Introduction
Since early 2011, the musical Hinterm Horizont (Behind the Horizon) has been running to great public acclaim in Berlin. It is a semi-fictional version of the love affair between West German rock star Udo Lindenberg and a young woman from East Berlin in the early 1970s. Over a period of almost three hours, the show jumps from one of his rock hits from the last four decades to the next. When this author attended a performance in the spring of 2011, mostly people in their late 40s and 50s filled the theatre. While Hinterm Horizont deals with a painful aspect of recent German history – the country's division and its tragic human consequences – most spectators that evening seemed to enjoy recollections of their own youth listening to Lindenberg's catchy tunes and funny texts. Brutal historical reality had suddenly become sweet memory.
Udo Lindenberg is one of Germany's best-known rock musicians but, due to his exclusive use of German lyrics, remains largely unknown outside the German-speaking world. Fans of the post-1968 generation have flocked to his concerts for over four decades, with the star enthralling them through cultivated coolness, nonchalant non-conformity, sexually allusive stage antics and political pieces. Apart from writing some of Germany's all-time rock music hits, Lindenberg achieved political fame for a concert which he gave in East Berlin on 25 October 1983, and for his exchange of presents with the East German leader, Erich Honecker, four years later. The following pages revolve around the earlier episode, when Lindenberg travelled to the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) to give a concert in the Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik). Now demolished, the building once sported a great quantity of light bulbs in its grand halls, which earned it the popular nickname ‘Erich's Lamp Shop’ (‘Erichs Lampenladen’).
For Lindenberg, the concert in the other Germany was a high point both in his career and in his engagement with the peace movement in his native Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany). For the GDR leadership, he was supposed to be a tool in a desperate mobilisation campaign, initiated by the Warsaw Pact, against the impending deployment of American-built Pershing II intermediate range nuclear missiles in Western Europe. No amount of Communist peace propaganda, however, could prevent the implementation of the four-year-old double-track decision by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In late 1983 the Western alliance was determined to go through with what it considered a strategic counterbalancing act against the increasing Soviet nuclear threat. But while East Berlin supported Moscow's hard line on military confrontation with Washington, it was happy to continue economic cooperation with Bonn.
Lindenberg's concert in East Berlin on 25 October 1983 stands at the crossroads of cultural history with political, diplomatic and economic affairs in the final decade of the cold war. The intersection between this specific event and larger developments in international affairs produced an important marker in the unravelling of East German regime legitimacy. While the general outlines of the concert itself have been reasonably well documented in the media,Footnote 1 the existing literature on Lindenberg does not place it within larger cold war developments.Footnote 2 Several aspects of the story have attracted scholarly attention within unrelated lines of inquiry. Historians have explored social and cultural life in the late GDR,Footnote 3 stressed the opposing policies that Moscow and East Berlin followed as the cold war heated up for the last time in the early 1980s,Footnote 4 or written on the economic difficulties of the GDR and the resulting rapprochement with the FRG during that period.Footnote 5 Yet, virtually nothing has been published on the links between Lindenberg's concert and high politics. The current article explores new evidence not only about the behind-the-scene preparations for Lindenberg's concert but also about the junctures of low- and high-level politics at the time. It particularly relies on research conducted in the archival holdings of the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS; Ministry for State Security) and of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) in the federal archives (Bundesarchiv) in Berlin.Footnote 6
The story told here falls into five parts. The first section covers Lindenberg's professional interest in East Germany since the early 1970s and his repeated but unsuccessful attempts to get permission to perform there. In the following part, a flashback illuminates why the East German regime suddenly decided, in August 1983, to invite the impertinent rock star to perform. Although it had not changed its dismissive judgement of the singer, it hoped to exploit Lindenberg's anti-nuclear position to prevent the implementation of the NATO double-track decision. The third section tells the story of the concert itself, including the preparations and intentions of the East German regime, the political control by the state security organs, and the planned invitation of Lindenberg to tour through the GDR the following summer. In the subsequent part, another flashback elucidates the East German decision to cancel the tour in early 1984, largely for political and economic considerations. The final section comprises the aftermath, particularly the impact of the dis-invitation on the East German rock and fan scene as well as Lindenberg's further, yet unsuccessful, attempts to perform in East Germany.
Udo Lindenberg and the GDR, 1971–83
Born in 1946 in the western part of Germany, Lindenberg grew up in an increasingly divided nation. Like many of his fellow countrymen and -women, the young musician must have worried about the resulting suffering, particularly during the decade following the East German construction of the so-called Berlin Wall in 1961. Despite Germany's physical division, Lindenberg became one of the first rock stars widely popular in both halves of the country – especially in the 1970s when German–German rapprochement allowed some interaction between citizens of both sides. His irreverent political texts, which often addressed seemingly intractable problems in German and world affairs, tapped into a widespread feeling of malaise in both parts of the nation.
