East Germany after unification

It is hard to imagine what it must have felt like for GDR citizens, that evening of 9 November 1989 when the Berlin Wall and with it the foundations of the German Democratic Republic fell under the pressure of the people's voice. This was what many GDR citizens had been demonstrating for in Leipzig and other cities and had been dreaming of for decades: no longer locked in by a wall, inhibited by regulations, watched by the Stasi, the world finally lay open to them. There would be free travelling and a wealth of luxury goods to choose from, but moreover there would be freedom of speech and the liberty for everyone to make their own life choices. Helmut Kohl's statement that in those days ‘the window of history was opened’ has often been repeated:Footnote ¹ now, the world would change, definitively, and everything would be possible. However, this state of euphoria, which can now scarcely be recalled even by those who were there, lasted no longer than a few months. German reunification turned out to be less idyllic than was hoped for and expected. Psychologist Annette Simon has described the situation as a long yearned-for family reunion, in which ‘both are finally facing each other again and, after the first tears of joy, have no clue what to do with each other’ (Simon Reference Simon1995).

The stronger of the two partners got to choose where their now common path was heading. West Germany decided it would be best if the East countries would adjust to capitalist life standards as soon as possible, and East Germans, still blinded by what had happened, were eager to do so, at first. Everything that was reminiscent of the GDR was dissolved or cast away: Trabant cars, Spreewälder gherkins and the GDR German idiom. Along with them went GDR passports, diplomas, and even university professors. Within one year, East German identity was erased and replaced with another, as yet unfamiliar one. Moreover, the ‘Ossie’ became the subject of public ridicule and at best patronising pity in the West. East Germans were considered naive, quixotic and lazy. This ‘identity break’ caused many psychological problems from the beginning (cf. Siepmann Reference Siepmann, Kuhn and Ludwig1997, pp. 120–7). When, during the 1990s, unemployment rates increased to 20 per cent or more in many of the ‘new countries’,Footnote ² a third of the population moved away from the former GDR,Footnote ³ salaries in the East were deliberately kept lower than in the West because of the alleged lower living standards there, and federal and national governments failed to improve basic socio-economic circumstances such as GDR infrastructure, initial euphoria and hopes gradually turned into disillusionment, dissatisfaction and collective identity crises. These feelings have been largely unaltered ever since. A 2009 enquiry shows that East Germans' feelings of identification with the united Germany hardly grew in 10 years: less than 25 per cent of respondents from the former GDR indicated that they ‘feel like a proper German civilian’ while more than 60 per cent indicated that they ‘neither want the GDR back nor really feel at home in the unified Germany.’Footnote ⁴ It is this liminal state of undone desire that is the focus of my investigations into East German youth culture; from the late 80s onward local music and subcultures have reflected the shadowy spaces between hope and disappointment following the Wende, and from the beginning Gothic modes of expression have been important constituents of both.

The band Sandow, an underground punk and proto-Goth band from Cottbus – now one of many ghost towns in Eastern Germany, but a thriving brown coal mining community in communist times – seems to have anticipated the ambivalence of post-Wende German history. Sandow was one of ‘die anderen Bands’ [the other bands], bands originating in the last decade of the GDR that wrote subtly critical and often intellectually ambitious songs. Sandow's lyrics and music provide typically Gothicising expressions of the social and affective loopholes that East Germans felt themselves placed in after the beginning of the Wende. The following lines are from ‘Tour de Lose’ from the album Stationen einer Sucht [Stages of an Addiction], which was released ‘during the turns and commotions of German divisibility’ in 1989Footnote ⁵:

‘Tour de Lose’ is a minimalist composition for guitar and whispered male voice. The guitar part consists of a bare bass line exploring the tense harmonic areas of dominant and mediant chords of the C major scale in a repeated melody of single notes (B, C, G, E). It does not resolve onto the tonic C until after the words ‘And I don't want to know’, paradoxically adding the musical release of a cadence to those almost nihilist words. The bleakness of the guitar melody underlines the emphatic lack of resolution of the song lyrics, which are spoken with as much urgency as resignation. The whispered tone of the singer represents the forbidden and unheard voice of GDR youth; the fact that it rather would not know ‘where the journey goes’ than predict or even try to influence it is symptomatic of the distrust that had already crept into East German culture around the time of the Wende. Whether communist or capitalist, ‘Tour de Lose’ seems to suggest, the political and economic forces determining Germany's journey would still make decisions top-down, and so resistance and subversion assumed the shape of nihilist comments from the lips of the unseen.

