The ‘Red Woodstock’ Festival and the Making of an International Youth Culture in the East Berlin Cityscape during Late Socialism, 1970s-1990s
Open AccessThis dissertation destabilizes the idea that the 10th World Festival of Youth and Students—the “Red Woodstock”—which took place in East Berlin in 1973, exemplified a subversion of everyday life under state socialism. It does so by tracing how East Berlin remained a space for the ebb and flow of transcultural interactions and exchanges with the world beyond the so-called “Iron Curtain” well after the 1973 festival ended. Such multidirectional flows occurred through officially sanctioned events, such as the Rock for Peace and Political Songs festivals that took place annually in East Berlin. They also emerged through subterranean channels, including the unofficial blues fairs of the Protestant churches that attracted society’s outcasts—or “asocial” youth—as well as activists who rejected or were ostracized by the state.By rendering the Red Woodstock festival as a reflection of everyday life, the dissertation sheds light on how state socialist rituals transcended the binary of the “carnivalesque” versus “normalcy.” This was apparent as music performances, films, late night discussions, and even anti-imperialist expressions of solidarity that the East German state interwove into the youth rituals during the 1973 festival proved to be neither momentary nor fleeting. Rather, they were reified in everyday life as a result of the Party’s attempt to fuse state ideology with youth culture trends through various activities during late socialism. More importantly, by examining continuities rather than ruptures through time as well as across space, the dissertation makes visible how East German youth channeled concepts from both state-sponsored programs as well as their own counter-culture agendas to alter the very fabric of East German socialism. International, anti-imperialist, and even revolutionary in its articulation, East Germany youth culture generated a momentum of its own, enabling young people to repurpose global expressions of resistance within local public spaces in ways that would transform East German socialism from the bottom up.
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