The Berlin Wall was supposed to prevent not only the outflow of well-trained East Germans to the West but also the inflow of what the Communist regime in East Berlin considered subversive influences.Footnote 7 As early as the 1950s, the leaders of the GDR were concerned about the popularity of Western rock music because it supposedly endorsed bourgeois values and promoted sexually loose dancing styles. The regime reacted to the perceived threat to Communist morals with the introduction of mandatory licenses for concerts. It also encouraged the creation of an ideologically correct dancing style without sexually allusive movements. The new policies failed to undermine the popularity of Western rock music, which powerful radio stations from West Germany or West Berlin beamed into the GDR. And the officially sanctioned dance style – carrying the uncool name Lipsi – completely flopped.Footnote 8
The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 made listening to rock music in public, wearing Western clothing, and sporting long hair one of the few avenues for young people to express defiance to the omnipresent regime. In the 1960s, the state security apparatus, the Stasi, as well as the police tried to eradicate what they considered immoral lifestyles through the prohibition of rock music, the political repression of so-called ‘deadbeats’ (‘Gammler’) in schools and workplaces, forced cutting of long hair, and even imprisonment.Footnote 9 Yet, Western rock music remained popular, partially as a result of official vinyl releases in the GDR and covers by East German bands, but more often also through illegally recorded cassette tapes. In the 1970s, the GDR authorities tried to co-opt the taste of its young citizens by promoting politically palatable native rock bands – with varied success. The tight ideological control recurrently led to the retraction of performance licenses by the regime, the forced expulsion of musicians to the FRG, or their refusal to return home after tours in West Germany.Footnote 10
The year of Lindenberg's first, though unsuccessful, album marks the moment when the singer began to leave traces in the East German archives. On a short visit to East Berlin, GDR border guards searched the musician on 29 August 1971, finding 20 g of marijuana among his belongings.Footnote 11 The incident seemed not to have had any consequences for the artist; he visited East Berlin several times in subsequent years. It was in this period that he had the affair with the young woman in the eastern half of the divided city – the episode which formed the basis for the musical Hinterm Horizont. Written with a great dose of literary license, his memoirs describe the events over several pages. However, they do not fail to mention that the woman who was the focus of his emotional attention had contacts with the Stasi, which eventually put an end to the affair.Footnote 12
These events produced Lindenberg's first song about East Germany, and one of his earliest hits.Footnote 13 Released in 1973, ‘We just want to be together’ bemoaned the fact that GDR visa rules allowed lovers from the two halves of Germany to meet each other only sporadically, and then merely for a the duration of one day. The song ended with the hope that ‘the guys will put this in order soon’, which was a reference to the East German leader Erich Honecker and the West German Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt. In fact Brandt's Ostpolitik from the late 1960s onwards had already made contact between people from the two Germanys much easier, even if only West Germans were allowed to cross the border. Given the danger that GDR citizens would not return from the FRG after a visit there, only a few were allowed to go. Moreover, Honecker feared that too close a rapprochement, particularly too many West German visits to East Germany, would undermine the security of the GDR. German–German rapprochement thus led to a doubling of Stasi personnel in the 1970s, intended to supervise and – as in Lindenberg's case – discourage the development of closer contacts.Footnote 14
In the second half of the 1970s, Lindenberg repeatedly tried to get the permission from the Honecker regime to perform in East Germany. To what degree the affair mentioned above, his concerns about the country's division, or sheer commercial considerations triggered this desire is not quite clear. Lindenberg's own testimonies about his life and career often are obfuscating, self-promoting or ironic. As early as 1973, however, he had decided that ‘caring for the GDR’ was a part of his plan to promote his artistic career.Footnote 15 The Stasi eventually picked up on his wish to perform,Footnote 16 but it considered him a ‘mediocre’, ‘decadent’ and even ‘anarchical’ musician not worth inviting.Footnote 17 An internal report criticised his ‘contradictory political standpoints’, particularly his belief that those in power in East Berlin and Bonn simply could work things out, as mentioned in ‘We just want to be together’.Footnote 18 On 9 March 1979, Kurt Hager, East Berlin's hard-line man in charge of culture, personally decreed on the Lindenberg case: ‘There is no question of an engagement in the GDR’.Footnote 19
Even if Lindenberg used Germany's division as a tool to promote his artistic career, the political content of many of his texts reflected his opinions and concerns. Apart from singing about Germany's fate, he became increasingly active in the West German movements against nuclear war, for world peace and for the protection of the environment. Starting in 1977, a substantial number of his songs dealt with the insanity of the nuclear arms race.Footnote 20
As to his long-standing but unfulfilled desire to perform in the other Germany, Lindenberg eventually decided to resort to public diplomacy. In early 1983, he released his new album ‘Odyssee’. Its title song described the possibility of a nuclear holocaust brought about by ‘sick old men on iron crutches’ playing ‘American poker and Russian roulette’. Yet, it was the album's fourth song that would become his most recognised ever. Based on the melody of Harry Warren's ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ (made famous by Glenn Miller), ‘Special Train to Pankow’ was a self-invitation for a drink with Honecker in the residential district of the GDR leadership. Lindenberg not only maintained the original song's allusion to an arduous train trip but also chose a melody that was an all-time hit in the GDR.Footnote 21 Written in a satirical tone, Lindenberg offered ‘Honey’ to play in the Palace of the Republic for little ‘money’.Footnote 22 Recalling that many other Western ‘pop music monkeys’ (‘Schlageraffen’) had already been invited to do so, he called Honecker a ‘pig-headed hobgoblin’ (‘sturer Schrat’) who would not allow him to sing before his ever-increasing number of friends in the GDR.
