerous beat groups. The main reason for the demonstration was the ban imposed ten days earlier on 54 of the 58 registered Leipzig bands, including the popular band Butlers. The demonstration was violently broken up by the Volkspolizei and the Stasi immediately after the start. Of the 264 demonstrators arrested, 97 were deployed for up to six weeks on “supervised work” in the Kitzscher and United Schleenhain coal mine. The Leipzig Beat Demo was the largest non-approved demonstration in the GDR after the events of 17 June 1953 and, along with the events of 7 October 1977 on Berlin's Alexanderplatz, remained unique in this form until autumn 1989.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
