My first Hanover Chaos Days
It was summer '83. Four of us decided we take a trip to Hanover. Finally we could break out of our everyday life. So far we have only experienced the same monotony: school on weekdays, a little football, drinking on weekends. This shaped our lives, and without exception we were drinking ourselves to death every weekend, even if we had to play football the following morning. We didn't care. The Chaos Days in Hanover came at the right time for us and proved the ultimate escape from this annoying daily routine.
We told our parents that we would go by bike to Schleswig for a camping tour at the Baltic Sea inlet Schlei. However, the three of us, who were at home northerly of der Kanal (NDK), drove to Pries Village, where Vielmann lived, and in a house next to him was Wisent, about one or two kilometres away from our residential area. We left our bicycles and camping equipment there. The only things we took with us to the hitchhiking spot at the entrance to the A7 autobahn, were bags of beer and some food.
The three of us took the bus to Adelheidstrasse near the hitchhiking spot. On the wall of the house next to the stop the band name 'Dead Kennedys' was sprayed in large letters on the wall. During the bus ride our school Nazi Gerd boarded at a city bus stop. We wanted to take him with us to the Chaos Days and turn him into an anti-fascist. We tried this without hatred by lending and recording various German punk LPs in the weeks before, and he gradually took pleasure in it. Nazi-Gerd saw his life-task in restoring the old Reich borders. We were sure we could convert him. Unfortunately, we underestimated him and his plans, as well as the puppet masters behind him. We will come to that later.
We all wanted to look totally horrific, because it was our first Chaos Days. Apart from Gerd, whom we sometimes provocatively called "Chicken-Gerd", none of us had ever been to Hanover before. We knew that the capital of Lower Saxony is located directly on the autobahn A7, that runs from Flensburg via Hamburg to Kassel.
Hecker, Gerd and I went to the same school near the inner city. Ringo was at the EBG (Ernst Barlach Grammar School) in the neighbouring district, a school that was considered less authoritarian. All four of us were already 16 at that time and had received our military registration notice in the previous school year. Excluding Gerd, we were all pretty frustrated with the defence registration. We were about to have our medical examination. Who knows, perhaps that contributed to our negative attitude that weekend?
Hecker was wearing his studded belt and army boots. His light blond hair stood punk-like upwards, a strand of his hair flopping in his face. He was wearing washed-out jeans and a Domestos jeans jacket with the band name "Abrasive Wheels" on it, that he had 'borrowed' from me before. He had put on his Business T-shirt with the words Loud, Proud and Punk on it and a motif that could not be seen on any of the singles or LPs. Hecker usually felt irritated by everything and made no secret of it. His favorite words and phrases were 'frustration', 'frustrated', 'frustrating', 'frustrative', 'frustration-drinking' and 'a frustrated head'. During our binge-drinking meetings, he liked to fumble with his drinking buddies' faces to bring them out of their shells. He made it clear to his fellow men how bad he found them. In those situations he was thoroughly honest and told them to their faces what he didn't like about them. He had a tic that really drove us mad. He preferred to borrow jackets and just didn't give them back. He took at least one leather jacket, two jean jackets and two blue Adidas rain jackets from me alone. After he had taken my first rain jacket with the thick Adidas stripes on the sleeves, my father bought a new one, again in blue, only now one size larger than the old one, so now I had a protective cover especially for football training when it was raining. It may also be that one of the jackets originally belonged to my sister, but Hecker, the bastard, knew no mercy and borrowed this second rain jacket as well. He again managed to dupe me "to get home dry" and never ever gave me this jacket back. What did he want as an only child with two blue Adidas rain jackets? He was completely spoiled by nature and came from a comparatively good social background. Hecker, the weird only child, was super proud of his punk attitudes, but did not try to convert anyone to punk, which I was accused of several times.
He never told tales, always made accurate allusions or passed on information precisely about the scene within the scene. He seldom stayed out of brawls. However, as far as women were concerned, he was quite good with the chatter. Women seemed to like him for his blond hair. He would pick up a punk girl now and then and would say bad things about her, behind her back.
When he bought new records on his own, he used to hide them so he didn't have to lend them. Of course, this was insidious, as he himself borrowed every record he could get his hands on from others. We already had to dig through his record collection to find the new ones. He preferred bands like Business, The Damned, Meatmen, 7 Seconds, MDC and the Dischord label's Flex your Head sampler. At some point he specialized in political punk like Dead Kennedys, Conflict and Chumbawamba.
Hecker liked to imitate decadent drunks and sang with joy,
"I get no kicks from champagne."
If he didn't have a beer opener at hand, he'd scream,
"Give me a midwife!"
His standard slogans included,
"Punch the cops flat like sandwiches!"
and
"Punch them flat like Donald Duck!"
as well as
"Punch the skinheads till they burst!"
To him, politicians and economic fat cats were nothing more than pig's heads. For him, rockers were headbangers and he basically called women tarts. Hecker and Ringo's mothers played together in the flute choir of the Schilksee Church. When they talked about their sons, many shameful deeds came to light. Of course, that was a thorn in the side for them.
Sometimes I went with Hecker directly after school to the Penny market in Belvedere, near to the meeting point of the punks, although usually on workdays they were non existent. Here we bought a large bottle of Lambrusco and a kilo of sugar, drank a couple of sips, put the sugar into the bottle, shook the 2-litre-bottle several times well and emptied the swill until we got a bright red, glowing head. This was quite hardcore, especially in the summer. It's always been a special thing with Hecker. We once went to a jeans shop in Holstenstrasse and tried on jeans with a black and white check pattern. We simply pulled our own trousers over the jeans we had tried on and directly left the shop. That was shoplifting in 1983. It was a kind of cooperative thing this shop-lifting. A store detective could've only arrested one of us. Together we dyed the trousers red, so that a black-red check pattern was created. We looked like lean harlequins in it. We completed our partial partner look by buying tiny horseshoes from the ironmonger 'Ziems' in Friedrichsort and nailed the small ironworks under our army boots. At night, the metal fittings produced some real sparks when sliding on the pavement. That was hardcore. Hence we were once asked by our "favourite cop" at the bus stop in Dreiecksplatz, who wanted to know what this was all about. We stopped the sliding and the copper soon went away. He belonged to the special unit of the Kiel cops, which targeted youth gangs. The thing with the sparks flying everywhere was 'supergeil' – however, after a few weeks it became boring and was no fun anymore. Our "favourite cop" spoiled our fun more than once.
Ringo and Gerd were skinheads, so bald heads, skins, herberts or whatever. Ringo was left-wing and Gerd was on the best way to be freed by us from the right-wing scene – well, we thought so at least.
