Baustein West und Bauplan Ost. Zur politischen: Transformation jugendkultureller Stile in der DDR

Abstract

Within different political systems, youth cultures use similar symbols and styles which are charged with distinct and specific meaning. In the German Democratic Republic, the socialist part of Germany, youth cultures were identified as being a political threat. They created space for communication that was in sharp contrast to the propagandistic ideal of the so-called „socialist personality“ and hardly to control by the state. Based on the example of the hippie phenomenon in the East, the essay explains the way global youth cultures had been differentiated culturally and loaded with political sense under the circumstances of socialism