Mark Fenemore Livres

The book offers an engaging exploration of youth culture in East Germany during the 1950s and 1960s, highlighting the struggles of young people caught between traditional parental values and the state's imposed ideology. It examines the rise of street gangs and alternative youth movements that embraced Western fashion, music, and icons, leading to significant clashes with a repressive regime. The narrative delves into the intersections of gender, sexuality, and political ideologies, set against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall's construction and the broader Cold War context.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s Berlin, the narrative explores the complexities of the Cold War, highlighting its multifaceted and intertwined nature. It delves into both legal and illegal aspects of this conflict, emphasizing the subtle and gradual tactics employed during this period, likening it to a war of a thousand cuts or minuscule salami slices. The book offers a nuanced perspective on the historical intricacies of Cold War dynamics.

A fascinating and highly readable account of what it was like to be young and hip, growing up in East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. Living on the frontline of the Cold War, young people were subject to a number of competing influences. For young men from the working class, in particular, a conflict developed between the culture they inherited from their parents and the new official culture taught in schools. Merging with street gangs, new youth cultures took shape, which challenged authority and provided an alternative vision of modernity. Taking their fashion cues, music and icons from the West, they rapidly came into conflict with a didactic and highly controlling party-state. Charting the clashes which occurred between teenage rebels and the authorities, the book explores what happened when gender, sexuality, Nazism, communism and rock 'n' roll collided during a period, which also saw the building of the Berlin Wall.