III. Post-Skinhead
Grandfather’s My Struggle
The detachment process had only just begun. At the time, I was careful to ensure that my record collection did not contain any politically incorrect pieces. Everything was meticulously checked and discussed. As soon as we noticed that certain bands were using right-wing lyrics or publicly making a right-wing statement, they were no longer acceptable to us, and we rejected them. It was like we were constantly cleaning out our record collections, but I wanted to get rid of more things. This included a Quality Street can full of badges and uniform buttons, which I had partly found long before my punk time at the landfill and partly got as a present from my grandfather, who worked as a civilian employee on the grounds of Holtenau Naval Airport until his retirement. To my shame, I have to admit that at that time even the book My Struggle, which belonged to my grandfather, was in my parents' house because I had secretly stolen it from my grandparents' cellar at the age of 14 or 15 with the intention of selling it. Now I didn't want all this filth to lie around in our house any longer. I finally gave away the badges and buttons and decided to sell Grandfather's My Struggle as soon as possible.
When the Second World War ended, my grandfather was 30 years old. I asked him once, when Grandmother was already dead and he lived in Osloring Street in Kiel-Mettenhof, if he had shot anyone during the war. He said,
"No, I didn't shoot anybody,"
and smiled a little when he spoke. He also said that he had only been in Russia and France, had simply thrown away his rifle in the last days of the war and had run back home. We believed that although he also exaggerated sometimes. Once he told us,
"At the end of the war you could look from one end to the other on the east shore of Kiel. There were no houses left standing."
I couldn't really imagine that and was a little skeptical.
While my grandfather usually ignored the topic of the Second World War, he loved to talk about the post-war period, coal theft and food organizing. That had a backlash on me. Anyway, he married my grandmother – who was an Austrian until 1938 – in 1940. In the Third Reich, it was customary for the registry office to present every young bridal couple with the wedding edition of Adolf Hitler's My Struggle. I found this book about 40 years later in a box in the cellar of my grandparents' home, which mostly contained medical booklets, Lassister (western novels) and a few Landser magazines (German soldier pulp magazines). I got the impression that the book was quite stuffy. It smelled perverse when it was opened. I had to laugh several times at the saying on the fourth page, "German marriage is service to the people." I briefly looked through the book, but what I read I found disgusting, with countless sick expressions that would be met with resistance everywhere today, except by the die-hard Nazis. From the beginning I had in mind to flog the thing to finance another drink.
When I wanted to get rid of Grandfather's My Struggle, I was already 17 years old. I had long since realized that the text was narrow-minded and dehumanizing. Overall, I opened the book briefly only two or three times before I put it out of my hands forever. I had no intention of reading the book, because it was rightly frowned upon due to the feeble-minded view of the world. I couldn't identify myself in the slightest with this filth and I didn't understand why so many people in the Third Reich were so into this crap. What was to happen to Grandfather's My Struggle now? Finally, I decided to sell the book cheap, even though it didn't belong to me at all.
In Bergstrasse there was still the snack bar whose owner was considered a right-wing radical, and would surely buy this disgusting book from me. In order to get as much value as possible, I additionally took a few stamps from my father's collection with me, on which the face of Adolf Hitler or swastikas were depicted. However, I did not want to show up alone in the despicable fascist snack bar. Ringo, my old mate from Schilksee, whom I had learned to appreciate since our beach parties and the relatively successful visit on the Chaos Days, promised to accompany me and took for himself whole stamp sets from the stocks of his father. Right before our visit we exchanged our Harrington jackets. He got my dark blue one in exchange for his red one, which as usual smelled strongly of sweat. We took the bus to Dreiecksplatz and arrived sober at the snack bar. When we entered the shop, we were immediately examined by the blokes present, probably all die-hard Nazis.
"What do you want?"
asked the owner of the snack bar with his bossy and sardonic voice.
We got right to the point by taking the articles out of our pockets and presenting them.
"We want to sell Hitler's My Struggle and a few stamps!"
I replied cowardly.
The snack bar owner took Grandfather's My Struggle in his hand and examined the book. He grumbled,
"That's just the family edition, most people had it at that time. It's not worth much."
