Cultural Spaces as Political Spaces: The Musical Field of the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), departing from the crucial role the State played there in organizing, and controlling all fields of cultural production. Much of the literature on the subject either depicts the interaction between the State and artists as unidirectional or represents their relationship as highly conflictual due to contrasting understandings of culture and its functions. In both cases, this tendency to dichotomize makes it hard to explain, for instance, how music genres that had arisen in Western countries could flourish in the GDR despite the official understanding of ‘socialist music’ propagated by the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Conversely, by adopting a field perspective, this article aims to highlight how musicians, the State, and Party representatives competed to shape the symbolic space of the GDR musical field. Hence, instead of understanding Party and State decisions as merely applications of ideological principles, a field perspective enables us to consider them as resulting from strategies, depending on both the objective position occupied in the musical field and its spatial-material dimension, and as aimed at maintaining their own power within it. The political elite succeeded, then, in actualizing its strategy of legitimating emerging music genres which were potentially disrupting until it was able to provide musicians with physical cultural spaces for developing their careers and, at the same time, expressing criticisms. On the other hand, from the 1950s, localized music scenes were created which proposed an alternative understanding of music to the official one without, however, refusing the core principles which structured the GDR musical field. After the end of the 1970s, though, new music scenes were formed which positioned themselves outside the institutionalized music spaces and places, refusing in this way the rules of the GDR musical field and questioning its very existence.

The spatialization of music and politics in festival spaces: The social, symbolic and emotional structuring of the Festival of Political Songs in the German Democratic Republic

“…Furthermore, the more the number of performances and participants (as well as their musical differentiation) increased, the more it was difficult to directly control Festival performances, for which the political apparatus enhanced its control over the songs' texts as a compensatory measure (Table 1; Figure 1). With respect to the effects of the Festival on the GDR musical field, the success of the Festival primarily persuaded the State to support the professionalization of artists in the subfield of entertainment music which, until that moment, had been disregarded by interpreters of classical music who dominated the GDR musical field (see Grüning, 2022). On the other hand, however, this kind of support also entailed a greater control over their careers.…”

“…This practical understanding of the musical field, while mediated by bodily and sensory experiences in physical spaces, also depended on their structural position in the field. Not least, the material construction of social and symbolic boundaries within the musical field implied for the artists the creation of distinctive and located senses of belonging , for which occupying the same physical spaces while playing, discussing and listening to music also created the feeling of belonging to the ‘same scene’ (see Grüning, 2022).…”

“…The failure of the new festival was, however, also related to the crisis of the GDR song and rock scenes, 2 which had been strongly related to the genesis and development of the Festival and whose success was also due to the criticism toward GDR-State politics found in their song texts. In this perspective, the end of the Festival of the Political Songs is as equally interesting as its genesis for examining the interdependence between the GDR-musical and political fields (see Grüning, 2022).…”

Marxist sociology in East Berlin (1949–1989): A field-spatial analysis

“…Beyes and Holt, 2020; Bottero and Crossley, 2011), may highlight how working as a sociologist in Berlin entailed more possibilities for weaving together different kinds of relationships and collaborations with actors working in different institutes, 6 or for participating at different levels (local or national) in the political and bureaucratic fields (cf. Bourdieu, 2000; Bourdieu et al, 1994; see also Grüning, 2022) as well as fields of cultural production other than the academic one (i.e. radio).…”

“… 20. On the difference between the role and hierarchical position by Party and State representatives in the fields of cultural production, see Grüning (2022). …”