Ringo rolled up his jeans to show off his Doc Martens, wore a body odour bomber jacket and an Infa Riot T-shirt – an Oi! punk band that scored decisive points with kids like us, not least through their hit "In for a Riot". When someone played Infa Riot on a party, we all sang along and pogo danced. When "Still out of Order" was playing, Ringo was not the only one to blow the fuses. He was "working class" and apart from Oi! music he loved to listen to bands like Youth Brigade, Bad Religion and The Proletariat. His favourite compilation was the Secret Life of Punks sampler, whose wonderful front cover shows a punk couple in embrace. Ringo regularly cropped his hair with a hair clipper, that he normally had permanently set to five millimetres length. Immediately before the Chaos Days, he decided on the three-millimetre length limit comb. Sometimes he moved the machine rhythmically back and forth on the scalp, at other times he elegantly traced his scalp track by track, segment by segment. Whenever he was on tour, he always wore his suspenders down over his pants.
The first of us who found out the news that Chaos Days was to take place in Hanover was Ringo. He was by far the best informed amongst us. He was always up to date with the punk zines that were common in the north. He got them by the dozen: "Excess", "Kabeljau", "Mottenpost", "Sinnvoll", "Die modern Ratte", "Der rammelnde Hase", even "Maximum Rocknroll" from the USA and many other works of art. On several occasions he gave me tattered copies of various punk zines after he had read through them. Of course, you could find in many of these zines announcements about the Chaos Days on the first weekend in July 1983, unless the producers lived completely off the beaten track somewhere in the countryside where there was not even a beer vending machine.
Ringo was a talented comic strip figure artist, who of course only put skins and punks on paper, which he meticulously drew as motifs on parcels, small packages and envelopes. He told us again and again that we are the kids of the 80s. He was also known for his terrible grimaces. He always went bananas when he only had a few beers and heard some Oi! music. He started screaming and singing along and knew almost every Oi! classic by heart. Although he originally came from a metal environment, he soon converted into a skinhead via punk. I borrowed the rest of his metal records and simply destroyed them or nailed them to the wall as if I had the right to do that. We soon hated everything that had to do with metal: motorcycles, hard rock acers and their music, ...
When the record Neither Washington nor Moscow later had a sensational breakthrough, Ringo was one of the first Redskins ever. He ran off with the girlfriend of the Friedrichsorter Spike and integrated her into his socialist working group. Therefore Spike attacked me in front of the kebab shop between Jägersberg and Lehmberg with his short shaved hair and a long bread knife – only because he knew that I was friends with Ringo. Apparently he wanted to kill me in cold blood and behaved as if he was planning a remake of Psycho III. Thank God he didn't catch me, I sprinted away, was much faster than him and I have to confess this was really frightening.
Ringo had a special hatred for yachtsmen, members of student fraternities, members of the Young Union and the Schüler Union. He had a great sense of humour. He was always telling people to their faces how stupid he found them. At the age of 16 he mastered the technical terms of historical materialism brilliantly and applied them consistently in conversations when useful. He later received death threats by telephone from the right-wing scene when he was living in Hamburg. Luckily his new address wasn't in the phone book.
In the past school year we were able to persuade Gerd to buy or tape a few punk records. He made compromises, but it had to be bands with German lyrics. He was particularly taken with OHL, Stosstrupp and the song "Klartext" by Daily Terror. He donned worn-out army boots, rolled up jeans, suspenders pulled over his shoulders, a finely chequered shirt and a black Harrington cloth jacket. Usually we let Gerd talk and smiled, unless he made right-wing comments, whereupon we talked back to him. Like Ringo, he wore his hair shortened to three millimetres. That was short enough back in the summer of '83. Gerd always went to the hairdresser regularly and expressed his wishes. One time a barber in Europaplatz accidentally cut his ear. He didn't have to pay for the hair cut. When he showed us his wound and told the story of how he got it, we thought this hilarious.
Gerd was long regarded as a model schoolboy, but he was right-wing. We tried to convert him time and time again. We had to do it step by step. He also still had his school Nazis in the background, which, as they got older, increasingly changed over from purely verbal maneuvers to physical attacks. Gerd could not break away from these circles. How could he if he was a ringleader himself? He kept boasting about his alleged sexual conquests in the summer camp of the "Bund Heimattreuer Jugend", which he cited as the main argument for going back there.
He often served as an informer on the right-wing scene. He couldn't see through our game. Soon he listened to German punk with passion and could fully identify with it and even started to collect indexed records, like the first Slime LP, but he didn't come to his senses and kept falling back on his right-wing attitudes. Now, of course, the question can be asked: why did we try to take care of him? Our opinion was you should not give up on a person so quickly. Gerd was highly aggressive. He reacted to any provocation and preferred to respond with punches. The school fascists always listened to what he was propagating. This had to come to an end. Hanover came just in time. He deserved one last chance.
Just like my mates, I wanted to look really tough on my first Chaos Days outing. I wore second hand boots and shredded black trousers with leather patches on my knees and ass. In addition, I created my own studded belt, for which I used a little less than 100 cone-shaped studs. I also wore my leather jacket, that was heavily studded with over 100 conical studs in the shoulder area, and a few small pyramid studs mainly on the collar. On the jacket were various off-white letterings of names of different punk bands. On the left arm was the lettering 'BLITZ', on the back I had painted big 'Chaos U.K.', diagonally underneath small, surrounded by pyramid studs 'One Way System'. I also wore my Domestos-discoloured muscle shirt with 'Chaos U.K.' on it on our way to Hanover. I changed my hair colour in the last week of school before the holidays with a box of blond hair dye. Initially my hair turned into an almost piss-yellow tinge. My mother was not amused and tried to colour my hair back with chestnut brown immediately. She cursed,
"If you dye your hair again, I'll slap you right in the face!"
However, the re-colouring was not completely successful. My hair now had a striking reddish brown. It looked like a street dog's fur. With a compulsive mix of beer and soap I finally tamed my hair somewhat, and tried also to find patience to form me a few spikes, that became through the course of the day more and more wobbly.
I was totally indifferent to everything. I kept looking at the dark side of things, which painted a gloomy picture. After my two-week school ban and its consequences, I saw no sense in anything. My prevailing attitude was pessimism, indifference and fatalism. I was sceptical about everything, looked at everything negatively and took nothing seriously anymore. It was sometimes extremely malicious how I treated the environment and my fellow human beings. Not that I was a human asshole, no. My friends valued me for my wasted eloquence, my wit and my critical attitude. My humor was black and revealing. Everyone could become a victim of my mockery and I'd regularly get "a punch up the bracket". I had as many enemies as friends. I always regarded the acers as my enemies. I had to talk to them, but I hated them as much as I hated the plastics and the philistines. Many women openly called me sick, because I pulled their legs, although they showed me credible sympathies. I had the talent to disqualify myself everywhere with my loose mouth. In principle, like many of the young, rebellious punks, I was a big mouth. Nobody – except perhaps Hecker, Ringo, Steff and Heimerich – told me this directly to my face, so that I was not sufficiently aware of this fact.
I tried to make a big show everywhere I went. Everybody should get to know me and see what a great punk I am, but I was just a pseudo. I acted like someone who constantly tried to spread an apocalyptic mood, provoking everyone I no longer had respect for and sometimes even persons commanding respect. I enraged many of them. Only when someone was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the tension turned to laughter, I was happy.