Nevertheless, he did not give the book back. Instead he began to fill my mate Ringo and me with beer and corn brandy, and finally offered me 20 Deutschmark for the old, disgusting book. I had to reconsider for a moment because I had hoped for more.
"Here, take another one before you go,"
he grumbled and poured us more corn brandy.
We were quite tipsy, and in the end I agreed to the selling price of 20 Deutschmark. I received the agreed twenty, and the snack bar owner also had us show him a few stamps. He kept some of them, but instead of paying money for them, he kept pouring us beer and corn brandy until he finally barked at us,
"Well, that's enough now. There's nothing more. Have a nice day."
Ringo and I, now disburdened of the book and quite a few stamps, took to our heels and felt by and large successful, because the flogged things meant nothing to us and did not even belong to us anyway. Even though we entered the fascist snack bar soberly, we were drunk as hell now. While making derisive remarks about the snack bar owner we staggered down Bergstrasse and along Martensdamm Road, lay opposite to Hiroshimapark on a slope at "Kleiner Kiel" pond and dozed for a while in the blazing sun. That bastard had got us so drunk that we were completely legless. Everything was spinning and my skull buzzed as if someone had hit a baseball bat directly against my forehead. When we came to our senses, we asked a few strangers if they would like to buy some stamps from us. We even got rid of some. It was just the GDR stamps nobody wanted, back in the summer of '84.
The booze tour to Langeland
I wasn't sure who had organized it. Maybe it was pure coincidence. Anyway, I met with Leo and two girls, Marina and Stella, at Alter Markt Square to take the steamship to Langeland Island. These booze cruises were notorious, because pensioners, armed with umbrellas and handbags, pushed their way into the first rows of the jetty bridge in order to get hold of the best seats. We were astonished how sprightly and dangerous these people still were at that age. They were not only the first to stand at the jetty and blockade the entrance, but they occupied the best seats throughout the trip. The ship was not a small fjord steamboat, but a 50-metre-long liner that commuted daily between Kiel and the island of Langeland. Every seat below deck was occupied rapidly by sprightly pensioners, so we stayed most of the time above deck and formed two groups: the two girls, Marina and Stella, stayed together most of the time, and Leo and I also formed a team of two.
At first we talked about ska bands. Leo seemed to have moved a little away from punk. He had been to the barber before and had his mohawk removed. He wore relatively short hair, basically as long as mine. On this day I saw him for the first time in my life without a mohawk. Halfway across the Baltic Sea, Leo had a word with me and addressed the problems I'd had with the other skinheads. He asked,
"Is it true that you invited all the skins from other cities to Kiel Week?"
"Yes, that's true. They didn't come by themselves. Stidi sent out the invitations,"
I answered cynically.
"And they shouted right-wing extremist slogans?"
"Yes, they did."
"Did you all join in?"
he enquired. I hesitated a little, but thought I could confide in him. With a heavy heart I told him,
"It may be that some of the Kielers joined in. At some point I lost the overview. I now regret that I was there that day."
"Did you yourself join in?"
"No, I didn't. On no account. It's bad enough that I had to deal with those assholes."
I was completely embarrassed at that moment, and I blushed.
"Man, what a load of crap. You were almost all punks in former times!"
"Yes, I also felt like I was being remote controlled. That was by far not all that happened. Two or three months ago, I met with two skins from Bundeswehr who wanted me to shout 'Sieg Heil', but at some point I managed to leave."
"Man, what are you doing? You're on the way to ruining your whole life after all."
"I didn't join in their yelling either. I'm sick of it all. I stopped meeting the others anyway."
Leo dug even deeper,
"Man, what happened back then in the Third Reich? You all can't seriously make right-wing extremist remarks."
"Yes, I know, I absolutely agree."
"The whole Holocaust and everything. The whole war of extermination. That was all extremely brutal. You can't be taken in by that."
"Yes, I know,"
I said again and added,
"I really hate the fact that Stidi invited all the fascists, and we had to pay for it."
"And how did your fight with Stidi come about?"
