Article contents
Sites of Corruption, Sites of Liberation: Hamburg-St. Pauli and the Contested Spaces of Early Rock'n’Roll
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 December 2016
Abstract
Rock'n'roll emerged in Hamburg in the unique spatial context of St. Pauli's entertainment district during a new phase of capitalist modernity around 1960 that granted youth unprecedented access to commercial venues catering to their new economic power. Crossing class, regional and national lines, young people used spaces free of parental supervision to create alternatives to the era's sexual conservatism and social conformity. This new youth presence worried local authorities: minors had to be shielded from the commercialised vice that was St. Pauli's stock in trade. This set up clashes between police, city officials, business leaders and social welfare agents on the one side, and club entrepreneurs and music fans on the other. Confrontations between these two camps constituted struggles over social discipline, youths’ right to public and commercial space, the meanings of democracy and the sexual morality of youth in a place known for license and excess.
- Type
- Forum
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016
References
1 Babies’ dummies for British readers.
2 Press estimates on the number of protesters vary widely. For local coverage see ‘Bezirksamt Mitte entzieht Lizenz für Star-Club’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 15 June 1964; ‘Verbot für den Star-Club-Boss’, Hamburger Morgenpost, 15 June 1964; ‘Demonstranten vor dem Star-Club’, Hamburger Morgenpost, 24 June 1964; ‘Twens und Fans betrauern die Star-Club Schliessung’, Hamburger Echo, 24 June 1964; ‘Jugend-Krawalle vor dem Star-Club’, BILD, 24 June 1964; ‘Star-Club Fans waren einsichtig – kein Krawall’, Hamburger Morgenpost, 26 June 1964. On events building up to the closure, see ‘100 Polizisten im Twist-Club’, BILD, 19 June 1963; ‘Heute früh – Razzia im Star-Club’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 18 June 1963.
3 Detlef Siegfried briefly notes the closure but not the protest in Time is on My Side: Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 216. I discuss it in ‘Musikkultur und Jugendprotest in Hamburg in den 1960er Jahre’, in Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, Hg., 19 Tage Hamburg. Ereignisse und Entwicklungen der Stadtgeschichte seit der fünfziger Jahre (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2012), 95–110. Many of the articles in note 1 appear in the Star Club's tax office file: Staatsarchiv Hamburg (hereafter StaHH) 442-1 Bezirksamt Hamburg-Mitte, 95.92-15/9 Bd. 2. No notes on the incident are in the protocols of the Jugendschutztrupps, nor have I yet found a mention in police files.
4 On this broad phenomenon see Thomas, Nick, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A Social History of Dissent and Democracy (New York: Berg, 2003), 1–4 Google Scholar.
5 Baacke's thesis is spelled out in Beat – die sprachlose Opposition (Munich: Juventa, 1968); see also Jerrentrup, Ansgar, Entwicklung der Rockmusik von den Anfängen bis zum Beat (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1981), 142–3Google Scholar.
6 See Fürmetz, Gerhard, Hg., ‘Schwabinger Krawalle’: Protest, Polizei und Öffentlichkeit zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre (Essen: Klartext, 2006), esp. 25–57 Google Scholar; Brown, Timothy Scott, West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Antiauthoritarian Revolt, 1962-1978 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 58–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, during the Halbstarken violence of 1956–58 participants also frequently blocked streets; Stefan Hemler, ‘Aufbegehren einer Jugendszene. Protestbeteiligte, Verlauf und Aktionsmuster bei den “Schwabinger Krawallen”’, in Fürmetz, ‘Schwabinger Krawalle’, 51.
7 Marwick, Arthur, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c.1958–1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
8 My thinking about space and pop culture is informed by Fiske, John, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)Google Scholar and ‘The Cultural Economy of Fandom’, in Lisa A. Lewis, ed., The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (New York: Routledge, 1992) and de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar. On youth and subcultural space in West Germany see Siegfried, Detlef, Sound der Revolte. Studien zur Kulturrevolution um 1968 (Weinheim und München: Juventa, 2008), 133–Google Scholar; Schildt, Axel and Siegfried, Detlef, Deutsche Kulturgeschichte (Munich: Hanser, 2009), 188, 267Google Scholar; Horn, Gerd-Rainer, The Spirit of ’68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 33 Google Scholar. On the social-sexual climate of the period see Herzog, Dagmar, Sex After Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 101–40Google Scholar; Heineman, Elizabeth, Before Porn was Legal: The Erotic Empire of Beate Uhse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 27–60 Google Scholar.