My circle of friends were divided into three parts. There were the people I knew from school, where I only met people who had an affinity to the left subculture – apart from Gerd, who we wanted to change. Besides, I had my contacts through the youth club. That was the local teenager scene with great potential for conflict. Last but not least there were the people from my football club, all of them football fools from the working-class district of Friedrichsort with partly football ambitions, partly prima donna behaviour and partly with priorities in the social "third half". These three areas had certain points of intersection: if a school friend was in the football club at the same time – this was the case with Hecker, for example – or if a teammate showed up at the youth club. Everything was connected through punk.
My physical health at that time was not too much affected by the boozing, as I regularly played football in the club and ate reasonably healthy food. Others couldn't say that about themselves. Nevertheless, my football career would certainly have been more successful without alcohol.
We categorized every punk back then. We differentiated between die-hard punks, who had been punk since 1977, noble punks, if they were well situated or drove a car, into ex-, chief-, hardcore, flagship-, fashion-, pseudo-punks and followers. Everyone, who started with punk, started mostly as pseudo-punk, until he proved himself in the group by rioting, alcohol excesses, campaigns, record purchases, house bans, beatings, haircuts or a crass outfit. We almost all started out as pseudos. The participation in the Chaos Days would catapult our reputation in the scene. We hoped to finally get rid of our pseudo-image in Hanover in order to put ourselves on the same level with the established die-hard punks. We wanted to be the children of Chaos Days.
We were totally buzzing, without knowing exactly what we could expect in Hanover, which bands were playing, which acquaintances we would meet, and how the executive carried out their orders. We zeroed ourselves in verbally with punk slogans and phrases,
"Never mind Hanover, here comes Kiel!"
and
"This is Kiel, not Hanover!"
We had formed two pairs: Hecker and Ringo and on the other hand Gerd and me. It upset me at first that I had to sit in a car with Gerd. The others had plotted this with intrigue. It didn't help to make a fuss for any longer, because the first cars were already targeted.
Safe hitchhiking was not possible any more at the original spot at the beginning of the autobahn. It was even life-threatening now. Here, too, the city administration had altered the route as a way of prevent hitchhiking, or at least to make it more difficult for everyone. That's why we stood at the traffic lights on Schützenwall, even before the big crossroad on Westring. We knocked on the car windows and asked the passengers to roll them down to ask,
"Are you going to Hanover?"
or to point out,
"We want to go to Hanover!"
If a car had a capital H on the licence tag at our hitchhiking spot in Kiel, it was signalled on eye contact,
"We want to go there as well!"
even if it was a Mercedes.
The Chaos Days were not widely publicized – apart from the preliminary reports in punk zines. There were no official warnings from the cops or the like. Most drivers didn't like our outfits, but they didn't know what we were up to. They were not prewarned, as was the case in later years, when Chaos Days were officially declared and hundreds or thousands of young people arrived from all over Western Germany.
Gerd's cousin lived in Hanover. We were allowed to stay overnight in her flat. The keys were to be handed over and his cousin went to the countryside for a few days. Gerd would be the only one of us in possession of the flat key this weekend, and that was the absurd thing: we wanted to convert his political opinion, but we were dependent on him ourselves. If he hadn't come with us, we would've taken our sleeping bags and looked for somewhere to sleep. Maybe it was for the better that way. After half an hour of hitchhiking, a driver told us that she would give us a lift. Gerd and I got in. As soon as we got in the car, our two friends were forgotten. We did not see Hecker and Ringo again before Hanover. Ringo, who was sometimes affectionately called Aunt Ringo, and Hecker made their own experiences on the 250-kilometre route from Kiel to Hanover. We didn't even have a chance to wish them a good trip.
It was a short and comfortable ride. We said to the hippie woman how cool it was to be a punk or skinhead and that we represented the slogan "Punks and Skins United". She listened to all this peacefully and was happy to be chauffeuring such high-ranking gentlemen. This chubby, but dear hippie lady, had long hair and was completely dressed in purple. Maybe she was an anthroposophist? Anyway, she could hardly speak, because we were totally euphoric, which was due to our anticipation. The woman finally let us out at a small rest stop behind Neumünster. It was still late in the morning on this Friday in the summer of 1983 and we would have liked to have heard the police radio beforehand, but we couldn't handle the frequencies. None of us were able to manipulate a radio anyway. Only a few of us from our school managed to do that. We just wanted to listen to the local network, like Ottmar, Wisent's brother, a physics hippie, had tried to teach us. For this procedure, however, a whole radio would have had to be sacrificed in which the bandwidth would have had to be manipulated. What did we want in the weeks before the Hanover Chaos Days with the local police radio in the Kiel and Rendsburg-Eckernförde area?
The next lift took us directly behind Hamburg. The driver was a blond man in his 40s. I don't know, maybe it was a cop. Let's not imply anything. Who knows, maybe we were ferried all the time by civilian cops without realizing it. Though, this thought might be a little paranoid.
I'm sure some punks had been checked out by the coppers. Who knows, they worked with cunning and malice. Maybe we just should have listened to the police radio in Rendsburg-Eckernförde. The police action at that time was probably comparatively small contrasted with what is going on in this area today, but it definitely cost a few million to keep a bunch of crazy and frustrated punks and skins in check. We didn't give a toss. For us, the events and the venue were at the forefront of our minds as well as the fact that we could escape boring Kiel for the weekend.
It was like a small adventure vacation, without large expenditure and travel insurance, without holiday reps and the fine print in the travel contract and without switching fees for the travel agency, without private beaches and building site noise at a neighbouring hotel.
Gerd lisped a little. Every time we mucked him about it, he'd say,
"Stop it, man!"
and started punching us in the kidneys. He had a small scar on his skinhead, which was often addressed. He also loved to trash others. When he was upset, we only had to stroke his hair stubble theatrically with our hands and he became calm like a lapdog. Soon the first beer was ripped open, however, we avoided getting drunk on the journey because we didn't want to miss a thing in Hanover. This time Gerd sat in front, and when I told him or the driver something, I leaned my arm against one of the front backrests and waved my beer can around. It was foreseeable that we would arrive in Hanover only in the evening, and that it might already be dark. As schoolboys, we had an intellectual interest in the Chaos Days. We wanted to experience the bands sober to some degree. We were never as wasted as the die-hard punks, at least not then. Drugs didn't matter to us. We wanted to have our fun on the Chaos Days in Hanover and afterwards make a political statement in the school yard. We wanted to be tough, we wanted to visit the Mecca of our punk generation. We wanted to check out the state before it checked us out. We were never so radical that we wanted to smash the state, and when we put it that way, we were drunk and, frankly, we meant it ironically, even though we knew that turbo-capitalism couldn't go on like that anymore. Every second geo-teacher had already said that in a roundabout way. Our expectations weren't huge, we weren't afraid of scenarios like the roughest anti-nuclear demos, like the Wackersdorf, Brockdorf or Gorleben incidents or even the Brixton Riots. We simply wanted to feel some freedom and break out, as it was otherwise only marginally possible during the small inner-city punk excursions and the away games with the youth football.