Obviously, the East German regime did not like the song. A Stasi report listed the occasions on which this ‘malicious defamation’ of Honecker had been played from illegally recorded cassette tapes in music clubs.Footnote 23 Two disc jockeys received five-month prison terms for playing Lindenberg's song.Footnote 24 Even the performance of original ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ was prohibited.Footnote 25 Another Stasi report reviewed Lindenberg's career, acknowledging his increasingly politicised texts since 1977 and his political engagement. Nevertheless, the report concluded, he ‘does not play a special role in the West German peace movement’.Footnote 26
Lindenberg doubled up his bold song with an equally irreverent public letter to Honecker. Addressed to ‘Honey’ and consistently using ‘Du’ (the informal ‘you’ in German), the rock star asked for a ‘yodelling licence in the GDR’. He even went so far as to imply that Honecker's daughter must have introduced the East German leader to ‘Special Train to Pankow’, and that the ‘hobgoblin’ in reality was much more ‘laid-back’ than his wooden public persona suggested. The West German rock star requested the ‘green light’ for a concert in the ‘red state’, concluding the letter with the contact information of his agent.Footnote 27 The mocking tone and public form of the letter could not have endeared Lindenberg to Honecker.
Yet, Lindenberg did not give up. In a formal letter, dated 23 August 1983, and addressed to ‘Herr Honecker’, he reviewed eight years of attempts to get permission to perform in East Germany, candidly admitting that his open February letter was due to his frustrations about his continued inability to get one. The August missive concluded with an offer to perform without any pay and to discuss the selection and contents of his songs beforehand.Footnote 28 To Lindenberg's surprise, the GDR replied within one month with an invitation to the festival ‘For World Peace’ (‘Für den Frieden der Welt’) in East Berlin on 25 October.Footnote 29
The international context of Lindenberg's invitation
Honecker's sudden change of mind was hardly related to the more respectful tone of Lindenberg's August letter. The music star's request came just at a time when the Warsaw Pact desperately tried to mobilise Western European public opinion against the implementation of the NATO double-track decision. Thus, it was easy for Honecker to consent to Lindenberg's request, despite the previous dismissal of his political stances and supposedly mediocre songs. The artist's engagement for peace was a welcome conduit for East German propaganda.
By the late summer of 1983, the Warsaw Pact states faced a major crisis in international relations. NATO was in the process of implementing its double-track decision, taken on 12 December 1979, to deploy intermediate range nuclear missiles to counter the ongoing deployment of similar rockets – the SS-20 – by the Soviet Union since the mid 1970s. Historians still debate why Moscow deployed these rockets in the western Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the first place.Footnote 30 The SS-20 deployment happened against the background of protracted Soviet–American negotiations following the conclusion of the 1st Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) in May 1972 on the further capping of intercontinental nuclear missiles. Moscow and Washington signed SALT II in mid 1979. But the concurrent deployment of the Soviet SS-20 rockets raised fears among Western European NATO members about their own vulnerability.Footnote 31 As early as October 1977, the West German Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had publicly warned about the decoupling of United States security from Western European security as a result of the Soviet–American SALT II talks, which focused exclusively on intercontinental nuclear missiles.Footnote 32
After the United States and the Soviet Union had signed SALT II, the US President Jimmy Carter changed his hesitant position on the SS-20.Footnote 33 The NATO double-track decision of 12 December 1979 envisioned negotiations with the Soviet Union on intermediate range nuclear missiles in the coming four years, designed to reduce if not eliminate the SS-20 threat. While NATO announced the additional withdrawal of one thousand nuclear war heads from Europe as a sweetener, it also wielded a big stick – the threat of deploying 108 US Pershing II missiles and 464 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the end of 1983 – should negotiations fail.Footnote 34
Given the increasing awareness about the dangers of the nuclear arms race, public reaction in Western Europe and in the United States to the NATO double-track decision was divided.Footnote 35 Even the governing Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) under Schmidt was split.Footnote 36 While the chancellor was a co-architect of the decision, a large majority of his party's rank and file opposed it.Footnote 37 Moreover, the new NATO policy occurred at a time when the peace and the women's movements, and the anti-nuclear and ecological movements in West Germany converged to form the Green Party (Die Grünen). Provincial party sections (Landesparteien) had been formed throughout 1979, with the federal party being established in mid January 1980.Footnote 38
Lindenberg, who by then had already made nuclear issues and the division of Germany topics in many of his songs, was an early sympathiser with the new party. He also publicly signed the famous Krefeld Appeal (Krefelder Appell) of November 1980, which was co-sponsored by the Green Party and which called on the West German government to withdraw its agreement to the deployment of the American nuclear missiles.Footnote 39 Artists like him performed in subsequent years at mass demonstrations and open-air concerts for peace and against nuclear armament, bringing together up to half a million people on some occasions.Footnote 40