9 Sneeringer, Julia, ‘“Assembly Line of Joys”’: Touring Hamburg's Red Light District 1950–1966’, Central European History, 42:1 (March 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Mort, Frank, Capital Affairs: London and the Making of the Permissive Society (New Haven: Yale, 2010), 23–Google Scholar. Hamburg guides were particularly self-conscious about competition with Paris – an example is Günther, Horst, Hamburg bei Nacht (Schmiden bei Stuttgart: Franz Decker Verlag, 1962)Google Scholar.
10 ‘Scene’ denotes a community of performers and audiences that coalesces around a particular music style in a specific geographic location and particular spaces within it. See Cohen, Sara, ‘Scenes’, in Swiss, Thom and Horner, Bruce, eds., Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999), 239–49Google Scholar; Bennett, Andy, ‘Subcultures or Neotribes? Rethinking the Relationship between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, in Bennett, et al., eds., The Popular Music Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2006), 106–13Google Scholar. The best survey of Hamburg's Beat music scene is Krüger, Ulf and Pelc, Ortwin, The Hamburg Sound (Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2006)Google Scholar.
11 This essay treats as ‘youths’ those aged fourteen to twenty-five. West German law in this period set the age of majority at twenty-one.
12 Of course, St. Pauli was not just the entertainment district – it was (and still is) also a densely populated residential neighborhood of roughly one square mile whose residents were more likely to be foreign-born, poorer and older than city averages. It was a bastion of socialist and, before 1933, communist politics. This lively neighborhood existed in the shadows of the entertainment district, though its status as a ‘problem’ district shaped the city's efforts to maintain the touristic product ‘St. Pauli’. A useful history is Manos, Helene, Sankt Pauli: Soziale Lagen und Soziale Fragen im Stadtteil Sankt Pauli (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1989)Google Scholar.
13 In this it resembled other entertainment districts in Paris, London and New York; see Becker, Tobias, ‘Das Vergnügungsviertel: Heterotopischer Raum in den Metropolen der Jahrhundertwende’, in Becker, Littmann, Anna, Niedbalski, Johanna, Hg., Die tausend Freude der Metropole: Vergnügungskultur um 1900 (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 137–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Amenda, Lars, Fremde – Hafen – Stadt. Chinesische Migration und ihre Wahrnehmung in Hamburg 1897–1972 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2006), 47–50 Google Scholar. Hamburg played a key role in German colonialism because of its shipping and sites of colonial knowledge production, the Colonial Institute and the Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases; Amenda, Lars and Grünen, Sonja, ‘Tor zur Welt’: Hamburg-Bilder und Hamburg-Werbung im 20.Jahrhundert (München: Dölling und Galitz, 2008), 22 Google Scholar. ‘Exotic’ displays also included shows of human oddities, tattooed performers and animals; Spamer, Adolf, Tätowierung in den deutschen Hafenstädten (Bremen, 1934), 41–62 Google Scholar; Ames, Eric, Carl Hagenbeck's Empire of Entertainments (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
15 On this history see Pelc, Ortwin, ‘Der sündige Stadtteil. Der Ruf St. Paulis und seine Entstehung’, in Jaacks, Gisela, Hg., Hamburgs Geschichte: Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Hamburg: Ellert und Richter, 2008), 90–105 Google Scholar; McElligott, Anthony, Contested City: Municipal Politics and the Rise of Nazism in Altona 1917–1937 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, Hg., Hamburg im ‘dritten Reich’ (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005); Rosenkranz, Bernhard, Bollmann, Ulf and Lorenz, Gottfried, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in Hamburg 1919–1969 (Hamburg: lambda, 2009), 23–100 Google Scholar; Zürn, Gaby, ‘Von der Herbertstraße nach Auschwitz’, in Ebbinghaus, Angelika, Hg., Opfer und Täterinnen: Frauenbiographien des Nationalsozialismus (Nördlingen: Greno, 1987), 91–101 Google Scholar. ‘Joy and forgetting’ in Hamburg: ein Stadtführer (Frankfurt am Main: Wofe-Verlagsgesellschaft, n.d. [likely 1959]), 143; see also Sneeringer, ‘Assembly Line of Joys.’
16 See Mort, Capital Affairs, 23, on Soho as a crime story setting.
17 Press clippings in Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg [hereafter FZH] archives, file 322, Hamburg Stadtteil Geschichte. This came at a time of broad concerns about German tourism: see ‘Ist Deutschland keine Reise wert?’ Quick, 12 May 1963. See also StaHH 231-10 Vereinswesen, folder B1977-66 Aktionsgemeinschaft ‘St Pauli ist für alle da’.
18 Falck regularly attended Bürgerverein meetings; StaHH 442-1/70.02-1 Bd. III (Ausschüsse auf dem Gebiet des Wirtschaftswesens, Sonderausschuss St. Pauli 1965–66).