Two years later, when the first disappointments had taken hold, Sandow expressed the lost illusions after ‘the window of history’ had been closed again in the sinister ‘Monolog der Frau 1’ [The Woman's Monologue 1] for female spoken voice from the album KänGuru (1991). The last lines are as follows:

The political criticism in this song's lyrics, in which a kangaroo jumps over borders without actually finding anything on the other side, is direct and severe. It is expressed musically in a similar way, with means that are simultaneously simple and disruptive: the remarkably clear female voice is accompanied by a chromatically ascending line starting on C that slowly builds into a dissonant, chaotic cluster of sound. ‘Monolog der Frau 1’ expresses the same hopelessness as ‘Tour de Lose’, but rather than not wanting to know, this clear voice demands an answer – what is the use of crossing over the Berlin wall, over communism, into an alleged liberty, if no sense, no reason and no freedom emerge from it?

Twenty years after the fall of the wall, German political reunification has all but resulted in social unification. Mutual disappointments and prejudices have maintained what is sometimes referred to as a ‘wall of complaints and projections’ between East and West Germans (Simon Reference Simon1995, p. 25); another sign of the spectral afterlife of the Berlin wall is the popular expression that citizens from both East and West still have a ‘wall in their head’ [Mauer im Kopf] so many years after the physical structure was torn down. Although this problem is addressed in many German journalistic and academic studies, authors often do not detach themselves from their own background and continue to affirm already existing opinions. East Germans see the corrupting power of commercialism and bureaucracy at work even in the academic studies of their Western colleagues, West Germans see the social and economic helplessness of the traumatised East (Goll and Leuerer Reference Goll and Leuerer2004). Solving the existential crisis of many East Germans will need differentiation and self-criticism from both sides of the psychological German wall, but it may take generations to get there.

East German Goths: living in a twilight zone

Disillusionment following German unification has led to an increase in the incidence of depression, alcoholism and broken families in the Eastern countries. Many East Germans experience nostalgia for the economic and social securities of the GDR. Empirical research from 2010 shows that nearly 50 per cent of East Germans feel that the GDR had more good than bad aspects (‘Beurteilung des Lebens in der DDR’ 2010); so-called Ostalgie is an expression of these feelings. The expansion of Goth subculture in the East can be seen as one of the ways young East Germans react to the same circumstances. Experiencing their parents' depression, seeing their towns and villages grow empty and having very few opportunities to build a career or even to obtain a job themselves, it is hard for them to remain optimistic about the future. Goth subculture offers one way for them to express their feelings, as many aspects of Gothic and Goth are directly in line with the psycho-social situation of these children of the Wende.

The superficial qualities that are often attributed to Goth subcultures are eminently appropriate to express young East Germans' sentiments. Firstly, the neo-romantic Weltschmerz that is paradigmatic for Goth subcultures characterises rather precisely this generation's foremost life attitude. Axel Schmidt and Klaus Neumann-Braun describe the German Goth scene as ‘based on subjectively experienced and collectively shared disappointments which lead to the consolidation of resigned and pessimistic life attitudes’ (cf. Richard Reference Richard1995, p. 133; Schmidt and Neumann-Braun Reference Schmidt and Neumann-Braun2004, p. 78). This description almost painfully matches young East Germans' daily life experiences. Secondly, the social and physical isolation that has been a main theme in Gothic arts since the late 18th century and which is romanticised by contemporary Goths equally corresponds with the social reality that East Germans are confronted with. Finally, the GDR is sometimes mockingly referred to as ‘undead’, a qualification that is interpreted heroically by Goths.