The Soviet Union perceived the double-track decision from the very beginning as an effort to tip the nuclear balance in Europe in favour of an ‘aggressive’ NATO.Footnote 41 Its military intervention in Afghanistan two weeks later, however, not only belied its peace claims but also triggered a worsening of relations with Washington.Footnote 42 The sudden change in the international climate worried the Soviet leadership, although it remained unable to look beyond its own ideological blinkers. Convinced that socialism would be victorious within 20 to 25 years, the gerontocratic regime under the Soviet Communist party leader Leonid Brezhnev believed that the NATO double-track decision was a desperate Western gamble to save the moribund capitalist-imperialist system. Soviet and East German leaders agreed in January 1980 to meet the NATO challenge by mobilising Western public opinion, particularly labour unions and popular artists, with the purpose of creating ‘a wide mass movement designed to foil the American missile plans’.Footnote 43
In 1981 the Soviet double strategy of mobilising Western public opinion and engaging in obstructionist tactics during the negotiations on intermediate range nuclear missiles in Geneva unfolded. The Soviet leaders hoped that the disunity which their campaign allegedly was sowing among NATO members could weaken the hard-line position of newly elected US President Ronald Reagan.Footnote 44 By June 1981, Moscow and East Berlin realised that a gap had opened up between Schmidt and large parts of the SPD.Footnote 45 Yet, despite the obvious attempt to co-opt the peace movements in Western Europe (for example, the West German splinter Communist party (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, DKP), which was politically and financially dependent on the GDR, was a co-sponsor of the Krefeld Appeal), the large majority of anti-nuclear activists in the western half of the continent, including artists like Lindenberg, were neither created nor controlled by the Communist world. On the contrary, Western Europeans, and particularly West Germans, were deeply and genuinely worried that they would be in the bull's eye during any nuclear showdown between the Soviet Union and the United States.Footnote 46
Defying his public image as a hard-liner and responding to the growing peace movement in the Western world, Reagan himself proposed in late 1981 a double zero solution to the problem of intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe.Footnote 47 But in the subsequent bilateral talks with the United States, the Soviet Union refused to negotiate seriously while insisting on the inclusion in the talks of the relatively small and independent nuclear deterrent forces of Great Britain and France.Footnote 48 According to the recollections of a high-level Soviet adviser, the Brezhnev regime thereby missed a golden opportunity to stop the resumption of the arms race.Footnote 49 In the spring of 1982, the Kremlin observed with apparent, though misguided, satisfaction how its own policy towards the peace movement in Western Europe seemed to bear fruit.Footnote 50 Yet, the Brezhnev regime was aware that it was racing against time – ‘if . . . a solution is not found before the end of 1983, the NATO plans to deploy new American missiles in Europe . . . will become reality’.Footnote 51
The political changes in West Germany in early October 1982 should have convinced the Communist world to change course, even at so late a stage of the game. Schmidt's governing coalition with the small liberal Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) collapsed – partially because of the opposition to the NATO double-track decision by many in the SPD. On 1 October, Schmidt lost a parliamentary vote of confidence against an ad hoc coalition between the large conservative opposition parties, the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (Christlich Demokratische Union, CDU; Christlich-Soziale Union, CSU), and the FDP. The head of the CDU, Helmut Kohl, followed him in office on the 4th.Footnote 52 Nine days later, the new chancellor announced snap federal elections for 6 March.Footnote 53
The Communist world failed to realise that the snap election in some respects was also a public referendum on the NATO double-track decision. The West German peace movement, the Green Party, and large parts of the SPD ran against the CDU/CSU/FDP coalition. On 6 March, the majority of voters supported the new coalition which unequivocally backed the implementation of the NATO double-track decision.Footnote 54 Although the Green Party managed to get its first seats in the federal parliament, it had lost the referendum – together with the Warsaw Pact, large parts of the SPD, the peace movement, and, among many others, Lindenberg.
Yet, still wedded to its failed policy of trying to mobilise Western public opinion, the Kremlin started what it considered the ‘decisive phase’ of its campaign against the NATO double-track decision in the late summer of 1983.Footnote 55 In September, Soviet and Eastern European leaders agreed to launch simultaneous mass campaigns against the alleged nuclearisation of Europe.Footnote 56 At the same time, they also endorsed the recent Soviet call for a double zero solution including the nuclear missiles of Great Britain and France.Footnote 57 Less than a week later, the Soviet Union began its national propaganda campaign against the Pershing II missiles with a public threat of countermeasures.Footnote 58 On 4 October, the GDR started its own campaign. It included personal talks with FRG politicians from the federal and provincial level, ‘youth manifestations’, the mobilisation of teachers and parents in schools, the use of diplomatic and external media channels, and the multi-day political music festival ‘For World Peace’ to which Lindenberg had been invited.Footnote 59
None of these last-ditch efforts could prevent what had been announced in 1979. On 14 November 1983, the first Pershing II missiles arrived in Great Britain, intended for deployment on the territory of Western European NATO countries and scheduled to become operational soon.Footnote 60 On 22 November, the West German parliament, dominated by the CDU/CSU/FDP coalition, approved their deployment. The following day, the first missiles arrived in the FRG.Footnote 61
Subsequently, the Warsaw Pact followed a hard line on nuclear issues, largely because the Soviet Union had no concrete plans on how to deal with an event for which it had not formulated an emergency plan.Footnote 62 Moscow hoped that the US presidential election in 1984 would result in the defeat of the ‘reactionary’ Reagan. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko informed Honecker that much would change once the Democrat Walter Mondale was elected.Footnote 63 As before, the Kremlin lived in its own reality; Reagan won by a landslide in early November 1984.
