By Melanie Schiller
Germans are cool and stiff, they have no emotions and function like machines. Or they are ridden by angst and Weltschmerz – not coincidentally German loanwords. But: don’t. I repeat. do NOT. mention the war.
Germans evoke a lot of stereotypes, and some of them know it. In popular music history, those German musicians and bands that cater best to these expectations are probably the most successful internationally - most famously, of course, Kraftwerk and Rammstein. Both bands are well-known for being German (not despite of it) - for performing the perfect ideal of the national stereotype.
Besides the fact that they deliver a particular version Germanness for an international audience, these bands also share a complicated relationship to national history and identity. Throughout the oeuvres of both bands frequent references to the Nazi past are obvious – Kraftwerk famously had the German Autobahn (an icon of Nazi architecture) on their breakthrough album cover (1974) and the Volksempfänger radio (literally: “people’s receiver”), which was primarily intended to spread Nazi propaganda during the Third Reich, on the follow-up album Radioaktivität (1975). Similarly, Rammstein directly used Nazi-propaganda material from Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” in the music video to “Stripped” (1998), and in their more recent “Deutschland” (2019) they enact concentration camp scenes.
What both bands also have in common, although Rammstein more explicitly than Kraftwerk, is a level of controversy and ambiguity – are they serious or ironic? Are they fascists or anti-fascists?
In my book Soundtracking Germany – Popular Music and National Identity (Rowman and Littlefield Int., paperback: 2020) I trace some of these ambiguities as they are always connected to questions of German popular music and national identity. How does German post-war pop relate to the national past, how is national identity narrated musically and what tropes of Germanness can we find across such diverse genres as Schlager, German Beat music, Krautrock and Kraftwerk, German New Wave, Berlin Techno and, of course, Rammstein?
On a general level, the book argues for the importance of popular music in negotiations of national identity, and Germanness in particular. Specifically, it discusses diverse musical genres and commercially and critically successful songs at the heights of their cultural relevance throughout seventy years of post-war German history to describe how popular music can function as a language for “writing” national narratives. With close readings of, amongst others, Rammstein’s “Mein Land” (2011), Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” (1974), DAF’s “Der Mussolini” (1981) and Paul van Dyk and Peter Heppner’s “Wir sind Wir” (2004), the book explores how Germanness is performatively constructed, challenged, and reaffirmed in and through popular music throughout the course of seventy years.
One thing has become obvious: throughout German post-war popular music history, national identity has been a central point of reference across genres, styles and ideologies – either explicitly or implicitly. Even music that tries to be as un-German as possible (like, for instance, 1960s German Beat music) cannot avoid having to relate to its own Germanness. Conversely, music that presents itself as proudly German has - arguably until recently - been received with suspiciousness in popular discourses. Across this wide range of national articulations, the books shows that most German music dealing with questions of national past and identity primarily functions on the level of ambiguity, multiplicity and irony. Pop-made-in-Germany, it seems, cannot be angst-free. How very German of it.
Contact: m.m.schiller@rug.nl
Melanie Schiller is Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Popular Music at the University of Groningen, and member of the executive board of IASPM Benelux (as national representative)
