The Fashion from the Streets: Neue Deutsche Welle and the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s and 80s

Purpose of the Study: This study represents a comprehensive and original cultural examination of Neue Deutsche Welle music (German New Wave) as a sonic avant-garde of West Germany between 1979-1984. Originating out of the organic punk scene cultivated in Düsseldorf in 1977, NDW was an ideological evolution of the tenets of West German punk but also a subcultural result of the specter of fascism, the violent student protests of the 68er movement, and the terrorism of the Red Army Faction in the 1970s. From this a unique punk subculture was developed in Düsseldorf which combined art, fashion, and music with the punk ideals of “do-it-yourself”, Anderssein/otherness, and authenticity, to create what became an avant-garde predicated on sonic and fashionable experimentation and which aimed to create a new cultural identity for a despondent German youth in the face of an embarrassing national history and an uneasy socio-political and economic climate in the Federal Republic at the time. This research examines how Neue Deutsche Welle used fashion and taboo symbolism to decontextualize the historical meaning of said fashion and symbolism to reconcile the country’s Nazi past and create a new cultural West German identity. Furthermore, this study examines the NDW interpretation of authenticity by studying the commercialization of the of the genre in the early 1980s. Authenticity was viewed as a bulwark against the homogenizing nature of cultural authoritarianism but by examining the commercialization of NDW this study explains how the avant-garde valued an ideal of “individual authenticity” rather than the “communal authenticity” of hardcore punk. Lastly, this work studies how NDW was influenced by absurdism and examines how this absurdist connection influenced the sonic and fashionable experimentation which came to typify the subculture. By inspecting new, contemporary oral histories and primary resources, i.e. musical magazines (“fanzines”), interviews, and other cultural studies of the period, this work adds to an emergent historiography of Neue Deutsche Welle and continues the historiography on modern West German subcultures. Finally, this study clarifies the distinctions between West German punk and Neue Deutsche Welle and gives proper historical context to Neue Deutsche Welle as an absurdist, sonic avant-garde of late 1970s and early 1980s.