Leo seemed to be quite well informed.
"Both the Konz brothers attacked me at a festival at the School of Scholars. At some point things escalated and a fight arose between Stidi and me. Fortunately Mig kept out of it. Otherwise I wouldn't have had a chance."
I told him the whole story in detail. Leo gave me fresh heart again through his friendly nature. After that we began to booze even more. Marina and Stella had already got tipsy with Danish cherry liqueur Kirsberry, while we two men started with beer. Later we also drank hard liquor. When we arrived back in Kiel, we took with us loads of duty-free alcoholic drinks as we left the ship.
That evening, we continued celebrating near Bergstrasse and sat in the schoolyard of the former Muhlius school, opposite the discotheque area. I was extremely drunk when I slowly came closer to Marina. I tried to get laid with her while under the influence. When it came to sex at our age, most women indicated early by a clear statement or gesture that touching was only allowed above the belt. That was different with Marina. She was a little chubby at the time and wore her black hair in a new wave style. We played around, kissed and touched each other. Her breasts were unusually firm and tightly wrapped as I felt them through the dress. The woman was what we called a knockout bird. Her mouth smelled disgustingly of alcohol, but I smelled quite similar. Nevertheless, we played around with closed eyes. At first I had difficulties pulling her very tight black dress up to hip height. Her white panties caused me considerable problems. I had expected an uncomplicated panty, but the panties consisted of a firm, silk-like material. It looked like a mixture of "old granny panties" and boxer shorts. The garment was so tight-fitting that I had a great deal of trouble to proceed further with my hand from above or from one of the two inner thighs. Inexperienced as I was, I pushed the tight dress further upwards and pushed the flat of my hand past the elastic band into her safety area, but her knickers sat so tightly that it constricted my hand. Marina endured it all without a word and moaned from time to time while I fumbled at her senselessly. Stiff as a board she hung on the bench with her back to the outer wall of the school building. I did what every grammar school pupil secretly dreamed of: I fingered her by moonlight. I asked myself in silence,
"Should I finally come to the point with Marina?"
But my little executor was still not allowed to come into action for the first time, although that would have meant more to me than a victory in the U17 county league against Holstein Kiel. Leo was carrying on with Stella parallel to us on the next bench. At first I had not noticed that at all, because I concentrated solely on Marina and faded out the world around us. Later we went over to Pfefferminz, where I continued to hang out with Marina. I was just too drunk to get more out of the evening. I never screwed her. Someone later told me that she was the daughter of a former mayor of Kiel. I even believed that for a while.
After the Langeland tour I was extremely happy that Leo had had a word with me personally, the man formerly with the highest mohawk in Kiel. I finally felt cured of my bad manners and hadn't regarded myself as a pseudo for quite a while. In the time that followed Leo and I didn't have time to exchange experiences about our little love adventures after the Langeland tour. Was he more successful than me?
I end up at ska parties
After my fight with Stidi I seemed to have a little bit more luck with women than I did before. On the following weekends I met Marina, and every time there was a lot of alcohol involved. We got the opportunity to kiss each other and sat together on a beach chair at Pfefferminz. Several times we went to smaller parties. That was a nice time, because I got to know a lot of new people, mostly from the ska scene.
Both my fight with Stidi leading to the successful separation from the skinhead scene, and the fact that I wore creepers instead of Doc Martens, brought me a lot of new acquaintances. I was even invited to small ska parties, where partying was much more discreet. However, only ska was played. Someone recorded me a tape with the ska sampler Dance Craze, which ran almost permanently on my tape deck at home. In my eyes Dance Craze was the best ska sampler of all times. I can remember parties in Lehmberg, Gerhardstrasse, Alsenstrasse and Annenstrasse. Most of the time the ska scene, which also included rude boys, ex-mods and current mods, met at Pfefferminz. Some of these people were not that easy-going while boozed up. Once, we walked along Forstweg Street and jumped over a whole row of cars parked alongside each other from bonnet to bonnet until we couldn't go on any further – and that was on a Saturday afternoon with the police station just around the corner. We caused quite a lot of damage to those cars and the dents were considerable.
