BBRoundtable

This pop concert has written history: 20 years ago, Depeche Mode played a secret show for the Free German Youth in East Berlin. Fans has bidden enormous amounts of money for tickets, some had even forged them. Sascha Schmidt has traced contemporary witnesses which were there - and pictures of this concert.

The 7th of March 1988 is a cold day in East Berlin. But even the light snow couldn't hold back thousands of black-dressed juveniles to gather in front of the Werner-Seelenbinder-hall at the Prenzlauer Berg. Only a minority is actually holding a ticket for this event. "Birthday Concert of the Free German Youth" is printed in plain letters on brown paper, price: 15 East German marks. There are no more notices on the program. But nonetheless, thousands of freezing fans are offering fancy prices to get into the hall.

Even without official notifications the rumour had spreaded all across the nation: Depeche Mode would play their first and only concert in the GDR. A sensation, not only for the amounts of East german New Wave fans. "I couldn't believe it. The Hungarians were probably able to pull such a stunt, since Hungary was halfway West" Sascha Lange, author of "DJ Westradio" is recalling his memories, "but the Free German Youth - never!"

Pop Cultural State of Emergency

Fan love in the GDR - in most cases, it remained a distant relationship. The objects of desire beamed from the tubes of Western TV or smuggled Bravo magazines, which were sanctuaries for each snippet. "I had a grandmother in West Germany, therefore I owned 80 posters of Depeche Mode" Lange is reporting about his youth in the GDR.

Rocco Ganzert belonged to the pioneering Depeche Mode-fans of Leipzig. With sitting blockades on the dancefloor, he and his friends made them DJs in the youth clubs playing their cumbrous on the point wound tapes. When he got wind of the East Berlin concert, it was clear for him: he had to be there. Though the tickets were exclusively given avay at schools in Berlin, the young building cleaner was able to get one ticket - for 650 East German marks, which was representing the wage of two months - in front of the hall. Others paid the double amount. "Next day, we heard of some fan swapping his motorcycle for a ticket" Gerald Ponesky, who was responsible for the operational sequences in the hall as the executive producer, is remembering. For one night, a pop cultural state of emergency ruled the GDR.

One year ago, pop concerts being held in the socialist workers' and farmers' state caused some agitation. On the occasion of celebrating 750 years of Berlin the GDR wanted to present itself in the best. "This was when the total class struggle broke out", Ponesky tells. "They wanted to flip the bird at the West". But the youth of the East were magically attracted by the events beyond the wall. During a concert featuring David Bowie and Genesis right beside the Reichstag building the situation escalated: the wind carried the songs far into East berlin, and more and more juveniles gathered at the street "Unter den Linden" to be close to their idols, at least acoustically. When the calls for "Perestroika" and "Glasnost" became louder and louder, the Volkspolizei striked back, arresting a number of people. Reminiscents of the 17th of June 1953 when the people of East Germany had risen against the administratorship of the GDR were awaken.

Merchandising - that was the souvenir stand

A dam broke. The functionaries of the GDR felt more and more that a growing part of the citizens were turning away from them and that no wall could hold back youth movements like HipHop and New Wave. The "wonder weapon West concert" was supposed to help regaining lost prestige. Indeed, artists like James Brown and Uriah Heep hald already guested East Germany - but Depeche Mode played in a different league. Wth electronic sounds and an inapproachable attitude, the British musiicans around singer Dave Gahan were not only for the teenagers of the GDR a term of coolness. A Hungarian promoter had threaded the deal, and the 5000 Westmarks salary for the band seemed like a bargain for the comrades which were always short on foreign currency. At the end, the - well calculated - business loss for the band was said to be over 100,000 Westmarks. Numbers which made the Free German Youth-coup even more spectatcular.

"The concert came out of the blue sky," Ponesky recalls. "Fortunately, it was not our first one. We had already learned a few terms like "backstage" or "catering". Merchandising - for us in the GDR, it was actually our souvenir stand!"

Others were less versed in the rules of the business. Without any problems, contemporary witness Rocco Ganzert manages to smuggle his tape recorder into the hall. It's forbidden to make recordings of concerts, that's what he had read in the Bravo before. But obviously, this information had never reached the stewarts of the Free German Youth.

"This luck, this joy"

6,000 fans are waiting in the hall. 16-year old Sascha Lange can leave his precautionary brought Free German Youth-identity card in the pocket: nothing gives a hint on that there is a birthday party of the Free German Youth happening. Instead of blue shirts [formal wear of the Free German Youth; the translator], black dressed Depeche Mode-fans are feverishly waiting for the gig. The GDR is endlessly far away on this evening. The openers, East German band Mixed Pickles, were booed mercilessly away from the stage.

At 8:08 pm, it's finally beginning: when Dave Gahan is shouting "Good evening, East Berlin" into the hall, Rocco Ganzert is excitedly pressing the recording button of his tape recorder. Tears are running over the faces of many fans. "We went completely ballistic" Sascha Lange says. "This luck, this joy - Depeche Mode in the GDR, and I was there!" Even executive producer Ponesky was gripped by the spirit: "It was a concert which was unmatched. The band featured an aura which could made one almost a believer." When the lights went on again about 90 minutes later, all spectators knew that they had just experienced something very special.

Rock concerts as "mass political work"

At the station Lichtenberg, Sascha Lange meets Rocco Ganzert. Like an evidence that this wasn't just a dream, they are listening again to the clanking recording of the concert on their way back to Leipzig. And in the retrospection, Gerald Ponesky experienced this evening as something unreal: "It felt like extraterrestials came down for 90 minutes just to disappear again. And all stood there and asked themselves if all of this had really happened."

Such doubts are alien to the administration of the Free German Youth. They are accounting "their" real existing birthday concert as a full success: "Rock concerts with ten thousands of spectators have proved to be an effective form of mass political work of the Free German Youth among the youth" is the optimistic estimate of a resolution of the central council made on the 28th of June 1988.

But the reality catched up with the functionaries soon. When Depeche Mode unpacked their tour cases in Berlin for the next time, the GDR was already history.

http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/top ... schen.html
(author: Sascha Schmidt; painstakingly translated by your ole wavemeister )

What an interesting article! Thanks for the translation, btw!
How much were the concert tickets back then? It says people paid an enourmous amount of money. Are we talking less than $1000? Or way more than that?

You have to compare it with the buying power and other cicrumstances dealing with living in the GDR. The regular price of 15 East German Marks were within the scope, I think I had paid some 35 Deutschmarks to see DM during the "Music For The Masses"-tour 1988, while the exchange rate was around DM1.50 for the USD. The official exchange rate between Deutschmark and East German Mark was fixed by the adminstration of the GDR with 1:1, but the factual rate was around 1:7 to 1:10.

Now, one might draw the conclusion that the people of East Germany were rather poor when it came to buying power. Actually, that's not true - the in the eyes of many West Germans ridiculously overdrawn prices for certain goods like consumer electronics were the result of the administration trying to get on the money which was bulking up on the accounts of many GDR-citizens and damping the request for them, as the GDR had to rely on exports in return for foreign currency. Thats why (and if...) a color TV set was available for over 6,000 East Mark in the GDR while a comparative apparatus costed about 600-800 DM in West German stores, with the average worker earning about 600 M in the East and 1,500 DM in the West. The irony of it all: most tubes which were available at mail-order companies for this price were actually made in the GDR.

But you can assume that giving away two wages or a whole motor bike for a single concert was surely more than a sacrifice if you had lo live behind the Iron Curtain.

That's a really nice story, thank you!!!