It took a new Soviet leader to jump-start negotiations a year later. In December 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons – the SS-20 rockets and the Pershing II missiles – in Europe. Reagan's double zero proposal from 1981 had served as the blueprint; Gorbachev did not insist on including British and French nuclear missiles.Footnote 64
The Lindenberg concert, 25 October 1983
Udo Lindenberg had sent his 23 August letter to Honecker in the period before the final, frantic Warsaw Pact campaign against the implementation of the NATO double-track decision.Footnote 65 As an East German cultural official remembered three decades later, the GDR had finally noticed that Lindenberg opposed the deployment of the Pershing II missiles, which ‘put much of what we had previously read about him into a new perspective’.Footnote 66 Aware of the frantic developments in the Communist world, Lindenberg's adviser, Michel Gaissmayer, initiated the idea of the 23 August missive.Footnote 67 On 5 September, Honecker forwarded Lindenberg's respectful letter to Egon Krenz, the head of the official GDR youth organisation – the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend, FDJ).Footnote 68 The task was to come up with some creative ideas.Footnote 69 Three decades later, Krenz recalled that the East German policy in the late summer of 1983 was to include everybody who could help prevent the deployment of American nuclear missiles.Footnote 70 Consequently, he had no problem advising his boss to invite the West German rock star. However, Krenz urged Honecker to invite other famous musicians so that his visit would not degenerate into a ‘concert of Lindenberg only’. His boss agreed.Footnote 71 Eventually, the GDR regime made a deal with Lindenberg's manager, Fritz Rau, who had to engage the American singer and peace activist Harry Belafonte for a joint concert with the West German rock star in East Berlin on 25 October, the last day of the political music festival ‘For World Peace’.Footnote 72
The same month, the official festival organiser contacted Lindenberg to discuss the details of the engagement as well as the possibility of three additional concerts in the GDR the following year.Footnote 73 The formal invitation followed on 8 October, four days after the GDR had launched its own national campaign against the NATO double-track decision. Apart from the invitation for 25 October, it included the confirmation of ‘our invitation for further concerts . . . in the year of 1984’.Footnote 74
Yet, from the very beginning, the East German regime made sure that the concert would remain tightly controlled. As a Stasi report reveals, Lindenberg was scheduled to come to East Berlin only on the day of the concert. Tickets were to be issued only to FDJ activists and other cadres, without any public sales. Ticket-holders were supposed to receive political instructions before the concert.Footnote 75 The Stasi planned to secure the inside of the Palace of Republic with 200 officers and the outside perimeter through the help of a group of ‘200 friends’, that is plain clothes officers. People without tickets were not allowed to get access even to the square in front of Erich's Lamp Shop.Footnote 76 Soon, however, the Stasi received unsettling reports. Obviously some FDJ activists and cadres had tried to make a buck or two off the concert on the black market.Footnote 77 And East German artists were angered by the ‘bizarre’ development of events; first, the GDR leadership banned Lindenberg from performing for many years, and then invited him for an exclusive concert.Footnote 78
Lindenberg and Belafonte arrived in East Berlin, by car and plane, respectively, on 25 October at around noon. A small lunch together with Krenz at the airport in East Berlin preceded sound checks in the Palace of the Republic, informal talks between Lindenberg and Krenz on the concerts in 1984, the official photo session, a press conference, an honorary university degree for Belafonte only, and the actual concert at 7 p.m.Footnote 79 Lindenberg's manager and the East German side had agreed beforehand on the songs the West German rock star was permitted to sing; ‘Special Train to Pankow’ was not among them.Footnote 80
All the well-laid Stasi plans to keep Lindenberg separated from his East German fans started to unravel long before the concert. A number of his devotees had waited on the East Berlin side of the border crossing to welcome the rock star. Before the concert, Lindenberg managed to escape his Stasi controllers and the tightly sealed Palace of the Republic for an impromptu encounter with fans braving the cold temperatures outside.Footnote 81 His followers were ecstatic, the Stasi security detail dumbfounded.Footnote 82 Although Lindenberg demanded the complete withdrawal of all nuclear missiles from Europe in the presence of his applauding fans,Footnote 83 a Stasi report later lauded him for managing to placate his excited followers with a reference to the live television broadcast of the concert that evening and his planned 1984 tour through the GDR.Footnote 84 At the subsequent press conference, both the East German side and Lindenberg confirmed that negotiations about the details of the tour in 1984 were under way.Footnote 85
The concert in front of an audience of mostly blue-shirted and politically reliable FDJ activists and cadres inside ‘Erich's Lamp Shop’ went well, while Lindenberg's real fans outside were loudly demanding access.Footnote 86 Yet, at the end of his performance, Lindenberg replied to the opening speech, in which Krenz had only criticised the United States for the nuclear arms race,Footnote 87 by repeating what he had already told his fans earlier: ‘Away with the missile rubbish – in the Federal Republic and the GDR. We don't want to see even one missile anywhere, neither a Pershing [II] nor an SS-20. We want peace, neither a cold nor a hot war’.Footnote 88 With these words, he had completely surprised the East German organisers, but he had also broken a taboo in the GDR – public criticism of Soviet nuclear armament at an officially sponsored event.Footnote 89 Ironically, the anti-Reaganite rock star, whom the GDR hoped to exploit for its anti-American propaganda, had called on live television in East Germany for the double zero solution, which the US President had proposed two years earlier. The Stasi later mocked the rock star for his politically confused views, accusing him of failing to praise the ‘real efforts for peace and proposals of the USSR’.Footnote 90