Originally we weren't necessarily considered bad schoolboys, and the problems didn't start until the teachers took action against us. They were verbally aggressive against us and even used violence to try to destroy our self-confidence based on our language, clothing and punk music. I certainly believe our teachers should have reprimanded us more moderately for our misbehaviour. Instead they imposed such extreme punishments to try to change our appearances and behaviour. Back to our weekend trip.
Soon we were in direct "approach" to our "target destination". Now an unimportant man with half-short hair drove us, more of a teacher type. We didn't talk much, looked out the window and watched the traffic signs. We neither felt sick, nor did we have any uneasy feelings. I looked over at Gerd, who had turned his head away from me and was staring out of the window, as if he was watching deer on the distant landscape besides the autobahn. I could literally see his pulse beating on his carotid artery which was facing me. I think I saw the white of his eyes.
The driver now was pretty crazy. There were boxes of beer in the car boot and in the passenger seat. He even drank while he was driving and offered us a bottled beer. He boasted,
"I'm on my way to a drinking contest right now."
"Oh, you are already drinking beforehand? Isn't that a disadvantage?"
"No, that's a head start."
That guy was really weird. He had put something on the gas pedal and placed his feet on the steering wheel. His seat was pushed far back, so Gerd and I had to squeeze behind the passenger seat.
"Here on the autobahn, it's almost straight ahead anyway,"
he commented on his behaviour. He talked to us, told us about his upcoming drinking contest, but was also interested in the Chaos Days,
"Who organized it?"
"We don't know!"
Gerd said resolutely.
"We just want to take a look. Concerts take place as well."
"Can it be described as a festival?"
"More like a big street party."
I already knew the exit to Hanover, since I had passed there several times with my parents and my sister, when we visited our relatives in Bavaria. I knew we would soon have to turn onto a significant upward slope, and that there was an autobahn bridge immediately behind it. The driver had no plan of turning off at all and he probably would have driven us all the way to Kassel without stopping.
I screamed,
"This is the exit!"
He let us out right on the side-strip, just like a regular citizen should. We thought,
Finally done!
The driver shouted,
"Take care. Have fun!"
"Thanks, you too!"
We had to go back about 100 metres with our heavy boots and our beer and food bags and finally had to walk up the exit. That wasn't safe. We were confident and convinced that we would arrive at the desired mass event in just a few minutes to face whatever might be waiting for us there. We started joking that Ringo and Hecker were probably already drunk now and stuck in some roadside restaurant in the middle of Schleswig-Holstein.
During the whole trip we didn't spot any major police forces. The cops had been there for quite a while and zeroed themselves in on this weekend both emotionally and verbally. They were faster than the police and got up before the first cock crows.
Each of us had had our own, more or less bad experiences with the boys in blue. It always hurts the first time you're at the Chaos Days. So far, we'd only been policed several times, reprimanded, searched through or asked to come to the police station, if at all. We had already received one or more subpoenas, but none of us has been knowingly officially recorded or photographed by police identification service at this time. I had my first "photo shoot" only nine months after the Chaos Days.
Gerd and I continued along the exit in the direction of the capital of Lower Saxony until we came across a country road. We didn't know now if we should go left or right. Here everything still seemed cruelly rural. A little later we saw a bus stop, but according to the timetable a bus wouldn't stop until the foreseeable future. It was around 7 p.m now. We asked a 12-year-old boy,
"We want to go to the Chaos Days. How do we get to the city centre? "
He already knew about the Chaos Days. He finally sent us to a kind of city tram that would take us directly to Hanover's central railway station,
"It would be best to ride with it to the main station."
During the obligatory ride without a ticket Gerd sat opposite me. We weren't sure if we were on the right track, rode on and on and talked about different punk bands. Slowly the outside scenery grew city-like. Now we could be sure: we were in Hanover – and were as merry as a lark. However, we soon developed a slightly queasy feeling, as we gradually realized what we had got ourselves into. Now we just had to get off at the main station and somehow meet our two friends again. We had only to ask the way to the Youth Club, "Korn", on Saturday. Happy and excited we got out of the vehicle. Finally our first Chaos Days could start.
The movie had already started. Our frenzied fellows were lurking everywhere. They walked all over the station complex, looking for friends, wanted to attract attention, shared their six-packs with other punks, whether it was their bag of beer, their wine, vermouth, Bacardi or whatever they had.
We were simply amazed and ran around the station – there was a real party going on. The people were unrestrictedly communicative, but also aggressive, bitchy and drunk.
When we were just going up the escalator, suddenly Taffy, a punk from Bordesholm in Schleswig-Holstein stood on top of the platform. I already knew him from hanging around with a horde of punks in Kiel close to Hertie shopping centre. At that time we drank only a few cans of beer in Kiel and walked round the city late Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, we had problems with the aggressive Kiel cops, who decided to stop us. We were made to gather by the wall in the Hertie foyer on the first floor and were held there. This intermezzo would certainly have been a great record cover photo, but it had a rather traumatic effect on me as a newcomer. It all happened just a few weeks before the Chaos Days. That's why I recognized Taffy right away. On that afternoon the cops took rigorous action in Kiel against all the punks hanging around and drinking on the high street, because of the guild of shopkeepers or whoever found our behaviour damaging to business, not least because some pensioners were hindered in their shopping. Why did the cops have to check the punks in the Kiel shopping zone so consistently, bully them and finally scare them away? As a result, they created even more fear among the population, for passers-by certainly suspected the worst. Why is it allowed to treat young people this way? For the hardcore cops, the procedure was quite normal, their daily bread. What the old cops ordered was carried out by the lower cops, even though this order had still taken place in the Third Reich. Anyway, Taffy was happy to meet Schleswig-Holsteiners. He was able to sort them out right away. In all the hustle and bustle, however, we lost sight of each other after a short time. He showed us the way out of the station building and wished cynically,
"Have fun!"
Should we have stayed together?
Gerd and I walked towards the main entrance with the glass doors. We were flabbergasted as we surveyed the scenery there. Like the Praetorian Guard, the bodyguard of the Roman emperor in the movie Quo Vadis, about 60 cops stood in a semicircle in front of the station entrance. Things looked really threatening. What was that clownery good for?
The side entrances were locked anyway, so we could only take the main entrance or leave. There was real chaos. We decided to stay, of course, and after a while realized that the police chain was semipermeable, so that the punks and skins were, in fact, able to move to the Hanover city centre, but not through the railway station.
People were turned away whose sleeping bags lay in lockers and others who just wanted to travel were drawn into it. The cops tried to prevent what was going on at the station, the advance party on the eve of the main event in Kornstrasse, but the party was already in full swing. The boys in blue apparently planned to block the station all night to prevent people from setting up camp. Whether this action contributed to de-escalation remains to be seen. No one knows what would have happened if the cops hadn't built that semi-permeable chain. We were very confused and went back into the station again. We drank more beer while strolling around and enjoying the atmosphere.
