While Jeff Hayton's Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany is grounded in German history, it contributes to the growing body of work on punk in central and eastern Europe and to recent comparative and transnational accounts of punk. Despite its conventional main argument, the book brings new evidence and examples to the perennial Slavic Studies question of whether the First and Second Worlds should be understood as opposites or as alternative pathways to modernity.
Hayton's approach foregrounds sociological and political analysis rather than punk's musicological and literary aspects. The book's first main argument is that punk was a “medium for alternative living and a motor of social change,” with “emancipatory potential . . . on both sides of the Berlin Wall” allowing punks to “oppose convention and advance difference as the basis for alternative identities and communities” (8). The first half of the book examines punk through (perhaps surprisingly) traditional anthropological categories, but also up-to-date theory from English and German scholarship on punk's “Origins and Scenes, “Beliefs and Practices,” and “Language and Identity.” Hayton analyzes German punk's genesis and meaning in both East and West Germany in parallel, acknowledging both differences and similarities. Identity features largely, with Anderssein or “being different,” (64) placed alongside authenticity at punk's ideological core. Hayton's integrated analysis of East and West German punk is plausible, if optimistic, emphasizing punk's creativity and agency over its nihilism and rage (likewise, Hayton perhaps too neatly excises far right skinheads from punks).
The second argument, developed in the book's second half, is that punk “helps explain why West Germany flourished and why East Germany collapsed,” as punk “remained fundamentally indigestible to Eastern state socialism” but “proved unable to withstand Western democratic capitalism” (9). In this section, the chapters alternate between East and West Germany, examining punk's different trajectories before showing how both histories shaped punk's legacy in a reunited Germany. In the east, Hayton traces punk's genesis through contact with the west, its suppression by the Stasi (secret police), its survival in uncomfortable alliance with protestant churches, spaces of refuge from the omnipresent state, and unsuccessful efforts by the Communist Party and state to integrate punk. In the west, Hayton describes the split between creative Kunstpunks and doctrinaire Hardcores, punk's commercialization in Neue Deutsche Welle, and Hardcores’ reaction against the perceived commercial threat to punk's authenticity. While the divergent narratives of the two punk scenes are interesting, the underlying argument lends itself to reproducing the decades-long status quo of comparative studies of popular culture: examining a complex mix of economic, social, and cultural factors in popular culture in the west but emphasizing the clash between society and the state in the east.
The book's greatest strength is its impressive archival source base in both East and West Germany, along with its extensive secondary sources in German and English. Hayton includes some references to east European and Russian punk and popular culture, but deeper engagement with scholarship on punk in other eastern bloc states could have revealed fascinating comparisons—for instance, how some central/east European scenes (Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia) actually had much in common with West German punk, while others (USSR, Czechoslovakia) more closely resembled the East German scene.
If the book's extensive archival source base is its strength, it also contains a liability. While Hayton's archival sources on West German punk are complemented by an assortment of mainstream periodicals and punk ‘zines, the account of East German punk relies heavily on state security archives, resulting in a rich and multifaceted account of West German punk and a comparatively monochromatic image of punk in East Germany. While Hayton acknowledges this imbalance, it nonetheless leaves the reader wondering if the overwhelming emphasis on opposition to the state in East German punk is an artifact of the sources as much as the scene.
The merits of Hayton's careful research and analysis often reveal themselves more effectively at the paragraph level than in the book's overarching argument, however, for instance, examining tensions between punks and protestant clergy and within the East German Communist Party, efforts by the West German state to suppress punk, and punk's breeches into popular awareness, including on state airwaves, in Eastern Germany. These and myriad other examples, as well as the book's expansive and original archival research on both sides of the “iron curtain,” make it well worth reading for scholars of east/central European punk and popular culture and anyone interested in comparing culture and society under state socialism and capitalism.