With these characteristics, being part of Goth subculture has several functions for young East Germans. Escape through the multimedia immersion in music, videos, festivals and online communities offers relief from daily problems (cf. Eckart Reference Eckart2005, p. 549). Moreover, Schmidt and Neumann-Braun have pointed out that the preoccupation with secularised rituals and cults in Goth scenes leads to a transcendence of the here and now. Allowing boundaries of time and space to be temporarily lifted and forgotten in such highly immersive activities, participants can forget their day-to-day troubles and act out their frustration, fear and anger (Schmidt and Neumann-Braun Reference Schmidt and Neumann-Braun2004, pp. 285–321).

Furthermore, the collectivity of Goth subculture provides East Germans with the sense of belonging and group identity that the unified Germany fails to give them. Despite the enormous variety of individual styles in music, texts and clothing within Gothic subcultures, the scene is remarkably tight on a social level. Paul Hodkinson criticises cultural studies and postmodern approaches to subcultures, which in their emphasis on difference overlook what he calls the ‘relative stability and boundedness of groupings such as the Goth scene’ (Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2002, p. 19). He coins the notion of ‘consistent distinctiveness’ to describe the balance between individual and collective styles, heterogeneity and unity within the Goth subculture (Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2002, p. 29ff.) This balance seems to be particularly important for East German Goths, who feel different from the world that they live in and at the same time long for the safety and mutual respect of collectivity. The Gothic world offers them both active differentiation and group belonging. Anthropologist Agnes Jasper, herself a major figure in the Amsterdam Goth scene and organiser of the famous Medusa parties and the Bal du Masque, describes how Goths feel ‘at home’ at parties: ‘the smells, attitudes, clothes, colours, tastes and visual aspects of a party and its visitors tell us we find ourselves amongst our kind, in a familiar place’ (Jasper Reference Jasper2004, p. 90).

In addition to these psychological dimensions, being Goth also allows for a clear demarcation of the self against the outside world. Clothing, make-up, hairstyle and accessories are extremely important for Goths and form an explicit expression of being ‘different’ from the society that they do not feel at home in. Whereas the Victorian dresses, frilly shirts, the lace and the velvet of the black romantic Goth style reflect a certain (unidentified) romantic nostalgia within Gothdom, elements such as the consistent black colouring, body art in piercings and tattoos, and references to BDSM and fetishism that turn up in black romantic as well as in cybergoth styles simultaneously show that this nostalgia is accompanied by the will to transgress established norms. With these characteristics the Goth look enables a cultural performance of young East Germans' feelings of disillusionment and dissatisfaction in the shape of historically delineated Gothic themes – Sehnsucht, isolation, distrust in the future, the undead, transgression. The combination of nostalgia and transgression in Goth subculture establishes a very specific type of social criticism which, as I will argue in the second half of this article, is especially important for the situation of East Germany. Moreover, since the Goth look is very explicit, Goths are hard to overlook; Gothic melancholy and subversion have an exhibitionist dimension.

However, these aspects of what the Gothic is and what it can do are aspects of its surface visibility, and I would like to move beyond the semiotics of style and an ethnography of social participation. While such data have been amply provided in Paul Hodkinson's (2002) and Dunja Brill's (2008) extensive sociological studies of the scene and help provide insight into the looks and demographics of the scene, they are insufficient for an understanding of Goth's role and significance in a larger cultural framework. Criticisms of theoretically informed discussions of subcultures (Goth or otherwise) asserting the priority of empirical data from interviews over theoretical readings do not recognise the complementary relationship between these different scholarly approaches.Footnote ⁶ Empirical data regarding subcultures should never be read autonomously; if, for instance, Hodkinson's interviewees indicate that ‘social atmosphere’ and ‘socialising’ are important reasons for their participation in the Goth scene (Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2002, pp. 200–1) these responses do not make any real sense unless this social scene is located within its cultural-historical framework and is critically examined. Moreover, and this is a more fundamental methodological problem, asking subcultural participants solely for the reasons why they are involved in a certain scene can occlude further critically informed discussions of their answers: it is like asking an author what she intended with the book without investigating the book's position in its cultural, historical and intellectual surroundings. There is no doubt that sociological studies of Goth provide useful empirical data, but cultural studies can offer broader perspectives on the data by its deployment of critical and theoretical interrogations. My question in the following, therefore, is not ‘what do East German Goths wear and where do they meet’ but rather ‘to what extent can East German Goth subculture be understood as a mode of Gothic engagement within the specific dynamics of post-unification German history.’ In order to answer this question, the empirical data gathered during my own participant observations in the sceneFootnote ⁷ as well as by Farin and Weidenkaff (Reference Farin and Weidenkaff1999), Schmidt and Neumann-Braun (Reference Schmidt and Neumann-Braun2004) and Brill (Reference Brill2008) is examined through the lens of Gothic criticism and cultural spectrality.