The biggest rush was at the beer vending machine on one of the platforms. All the time an overweight, aggressive skinhead without legs wheeled his wheelchair through the station halls. He produced a slight panic everywhere he showed up, because he literally drove into the crowds of people with his wheelchair. He did the same thing at the beer vending machine. He just pushed people away to get a can of beer out of the machine. This behaviour worried us very much. He drank the beer immediately and continued driving through the station area. The man was heavily tattooed and moved as if he was participating in a long distance tour at the Paralympics. All the people here were already very irritated by the police behaviour outside. Despite the omnipresent chaos, total team spirit prevailed among the Hanover tourists.
The last was a camera team that really wanted to interview everyone who looked photogenic in some way, and there were plenty of people of that kind. The camera team just had to jump aside every time the tattooed wheelchair user approached.
Here in Hanover it became obvious: the transitions from punk to skinhead and from skinhead to punk was smooth for many visitors. There were even skinheads wearing studded jackets. We saw lots of punks with Doc Martens boots and T-shirts from Oi! bands. There were skins with combat boots and even people who wore bomber jackets with slightly longer or dyed hair. We sighted both punk girls with shaved heads as well as punk girls with a punk haircut on one side of the skull and a skinhead haircut on the other. It was funny. New figures came to Hanover all the time: iroquois for iroquois, mohawk for mohawk, spike head for spike head, skinhead for skinhead. Apparently the cops prevented the punks, who came from the greater Hanover area, from returning in the evening due to the barrier at the main station. Was that calculation? Or were the Chaos Days an experimental field for the cops, who were to train specifically for larger operations such as nuclear transports? Were we all just absurd clowns, dummies and cannon fodder for a bigger thing?
Could it be that there were a few people among the heads of operations who had already gained their first experience of police missions in the Third Reich? Or did they always ask grandfathers for advice in their retirement home who had experience in "police work" since 1933?
Now we dared to leave the station. We walked through the narrow corridor that the cops had left open. We moved a few metres away from the station building. Wherever the police were deployed, the sound of the radio units were always present. Even if the radio carriers, police radio operators or whatever were not directly involved in the ongoing radio communication, there were always conversations to be heard between any invisible participants in the operation. These were always initiated by a crackling,
Crack – "Blah, blah, blah" – crack. Short break.
Crack – "Blah, blah, blah" – crack.
The policemen who carried their radio units hanging around their shoulders always walked around extremely thoughtful, as if they were listening to a symphony. This cracking and incomprehensible speech accompanied by a strong noise could of course also be heard from the parked police vehicles. There were rear mostly guards sitting in these vehicles listened silently to the almost incomprehensible noises that sounded like isolated, uninteresting material of the band Einstürzende Neubauten.
The cops here were different than those we knew from Schleswig-Holstein. These were even more uncompromising, not like the village policemen with us, bar the inner city cops. When a punk approached them, they reacted without humour but with antipathy, which reflected all the hatred that had certainly been drummed into them at various preliminary briefings. They certainly received instructions not to engage in discussions in order to maintain obedience and a hard stance, so as not to weaken the order from above. The uniformed men mostly avoided looking the punks in the eye as long as there hadn't been an open exchange of arguments. The boys in blue showed up armed with shields, helmets and clubs. These insignia of state authority were omnipresent, at least with regard to the acute hot spots this summer weekend in Hanover. When potentially provocative questions were asked by punks keen to debate, the cops stood mute and stupid, demonstrated their mental blockade attitude and kept a straight face. The forces no longer looked like cops, but more like the military. Everything seemed as if a science fiction movie was shown about a military regime like 2025 – The Slave-owner State. The police metarmorphosis into a paramilitary seemed complete. It was time for the apocalypse. It was not yet clear to us that the matter could become hellish in the case of an emergency. We had a lot of fun.
We were now constantly wandering round the forecourt and the immediate catchment area of the station. Punks appeared everywhere, individually and in groups. Empty cans, bottles and broken pieces of glass lay here and there on the asphalt.
Anyone could talk to anyone here. Suddenly we were interested in how we could get to Kornstrasse tomorrow and which bands would play. Someone said,
"Korn is not far from here. You'd better take the tram."
"Yes, which line?"
"I don't know, just get on where most punks get on."
As far as the bands were concerned, there was still uncertainty. One punk said,
"Daily Terror shall play!"
Another claimed,
"SS Ultrabrutal have accepted!"
And we found out,
"Die Alliierten from Wuppertal are to perform!"
Our Gerd was happy, because the announced combos were German-speaking punk bands. Our stay at the station forecourt continued to be extremely communicative, even though it became more chaotic.
We wanted to go back to the station building. It was dark and around 9pm. Suddenly beside us a tram stopped. The back door opened and a screaming, drunk guy with Doc Martens, Domestos jeans and bomber jacket stumbled out and shouted,
"Kiel is alive!"
It was our mate Ringo and right behind him Hecker. The joy was great, we hugged and cried together,
"Kiel is alive!"
and
"If the Kids ..."
"are united ..."
"they will never ..."
"be divided."
The hitchhiking procedure had already separated us for more than ten hours.
"Have you just arrived?"
I asked curiously.
"We came directly along the autobahn!"
Hecker replied reproachfully.
We reported our first impressions,
"This is absolute chaos here! The station is a real mess."
And now our new arrivals, who seemed exhausted and drunk, wanted to go to the station to see the punks and skins live in action. The phalanx of policemen was still in front of the main entrance, which the two newcomers registered with horror. We tried to creep into the station through one of the side entrances and noticed that at one point young-blood punk girls were allowed to walk through. We went to the crossing point, gave reasons for passing,
"We want to go to our locker!"
and
"We are looking for our friends!"
The officers remained tough. When Ringo finally said,
"We want to see what time our train goes back home!"
They finally let us through and we were able to reach the inner area of the railway station. Here the usual chaos prevailed: drinking and screaming punks, occasionally a few skins were around. We walked around the station drinking beer. Suddenly, we saw Kammkatz and Rochen sitting on a bench on a lower platform. At that time, the two were considered Kiel's toughest punks. We walked in their direction, stopped less than five metres in front of them, formed a small group of four and discussed the situation.
"Ey, there behind us, Kammkatz and Rochen!"
"Oh, do you think we can talk to them?"
The two instilled more respect in us than the countless cops outside on the station forecourt. Kammkatz had stringy, bright red hair. The strands on his hair fell over his face. That must have been what trendy hairdressers called a "Korean whip" (Koreapeitsche). He hadn't tied up his combat boots properly. Otherwise he was dressed almost entirely in black. His leather jacket was covered with white paint, that had already crumbled off in some places. In addition the entire jacket was spangled with long, pointed, nail-shaped studs. We didn't see the other side of him, but we knew that he had the band name "Chaotic Dischord" painted on his back. He had strapped on his cartridge belt as usual. What made Kammkatz look so frightening was the fact that on his leather jacket he wore the coat of arms of the Schleswig-Holstein police as a trophy, which he is said to have torn off a captured police cap to adorn his jacket.