Lindenberg fans, who had stayed near the Palace of the Republic during the concert or had rushed to the building after the end of the television show, clashed with security personnel into the early morning hours. Forty-four people were arrested for wearing Lindenberg badges, holding up ideologically incorrect banners, taking photos, climbing trees and sitting on window sills – but also for public drunkenness and insulting security personnel (‘fascists’ and ‘arseholes’). Most were released with reprimands or fines after a night of interrogation.Footnote 91 Yet, a personal report of one detainee compared his arrest to scenes from George Orwell's novel 1984, including the suffering of hunger, extreme cold, physical abuse and time deprivation. The writer concluded that the experience had revealed to him the ‘fascist’ character of the GDR.Footnote 92
Lindenberg continued with the planning for his tour through the GDR even in the week after the formal FRG decision, on 22 November, to deploy the Pershing II missiles. The rock star wrote to Krenz that the implementation of the NATO double-track decision required a greater effort for peace.Footnote 93 In a letter to Honecker on the 30 November, he emphasised his joy over the planned series of concerts in the other Germany, but also called on the autocrat not to stop negotiating on nuclear disarmament.Footnote 94 No replies were forthcoming.Footnote 95
The issue of allowing the rock star to come to the GDR came to the forefront in mid January when the West German rock group BAP cancelled its official GDR tour the day before the first concert. BAP had been the first major Western rock band allowed to go on a tour in East Germany.Footnote 96 Despite having signed a contract that allowed complete freedom with regard to the programme, the group had not received permission to perform a brand new song dealing with its reasons of why it was performing in the GDR – for pacifism and freedom of opinion, and against the ‘clique’ in power in East Berlin.Footnote 97 Lindenberg's agent called the GDR artists’ agency on 17 January to congratulate East Germany for having sent BAP packing.Footnote 98 If this telephone call had been an attempt to save the Lindenberg tour it failed. In a letter to Honecker that very day, Krenz advised not to invite the rock star at all, even flatly denying that there had been an agreement on a tour.Footnote 99 Hager issued a guideline that required his prior permission for all invitations of West German musicians, including opera singers, in order to prevent further politically ‘hostile’ incidents.Footnote 100
The international context of Lindenberg's dis-invitation, 1981–4
From the perspective of high politics, sacrificing Lindenberg was no problem for the regime in East Berlin. Despite his concert on 25 October, the NATO double-track decision had been implemented. Moreover, the decision to ditch the West German rock star occurred against the background of larger developments in German-German relations, in which good relations with the new conservative government in the FRG were more important than close links to leftist opposition figures.Footnote 101
All along, the intransigent stance on the SS-20 issue by the Warsaw Pact states had stood on a pair of economic clay feet. The Communist world had amassed substantial Western debt throughout the 1970s.Footnote 102 Of the combined US$65.4 billion of Western debt owed by the Soviet Union and its six Eastern European allies, Moscow, Warsaw and East Berlin carried more than 70%.Footnote 103 The Kremlin was unnerved by its increasing economic dependency on the capitalist world as well as that of its East German ally. Brezhnev feared that GDR dependency on the FRG would also lead to its ally's ‘disintegration from the USSR’.Footnote 104 The introduction of Martial Law in Poland on 13 December 1981 additionally worsened the economic situation in Eastern Europe. A month before, the international banks of the Communist world had already warned that the Western credit boycott following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan had become tight.Footnote 105 After the introduction of Martial Law, Poland turned to its fraternal Communist members for more economic aid.Footnote 106 As result, overall liquidity within the Communist world was at peril by early 1982.Footnote 107
The day of economic reckoning seemed to have arrived for the GDR.Footnote 108 In January 1982, the East German Foreign Trade Bank issued a warning on the possibility of state bankruptcy.Footnote 109 In this context, the desperate GDR was willing to defy the economically impotent Soviet hegemon by approaching its loathed capitalist brother, the FRG. As early as December 1981, East Berlin had been in contact with Bonn about the possibility of greater economic integration, but Schmidt was more interested in GDR concessions with regard to human contacts.Footnote 110
Despite his commitment to the NATO double-track decision, the new chancellor, Kohl, was willing to give Honecker some economic slack in October 1982. During the change of power, Schmidt had informed Kohl about the debt situation of the GDR.Footnote 111 Within a fortnight, the new chancellor hinted at his willingness to continue the decades-old practice of providing the GDR with the so-called SWING – a short-term credit-line that allowed the GDR to receive goods from the FRG before payment.Footnote 112