At these parties, you could first make out with the women when their alcohol level was high enough. I hung around with Marina again at Stella's party in Lehmberg Street. Finally Marina invited me to a party at her home, where all her close friends were present. Unfortunately, I must have done something wrong at this party, because Marina dropped me afterwards. Maybe I was too brutal because of the alcohol abuse. Or I was too prole-like to her and had bragged too much. Or she turned away from me because of the recurring rumours. I don't know. At the end the woman remained only as a drinking acquaintance.
I lost contact with Marina. However, Leo gave me a lot of confidence and motivation after our conversation on the booze cruise, but I still overdid it with the booze. I even woke up once in a comatose state in Pfefferminz next to the dance floor near the beach chair, when a person slapped me firmly awake. I can remember that in the background "Gangsters" by The Specials was running when I regained conciousness. Unfortunately, my ska phase didn't last very long, so in the end I was nothing but a buffoon in the Kiel ska scene. I still wonder how I could have screwed it up.
The aftermath
Since many skinheads originally came from the punk scene, I thought for a long time that our escapades weren't too bad and could still be counted as punk; the relationship and similarities between skins and punks were high in many areas, as long as the skins weren't too stupid. Meanwhile I had to learn that my whole skinhead involvement was shit, apart from the peaceful initial phase. I realized that there was no excuse for what was going on with the skins. The responsibility can't solely be passed on to record labels like Rock-O-Rama, who at that time increasingly switched to releasing right-wing extremist recordings. With these background descriptions I wanted to come to terms with my personal misery, because there were still a couple of unanswered questions. After my excursion into the world of skinheads my hair kept growing. Fortunately, Nazi-Gerd finally left me be after my fight with Stidi. He had developed something like respect, but had the neo-fascists set in motion compromising processes that would last a lifetime? Since I was no longer a skinhead, the protagonists of the punk scene increasingly confronted me. To them, I, as a skinhead, had committed a betrayal of the punk ideals. A former band member of the Scapegoats approached me discreetly but persistently at Alte Meierei, where a new venue was slowly coming of age. He had the guts to ask me directly whether I was a right-wing radical. I said no. Nevertheless, he dug deeper several times intentionally and reproachfully, until he finally let me go. He had no interest at all in talking to me about other topics. Later, he walked around with a shaven head himself. There were several discussions in which I had to justify myself. People couldn't know exactly what had happened and received the rumours via a series of detours.
Lasse of The Victims spoke to me at a disco in Bergstrasse. He was on his way to the night shift in a ward of a care home and seemed extremely emotional and reproachful. He tried to make it clear to me that everything we did was just nasty. For him, the saying applied,
"Cling together, swing together."
Lasse made it clear to me that I was not his friend. When he left, he emphasized tersely,
"I have to go to the ward now!"
and did not even say goodbye. I don't want to accuse him, but he also looked like a skinhead later, even wearing a camouflage jacket.
Keddie of the Wikers confronted me when I walked on my own through the city in broad daylight. He said,
"What you did, that really wasn't kosher!"
and referred to my skinhead time. Afterwards, I hummed and hawed and emphesized that everything was over now. Even Keddie took everything wrong and didn't even greet me when we later passed each other on the pavement. These people created in me unknown conflicts and moral dilemmas. Some people were so overbearing with their accusations that I had to assume that they wanted to drive me into castration anxiety. Their behaviour was really intimidating, just like some alpha animals from the local new wave scene. From the right-wing spectrum new hostilities also came into being, as well from the malicious Karl Melitz, who once viciously confronted me at Hinterhof disco, because to him I was still nothing but left-wing scum. Once, he even shouted at me threateningly from his car in Schilksee. I didn't understand most of what he yelled at me. Some things sounded like,
"Get the fuck out of this place!"
or something like that.