19 Falck's campaign was even noticed by the US press: ‘Reform on the Raper’, Time, 12 June 1964. On Schmidt's practice of delegating control to district offices see Soell, Hartmut, Helmut Schmidt 1918–1969: Vernunft und Leidenschaft (München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2003), 393–4Google Scholar.
20 Dickinson, Edward Ross, The Politics of Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 169–243 Google Scholar; Berg, Anne, In and Out of War: Space, Pleasure and Cinema in Hamburg 1938–1949 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2011), 207–11Google Scholar. The term actually dates back to late nineteenth century debates about child labour.
21 ‘Transithotel der Verwahrlosen,’ Die Welt, 8 Sept. 1949. See also Foitzik, Doris, Jugend ohne Schwung? Jugendkultur und Jugendpolitik in Hamburg 1945–1949 (Hamburg: Dölling und Gallitz, 2002), 10–25 Google Scholar; Archiv, St. Pauli, Im Schatten des grossen Geldes: Wohnen auf St. Pauli (Hamburg: St. Pauli Archiv, 1990), n.pGoogle Scholar. For a comparison with Berlin see Evans, Jennifer V., ‘Bahnhof Boys: Policing Male Prostitution in Post-Nazi Berlin’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 12 (2003), 605–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 This replaced Himmler's 1940 Police Order for the Protection of Youth, which, among other things, banned persons under eighteen from dance halls without an adult (the new law allowed attendance for sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds until ten o'clock); Blank, Ralf et al., German Wartime Society 1939-45 IX/I: Politicization, Disintegration, and the Struggle for Survival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 136 Google Scholar. Text of 1951 law in Aktion Jugendschutz (Hamm) pamphlet, ‘Was will das neue Jugendschutzgesetz’, FZH archives file 257-2; for a leftist critique see ‘Erst mit 16 Jahren auf der Strasse rauchen’, Aufwärts: Jugendzeitschrift des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 15:4 (26 July 1951).
23 Herzog, Sex after Fascism, 114. Unlike Weimar's Schund und Schmutz debate, West German moralists ceded that trivial literature was relatively harmless, not to mention unstoppable. See Heineman, Before Porn was Legal, 31–60; von Saldern, Adelheid, ‘Kulturdebatte und Geschichtserinnerung: Der Bundestag und das Gesetz über die Verbreitung jugendgefährdender Schriften (1952/53)’, in Bollenbeck, Georg und Kaiser, Gerhard, Hg., Die janusköpfigen 50er Jahre. Kulturelle Moderne und bildungsbürgerliche Semantik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2000), 98–9Google Scholar. On enforcement in Hamburg see Whisnant, Clayton, Male Homosexuality in West Germany: Between Persecution and Freedom 1945–69 (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 83–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 On the roots of this problematic see Gries, Rainer, ‘Generation und Konsumgesellschaft’, in Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Torp, Claudius, Hg., Die Konsumgesellschaft in Deutschland 1890–1990 (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2009), 190–200 Google Scholar.
25 Stephens, Robert P., Germans on Drugs: The Complications of Modernization in Hamburg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 48–53 Google Scholar.
26 Grotum, Thomas, Die Halbstarken: Zur Geschichte einer Jugenkultur der 50er Jahre (Frankfurt: Campus, 1994), 80–Google Scholar.
27 Youths, along with women, had been targets of mass culture since its inception; Maase, Kaspar, Grenzenloses Vergnügen: Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1997), 93–4, 276Google Scholar; Abrams, Lynn, Workers’ Culture in Imperial Germany: Leisure and Recreation in the Rhineland and Westfalia (London: Routledge, 1992), 179–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Savage, Jon, Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture (New York: Viking, 2007), 113–27Google Scholar.
28 The classic study is Münster, Ruth, Geld in Nietenhosen: Jugendliche als Verbraucher (Stuttgart: Forkel, 1961)Google Scholar. See also Siegfried, Sound der Revolte, 37–40; Kaspar Maase, ‘Körper, Konsum, Genuss: Jugendkultur und mentaler Wandel’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 2003, 10; Gries, ‘Generation und Konsumgesellschaft’, 190–200. Foitzik sees commercial youth culture emerging in the late 1940s but on a much smaller scale: Jugend ohne Schwung? 262–4.
29 Schildt, Axel, ‘Eine Großstadt nach dem Dritten Reich. Aspekte des Alltags und Lebensstils im Hamburg der fünfziger Jahre’, in Reichel, Peter, Hg., Das Gedächtnis der Stadt: Hamburg im Umgang mit seiner Vergangenheit (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1997), 85 Google Scholar.