Rochen, also dressed almost entirely in black, had even dyed his hair black, which stood off in thick spikes in all directions. However, it was not the colour black that prevailed, but the silver of the many spiked studs. During a pogo I bet you would inevitably have torn your skin to bloody shreds around his thorny spikes. Not only because of his height, Rochen was really frightening. He was about 6'3". The jacket, covered with studs, made him look menacing and dangerous. Kammkatz and Rochen were known beyond Kiel's borders at that time. They did what no one thought possible: a deed that since then has gone from mouth to mouth as a kind of folk etymology. One night in Kiel, they managed to steal a two-metre-long liqueur bottle standing in the shop window of a delicatessen shop through a hopper window about three metres high. Several people had already tried this before them. Hecker and I also tried this again and again without success, and we had to be careful not to damage the bottle with its light green liquid or to clamp off our arm on the hopper window. We managed to grab this bottle several times by the spiral-like twisted bottle neck. One was giving assistance with hands, the other was reaching through the window gap. We never managed to pull the overweight vessel through the gap. That was reserved for Kammkatz and Rochen. The two mastered it by the big Rochen giving assistance with his hands for the agile Kammkatz. Thus they were unchallenged, the kings in Kiel. That's where the kids set the benchmark for being a myth. I used to think,
"What would have happened if Hecker and I hadn't been stealing the giant liqueur bottle from the delicatessen shop back then? Had we been the heroes, would we have been mentioned in history as Kiel's toughest punks?"
I don't think so.
Other sources later claimed that Kammkatz and Rochen did not steal the said liqueur bottle through the tilt window, but an oversized smoked ham. I never dared to ask them directly.
Long after the Chaos Days, a hairdresser and a small café opened in the premises of the former delicatessen shop, from which Rochen and Kammkatz were meant to steal the oversized liqueur bottle with the light green swill. For a while I regularly went to the café that was connected to the hairdresser's by a corridor, and told the waitresses and other guests about the liqueur bottle. The waitresses probably thought
Who's that odd person?
Anyway, out of improper respect we didn't dare to address them in Hanover now. This, of course, was a regression into old pseudo-punk times. We stood at the edge of the platform, as if we wanted to take the next train, and turned around briefly to look at them again and again. Our behaviour must have seemed quite suspicious, because we continued to avoid making contact. They sat there less than five metres away from us in their heavy leather jackets covered with nail and needle-like studs – bent forward and their forearms supported on their thighs as if they were already totally pissed.
"They must be super aggressive,"
Hecker assumed.
Although I had been on tour with them several times in Kiel, the four of us here in Hanover seemed to be internally blocked standing in front of these chief-punks. Finally, the chaotic hustle and bustle at the station drove us further into turmoil. We sipped more beers into us with the goal of becoming as hard as Kammkatz and Rochen at some point. Meanwhile, we were repeatedly confronted with pushy panhandlers and therefore slowly decided to make our way to the place where we were dossing at the time.
Gerd only vaguely knew the way to his cousin's flat. We were very drunk and also exhausted from the hitchhiking. After the evening turmoil we finally left the main station. We were allowed to pass the cops without complications and took the next tram to our accommodation. 20 minutes later we arrived at the flat. Gerd's cousin was waiting for us. Everything went like clockwork. Gerd received the keys and his cousin said goodbye. She intended to stay outside of Hanover over the weekend. Now we could spend the night safely in Hanover on sleeping mats, mattresses, couches and quilts. The night was relaxing. Anyway, the flat was quiet and we could get plenty of sleep. We could not judge whether the night at the central station and in the city centre was going to be quiet as well.
We had breakfast in the morning and exchanged our experiences of Friday. Of course, Hecker and Ringo, like Gerd and I, didn't get through to Hanover in one go. They were also taken along by funny people and finally arrived in Hanover much later. Maybe they weren't as focused as our hitchhiking group of two. Meanwhile we teased Gerd hoping that he would distance himself from his right-wing attitude. We immediately smothered any right-wing tendency with plausible counter-arguments, as we had taught ourselves in the schoolyard and during our punk meetings in the children's playground behind the Penny market. Hanover was supposed to be a turning point especially for Gerd, as we had planned. We didn't want to miss the beginning of the day, dressed up, styled ourselves and went to the next supermarket. It was still almost noon, and we bought our workload of alcohol and a few little things to chew on: crisps, a can of fish and some fruit. I said,
"Oily canned fish is the best basis for boozing. You're not getting drunk."
"There are several theories,"
Gerd replied.
"It's true. The digestive tract is being oiled thoroughly. This is supposed to be great for drinking contests!"
We stood next to a wall near the supermarket, where only a few people walked by. We loved public places where we could drink our booze and have fun, even though we didn't have a kasi recorder this time.
After Hecker and I had already slapped soap in our hair in the flat of Gerd's cousin, we now also poured beer into our hairdos. This gave the hair the desired toughness and stiffness and spread the smell we were used to, that we knew from punk concerts and parties. Gerd now behaved like a real punk, and we believed that he would soon be healed from the fascist attitude that was implemented at school and in his family. The mood was gradually rising.
We wanted to leave, even if it was not quite clear to us which way we had to take to Kornstrasse, where the musical part of the Chaos Days should take place. We quickly sank a few more beers or cheap wine to keep us in the mood. We provoked each other, made fun of each other because of the outfits, but also because of the different taste in music,
"Listen to your Cockney Rejects!"
"Oi, you jerk!"
We started to scuffle or kicked with our boots without really wanting to hit, as was usual.
"Roll up your jeans!"
"Roll up yours yourself!"
"Crass!"
"Your hairdo isn't acceptable, you look like a Honka!"
"Do the Honka!"
"Crass!"
"Don't drink so much, we're leaving right now!"
"You're wasted, mate!"
"Nuthin'!"
I recited the following lines of lyrics, that I had heard on television once, when a report about punk in Germany was broadcast and a band was introduced in a short excerpt,
"What can I do, what can I do? Should I fight the cops or should I get drunk?"[1]
and asked,
"Do you know who this is?"
"I don't know!"
said my mates.
Gerd had similar problems, and performed the following lines,
"Be free, be drunk, there must be terror! Build bombs, steal guns, hit the cops in the face!"[2]
"Who was it?"
Hecker asked himself aloud.
A shiver ran through me without me associating it with the Chaos Days. We decided not to drink so many different types of alcohol. Those who drank beer initially stayed with beer, those who drank cheap wine usually remained with cheap wine.
We got on a tram, saw isolated skins and punks here and small groups there. We stared out the windows and took a drink or two. We were probably already lost. We changed tram again until someone said,
"We have to get off here!"
We recognized this from the many punks who left the tram here. The weather was good, the sun was shining, the day was young, we had to drink, we kept the pot boiling. Now we saw more and more punks, but hardly any real skinheads. Finally we were in the Kornstrasse and only had to find the Youth Club Korn, where the concerts were hosted. Punks were lurking everywhere, most of them ten years older than us. Yesterday at the station we saw mostly young punks.
