The rock star and the dictator: Udo Lindenberg’s East German celebrity diplomacy

ABSTRACT

In the 1980s, several unusual public interactions took place between West German rock star Udo Lindenberg and East German dictator Erich Honecker. On the surface, their exchanges concerned whether Lindenberg would be allowed to tour in East Germany. Beneath the surface, however, these interactions constituted a challenge to East German cultural policy and restrictions on freedom of expression. Despite this, Honecker sought to harness the musician’s appeal in the German Democratic Republic’s fight against North Atlantic Treaty Organization nuclear missiles. The story of the rock star and the dictator thus reveals the parameters and limits of East German soft power diplomacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• Germany
• German Democratic Republic (GDR)
• popular culture
• political concert
• rock music
• star power
• youth culture

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticisms and thoughtful suggestions. My thanks also go to the many colleagues and mentors who read drafts including Donna Harsch, Charles Lansing, Zach Levy and Robert Terrell.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Der Chef des Bundespräsidialamtes, ‘Bekanntmachungen’, Bundesanzeiger Nr. 234, 14 December 1989.

² East German music historian Michael Rauhut has traced Lindenberg’s exploits in great detail and meticulous documentation, but he contextualises them only within the East German regime’s ambivalent relationship with popular culture. Michael Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke: Udo Lindenberg, BAP, Underground: Rock und Politik in den achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1996). Lorenz Lüthi also limits his account to the 1983 concert, although he argues that the concert revealed serious inconsistencies between the GDR’s foreign and domestic priorities: Lorenz M. Lüthi, ‘How Udo Wanted to Save the World in “Erich’s Lamp Shop”: Lindenberg’s Concert in Honecker’s East Berlin, the NATO Double-Track Decision and Communist Economic Woes’, Contemporary European History 24, no. 1 (February 2015): 83–103; and Ingo Grabowsky’s short piece outlines the 1987 meeting between Honecker and Lindenberg but offers no analysis. Ingo Grabowsky, ‘Sonderzug Nach Pankow. Udo Lindenberg Und Die Deutsch-Deutsche Sehnsucht’, in Sound Der Zeit, ed. Paul Gerhard and Ralph Schock (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2014), 493–8.

³ The nature of the GDR dictatorship was the focus of intense historical debate in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a backlash against the initial post-Cold War literature which characterised the GDR as a totalitarian state. Recognising that the survival of the SED state for 40 years had required some give-and-take between the regime and populace, many historians sought out new terms to capture more accurately the nature of this particular German dictatorship. Three of the most popular have proven to be ‘participatory dictatorship’ (Mary Fulbrook), ‘welfare dictatorship’ (Konrad Jarausch) and ‘consensual dictatorship’ (Martin Sabrow). Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Konrad Hugo Jarausch, Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999); and Martin Sabrow, ‘Der Konkurs der Konsensdiktatur. Überlegungen zum inneren Zerfall der DDR aus Kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive’, in Weg in den Untergang: Der innere Zerfall der DDR, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch and Martin Sabrow (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 83–118.

⁴ John Lewis Gaddis, ‘On Starting All Over Again: A Naive Approach to the Study of the Cold War’, in Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, and Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000), 27–42.

⁵ Christian F. Ostermann, Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War in Germany (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021).

⁶ For overviews of the cultural Cold War see Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Frank Schumacher, Culture and International History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003); Gordon Johnston, ‘Revisiting the Cultural Cold War’, Social History 35, no. 3 (2010): 290–307; Giles Scott-Smith, Peter Romijn, and Joes Segal, eds., Divided Dreamworlds?: The Cultural Cold War in East and West (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012). The history of music and diplomacy is also a growing subfield in its own right. For overviews see Rebekah Ahrendt, Mark Ferraguto, and Damien Mahiet, eds., Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Mario Dunkel and Sina A. Nitzsche, Popular Music and Public Diplomacy (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2018); Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015); and Frédéric Ramel and Cécile Prévost-Thomas, eds., International Relations, Music and Diplomacy: Sounds and Voices on the International Stage (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

⁷ The concept of soft power as an attractive element in diplomacy, distinct from coercive measures or payments, was first developed by Joseph Nye in the late 1980s. See Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); Joseph S. Nye, ‘Soft Power and Public Diplomacy Revisited’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 14, nos 1–2 (22 April 2019): 7–20.