30 On entertainment as ‘need’ and right see Sneeringer, ‘Assembly Line of Joys’; Heinemann, Elizabeth, ‘The Economic Miracle in the Bedroom: Big Business and Sexual Consumption in Reconstruction West Germany’, Journal of Modern History, 78 (2006), 846–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Rock related violence caused West German promoters and broadcasters to embargo it; ‘Saat der Gewalt,’ Der Spiegel, 45 (5 Nov.), 1958. Before Beatlemania smashed this blockade, rock'n’roll circulated in West Germany primarily through American movies, American and British forces radio and Radio Luxembourg; overview in Bloemeke, Rüdiger, Roll Over Beethoven: Wie der Rock'n’Roll nach Deutschland kam (St. Andrä-Worden: Hannibal, 1996)Google Scholar.
32 On this reification of racial difference around jazz, see Hurley, Andrew Wright, The Return of Jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Exchange (New York: Berghahn, 2009), 60–Google Scholar. Similar ideas surfaced during jazz's first German run in the 1920s, as in Ivan Goll's 1926 plea for ‘Negro blood’ to reinvigorate Europe: ‘The Negroes are Conquering Europe’, reprinted in Anton Kaes et al., eds., Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 559–60.
33 See remarks by fans in Beckmann, Dieter und Martens, Klaus, Star-Club (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1980), 132–5Google Scholar; Voormann, Klaus, Rock ‘n’ Roll Times: The Style and Spirit of the Early Beatles and their Fans (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1983)Google Scholar.
34 This was not the first period in which mass culture swept through Germany but its scale, widespread adoption and penetration into the elite starting in the 1950s gave it unprecedented reach; Maase, Kaspar, ‘Establishing Cultural Democracy: Youth, “Americanization”, and the Irresistible Rise of Popular Culture’, in Schissler, Hanna, ed., The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany 1949–1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 428–50Google Scholar. On youth organisation see Peter Liebes, ‘Ideologiemüdigkeit der Jugend’, Neue Zeitung (München), 4 June 1949; Hans-Otto Wolf, ‘Warum ich nicht organisiert bin’, Hamburgische Freie Presse, 4 Aug. 1951. The classic formulation of this is Helmut Schelsky's ‘sceptical generation’. Schildt, Axel notes that nearly half of Hamburg youths still belonged to some kind of organisation, usually sport-oriented: ‘“Heute ist die Jugend skeptisch geworden”: Freizeit und Jugendförderung in Hamburg in den 50er Jahren’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte, 82 (1996), 123–60Google Scholar.
35 Speech of 10 Nov. 1961, in StaHH 135-1 VI Staatliche Pressestelle VI, file 1590. An interesting contrast with Weimar social workers’ advocacy of youth centres to deter boys in particular from radical politics. Louise Schroeder, pioneer of social worker training, urged her students to embody republicanism by being good workers and citizens; McElligott, Contested City, 85.
36 Schildt, ‘Eine Großstadt’, 97. Karpinski claimed the dances attracted 2,000 attendees on average; press conference of 16 Mar. 1960, in StaHH 135-1 VI Staatliche Pressestelle VI, file 1590. On jazz's new respectability see Poiger, Uta, Jazz Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 137–67Google Scholar.
37 ‘Die Jugendbehörde Hamburgs: Entwicklung, Organisation und Aufgaben’, 1962 manuscript, FZH archives file 257-3. Hamburg had long been Germany's centre of social worker training.
38 On the unit's history see Pietsch, Rosamunde, ‘Die Jugendschutztrupps’, in Schaefer, Herbert, ed., Grundlagen der Kriminalistik: Bd. 1 - Jugendkriminalität (Hamburg: Steintorverlag, 1965)Google Scholar; Whisnant, Male Homosexuality, 158–; Stephens, Germans on Drugs, 54. A broader study of Hamburg's police is Weinhauer, Klaus, Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik: Zwischen Bürgerkrieg und innerer Sicherheit (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003)Google Scholar.
39 Keilhack, Irma, Bericht der Jugendbehörde in Hamburg: Bericht über die Lage der Jugend und die Bestrebungen auf dem Gebiete der Jugendhilfe (1964), FZH; Pietsch Google Scholar, ‘Die Jugendschutztrupps’.
40 Reports run from the detailed to the clinical, becoming terser after June 1963 when a new Trupp was formed; by 1966 they become so sparse as to reveal little. Published statistics show youth crime at its highest in 1950–52, with another uptick in 1958; the vast majority of arrests of both males and females were for theft. Figures in Statistisches Amt für Hamburg, Statistisches Jahrbuch der Freien- und Hansestadt Hamburg, 1960 and 1965 editions.
