A Social History of Early Rock 'n Roll in Germany. Hamburg from Burlesque to the Beatles, 1956–1969 by Julia Sneeringer (review)

The Hamburg district of St. Pauli is internationally known as a red-light district, but it has inscribed itself in cultural history as the place of origin of the Beatles. Despite this fact, it has been the subject of little historical research. Julia Sneeringer's micro-history of St. Pauli has remedied this neglect, and found a surprisingly new and stimulating way to explore the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The pivotal point of her analysis is the early history of rock 'n' roll in Germany. Sneeringer includes the formative years of the Beatles but treats them as only the most prominent expression of a diverse rock 'n' roll and beat scene that unfolded between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s in the St. Pauli district, essentially in two streets, the Reeperbahn and the Große Freiheit. The environment of prostitution, striptease clubs, straight and gay bars played a decisive role here, and so Sneeringer first reconstructs in detail the historical background of the neighborhood, which reflected centuries of accumulated wisdom about how to please the masses. For St. Pauli, located near the harbor, was not only a place where sailors satisfied their sexual desires. People drank and danced here, enjoyed women's wrestling and riding horses. As a good social historian, Sneeringer explains the emergence of clubs for a young audience since the late 1950s as part of an economically motivated change—a new target group had to be found after sailors became more and more absent—but also as an expression of a cultural reorientation of West German youth, who, through American rock 'n' roll, presented by British bands, were able to free themselves from nationalism and develop a generational self-image in which international outlook was better than national isolation, and enjoyment here and now more desirable than the educational goal of saving one's energy and love for the future.

Sneeringer illuminates this process in four chapters that focus on the groups of people involved: Managers, musicians, fans and authorities. By interweaving these four perspectives, she creates a multi-layered story that reconstructs and correlates the respective motives and practices of the decisive actors. Her thick description allows the contours of numerous actors to emerge clearly (and fairly), both individually and as types: Managers like Manfred Weißleder and Horst Fascher, musicians like Frank Dostal and Gibson Kemp, a barmaid like Betti Darlien, fans like Astrid Kirchherr and Icke Braun, and also the exponent of an oppressive state, Kurt Falck. She did a great job on them. This is another reason why the scenery is so vivid and precise that it reads like a movie: exciting rock 'n' roll shows on stage, hard-boiled waiters who intervene in disputes, enterprising club owners with heart and morals, a young audience ready to take action—and all this amid neon signs, lightly dressed ladies and gay bars. Historiographically her analysis becomes even more vivid because Sneeringer also deals with the history of individual houses, which in previous decades could have been dance halls, cinemas and strip bars, until they became a dance palace for young people in the 1960s.

Since the author takes her story seriously in every respect, anecdotes and details that might, in other hands, have been little more than historical color are used her to analyze the broader history of cultural change within the Federal Republic of Germany. Sneeringer's account of westernization, liberalization and democratization unfolds from the barely noticed margins of society, initially despised by cultural critics and oppressed by the police, but in the long run central to the transformation of West German society. For here young people, supported by club owners and the otherwise so despised cultural industry, conquered free spaces beyond legitimate culture, which would later meet with mass resonance. The Beatles' success shows how, with the help of proletarian youths...