The Gothic genre is understood here as a historically developed form of cultural criticism that foregrounds the dark sides of the self and the margins of culture. By doing so, it interrogates and often personifies the uncannily present sub-currents which may render that person or culture irrational, unpredictable and possibly dangerous. Gothic texts, films and music show paradoxes from an anti-dichotomical perspective, without commenting morally or politically: sometimes the black and the white converge in one time, place or person. It thus serves as a signifier of cultural crises that negotiates the anxieties accompanying them through an active confrontation with feelings of ambivalence and unease (Punter and Byron Reference Punter and Byron2004, p. 39). The Gothic stance works like a rear-view mirror unveiling the absent presence of the past, of the Other, of the imaginary, of fear within the here and now. Thereby it forces the one who looks into that mirror to discern such spectres roaming the liminal spaces in between existing categories. The spectres visible in the Gothic mirror are the forces that, following Freud, give us the uneasy feeling that our home – that is, the domestic sphere, our perception of identity, of consciousness or culture – has become unhomely, unheimlich, uncanny. Thus, the Gothic has come to function as a genre that criticises cultural dichotomies through a radical incorporation of ambivalence.

In Gothic fiction the uncanny spaces beyond categorisation are often symbolised by deserted houses, land- or cityscapes, or labyrinths. These desolate spaces are invariably haunted, as they house repressed or tabooed desires and anxieties that are otherwise safely tucked away in the unconscious. Gothic ghosts like Dracula and Frankenstein, Cathy in Wuthering Heights, and the elusive Bob in David Lynch's Twin Peaks represent the concrete (and anthropomorphic) manifestation of the ambivalences of being human – fear of and desire for eternal life, technological agency, irrational all-consuming love, the unknown lands of the unconscious. It is in dealing with these Gothic tropes that the subcultural Goth differs from the historical Gothic. Rather than reading about them or feeling the horror of seeing them on film, Goths actively embody the ghosts that appear in liminal spaces: at neo-romantic Goth parties you may encounter modern vampires; at cybergothic parties you meet cyborgs; in East Germany you meet the spectres of communism-cum-capitalism. If the Gothic as an artistic tool reaches for the uncanny borderland beyond dialectic by moving to and fro between opposites, Goths are the embodiment of that perpetual movement (cf. Siegel Reference Siegel2005, pp. 158, 167); if Gothic signals and negotiates cultural crises through the radical operationalisation of ambivalence, Goths have incorporated this very ambivalence. The Goth scene should therefore more appropriately be referred to as a literal ‘milieu’ rather than the (essentialist) term ‘subculture’. In the case of East German Goth, it is the milieu, the liminal space after communism and before experienced, functioning capitalism; its enacted cultural criticism lies in the embodiment of the question ‘what if the communism of the past and capitalism of the present are not diametrically opposed but similar and simultaneous forces?’

Gothic ambivalence takes on many shapes, starting with the presence of past in the here and now that is endorsed by the Gothic's rewriting gesture. The simultaneously nostalgic and transgressive rewriting of past situations and attitudes furnishes one of the consistent links between the various historical appearances of the Gothic. While 18th century Gothic novels focussed on the unspoken presence of medieval and spiritual pasts in enlightened Europe, the Goth genre in contemporary popular music and subculture have rewritten texts and themes from earlier (Gothic) times ever since Bauhaus' 1979 single ‘Bela Lugosi's Dead’, which is generally considered the first Gothic rock song. Such rewritings can take the shape of literary recasts of a certain story, but also in the remediation of a tale from one medium to another, or even in re-enactment. In spite of the constant recontextualisations that cause slight alterations in its outward appearance, it is the nostalgic and transgressive gesture of the Gothic that gives it a transhistorical quality. Gothic rewriting always endorses a chronological overlap between various historical times, and this chronological conflation excavates the ghosts that lie buried under the surface of the culture it originates in.