41 Building history in StaHH 442-1 Bezirksamt Hamburg-Mitte file 95.92-15/7.
42 The Beatles would play over 250 nights at the Kaiserkeller, Indra, Star Club and Top Ten between 1960 and 1962; chronology in Ian Inglis, Beatles in Hamburg (London: Reaktion, 2012), 176–8. Early profile of Koschmider in Miller, F.H., St. Pauli und die Reeperbahn: Ein Bummel durch die Nacht (Rüschlikon: Albert Müller Verlag, 1960), 33–6Google Scholar.
43 Krüger, Heinz-Hermann, ‘“Es war wie ein Rausch, wenn alle Gas geben”: Die Halbstarken in der 50er Jahre’, in Bucher, Willi und Pohl, Klaus, Hg., Schock und Schöpfung: Jugendaesthetik im 20.Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1986), 269–74Google Scholar.
44 Voormann, Klaus, ‘Warum spielst Du Imagine nicht auf dem weissen Klavier, John?’ Erinnerungen an die Beatles und viele andere Freunde (München: Heyne, 2002), 39 Google Scholar.
45 Their hometown had, after all, been heavily bombed by Germany during World War Two, with nearly 4,000 killed in Liverpool and Merseyside. Pauline Sutcliffe writes that her brother Stu, The Beatles’ original bassist, initially couldn't talk to German girls in Hamburg because he ‘felt guilty’ about the war, but his new friends profoundly reshaped his views; he ended up living in Hamburg with Astrid Kirchherr, one of Voormann's circle. The Beatles’ Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe and His Lonely Hearts Club (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2001), 78, 102.
46 ‘Pop explosion’ from Marcus, Greil, ‘The Beatles’, in Miller, Jim, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, (New York: Random House, 1976), 175 Google Scholar. On these early fans see Julia Sneeringer, ‘John Lennon, Autograph Hound: The Fan-Musician Community in Hamburg's Early Rock & Roll Scene, 1960–65’, Transformative Works and Cultures, March 2011 [http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/228].
47 A role Weissleder hyped in interviews and advertising. It's notable that the Hit Club and Star Club opened in former cinemas, symptomatic of the ‘Kinosterben’ that began in the late 1950s with the advent of television (Töteberg, Michael und Reißmann, Volker, Mach Dir ein paar schöne Stunden: Das Hamburger Kinobuch [Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2008])Google Scholar. The Beat Club operated on weekends in the basement of Kaffeehaus Menke, a venerable Reeperbahn establishment struggling to stay current.
48 As the title of Baacke's Beat – die sprachlose Opposition suggests.
49 Two notable examples are Bommi Baumann (Wie alles anfing [Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991], 21–3) and Günter Zint.
50 One of the earliest and best explorations of this conundrum for women is Ellen Willis, ‘But Now I'm Gonna Move,’ The New Yorker, 23 Oct. 1971. On the liberating potential of this music for girls see Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs, ‘Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun’, in Lewis, Adoring Audience, 84–105.
51 Chaney, David, Cultural Change and Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 145 Google Scholar. See also Canclini, Nestor Garcia, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 15–19 Google Scholar.
52 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 60 am 5 Mai 1962 on drinking; same file, Bd. 5, Streifenbericht des Jugendschutztrupps am 17 Sept. 1965 on Preludin. See Stephens, Germans on Drugs, 11.
53 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 2, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 119 am 1 Juli 1962 and Nr. 128 am 11 Juli 1962. Interestingly, a report on a late 1964 brawl between Star Club and Hit Club patrons appears not in Trupp files but tax office files; ‘Klub gegen Klub’, Hamburger Morgenpost, 28 Dec. 1964 (StaHH, 442-1 Bezirksamt HH-Mitte 95.92 – 15/9 Bd. 3, Erhebung der Vergnügungssteuer vom Star-Club, Juli 1964-Mai 1965).
54 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 2, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 137 am 18 Juli 1962. On the legal debate see Heineman, Before Porn was Legal, 106–13.
55 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 26 am 2 Februar 1962. On the crackdown see Whisnant, Male Homosexuality, 156–65. Becker spoke routinely of homosexuals as a ‘danger to youth’; Rosenkranz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, 126–48. For similar dynamics in post-war Berlin compare Evans, ‘Bahnhof Boys’.
56 Eberhard von Wiese, ‘. . . und ich habe ein fabelhaftes Abendkleid: legaler Mädchenhandel/Orient-Traum’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 3 Nov. 1956. See also Fontana, Julia, Fürsorge für ein ganzes Leben? Spuren der Heimerziehung in den Biographien von Frauen (Opladen: Budrich, 2007), 57 Google Scholar.