⁸ Edward Larkey, ‘Just for Fun? Language Choice in German Popular Music’, Popular Music and Society 24, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 4–5.

⁹ Udo Lindenberg, ‘Wir wollen doch einfach nur zusammen sein (Mädchen aus Ostberlin)’, in Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria, (LP, Telefunken, 1973).

¹⁰ Annette Blühdorn, Pop and Poetry – Pleasure and Protest: Udo Lindenberg, Konstantin Wecker and the Tradition of German Cabaret (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003), 155.

¹¹ For example, his 1981 album Udopia included the track ‘Kann den Liebe Sünde sein’ (originally 1938, Bruno Balz, Zarah Leander) and the 1986 album Phönix included ‘Ich wieß nicht, zu wem ich gehöre’ (originally 1932, Friedrich Hollaender, Robert Liebmann, Anna Sten). Blühdorn, Pop and Poetry – Pleasure and Protest, 162–3.

¹² ‘Neue Deutsche Welle schwappt in die USA’, Die Welt, 29 September 1983. Nina Hagen and Herbert Grönmeyer are also often acknowledged as early pioneers of German-language pop. Though they both became politically active in the mid-1980s, neither of them engaged in the kind of German-German ‘rock diplomacy’ described later in this article.

¹³ ‘Offizielle Deutsche Charts’, accessed 26 August 2018, https://www.offiziellecharts.de/.

¹⁴ Udo Lindenberg, 'Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria, LP, Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria, Telefunken, 1973. Udo Lindenberg, 'Cello', LP, Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria, Telefunken, 1973.

¹⁵ Udo Lindenberg and Pascal Kravetz, ‘Wozu sind Kriege da?’, Single, Telefunken, 1981; Udo Lindenberg, ‘Straßenfieber’, Udopia, LP & CD, Teldec, 1981.

¹⁶ The squatting and peace movements were both part of a wave of New Social Movements that swept across Europe in the early 1980s. Squatters were locally based but internationally networked activists fighting for access to European city centres through affordable rents and shared public spaces, like youth centres, by occupying buildings. The peace movement organised protest actions against NATO’s decision to station nuclear missiles in Central Europe, advancements in nuclear weapons technology, and actions that destabilised the balance of power, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. An independent peace movement in the GDR, i.e. not state sanctioned, grew under the protection of the Evangelical churches into an effective resistance movement against the East German regime. See Roger Karapin, Protest Politics in Germany: Movements on the Left and Right since the 1960s (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). For the broader international peace discourse see Petra Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

¹⁷ Clara, ‘Ton Steine Scherben: Die Legendären Urväter’, Spex, January 1981.

¹⁸ John Vinocur, ‘The German Malaise’, The New York Times, 15 November 1981.

¹⁹ James M. Markham, ‘Youths in West Germany Shake Off the Past’, The New York Times, 14 August 1983.

²⁰ Pankow was the name of the special settlement for East German party leaders located just outside of East Berlin. In the song, Lindenberg refers to Erich Honecker as the GDR’s ‘Oberindianer’.

²¹ ‘Bist Du denn wirklich so ein sturer Schrat / warum läßt Du mich nicht singen im Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Staat?’

²² Udo Lindenberg, ‘Sonderzug nach Pankow’, LP, Odyssee, Polydor Records, 1983.

²³ Timothy W. Ryback, ed., Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Sabrina Petra Ramet, Rocking The State: Rock Music And Politics In Eastern Europe And Russia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).