It became really frustrating when I met Franka again, who now lived in London and visited her family in Kiel-Wik once in a blue moon. Hecker still had regular correspondence with her. They met every time she visited Kiel. I saw them both by chance one afternoon at the Error Café, where they sat at a table and chatted about London. I said "Moin" and sat down as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I hadn't expected how unforgiving Franka really was. From the glances I could already guess what would come, and that she still insisted on not talking to me. She was stricter than ever and didn't appreciate me at all. When I approached her directly, she said resolutely,
"Shelter, I'm not talking to you,"
and looked straight ahead as if I wasn't even there.
I tried to ask,
"How come?"
"I've already told you."
"Why then?"
She repeated her attitude once again,
"I'm not talking to you anymore!"
When I asked,
"Why? Because I was a skinhead for a while?"
she said once more,
"I am not talking to you,"
She turned provocatively to Hecker and continued the conversation with him in a concentrated manner. I sat at the table for half a minute, but Franka cut me off aggressively. She finally broke my heart. As a result, I stood up and left. I never saw Franka again after that day. I could not understand it. On the class trip to Berlin she had at least giggled when she ignored me. Now in the Error Café she was deadly serious and full of hate. There seemed to be something going on behind my back. Those were only a few of the merciless reactions. I received rows of nasty and judgmental looks, which I took note of and accepted, but which really destroyed me deep inside. In those moments I felt like an outcast and regretted my choices. After the negative experience with Nazi-Gerd, who I initially thought was my mate, and the confusion that followed, I felt as if something inside me had died irretrievably. It took me years to realize and assess what had happened during my skinhead time and what significance it had for my later life. Despite my fight with Stidi, my reputation seemed irretrievably destroyed, my conscience burdened and my future prospects spoiled. As a 17-year-old now, I felt that I could be blackmailed all my life. It had a long-lasting effect that many people knew that I was a skinhead, even if I was only small fry. On the other hand, Brandy, for example, was still accepted, respected and even courted by the punks, not least because of his excellent record collection and his knowledge of punk music, although he played with fire just like me. He himself was intoxicated and harassed by the fascist piss artist. So something had gone completely wrong in the scene. At the same time, I was warned that the Schilksee and Strande skins, and some others, still regarded me as left-wing scum that should die today rather than tomorrow. It was a real dilemma – pure chaos. The whole thing was a pain in the arse.
But the courageous harassing and the intentional ignorance in the punk and new wave scene and by others – even if it hurt – contributed doubly to the fact that I regretted my behaviour and finally became a convinced anti-fascist in word and deed, even if I felt a kind of subconscious fear that I fought what I had unintentionally co-created, because I did not fight consistently enough against the rising neo-fascism.
The hardcore punks proved to be permanently merciless. They went so hard on skins- and ex-skins that they collectively described them as fascists, as if they wanted to drive people into the arms of the Nazis or make it impossible to get out of their claws. What was the right way? There was quite a bit of emotional confusion.
As if that wasn't enough, some from the punk scene who had blared at me reprimandingly, later turned out to have some contacts within the right-wing scene. They later boasted about the reprimand they gave me. When talking to women, some started to exaggerate these rumours and gave themselves a kind of hero image.
But who should be surprised in a country where petty criminals returned from prison as skinheads, fascists or drug addicts, and where shoplifters and fare dodgers – whether on probation or not – were punished harder than former Nazi henchmen. The vast majority of the die-hard Nazis still had carte blanche, and some still held high office and had the reins in their hands. Sick Germany.
The nightmare continues without me and keeps getting worse
Whilst turning my back on my former drinking idols and so called role models, they kept on with their horror show in the aftermath. I only noticed from a distance what happened to the skinhead scene after my disengagement and how the skinheads radicalized more and more.
Altogether I was only once at one of Gerds cronies, but that was decidedly once too often. I don't know if these two bad guys proceeded with their malevolence later on. However, I strongly believe that Nazi-Gerd and the fascist piss artist continued to fill young people with alcohol and use Nazi propaganda material to brainwash and recruit them for BHJ and Wiking Jugend.
On the other hand, I learned firsthand that things were getting more and more malicious in the skinhead scene. Some of them went totally crazy. The benches next to the transformer station in Schrevenpark were known as inofficial gay meeting place in Kiel back then, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. A hard core of the skins is said to have made fun out of going to the park in the evening for "gay bashing", as they called it.