Fred Botting has described Gothic nostalgia as the yearning for a romanticised past (Botting Reference Botting2007, p. 5). However, such nostalgic rewriting often results in transgressions of the past. Discussing the nature of nostalgia Linda Hutcheon has argued that the nostalgic drive does not so much signify the desire to literally go back to the past, but rather reflects the will to yearn for something which is essentially irrecoverable (Hutcheon Reference Hutcheon2000). As a result of this subjective sentimental drive, she asserts, ‘nostalgia “sanitises” the past:’ by nostalgic remembering we conjure up a past we desire to long for, and thus paradoxically transgress history itself by way of memory. It is precisely in this liminal space between history and memory that the Gothic roams. Embracing both the freedom and the uncanniness resulting from this entrance into the borderland between the real and the phantasmic or virtual the Gothic actively appropriates and acts out the symbiosis of nostalgia and transgression. And it does so in superlative: it underlines the transgressive force of nostalgia by deliberately perverting the orderly texture of the yearned-for past. While nostalgia is characterised by the retrospective or prospective creation of an idealised homeland, the Gothic renders this very homeland uncanny by perverting its idyllic quality. By this act of rewriting it positions itself at the uncomfortable sides of both present and past, which then overlap into a twilight zone inhabited by the ghosts of cultural trauma – loss, dissatisfaction, fear, secrecy or desire.

It seems to me that in these critical potentialities, much more even than in the superficial similarities described earlier, lies a deeper attraction for the Gothic for young East Germans. If we look at Goth milieus from the perspective of transgressive nostalgia, we can interpret the Goth style as an enactment of the Gothic rewriting gesture. Goths can then be seen as the cultural ghosts evoked by such rewriting – their clothes and make-up the narrative stuff of their trans-historical ghost story, and their parties and festivals the twilight zones endorsed by those narratives. Thus, East German Goths' subversion consists not simply of kicking against the establishment of reunified Germany – as the media would have it – but of creeping under the new Germany's skin through an enactment of the dark sides of, simultaneously, the communist past and the capitalist present. By doing this, the East German Gothic challenges the cultural dichotomy that still underlies much German social and political thinking: the GDR is not dead, nor is the unified Germany alive, neither communism nor capitalism offer straightforward solutions to the problems haunting the East countries. While many young East Germans feel stuck in this dead-end road of socio-economic developments, Goths turn that very road in the desolate East German landscape into a Gothic twilight zone.

Already in the early 1990s such Gothic aspects of former GDR citizens' lives were expressed in rock music. Bands such as Sandow were writing texts and music that, as argued above, have all the critical characteristics of the Gothic. Besides such intellectually profiled bands, another type of musical Gothicising occurred in ‘Neue Deutsche Härte’ (NDH), which originated in the East of the united Germany as a counterpart to ‘Neue Deutsche Todekunst’ in the West. NDH, whose internationally most famous representative is Rammstein, is a metal/industrial genre characterised by distorted metal guitars, industrial and electronic noise, upbeat tempos, and German lyrics expressing themes such as death, decay and pain in neo-romantic imagery. NDH's musical language combines the rough sounds of metal with operatic, sometimes bombastic melodic lines. While the band originated as Feeling B, writing in the punk rock style of ‘die anderen Bands’, Rammstein's first two albums with their characteristic titles Herzeleid (1995) and Sehnsucht (1997) are examples of this Gothic phase in German rock music.