Masquerading as a hard-line cold warrior in public in West Germany, the head of Kohl's CSU coalition partner, Franz Josef Strauß, had been in contact with East German representatives about a credit worth DM300–500 million (West German mark) as early as 28 October 1982.Footnote 113 As in the cases of previous financial aid, obtaining concessions from East Germany in the field of human contacts served as the guiding principle.Footnote 114 On 5 May 1983, Strauß welcomed Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, East Germany's economic jack-of-all-trades, to his native Bavaria for talks over sausages and beer. The CSU leader told his SED guest that FRG financial aid would only be forthcoming once the treatment of West German citizens at the GDR border had improved.Footnote 115 The agreement, which Strauß and Schalck-Golodkowski eventually signed on 29 June 1983, provided East Germany with a financial lifeline in return for a less harsh border regime.Footnote 116 Although Strauß had hoped to increase his influence in federal politics through this deal at the expense of Kohl's standing, the public outcry in the FRG did more to damage him in the long term than undermine the chancellor's image.Footnote 117 In fact, the concessions made by the GDR were much smaller than those discussed in previous talks with the Schmidt government. As Schalck-Golodkowski remembered, Strauß wanted to give the credit for virtually no concessions.Footnote 118 And Honecker later marvelled in a tasteless joke that the GDR had come by the monetary windfall as virgin had come by the child.Footnote 119
Despite the hostility between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over the implementation of the NATO double-track decision in late 1983, the two Germanies continued to discuss issues concerning mutual relations.Footnote 120 In mid December, Kohl even wrote to Honecker with an offer to work for détente in Europe on several levels.Footnote 121 By 27 January 1984, the East German autocrat was willing to loosen the GDR border regime even further in exchange for another large DM credit.Footnote 122 Whether or not the first personal meeting between Honecker and Kohl in Moscow on 13 February – on the occasion of the funeral of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov – helped to break the ice is not clear from the available archival material,Footnote 123 but the East German leader soon offered the chancellor a dialogue on bilateral issues.Footnote 124 Again, it was Strauß, during his meeting with Honecker in Leipzig in mid April, who initiated a second deal over another DM1 billion.Footnote 125
The aftermath of Lindenberg's cancelled tour
On 21 February, shortly after his return from the talks with Kohl in Moscow, Honecker gave Krenz his official agreement to cancel Lindenberg's tour but advised Krenz to come up with a good justification.Footnote 126 In a short letter to the rock star, dated the following day, the GDR organisers announced that the cancellation was the result of unspecified political statements the rock star had allegedly made in public.Footnote 127 While the East German regime had no problem in cancelling Lindenberg's concert tour in early 1984 from the perspectives of high politics and economic politics, the decision produced a major headache in terms of domestic politics. Without knowing about the real state of affairs at the turn of 1983/84, the rock star continued to assume that the plans for this tour through the other Germany were still on track. Late in January, he even issued a new song entitled ‘Hello GDR’.Footnote 128
Lindenberg did not take the unfriendly cancellation for a no,Footnote 129 as the East German artists’ agency soon realised.Footnote 130 In the following two months, he mobilised his agent and SPD opposition politicians with good contacts in East Berlin to make his case.Footnote 131 In a personal letter to Lindenberg from late April, Krenz changed the reasons for the cancellation, lying about ‘technical’ reasons.Footnote 132 The rock star took revenge at a live concert in May in West Berlin with a new song, mocking the decision as ‘petty’, ‘ridiculous’, and clearly political.Footnote 133 In turn, the Stasi considered Lindenberg a threat to ‘public order and security’ and banned him temporarily from entry into the GDR.Footnote 134
As the rumours about the cancellation turned into reality, GDR fans wrote angry letters to Honecker, the FDJ leadership, or simply to ‘the person responsible for the cancellation of the Lindenberg tour’, calling the decision a disappointment at best and a ‘disgrace’ (‘Schweinerei’) at worst. The letters, often signed with full name and address, not only testified to the frustration of the fans but also to their increasing disillusionment with the regime. Some mocked the insecurity complex from which the authorities obviously suffered in the face of Lindenberg's political texts. Others even questioned the legitimacy of Communist party rule.Footnote 135 Yet, these passions revealed the potential for disorder if the West German rock star had been allowed to perform. The Stasi was aware of the foul general mood within the East German population.Footnote 136 With regard to Lindenberg, the GDR found itself in a lose-lose situation in early 1984, and chose what it considered the lesser evil.
The cancellation of the organised BAP tour and of the announced Lindenberg tour within a short period of time had major repercussions for the rock scene in the GDR. Subsequently, some bands either refused gigs at official peace concerts or made politically provocative statements if they decided to perform. Yet most groups submitted to the increasing political pressure, including censorship of their lyrics, which in turn undermined their appeal to the East German fan base. The subsequent demise of the native rock scene forced the GDR regime to invite popular Western stars, like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen, in the second half of the 1980s in order to satisfy popular demand for big live concerts.Footnote 137 But Lindenberg was not among them.