Brandy told that Feycer, who wore his 14-hole Rangers with steel caps, one evening went bananas and kicked a gay man so hard that he himself suffered black and blue toes.
The Konz brothers and Gonnrad moved to Mettenhof and started a skinhead chaos shared flat, which was unacceptable for the neighbours in the long run and which even had to be raided by a riot squad of the cops. Of course, that created even more friction between punks and skins. The inglorious climax was the stabbing between Maxi and Mig, where, as a former band member of the Scapegoats reported, Mig suffered a stab wound to his upper arm.
Vielmann's right-wing comradeship evening
While I was able to successfully break away from the skinhead scene, others were less successful. In addition, the skins were slowly but surely infiltrated by ANS and FAP members. It was really blatant how the neo-fascists went about infiltrating a newly emerging subculture and abusing it for their own purposes.
While he was drunk, Vielmann, the complete idiot, let himself be persuaded to join the FAP (Free German Workers' Party) – an extremely right-wing radical party that was later banned just like the ANS (Action Front of National Socialists). They lured in this former apprentice electrician with the promise of regular booze-ups. They even pretended to offer him a job. Feycer even saw Vielmann once in an FAP uniform. There were comradeship evenings, at which Vielmann was to make contact with other so-called comrades. After dropping out of his apprenticeship early, he drank too much and lost countless old mates. Now he had been a member of the FAP for a few weeks and was intensively filled up by the Nazis with propaganda material glorifying the Third Reich. He was told to "pass the things around in his circle of acquaintances". On Saturdays he was regularly picked up for comradeship meetings and apparently went to events abroad where neo-Nazis groups from different countries met. That went on for quite some time. Much too late, Vielmann saw through the vicious game and from then on did not want to get further involved with the so-called comrades. He became recalcitrant towards the other party members. Finally, he decided not to participate in the meetings anymore and to break off contact with the group, but that didn't prove to be so simple.
He knew that I could already successfully free myself from the skinhead scene, after I was put under pressure, was attacked and in the end had my clarifying fight with one of the Konz brothers, who were well known to him. Vielmann learned that the fight ended in a draw and I still felt like a winner because they let me go. I could show some experience values. That created a basis for discussion and trust. That's why he asked me to get him out of the mess. I had already given up on Vielmann and broken off contact, when he called me again and managed to talk me into helping him. This neo-Nazi scum of the FAP was not to be taken lightly. He was not sure if they would let him go so easily.
Vielmann announced by telephone to one of his comrades that he now wanted to go his own way and was no longer available for meetings. A party comrade told him,
"Everything remains the same! We'll pick you up by car on Saturday at about 2 pm. You belong to us, you know that."
Vielmann, however, did not want to go to these primitive drinking bouts with the neo-fascists anymore and instead made a final break from his despicable friends. He urged me to spend the following Saturday afternoon with him, to help him in case his "old comrades" became violent and tried to take him away. As a member of the FAP, he was no longer acceptable to me. That was the bitter truth: a former friend, with whom I had experienced a lot as a teenager, got on the right-wing track. Could I just sit back and watch? Shouldn't I help to take countermeasures? Finally I agreed to support him and stayed with him all of Saturday afternoon. At that time I did not know that he was actually already a member of this fascist party. I only learned about it years later. If I had known that at the time, I would certainly not have helped him out of his plight. We waited, listening to some music – there were ska and new wave records on the turntable – and Vielmann kept running anxiously to the roof window to see if his comrades were showing up. Finally, the announced Nazi car stopped at the usual time of day next to the house. The car waited a good half-hour, but the renegade comrade did not show up. Nobody came up to us, but they possibly had rung the bell at a flat on the ground floor. Vielmann was in a cold sweat. He uttered several times,
"I am so ashamed."
He lowered his head and covered his eyes with his hand. Suddenly the car disappeared. They never contacted him again. Vielmann was quite lucky under these circumstances and his refusal had no consequences. His Nazi phase was thus over. He got off without serious consequences, but his reputation was ruined once and for all.
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