²⁴ Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Sergeĭ Ivanovich Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010); Marta Rendla, ‘The Influence of Western Trends on Slovene Popular Culture from the 1950s to the 1970s’, Slovene Studies 33, no. 1 (May 2011): 85–95; Grzegorz Piotrowski, ‘Jarocin: A Free Enclave behind the Iron Curtain’, East Central Europe 38, nos 2/3 (July 2011): 291–306; William Jay Risch, Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc: Youth Cultures, Music, and the State in Russia and Eastern Europe (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015); Ewa Mazierska, Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking the Cold War Paradigm (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Gleb Tsipursky, Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945–1970 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); Jan Dutoit, ‘Die Geschichte des Liedes “Ivo Lola”. Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis zwischen Rockmusik und Politik im sozialistischen Jugoslawien’, Südost-Forschungen 76, no. 1 (December 2017): 162–86; Petrică Mogoș and Pauwke Berkers, ‘Navigating the Margins between Consent and Dissent: Mechanisms of Creative Control and Rock Music in Late Socialist Romania’, East European Politics & Societies 32, no. 1 (February 2018): 56–77; Trever Hagen, Living in The Merry Ghetto: The Music and Politics of the Czech Underground (London: Oxford University Press, 2019); and Jan Blüml, ‘Beatlephiles and Zappists: Rock Fandom in Communist Czechoslovakia in the Context of the Scene in Brno in the 1980s’, Forum Historiae, no. 2 (July 2020): 36–57.

²⁵ Notably, Honecker was by this point serving as head of security and not in his former position as head of the East German youth organisation, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ). Among the criminal acts he cited in his speech were rape, hooliganism and binge drinking while shirking work. ‘11. Tagung des Zentralkomitees der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands in Berlin vom 15. bis 17. Dezember 1965’ (17 December 1965), DY 30/ IV 2/1/335, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (Foundation Archive of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives of Germany) (SAPMO-BArch), Berlin.

²⁶ Peter Wicke, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, Peace Review 5, no. 2 (1993): 200.

²⁷ The literature on rock music in East Germany is extensive and volumes on particular subgenres and their associated subcultural scenes are common. Works that examine rock music in general in the 1970s and 1980s include Kirkland A. Fulk, Sounds German: Popular Music in Post-War Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020); Sascha Trültzsch and Thomas Wilke, Heißer Sommer – Coole Beats. Zur Populären Musik Und Ihren Medialen Repräsentationen in Der DDR (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009); Bernd Lindner, DDR – Rock & Pop (Cologne: Komet, 2008); Barbara Hammerschmitt and Bernd Lindner, Rock! Jugend und Musik in Deutschland (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2005); Michael Rauhut, ‘Rock Und Rebellion: Altenburg 1976’, Thüringen Blätter Zur Landeskunde 33 (2003): 1–8; Michael Rauhut, Rock in der DDR: 1964 bis 1989 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2002); Georg Maas and Hartmut Reszel, ‘Whatever Happened to …: The Decline and Renaissance of Rock in the Former GDR’, Popular Music 17, no. 3 (1998): 267–77; Peter Wicke and Lothar Müller, Rockmusik und Politik: Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 1996); Olaf Leitner, Rockszene DDR: Aspekte einer Massenkultur im Sozialismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983). For discussion of the ideology behind the regime’s decisions see Esther von Richthofen, Bringing Culture to the Masses: Control, Compromise and Participation in the GDR (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009). On young East Germans’ social values see Harry Müller, ‘Jugend im Wandel ihrer Werte: IS II’ (Leipzig: Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung, 1985).

²⁸ ‘Rechtliche Einshätzung des Liedtextes “Entschulidgen Sie, ist das der Sonderzug nach Pankow” von Udo Lindenberg’ (Berlin, 7 February 1983), MfS, BV Berlin, Abt. OT 22, Die Archive der Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasiunterlagen (The Archives of the Federal Commissioner for Stasi Documents) (BStU), Berlin; ‘Ey, ich hab’ Udo gesehen’, Der Spiegel no. 44 (1983): 233.

²⁹ ‘Information über das Abspielen und Verbreiten eines von Udo Lindenberg/BRD komponierten Liedes mit die DDR diskriminierendem Inhalt in Diskotheken und anderen Einrichtungen’ (Leipzig, 31 January 1983), MfS, HA XX, ZMA 2003, BStU. Although the song was widely played, doing so was not without risk. The penalty was most often a fine, but Michael Rauhut reports that two DJs from the town of Guben were sentenced to five months in prison for playing the song. Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 81.