In Rammstein's song ‘Seemann’ [Sailor] the Gothic aspects of NDH are employed to express poignantly an important emotional predicament of young East Germans. Having seen the merits and the failures of two systems, these young people recognise the corruption of both, and are left paralysed with disappointment and distrust (cf. Maaz Reference Maaz1990, pp. 86–95; cf. Decker and Decker Reference Decker and Decker2000, p. 17). In the following lines from Rammstein's ‘Seemann’, singer Till Lindemann's voice gradually changes from a treacherously begging, soft tone to his characteristic ‘Härte’:

Of all the experienced reasons for such distrust of contemporary German society, Goth subversion is directed most explicitly against what is called Leistungsgesellschaft on German Goth websites – which is most adequately translated into English as the ‘achievement- and performance-oriented capitalist society’:

Goths seem to be haunted (sic) by an almost Adornian fear for the global cultural industry and driven by a desire for truth, originality and creativity (Jasper Reference Jasper2004, p. 109; Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2002, Chapter 4). Again, Gothic attitudes and East German disillusionment seem to match seamlessly, since it is the Leistungsgesellschaft that Ossies are disillusioned by and it is ‘authenticity’ beneath slick commercialism that they are yearning for. It is precisely about the issue of subverting capitalist structures that I would like to focus more closely on the internal characteristics that distinguish the East German Goth from other Gothic phenomena. If Gothic is radicalised ambivalence, then which ambivalence exactly – ambivalence between which states – does the East German Gothic signify?

The Spectres of Marx in the East German Gothic

The exhibitionist component of Gothic subversion noted above has a slightly different genesis in East Germany than in the West. To outline this difference, it is necessary to understand subversion as a changeable concept, which acquires meaning only in the context of cultural and historical contingencies. Social structures in the GDR were actively kept uniform by the party (SED) and the Stasi. Other than in individualist and liberist societies, any deviation from that uniform norm was automatically interpreted as subversive and therefore potentially dangerous. Because the border between norm and deviation was infinitely more narrowly defined, even the subtlest subversion was always seen, which in turn also made it relatively easy to be subversive. A local East German rock band in the second half of the 1980s chose as their band name Glas Most, which in German means ‘glass of apple juice’ but obviously referred to Gorbachev's glasnost politics. On account of this name, the authorities forbade their public appearance and declared the band to be illegal before they even started their career. At the same moment in time, western bands could call themselves Glasnost, We Hate Capitalism or Screw the System and nobody would look twice. A practical consequence of this situation in the GDR was not only that everyone was potentially dangerous, but also that everyone had attention and was therefore taken seriously.Footnote ⁸

After the Wende, many cultural analysts and psychologists have ascribed the continuing social problems in the new countries to the fact that the totalitarian regime of the GDR kept their citizens like children or at best ‘eternal adolescents’, having become stuck in acts of subtle and yet hopeless subversion (cf. Maaz Reference Maaz1990, p. 37; Decker and Decker Reference Decker and Decker2000). Whether or not this is an adequate diagnosis, it is clear that subversion from an East German perspective has different meanings than in western subcultures: for East Germans, subversion manifests itself in subtleties such as irony, it has to be publicly seen in order to be meaningful, and it confirms the dichotomy of the powerless collective against the repressive system. Indeed, a large portion of Ostalgie seems to derive from the nostalgia for the time when subversion was exactly that, and when it was a clear-cut ‘we’ unified against a very clearly defined ‘them’ (cf. Cooke Reference Cooke2003).

In the new Germany with its liberalist political system and individualised cultural structure, many even less subtle forms of subversion are not really noticed any more, and there is no such thing as a unified ‘we’. Young people who are dissatisfied and depressed want to be heard but do not know how to achieve this, since their notion of subversion has become irrelevant; they feel disappointed with the capitalist promise of equal opportunities since it seems that one has to know a certain language in order to be eligible for these opportunities.Footnote ⁹ Combining this language with the desire to subvert and be seen, they sometimes choose to be loud and explicit now whereas previously they would have chosen to be subtle and ironic. The accusations of neofascism against Rammstein and Neue Deutsche Härte are in need of differentiation from this perspective: these bands want to subvert and want to be seen, and they gained attention by being loud and explicit. The exhibitionist and even the alleged Satanist or occultist components in East German Goth milieus can similarly be seen as an enactment of nostalgia for the time that any subversion immediately called for a reaction. Being Goth is a form of subversion that is very outward and must be seen; here, too, explicit visibility has replaced ironic subtleties as a vehicle for subversion.