In early 1987, GDR authorities closely monitored Lindenberg's first private visit to the country in three years. The rock star complained to the Stasi agent who was supposed to shadow him that this had been the fourth attempt to visit East Berlin since late 1983. Lindenberg went on to express his desire to perform in the GDR, as long as it happened in front of ‘everybody’.Footnote 138 A month later, the Stasi reported on an illegal concert which the musician supposedly had given in an East Berlin club, and which only ended when ‘comrades from the responsible organs’ showed up.Footnote 139
In June 1987, Lindenberg switched from low-level activities to high diplomacy. On the 10th, he sent a leather jacket with metal buckles to Honecker by mail. The accompanying public letter resumed the informal tone of the February 1983 letter, calling on ‘Honey’ to ‘use microphones instead of megaphones, guitars instead of guns, and drumsticks instead of police batons’. Referring to his recent concert in Moscow under Gorbachev, the rock star promised that he would cause ‘less trouble’ than in 1983 if only he could play in East Berlin.Footnote 140 Although the GDR immediately barred Lindenberg for an unlimited time from further visits,Footnote 141 the humorous gift elicited an equally thoughtful response from the usually stiff Honecker: a shawm (Schalmei) – the musical instrument symbolising peace in German culture. The accompanying letter took up the light tone of Lindenberg's note, with Honecker reassuring that the jacket fitted, although he considered it a ‘matter of taste’.Footnote 142 A week later, the rock star asked in a formal letter for permission to perform in the GDR soon.Footnote 143
The evolving superpower détente after Gorbachev's ascent to power in March 1985 not only had led to the resumption of constructive talks in Geneva on intermediate range nuclear missiles – to be concluded successfully in December of 1987. It also triggered Soviet permission for Honecker to visit the FRG in September that year. The trip had been a long-held wish of the East German leader, particularly since he wanted to visit his birthplace in Neunkirchen/Saarland. A month before the visit, Lindenberg's agent informed the GDR authorities that a brief meeting between the musician and Honecker was on the official agenda.Footnote 144 At the actual encounter, the musician presented the surprised autocrat with a guitar, adorned with the words ‘Guitars instead of guns’ (‘Gitarren statt Knarren’), and in turn received a personal invitation to come the GDR.Footnote 145 A month later, Lindenberg once more asked formally for permission to perform in the other Germany.Footnote 146 But the Stasi had not changed its negative assessment of the ‘anarchistic’ musician.Footnote 147 Krenz forwarded to Honecker an analysis of the pros and cons of a Lindenberg concert, advising him to go slow on the request.Footnote 148 In the end, only the collapse of Communism behind the horizon allowed the rock star to perform, early in 1990, in what was soon to be the former GDR.
Conclusions
Critics of the Western peace movement have called its members ‘useful idiots’ who did the Soviet bidding.Footnote 149 Such a rhetorical characterisation is understandable against the background of the cold war in the 1980s. Even if the peace movement often was one-sided in its criticism of the NATO double-track decision, the true idiots, however, were those in power in Moscow and East Berlin. During the negotiations on intermediate nuclear missiles in Geneva, the Kremlin gambled away the chance to prevent another round of nuclear armament in the vain hope of influencing Western public opinion and splitting NATO. Despite the admirable strength of the peace movements throughout the Western world in the early 1980s, most democratically elected governments of NATO member countries had a majority of voters behind their positions with regard to the double-track decision. By 6 March 1983, at the latest, the Soviet Union and East Germany should have realised that they had lost the gamble for Western public opinion.
On the contrary, the Communist world redoubled its efforts once more against the implementation of the NATO decision. The widely popular Lindenberg was supposed to fix in late 1983 what the other ‘useful idiots’ had not managed to achieve in the previous four years. But the notorious rock star rose to the occasion on 25 October, undermined the carefully staged peace message through his very presence, and even called for the withdrawal of all missiles from Europe. One might wonder whether the East German leadership truly believed that a concert organised, managed and controlled by its own, widely despised security organs could have achieved anything like a genuine message of peace.
As Lindenberg failed to fix the shortcomings of Communist peace politics, he quickly outlived his usefulness to the autocratic regime in East Berlin. The GDR had looked at him with suspicion anyway since the 1970s; the events surrounding his concert confirmed that his official presence in East Germany was politically risky. More importantly, he was no political asset in any détente with Kohl's FRG, on which Honecker's GDR increasingly became economically dependent. Thus, by early 1984, East Berlin axed further official Lindenberg visits to the country. Yet, the damage had been done. East German rock fans and musicians were once more disillusioned, and the rock star yet again obtained more ammunition to ridicule ‘Honey’ in Pankow.
Lindenberg's irreverent rock music probably added to the political fermentation among young people in East Germany throughout the 1980s. The regime understood that he was a Trojan Horse to East German society, which was why it opposed his invitation until political necessities required his performance in East Berlin. Yet, even the best-laid political and Stasi plans failed to control his actions and words, and to separate him from his fans. His East German followers defied the cold, police threats and arrest. The regime's actions neither cowed nor convinced them of its supposedly benevolent and peaceful nature. On the contrary, the police and Stasi brutality on 25 October and the cancellation of the publicly promised tour revealed to East Germany's Lindenberg fans the high level of insecurity of those in power. Perceptibly to all, the supposedly mighty peasant-and-workers state trembled before one single ‘anarchic’ and ‘decadent’ rock musician.