³⁰ Udo Lindenberg to Erich Honecker, 23 August 1983, DY 30/ 2525, SAPMO-BArch. Axel Springer, publisher of the most popular West German tabloid, Bild, and the news magazine Der Spiegel, was conservative in its political orientation and rarely missed a chance to criticise either the GDR or the West German political Left.

³¹ Udo Baron, Kalter Krieg und heisser Frieden: der Einfluss der SED und ihrer westdeutschen Verbündeten auf die Partei ‘Die Grünen’ (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003), 99. The SED provided funding to the drafters of the Krefeld Appeal, but the East German party could not initiate or control the outpouring of public support in the Federal Republic.

³² ‘Nein zum NATO-Raketenbeschluß!’, Neues Deutschland, 10 September 1981; ‘Namhafte Künstler der BRD für den “Krefelder Appell”’, Neues Deutschland, 20 October 1981; ‘20,000 Westberliner feierten in der Waldbühne eindrucksvolles Friedensfest’, Neues Deutschland, 10 May 1982; ‘Künstler der BRD unterstutzen den Krefelder Appell’, Neues Deutschland, 10 June 1982; ‘DPA: Rätselhafte Selbstverbrennung’, Neues Deutschland, 11 June 1982; ‘Künstler der BRD verlangen: Keine neuen USA-Raketen!’, Neues Deutschland, 10 August 1982; Ralf Bachmann, ‘Künstler der BRD bereiten Bochumer Friedensfest vor’, Neues Deutschland, 11 August 1982; ‘Für Frieden und Abrüstung lohnt sich jeder Einsatz’, Neues Deutschland, 4 September 1982; ‘“Gemeinsam etwas gegen die amerikanischen Raketen tun” Anliegen der Teilnehmer des Bochumer Friedensfestivals’, Neues Deutschland, 8 September 1982; and Werner Otto, ‘Das Bekenntnis der Künstler: Jetzt für den Frieden aktiv sein’, Neues Deutschland, 13 September 1982.

³³ ‘Fernsehen, Funk und Berliner Bühnen am Wochenende’, Neues Deutschland, 11 September 1982.

³⁴ Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 73–4.

³⁵ Quoted in Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 83.

³⁶ Hauptabteilung VI, PKE Invalidenstraße, ‘Bericht zu Film- und Fotoaufnahmen im Vorfeld und im Hinterland der Grenzübergangsstelle Invalidenstraße im Zusammenhang mit der Einreise Udo Lindenberg zum Auftritt in der Hauptstadt der DDR, Berlin’ (25 October 1983), MfS, HA VI, 974, S. 10–12, BStU.

³⁷ Peter Berger and Günter Görtz, ‘Lieder, die Kraft geben im Kampf um den Frieden’, Neues Deutschland, 26 October 1983.

³⁸ Hans-Hermann Hertle, ‘Germany in the Last Decade of the Cold War’, in The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, ed. Olav Njolstad (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 222.

³⁹ Hertle, ‘Germany in the Last Decade of the Cold War’, 222.

⁴⁰ Hauptabteilung Kulturelle Veranstaltungen, Sekretariat des ZK der FDJ, ‘Konzeption für die ‘Tage des politischen Liedes’” vom 30.7. – 5.8.1973 unter dem Motto ‘Das politische Lied als Waffe im antiimperialistischen Kampf’ (n.d.), DY 24/7178, SAPMO-BArch; Zentralrat der FDJ, ‘Programm des 11. Festival des politischen Liedes’ (February 1981), DY 24/11,227, SAPMO-BArch.

⁴¹ Friedensgemeinschaft Jena, ‘Dokumente zur unabhängigen Friedensbewegung’ (1983), DF 02, RHArch; Henning Pietzsch, ‘Interview mit Dorothea Fischer (Thea)’ (18 January 2001), 27–29, ZeZe-F-01.01, ThürAZ.