"That's the way in!"
Ringo shouted, and we targeted the junction. We asked again,
"Are there any concerts here?"
"Joo, cash desk is upstairs!"
We asked again,
"Who's gonna play?"
"You'll find out all about it upstairs!"
replied the friendly punk.
I'm not sure what we paid as the entrance fee. I think it was two Deutschmarks per head. We asked for the bands' names again at the cash desk. From the background the live music was so loud that we didn't understand the answer. We were now inside. Finally, we were at the Korn. Was that the height of our punk life?
On stage were four skinheads.
"Who's that?"
we asked ourselves.
"I believe these are Die Alliierten,"
Gerd said.
"It can't be them,"
I shouted back into his ear,
"I know the entire LP of Die Alliierten. This must be another band!"
In front of the stage, an excessive pogo prevailed until a state of exhaustion. Suddenly we were also in the group and pogoed with the pack.
A short time later there was a punk with a mohawk cut next to us,
"I came all the way from Nuremberg!"
We looked at him in surprise.
"We're from Kiel!"
we replied.
And when he heard that, he collapsed and lay on the floor. We knew he was just overacting. It was unbearably hot inside the Korn. The closeness and high air humidity created an almost tropical climate. The windows were closed and sealed with mattresses, and this at the height of summer. There came very little light through the cracks. The ground was sticky like fresh tar. Heat rose within us and sweat broke out. The conditions here were chaotic. Now several skinhead-style people with naked upper bodies were dancing in front of the stage. They looked like they were working hard. At one point in the room half-litre bottles of beer were sold at ridiculous prices. We had another drink, stood a little further in the back and still had our eyes on the stage. It was a modern party with an extreme smell of sweat, just like Ringo's jackets always smelled, and there was a whiff of soap and beer in the air, just as we loved it. Every newcomer was welcomed with acceptance, whether he danced or not. Women were scarce in here, but there were probably several women with small breasts among the skinheads.
We still had no idea which bands were playing.
Except for the window cracks, light could only be seen on stage. The bands changed quickly. Either we were too drunk or the next band was a skinhead band as well. Maybe it was Beton Combo? Once more we speculated whether it could be SS Ultrabrutal. Anyway, the band did not announce their name, which increased the chaos here even more. Meanwhile the Kornstrasse was reducing our energy. To start with we were here with four blokes from Kiel, our little group gradually split up step by step. Ringo went to interview other punks, Hecker got fresh beer and Gerd jolted with punks and skins. There was a lot of swinging and staggering and there was pogoing.
Suddenly it happened, the black-out. This was probably due to the lack of oxygen in the Korn. Suddenly I was totally pissed, wanted to pee and could not find the toilets.
What followed now was a nightmare. I met my three friends again several hours later at the central railway station. I only have distant memories about what really happened. Anyway, I was just going down the stairs when I realized that there was a street battle on Kornstasse of unprecedented proportions. This came as a shock to me. I've never seen anything like it, not even on TV. At the Korn, I got the impression that it was already dark outside, but it was daylight outside which dazzled me. I squinted my eyes and was very confused, because the main exit of the Korn to the street was right in the centre of the street battle. To the right of the entrance stood a huge police force, on the left of the entrance the punks were in charge. At first I ran a few metres to the right towards the direction of the police, disoriented. I noticed that objects were being thrown from the left. There was lots of crashing and yelling. I held my arms up to protect my head. It was like running the gauntlet. Farther to the right, bottles and probably some stones pelted down. Only now did I recognize the police squadron, armed with helmets, shields and truncheons, backing away.
I thought,
Bloody hell!
I realized coming out of the Korn I had inevitably got mixed up with both the police lines and the punks. I walked back in a half-bent posture. In my torn leather jacket, I still held my hands protectively over my head in fear. Finally, I reached the other side where the punks were. I associated the throwing movements with the Federal Youth Games. I was still terrified, I still saw objects flying over my head. A die-hard punk completely dressed in leather and with long spikey black hair, maliciously attacked me,
"You coward!"
In my panic, I did not respond. I ran a few metres further back into the crowd of punks. I was bent over and felt like a hunted animal. My pulse was up and I felt that my face was burning. Now I put my arms down again and walked briskly and upright to the end of the street, which was overcrowded with punks. My legs felt like rubber. Many of the punks sat down on the street and seemed disinterested in what was happening on the other half of the street. These punks were clearly in the majority. The shock that this die-hard punk with the black hair had given me was still a bad feeling in my bones. He sounded familiar to me, as if it were the punk called Rotzig or another of the die-hard punks from Kiel that were lost in Berlin[3]. Now I considered picking up a bottle myself in order to throw it towards the boys in blue. I managed to control myself. Besides, my bladder was full of urine, and I was afraid that a shit of fear could slip out. Chaotic conditions prevailed throughout Kornstrasse. The punks and the few skins here formed no groups, they acted more like footballers before a penalty shootout – they were partly standing, partly sitting and exhausted, but highly concentrated on refreshing themselves with drinks for the final act.
I walked a few feet, was disoriented, stopped, looked around, saw faces, saw eyes, saw mohawks. I remembered that I originally wanted to pee. How could I forget that?
My bladder was nearly overflowing. I could have pissed on the side of the road or up a wall, but I just wanted to get away from here, I finally left Kornstrasse and looked for a suitable place. I found a side street. It already smelled strongly of urine. There were piss stains everywhere. The road was slightly sloping so that the urine ran down the asphalt. A punk girl was just sitting in this street doing her little business. Here again, I didn't dare to have a wee. I found a byway and started to pee. I don't know if I went to Kornstrasse again. If at all, I looked down this chaotic street only for a short moment. For a while I didn't meet up with my friends. Later on I somehow got back to the station, but don't ask me how. I must have met Gerd near the station, because I remember him telling me,
"The whole station is full of skinheads from ... and ... !"
He listed several cities which the local skinhead scenes had come from, probably including some Dortmunders. When I walked past the station, I saw almost only skins, but they seemed friendly enough. Suddenly, for some reason, I became violent. This feeling built up inside of me. Sometime later I found myself to the right of the station building, where there was a small, mobile fast food restaurant whose hatch was locked. I wasn't alone anymore – several drunken and violent punks had joined me. Anyway, suddenly the penny dropped and we rampaged the snack van, tore up the hatch, shook the van and threw objects at it. Suddenly we noticed that the thing was not properly anchored. We pushed the snack van, which made it give way at the rear, so we pushed again. We exerted rhythmic pressure and made the wagon swing. Meanwhile, we had to take care that we wouldn't get buried beneath the van. At the end, the snack van crashed backwards as if in slow motion. When it was clear that the thing would tip over, I left the scene in the direction of the station and heard only the loud crash behind me. Ringo later claimed he was there as well and participated in knocking over the snack van.