57 Hermann Brandt, ‘Entwichene Zöglinge in einer Großstadt’, in Schaefer, Grundlagen der Kriminalistik, 174–5. The Jugendwohlfahrtsgesetz dated back to 1924 with revisions in 1961.
58 Hitzer, Bettina, ‘Amid the Wave of Youth: the innere Mission and Young Migrants in Berlin c. 1900’, in Schildt, Axel and Siegfried, Detlef, eds., European Cities, Youth and the Public Sphere in the Twentieth Century (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2005), 8–26 Google Scholar; Stephens, Germans On Drugs, 56.
59 Richtlinien für die Behandlung von Kindern und Jugendlichen bei der Polizei (1956), in StaHH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 21/1981 41.10 ‘Jugendschutz und -kriminalitat’.
60 Pietsch, ‘Die Jugendschutztrupps’, 126.
61 Becker quoted in von Wiese, ‘fabelhaftes Abendkleid’; see also Holger Hoffmann, ‘Nachwuchssorgen in St Pauli,’ Die Tat, 21 Feb. 1960; ‘Krüger fand viele “Photomodelle”’, Die Welt, 1 Aug. 1963; Brandt, ‘Entwichene Zöglinge’, 175–8.
62 Such assumptions appear in police memo by Dittmer, ‘Bekämpfung der Gewerbsunzucht’, 19 Apr. 1962, in StaHH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 2/40.67, Prostituierte; also popular sources such as Günther, Hamburg bei Nacht, and Miller, St. Pauli und die Reeperbahn.
63 A useful summary is Heineman, Before Porn was Legal, 14, 102–5. The Sex Wave (roughly 1959 to 1968) can be seen vividly in illustrated magazines such as twen, which ran high-profile cover stories on abortion, birth control, teen marriage and reform of the law on homosexuality.
64 Dittmer, ‘Bekämpfung der Gewerbsunzucht’; Polizeibehörde memo, 31 Aug. 1961, in StaHH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 2/40.67 MEG 149B 5/2. ‘Hamburg's “leichte Mädchen” streiten’, Die Tat, 18 Oct. 1959. Observers claimed in late 1962 a decrease in prostitute numbers due to the Berlin Wall, but this appears to have been only temporary.
65 A practice upheld by federal courts in 1960; Freund-Widder, Michaela, Frauen unter Kontrolle: Prostitution und ihre staatliche Bekämpfung in Hamburg vom Ende des Kaiserreichs bis zu den Anfängen der Bundesrepublik (Münster: LIT, 2003), 283 Google Scholar.
66 ‘Einschreitungen gegen weibliche Prostituierte’ in StaHH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 2/40.67. VD figures in Lindner, Ulrike, Gesundheitspolitik in der Nachkriegszeit: Grossbritannien und die Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Vergleich (Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004), 364 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 175 am 6.-9. Okt. 1961. A 1957 police report claimed prostitutes sought johns in ‘almost all St. Pauli bars’ (‘Sittenbild in St. Pauli’). On English barmaids see Bailey, Peter, ‘Parasexuality and Glamour: The Victorian Barmaid as Cultural Prototype’, in Phillips, Kim M. and Reay, Barry, eds., Sexualities in History: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2002), 222–44Google Scholar; on Vienna see Bender, Beatrix, ‘Geschlechter-Inszenierung im Wirtshaus: Mädchenbedienung im Männerort’, in Spring, Ulrike, et al, Hg., Im Wirtshaus: Eine Geschichte der Wiener Geselligkeit (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2007), 242–7Google Scholar.
68 See the case of twenty-one year-old Hannelore Muskat from Memel; StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 2, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 201 am 20 Sept. 1962. The Verordnung über das Verbot der Beschäftigung von Personen unter 21 Jahren mit sittlich gefährdenden Tätigkeiten vom 3. April 1964 forbade women under twenty-one from working as ‘naked dancers, beauty dancers, veil dancers . . . either fully or partially unclothed’, Animierdamen, table dancers or barmaids; establishments hiring such women would be fined. In practice, minors could be grandfathered in and work there with parental permission.
69 Author interview with Ted Taylor, 12 May 2010.
70 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 2, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 138 am 19 Juli 1962.
71 Examples in Pietsch, ‘Die Jugendschutztrupps’; Miller, St. Pauli und Die Reeperbahn, 25–8.
72 Irma Keilhack, ‘Bericht über die Lage der Jugend und Bestrebungen auf dem Gebiete der Jugendhilfe,’ 1964, FZH Archives, file 257-3; StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 5, Streifenbericht des Jugendschutztrupps von 23 Sept. 1965.