⁴² James M. Markham, ‘West German Star Sings in the East’, New York Times, 27 October 1983.

⁴³ William Drozdiak, ‘West German Rock Star Brings His Antimissile Message to East’, Washington Post, 27 October 1983.

⁴⁴ Quotation from Egon Krenz’s short speech preceding the concert. Quoted in Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 86.

⁴⁵ Reinhard Heinemann to Udo Lindenberg, 8 October 1983, DY 30/ 2525, SAPMO-BArch; Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 90.

⁴⁶ Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 90.

⁴⁷ ‘Attachment to a letter from Egon Krenz to Erich Honecker’ (23 April 1984), DY 30/2525, SAPMO-BArch; Horst Dohlus et al., ‘Richtlinie für die Verfahrensweise in Bezug auf den Empfang von Künstlern und Gruppen aus der BRD bzw. West-berlin’ (23 January 1984), DY 30/2525, SAPMO-BArch.

⁴⁸ Udo Lindenberg to Herbert Mies, 26 March 1984, DY 30/ 2525, SAPMO-BArch. Udo Lindenberg to Horst Schmitt, 30 March 1984, DY 30/ 2525, SAPMO-BArch. Egon Krenz, ‘Aktennotiz über ein Telefonat mit Oskar Lafontaine’ (April 1984), DY 30/ 2525, SAPMO-BArch.

⁴⁹ The live broadcast underscores that the purpose of this concert was political rather than commercial. Musicians avoid live broadcasts because they decrease ticket sales and, in the 1980s when the cassette tape ruled, would depress record sales as well since fans would tape the performance and circulate it among their friends.

⁵⁰ ‘Information über eine Sendung des SFB II am 13.05.84 von 20.05 Uhr bis 22.30 Uhr mit Udo Lindenberg’ (13 May 1984), MfS, HA XX, 20,037, BStU.

⁵¹ This pun combines the acronym for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) and the German Beamten, a term for tenured civil servants.

⁵² ‘Information über eine Sendung des SFB II am 13.05.84 von 20.05 Uhr bis 22.30 Uhr mit Udo Lindenberg’, 84.

⁵³ Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 108–9.

⁵⁴ First quote attributed to Kurt Hager, member of the East German Politburo; second quote attributed to the Berlin Senate in their guidelines for the West Berlin celebration. Krijn Thijs, ‘Politische Feierkonkurrenz im Jahre 1987. Die doppelte 750-Jahr-Feier in Ost- und West-Berlin’, Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande 49, no. 1 (16 June 2017): 71–84.

⁵⁵ The SED referred to East Berlin almost obsessively, even in internal documents, as the Hauptstadt der DDR, the capital of the GDR. Even after the Four Power Agreement on Berlin in 1971, the signing of the Basic Treaty in 1972, and the GDR’s subsequent recognition by many countries, the Western powers did not recognise the legal status of East Berlin as the GDR’s capital and so the SED remained incredibly sensitive to any issues pertaining to the city’s status.

⁵⁶ Thijs, ‘Politische Feierkonkurrenz im Jahre 1987. Die doppelte 750-Jahr-Feier in Ost- und West-Berlin’, 82.

⁵⁷ Peter Merseburger, ‘Hirngespinste und die Wirklichkeit. Was an der Mauer passierte, und was die DDR daraus macht’, Die Zeit, 19 June 1987; Enno von Löwenstern, ‘Musik der Freiheit’, Die Welt, 10 June 1987.

⁵⁸ Thijs, ‘Politische Feierkonkurrenz im Jahre 1987. Die doppelte 750-Jahr-Feier in Ost- und West-Berlin’, 82.

⁵⁹ Lindenberg used the word ‘Dröhnung’, slang for loud music that can also carry connotations of using a drug.

⁶⁰ Udo Lindenberg, ‘Offener Brief an “Honey”’, Abendzeitung München, 11 June 1987.

⁶¹ Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 111.