This visibility itself also contains a double layer. In a way, both older and younger East Germans are troubled by the changed ideas with regards to norms and deviations. The growth of East German Goth subcultures seems to signify nostalgia for the time when norms and deviations were still clearly discriminated, as opposed to the confusing pluralism of capitalism. Whereas their parents think nostalgically of the social norms that ruled the GDR, East German Goths define themselves subversively through deviations from equally outdated norms – body piercings and fetishism aren't really taboos anymore, either. In this sense, such Gothic transgression is an act of nostalgia rather than the other way around (cf. De Bloois Reference De Bloois and van Elferen2007), as East German Goths express a nostalgia for past subversion by a present deviation that may not even be as relevant anymore.

Enhancing the paradox, the cultural structures they resist form a necessary prerequisite for the existence of this milieu. Subcultural theorists such as Thornton and others have shown that subcultures need media and commerce in order to manifest their deviant and subversive identities (Thornton Reference Thornton1995). Applying these insights to Gothic subcultures, Hodkinson has argued that the various locally confined Goth scenes operate translocally through mediation and commercialisation (Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2002, Chapters 6–9). The fear of money, media and mass culture that Goths experience has thus not only come true, but the vehicles of mass cultural industry also pervade their own resistance against it.Footnote ¹⁰ This ambivalent, often paradoxical status quo is painfully tangible especially for East Germans.

There is a strong tension created by Goth's deployment of the very capitalist culture it so strongly resists; here, the ‘Spectres of Marx’ that Derrida has so painstakingly evoked are at play. As noted above, the Gothic historically occurs as a reaction to cultural change, and especially cultural change that unveils differences between societal layers. Stephen Shapiro argues that the changes to which any Gothic wave has reacted have been instigated by capitalist phase-transitions, and that such Gothic cultural performances show a ‘Janushead temporality’: while on the one hand the eerie possibility of a return of the revengeful suppressed masses is explored, there is space for uncanny forebodings about the destabilised future on the other (Shapiro Reference Shapiro2008, pp. 33ff). This is exactly what Derrida describes as having happened after Fukuyama's ‘end of history’:

East German time has been out of joint since the end of communism opened and closed the window of history – the social, economic and political desolation, the undeath of both communism and capitalism, the ‘Janushead temporality’ in the conflation of GDR past, reunited presence, and insecure future. Derrida goes on to identify the spectres that haunt the (un)dead space of (post-)Marxism, their non-origin still always-already there, absent presences conjured up as well as exorcised by the new capitalist order (Derrida Reference Derrida2006, pp. 45–60, pp. 133ff). East Germany is inhabited by a multitude of post-Marxist spectres. The absent presence of the Berlin wall in people's consciousness as one of the ghosts that haunt East Germany's Gothic landscape has already been mentioned above; Warren Montag has argued that the most palpably and untrustworthily present of these ghosts is the spectre of Marx itself:

It is through the inescapable grasp of Marxism's afterlife, of course, that Ostalgie proves spectral; for it is the undead ghost of Marx that it nostalgically conjures up, and with it the transgressive ‘sanitised past’ of GDR times as well as all of Marx's own spectre. Ostalgie, with its nostalgic revival of GDR clothing, songs and language, summons up a cleansed version of the past, conveniently leaving out its negative aspects, without, in its very nostalgic gesture, losing paranoia and suppression, which is projected onto the capitalist present of the unified Germany. The sanitising act can only exist against the reality of the shadows it has cast, and the binary conception of temporality in Ostalgie's work of mourning confirms this dichotomy. It is through the undead presence of communism, also, that the East German Goth milieu proves spectral, albeit in another way; allowing themselves to play the ambivalent role of spectres of Marx within post-communist Germany, these Goths affirm their own spectrality, the hauntologically determined spectrality of the spectreFootnote ¹¹; they live ‘between life and death’ (Derrida Reference Derrida2006, p. xvii). If Ostalgie performs the work of mourning, East German Goths can be seen as human incarnations – or, in Derrida's terms, incarnated conjurations – of the liminal state of Germany after reunification. The Gothic's perverting nostalgia renders the GDR past which Ostalgie yearns back to uncanny by enacting its ghostly ambivalence, and by the painful realisation that the spectre of Marx is simultaneously cherished and feared – like a proper Gothic ghost.