73 Hoffmann, ‘Nachwuchssorgen’; von Wiese, ‘fabelhaftes Abendkleid’; memo from Polizeipräsident Walter Buhl, 31 August 1961, in StaHH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II Abl. 2/40.67; Herzog, Sex after Fascism, 133.
74 In 1963 the Star-Club began Beat tours to German cities as well as Liverpool, spreading word about the club. Radio Luxemburg, with 5 million German listeners in 1959 and growing, also spread the club's fame; Siegfried, Detlef, ‘Protest am Markt: Gegenkultur un der Konsumgesellschaft um 1968’, in ders. und von Hodenberg, Christina, Wo 1968 liegt: Reform und Revolte in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Rupprecht, 2006), 49 Google Scholar.
75 See discussion of young women in Soho nightlife in Mort, Capital Affairs, 304–13.
76 Pietsch, ‘Die Jugendschutztrupps’. Karpinski lauded social workers’ commitment, caring and expertise: ‘Die Kraft der Hingabe ist entscheidend’, 20 July 1961 speech at Mädchenheim Feuerbergstrasse,’ in StaHH 1351-1 VI Staatliche Pressestelle, 1606. Police report ‘Richtlinien für die Behandlung von Kindern und Jugendlichen’ reminds officers their first mandate is to protect and even empower the child.
77 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 176 [13 Okt. 1961]; same file, Bd. 2, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 125 [6 Juli 1962] and Nr. 248 {31 Okt. 1962]; same file, Bd. 3, Streifenbericht von 6 Marz 1964, notes students on a field trip wandering unsupervised; same file, Bd. 4, Streifenbericht von 10 Juli 1964 and 31 Okt. 1964.
78 Reports often noted the age of doormen, such as seventy year-old Hermann Westphal; StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 230 am 18 Dez. 1961. On Tante Rosa see Rehwagen, Thomas and Schmidt, Thorsten, Mach Schau! Die Beatles in Hamburg (Braunschweig: EinfallsReich, 1992), 104–5Google Scholar.
79 Jugendschutzwoche speech by Karpinski, 24 April 1961, in StaHH 135-1 VI Staatliche Pressestelle VI, file 1591 (Jugendschutzwoche Aktion Jugendschutz 1951–75).
80 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife 23 March 1962, 5 May 1962. Denk violation in same file, report of 2 June 1962. Eckhorn in same file, reports of 5 Jan. 1962; Bd. 2, 9 August 1962 and 12 Sept. 1962; Bd. 4, 5 Sept. 1964; Bd. 6, 15 Jan. 1965. Koschmider complaint in same file, report of 4 Jan. 1962.
81 ‘Look the other way’, in Grobecker, Kurt and Müller, Christian, Die Stadt im Umbruch: Hamburg in den 60er Jahren (Hamburg: Kabel, 1998), 156 Google Scholar; ‘Iron Broom’, in Martin Morlock, ‘Läuterung,’ Der Spiegel 28/1964.
82 Roughly 1,700 establishments, 800 of which were in St. Pauli or St. Georg. Kurt Falck, ‘Jugendschutz in Hamburg-Mitte,’ in Schaefer, Grundlagen der Kriminalistik, 161.
83 Ibid. 163.
84 Quoted in Detlef Siegfried, ‘Vom Teenager zur Pop-Revolution. Politisierungstendenzen in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur 1959 bis 1968’, in Schildt, Axel, Siegfried, Detlef and Lammers, Karl Christian, Hg., Dynamische Zeiten. Die 60er Jahre in den beiden deutschen Gesellschaften (Hamburg: Christians, 2003), 589 Google Scholar.
85 See Fraterrigo, Elizabeth, ‘The Answer to Suburbia: Playboy's Urban Lifestyle’, Journal of Urban History, 34:5 (July 2008), 747–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Manfred Schmidt, ‘Strip-Strip-Hurra!’ Quick, 43 (27 Oct.), 1963; Sneeringer, ‘Assembly Line of Joys’. Background on Weissleder in Krüger and Pelc, Hamburg Sound, 50–9; Rehwagen and Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 76, 148. A list of his holdings circa Dec. 1962 in StaHH, 442-1 Bezirksamt HH-Mitte, file 95.92-15.9, Bd. 1.
86 A marker of Weissleder's outsider status is his omission from the long list of invitees to a meeting of St. Pauli businessmen on future plans for the district; in StaHH 442-1 Bezirksamt HH-Mitte 70.02-1 Bd. III: Ausschüsse auf dem Gebiet des Wirtschaftswesens, Sonderausschuss St. Pauli, 14 Jan. 1965 minutes.