⁶² E. Honecker, ‘Brief an Udo Lindenberg’, Junge Welt, 26 June 1987; Erich Honecker, ‘Zeitmosaik’, Die Zeit, 3 July 1987. Honecker did not write the letter himself. Instead, he tasked Hartmut König and Egon Krenz to write a draft, which he then approved. See ‘Note from Egon Krenz to Erich Honecker’ (19 June 1987), DY 30/2525, SAPMO-BArch.

⁶³ Erich Honecker to Udo Lindenberg, 19 June 1987, DY 30/2525, SAPMO-BArch.

⁶⁴ Klaus Oberst, Schalmeienorchester der FDJ im Stil der 1920er Jahre, 4 July 1987, Photography, 4 July 1987, Bild 183–1987-0704-056, Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives of Germany) (BArch), Berlin.

⁶⁵ Russel Lemmons, Hitler’s Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013), 33.

⁶⁶ Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 77–9.

⁶⁷ Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2018), 228.

⁶⁸ John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2006), 228–35; For a recent global interpretation of this period see Carole K. Fink, Cold War: An International History, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2017).

⁶⁹ Hertle, ‘Germany in the Last Decade of the Cold War’, 225.

⁷⁰ On the domestic repercussions of this policy see Jeffrey Gedmin, The Hidden Hand: Gorbachev and the Collapse of East Germany (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1992).

⁷¹ For more on the extent and causes of East Germany’s economic woes see Jonathan R. Zatlin, The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

⁷² Hertle, ‘Germany in the Last Decade of the Cold War’, 226.

⁷³ The East German permanent representation in Bonn had also approved Lindenberg’s visit. Walter Jakobs, ‘Honey trifft Udo bei Friedrich’, Die Tageszeitung, 10 September 1987.

⁷⁴ This slogan also echoed ‘swords instead of ploughshares’, which was the motto of the independent peace movement in the GDR which functioned under the protection of the Evangelical Churches. Udo Lindenberg to Erich Honecker, 30 June 1987, DY 30/2525, SAPMO-BArch.

⁷⁵ Rauhut, Schalmei und Lederjacke, 120–1.

⁷⁶ Jakobs, ‘Honey trifft Udo bei Friedrich’.

⁷⁷ B. Karkow et al., ‘Cultural Exchange: The Rock Star and the Comrade Party Leader’, The Week in Germany [Newsletter of the German Diplomatic Mission to the United States], 2 July 1987, 8.

⁷⁸ ‘Beständiges Blasen’, Der Spiegel, Nr. 38, 1987.

⁷⁹ Roland Kirbach, ‘Ein Sammler und Ausbeuter’, Die Zeit, 20 May 1988.

⁸⁰ For a less critical interpretation see Jakobs, ‘Honey trifft Udo bei Friedrich’.

⁸¹ Von E. Honecker [Letter from Erich Honecker to Udo Lindenberg]’, Die Zeit, 3 July 1987.

⁸² The American administration shared this assessment as early as 1950. Ostermann, Between Containment and Rollback, 176.

⁸³ Despite its economic struggles, the GDR spent 160 million East German marks on the festival, equivalent to US$48 million at contemporary exchange rates. Ostermann, 177.

⁸⁴ Zentralrat der FDJ, ‘Zu einigen Fragen der Entwicklung der DDR-Rockmusik’ (July 1984), DY 30/IV2/2.037/12, SAPMO-BArch.

⁸⁵ ‘Note from Egon Krenz to Erich Honecker’ (12 October 1987), DY 30/2525, SAPMO-BArch. Rowdytum, or hooliganism, was a crime in the GDR that could be punished with several months in prison.

⁸⁶ Jason Toynbee, ‘The Decline (and Perhaps the Fall) of Rock, Pop and Soul’, in Popular Music Matters (London: Routledge, 2014), 209–23.

⁸⁷ Quoted in Michael Rauhut, ‘Rock und Politik in der DDR der achtziger Jahre. Ein ereignisgeschichtliches Resumee’, Jahrbuch für Zeitgeschichtliche Jugendforschung 95 (1994), 76–97.