I just searched my old tapes and started listening to them, especially the ones from East-Germany, because I’m from there. These bands have still something really special to me, mostly because of combination of good music and meaningful lyrics. I guess, you have to be born in the GDR to get some finer points in them, they often dealed with living in a “communist” regime (which it wasn’t) and the daily problems you have to handle. Of course, most punk bands did that, but life was different in the GDR compared to Westgermany. I know what I’m talking about… Please note, all songs are taken from demo-tapes, so the quality is excellent
I start with a band which is not really punk, but this was the band which played at the first show I saw. That was summer 1987 on the ‘Insel der Jugend’ (island of the youth) in East-Berlin. There was a huge pogo-mob, and I fell immediately in love with that ‘dance’. In the audience were a couple of men, all with the same clothes and the same haircuts, and they were standing with the back to the stage. How much more obvious can a secret service (the Stasi) be…? Anyway, this band also has a real nice name:
Tina has never had a Teddybear - He’s coming back (Demo 1987)
My first tape from an east-german punkband was Papierkrieg from Frankfurt/Oder. The tape is called ‘Noch nie hat ein Diktator seine Volksabstimmung verloren’ (Never before a dictator lost his national referendum) and was sold for 35,- Mark, which was the equivalent of the rent for a small flat, due to the high costs of audiotapes and the handmade covers (xerox etc. was not available, so often foto’s were used). They covered a lot of classic Deutschpunk-songs, but also had a couple of own songs, like this one:
Papierkrieg - A 11 (Demo 1989)
Another band which had a big influence on me during that time was Die Firma, which was also a nickname for the Stasi. Great lyrics and great music. Unfortunately I lost all tapes I had from them, but recently got copies from them again! So because I’m happy about this i decided to put 2 songs from them here:
Die Firma - Geh und Lach (Demo ‘Kinder der Maschinenrepublik’)
Die Firma - Anti Armia (Demo ‘Kinder der Maschinenrepublik’)
Short excursion: to get a car in East-Germany you had to sign in waiting lists and then wait for 12 years! And all you could get was a Trabant or a Wartburg. And if you got it, you could sell it immediately for 5 times the price! Crazy times… how do I come to tell you this? Right, the name of the next band is Wartburgs für Walter, they made a great demo-tape in 1987 where this song is from:
Wartburgs für Walter - More More Anymore (Demo 1987)
Last band in this first round of east-german punk (more to follow) is Kaltfront. They were quite succesful and did a couple of tapes including an excellent live one where i took this song from. The lyrics are from Erich Mühsam, a famous jewish german anti-war writer, which was killed by the nazis…

Kaltfront - Kriegslied (live) (Demo ‘A Friday Night In San Francisco’ 1988)
There are so many other good bands from East-Germany and I’ll post more later if someone is interested in it…