New Thinking: Rubble culture to techno in post-war Germany
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2019
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the 30th anniversary of the Berlin wall falling is marked on November 9th we rummage for stories amid the rubble. What were school teachers in Berlin pre-occupied with when the checkpoints were overrun? What would happen to the dogs of British forces families if the Cold War kicked off? Why was the poet Stephen Spender tasked with the ‘de-Nazification’ of German universities? And how does any of this relate to a 90s techno club in an air raid shelter?
Our host, New Generation Thinker Dr Tom Charlton, weaves together new research on different aspects of post-war and post-wall Germany.
Professor Lara Feigel from Kings College London is the Principal Investigator of Beyond Enemy Lines – a project looking at British and American writers and filmmakers involved in the reconstruction of Germany, 1945-49. The project is supported by the European Research Council http://beyondenemylines.co.uk/
Dr Grace Huxford from the University of Bristol is leading an oral history project on British military communities in Germany (1945-2000), exploring the experiences of service personnel, families and support workers living in bases. In 2019-20, Grace is leading the project as an AHRC Leadership Fellow (early career) https://britishbasesingermany.blog/
Dr Tom Smith from the University of St Andrews is currently exploring experiences of marginalisation in Germany’s techno scene. The first stage of the project is entitled Afrogermanic? Cultural Exchange and Racial Difference in the Aesthetic Products of the Early Techno Scenes in Detroit and Berlin. The first stage of the project has been funded by a Research Incentive Grant from the Carnegie Trust. Tom is also a New Generation Thinker https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/modlangs/people/german/smith/
This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation.
New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme to showcase academic research in radio and podcasts. You can find more information on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website https://ahrc.ukri.org
Producer: Karl Bos
Transcript
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| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | This is the Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:34.9 | I'm Tom Chalton and welcome to this edition of New Thinking, which is part of |
| 0:39.0 | our series looking at the very best in arts and humanities research from UK universities. |
| 0:44.8 | The 9th of November 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall starting to fall. |
| 0:51.4 | And so, in this edition, we're taking a look at Germany. We'd like to invite |
| 0:55.9 | you to imagine you were sent to Berlin in the aftermath of World War II, to build culture |
| 1:01.1 | amidst the rubble before the wall split the city, and to imagine you grew up on a British army |
| 1:07.0 | base in Germany in the Cold War years. Or that you were an East German soldier taken by |
| 1:12.7 | surprise as people burst through your checkpoint. And then to see how all that connects to the |
| 1:19.1 | techno scene in Berlin, where one of my guests joins us from. He is Dr. Tom Smith from the University |
| 1:26.6 | of St Andrews. |
| 1:28.3 | And joining me in the studio here in London are Professor Lara Feigal from King's College London |
| 1:33.3 | and Dr Grace Huxford from the University of Bristol. |
| 1:37.3 | Tom, as our correspondent in Berlin right now, |
| 1:40.3 | and what's the feeling and the mood there as the 30th anniversary of the wall falling |
| 1:44.7 | approaches? Muted, in a word. There's an awful lot going on. There's a couple of big events |
| 1:51.3 | planned for the evening itself, including a big concert with Daniel Barenbaum and the Statskapelle |
| 1:58.6 | Orchestra at the Brannenberg Gate. The DJ Westbaum is doing a set |
| 2:03.2 | as part of this concert, an important DJ from around 1989. There's a series of open-air |
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