While the East German distrust of both communist and capitalist corruptive forces are expressed in the fragment from Rammstein's ‘Seemann’ above, young East Germans recognise their own corruption in having collided with both systems, for instance in employing the structures of capitalist cultural industries for the manifestation of the subculture they participate in. Being painfully aware of the West in the East, and with that of the Other in themselves, moral comments or judgements of either one seem irrelevant. Their only remaining weapon is pervasive, disruptive irony – first and foremost self-irony. This irony not only links the children of the Wende to the Gothic, but also to Derrida's spectrally deferred spectres, whose hauntological nature renders ontic signification impossible:

When irony is hauntological, the ironic self becomes spectral. It is thus with Goth irony. Many Goth participants as well as theorists have described the subcultural capital of the Goth scene as highbrow and intellectualist, but also tongue-in-cheek. Goths know their literary, musical and film canon, and online Gothic forums often contain participants' poetry and philosophical discussions.Footnote ¹² Goths like to show off their knowledge, but also to laugh about their own posing. Jasper quotes extensively from a subcultural comic book called Oh my Goth! to demonstrate the self-irony of the scene. In ‘Mommy, am I a Goth?’, a ‘simple checklist for those who aren't sure’, the alleged Goth obsession with death and suicide is ironically reversed:

The historically developed critical stance of Gothic liminality has thus translated into Goth subculture as irony, extending also to a self-irony that meets Derridean hauntology. The authenticity that Goths seem so desperate for and which they miss in the ‘black carnival’ of ‘fake Goths’ lies in the combination of a black romantic outfit and a deeply doubtful and ironic mind.Footnote ¹³ This aspect of the Gothic comes forward in East German Goth milieus in particular. Since Gothic subversion is at once explicitly visible and subtly ironic, it is a highly appropriate form of self-expression for children of the Wende who find themselves oscillating between precisely these two modes. The Gothic milieu offers them simultaneously the ironic subtleties of GDR subversion, the explicitness of the West and the disruptive (self-) doubt caused by the insight that those two opposites are inseparably, and spectrally, united. Being Goth enables a critical stance that goes beyond mere social or political dissatisfaction, as it performs in self-aware irony the ambivalence between Marxist and capitalist spectrality that defines the undead German countries.

Dark spaces of German selfhood: conclusions

In conclusion, the Goth in East Germany is not only a milieu, but also a critical engagement. Adopting the Gothic with all its historical and critical roles allows a younger generation of East Germans a stance towards both their past, the present and their own feelings. East German Gothic can be interpreted as an embodiment of the paradoxes with which children of the Wende feel confronted. Since there is no obvious way out of these paradoxes, the profound irony that pervades the Gothic offers a reflexive coping strategy that not only is in line with former GDR attitudes, but also, partly because of that, guarantees a certain degree of self value. Contrary to their parents, these young East Germans do not want to choose the passive self-definition of victimhood, but rather engage in a critical attitude of complete and utter doubt – even if this means that indecisiveness becomes a life paradigm.

The East German Gothic can therefore be understood as a counterpart to Ostalgie: it is a spectral memory culture that does not so much reflect nostalgia for the GDR past, but a disillusionment with the BRD present. East German Goths acknowledge, although they do not necessarily accept, the ongoing existential crisis of the unified Germany, including the ghostly wall between East and West. In response to this situation the Gothic establishes a cultural identity that performs the discomfort of living in an undead country. In addition to an immersive form of escapism, collectivity and visible subversion, Gothic enables a critical position in the shape of embodied ambivalence and spectrality. East German Gothic thus reflects on the twilight zones in the margins of unification, where dislocatedness is located, were subversion encompasses transgressive nostalgia, and where irony reflects hauntic paralysis. As a specifically German version of the worldwide Goth scene, moreover, it marks the local boundedness of globalised subcultures.