87 Length of residency mattered: Willi Bartels, widely known as the ‘king of St. Pauli’, was actually born in the Harz and moved to St. Pauli as a teenager in the 1920s. Wilhelm Menke was a pillar of the community, but his forebear Dietrich, who opened the family's Reeperbahn establishment in 1927, was once described as an owner ‘who sets no store in attracting a respectable clientele’ and made his money off of ‘whores and pimps’; ‘Das Dirnengesindel am Silbersack und bei Dietrich Menke,’ Hermann Abel's Nachtpost, 19 Mar. 1927, in StaHH 376-2 Gewerbepolizei, file Spz X B 29, Bd. 3: Menke, Reeperbahn 34/35.
88 Rehwagen und Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 76. Police file in StaHH, 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 2/40.71.
89 In this regard he resembled Beate Uhse; see Heineman, Before Porn was Legal.
90 Building history in Zint, Günter, Große Freiheit 39. Vom Beat zum Bums (München: Heyne, 1987), 18–24 Google Scholar.
91 Business licenses in StaHH Zentral Gewerbekartei 741-1 Fotoarchiv, K4027 and K4119.
92 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 67, 16 May 1962.
93 Rehwagen und Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 101.
94 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 1, Bericht über die Streife Nr. 67, 23 May 1962. Profile of Müller in Der Spiegel, 27 (4 July), 1962.
95 For example, in 1962 the Top Ten saw a massive brawl between sailors from the USS Essex, military police and locals. Rehwagen und Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 134.
96 Gangsters were known to hang out at Beat clubs, seen, for example, in photographs of them at the Top Ten taken by Gerd Mingram; Rehwagen und Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 40, 109.
97 ‘Hörst Du es klirren?’ Der Spiegel, 23 (3 June), 1964; delineation of Müller's involvement with the Star Club in Rehwagen and Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 199 n.17.
98 Fascher, Horst, Let the Good Times Roll: Der Star-Club-Gründer erzählt (Frankfurt: Eichborn, 2006), 139 Google Scholar.
99 Rehwagen and Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 143. Fredi was fired for violating another aspect of the ‘code’ – having an affair with a gangster's wife.
100 Fascher, Let the Good Times Roll, 99.
101 Interview with the author.
102 Fascher, Let the Good Times Roll, 101–2.
103 Rehwagen und Schmidt, Mach Schau!, 176.
104 Fascher, Let the Good Times Roll, 142–3.
105 ‘Twist-Club-Chef schlug Fotoreporter nieder’, Hamburger Echo, 30 Sept. 1963; ‘Auf der Bühne im Star-Club: Jazz und Prügel’, Hamburger Morgenpost, 30 Sept. 1963; ‘Anzeige gegen St Pauli-Chef,’ BILD, 30 Sept. 1963; ‘Dänischer Küß’, Hamburger Morgenpost, 25 Apr. 1964. A judge ordered Weissleder to replace the camera.
106 StaHH 95.92-15/9, Bd. 1, files of late December 1962. Weissleder reputedly operated on a cash basis in all of his business transactions.
107 ‘100 Polizisten im Twist-Club’; also ‘Heute früh – Razzia im Star-Club’.
108 StaHH 354-5 II Jugendbehörde II, Abl. 16.1.1981, 356-10.05-1 Bd. 3, Streifenbericht des Jugendschutztrupps von 15 May 1964.
109 ‘Bezirksamt Mitte entzieht Lizenz für Star-Club’.
110 ‘Verbot fur den Star-Club-Boss’.
111 Former employees of both sexes widely remembered Weissleder as a generous and fair boss ‘on the side’ of youth; author interviews with Taylor and Kemp; recollections in Rehwagen und Schmidt, Mach Schau! See Siegfried, Time Is On My Side, 213–6.
112 See articles in note 108 and 109; also Zint, Grosse Freiheit 39, 37.
113 On the Star-Club News see Sneeringer, ‘John Lennon, Autograph Hound’.
114 Morlock, ‘Läuterung’. Curiously, this article implies that these moves made violence more widespread in the club because waiters were no longer allowed to intervene in fights.
115 Weissleder used the Star-Club News (SCN) as a forum for his views on Falck and authorities who ‘declared war’ on Beat fans and their subculture; examples in ‘Palast-Revolution’, SCN, April 1965; ‘Holzhammer Methoden’, SCN, May 1965; ‘Hilfe abgelehnt’, SCN, Nov. 1965.
116 Zint, Grosse Freiheit 39, 34–6. Siegfried describes Weissleder as ‘not only a businessman, but [a person] with heart, life experience and a political morality’; Time Is On My Side, 214.
117 An excellent overview of this global youth culture in Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties, 3–12.
- 2
- Cited by