As if by miracle, the four of us finally met again in the station area. The cop rally seemed to have been withdrawn from the station forecourt because it was more urgently needed at some other place. Instead, the roaring skinhead groups romped all around here. We probably seemed like an odd group because we consisted of two skins and two punks.
We wanted to go to the mall, and we were told that something might be going on there. When we got there, it looked like a ghost town. I remember the pedestrian zone similar to the corridor of a huge glass cathedral – above us the dark blue night sky, and to the sides large shop windows without their colourful interior lighting. They reflected mostly the sparse street lighting. It was a plastic, almost spooky atmosphere, a surreal scene. Someone had sent us to this ghost town. There should be something going on here. The bluish light seemed energetic, as if one spark was enough to ignite an inferno. At first we didn't even realize that the signs and illuminated advertising were switched off everywhere. We seemed to be the only ones here, and we were surprised. Only sometimes a single punk came out of some byway and wandered around. The mood in Hanover was like doomsday. It seemed to be the calm before the great storm.
We meandered a few metres through this ghost zone and were finally approached,
"Where's the action around here?"
"I don't know, we also thought something was going to happen here,"
we replied turning around to leave. We decided to walk back towards the station.
Everywhere we saw little groups walking around, crumpled cans, broken bottle pieces, puddles, demolished objects. Stray punks all over the place. There was solidarity and some form of correctness on the streets,
"Where are you from?"
"Where do you want to go?"
Every time a police transporter drove by, we'd look inside. More and more often we saw transporters with arrested punks racing by at high speed, sometimes with flashing lights and sirens, in order to criminalize the arrested at a collection point.
It was almost one o'clock at night and we finally decided to go back to Gerd's cousin's flat. We searched for a stop, walked around for a while as a tram without passengers arrived from the right, where really every window was smashed. We were shocked and had a fit of laughter. Bewilderment spread, because somewhere in the city violence raged on, probably still along Kornstrasse. Full of malicious joy we walked a few metres further, as we suspected a stop nearby. On our way we met a scattered group of punks wandering around.
"Moin, where are you from?"
Ringo greeted them.
I couldn't remember the city name they gave us. Anyway, the punk with red hair spoke in what was likely a Palatine dialect. He asked,
"Have you already got a doss?"
"Yes, we're sleeping at his cousin's!"
and Ringo made a pointing gesture with his head towards Gerd.
"But we can't take anyone else in,"
Gerd cried resolutely.
"Where are we supposed to go?"
asked the red-haired punk.
"Didn't you bring any sleeping bags?"
"No, we went to Hanover without them."
replied one of the completely broken-down group of punks.
"Why don't you go to the station and see what happens?"
Ringo replied.
"But there are a lot of skins running around there!"
said the red-headed punk.
"Or back to Kornstrasse,"
Hecker threw in. After this we parted ways.
Now we could get on an undamaged tram that drove in the right direction. Despite how late it was, the tram was full of punks. It reminded me of our tram rides in Kiel-Wik from the Belvedere bus stop to the city centre on Saturday afternoons.
Time and time again we heard the same questions,
"Where are you from? Where do you stay?"
We couldn't really help these exhausted punks either. Some even still kept asking us as we got off the tram,
"Can we come with you?"
Unfortunately, we had to rebuff them as well, because otherwise there would have been trouble with Gerd and his cousin. I thought several times about simply inviting a few punks to continue the party in the flat. I even asked Gerd once if we could take them with us. He remained persistent. When we finally reached the flat, we were exhausted, didn't talk much, maybe had a beer, put it aside half finished and went to sleep.
Much too early our first Chaos Days were over. The following morning we slowly made our way home. There was frustration and hangovers. Sunday was pleasant. We had a beer to fight our thirst and were puzzled about the best way to get to the hitchhiking spot. We intended to take the direct route to the autobahn. Gerd and I had already taken this route when we arrived at the outskirts of Hanover two days prior. I have almost no memories of the way back. We didn't do drugs, we weren't druggies at all. It must have been the constant adrenaline kicks that gave us – the young punks and skins – a hard time. Those kicks and the booze had totally exhausted us. I still had the smell of soap and beer from the selfmade punk hairstyles in my nose. On the second and third day this mixture smelled very dirty, and to this day I still associate the freedom of punk with this fragrance.
I don't remember how we got out of Hanover. We must have taken some kind of tram or city train again. Maybe we bought tickets out of fear of the ticket inspectors and masses of policemen.
We split up into groups again: Hecker and Ringo, Gerd and I. We must have found the right hitchhiking spot right away, probably an access onto the A7. I vaguely remember at the spot we rediscovered fresh and intelligent punk graffiti and scribblings on the back of the traffic signs and on pillars that caricatured the fate of the hitchhikers. Someone must have picked us up out of pity. The route certainly went off through the Elbe tunnel. Gerd and I finally arrived in the middle of Neumünster. We wandered around town for a while. It was late Sunday afternoon and it was getting colder. Suddenly we met Hecker and Ringo again, who also had only made it to Neumünster. The joy was great, we hugged and cried several times,
"Kiel is alive!"
and
"This is Neumünster, not Kiel!"
and other punk slogans. One of us surprisingly still had some money, and we sat down in the "Postkeller", a pub in the city centre. Here we slurped our beer and slowly started to reorient ourselves. We couldn't afford a train ride anymore, and we weren't sure where we should hitchhike from. We took it all as it came until Ringo suddenly said,
"In case of emergency, we'll sleep in the squat!"
"Oh, there is one here?"
"Yes, somewhere in the city centre, I think."
As if called, a freaky hippie squatter appeared next to us, who lived in the only squatter's house in Neumünster. He had a small, fat, white dog with him, which he lovingly called "Pig". We found it wicked how the squatter kept shouting "Pig" to summon his small, fat, white dog. Ringo had a long talk with him. As young punks and skins we always regarded long-haired squatters with extreme suspicion and healthy distrust due to the drastic situation in Kiel.
Finally, the hippie said,
"Okay, you can stay in the House."
We followed him and "Pig". "The House" wasn't too far from the Postkeller. As we passed through the gate of the rumbled house, we felt relieved to have found a place to stay for the night. The house was deserted. To our surprise, even punks lived here. However, all of them were still in Hanover. Only the long-haired one had stayed here to look after the house, as it was feared that the cops could have raided it during the Chaos Days. We had two rooms with double beds at our disposal. We could tell by the furnishings that punks lived here. Above one bed hung a painted bass guitar. We were so exhausted that we immediately lay down on the mattresses. I covered myself with a leopard patterned blanket.
We slept reasonably well, two of us on the first and two on the second floor. "Pig" kept turning up. We heard the long-haired guy coughing several times and shouting "Pig".
The following morning we got a coffee, asked the squatter for a suitable hitchhiking spot, thanked him politely and immediately set off. The long-haired one recommended Kieler Strasse to us. Ringo and Hecker had suddenly disappeared. Gerd and I arrived at Kieler Strasse, stood at the B76 to hitchhike via Bordesholm to Kiel. A woman took us along, who could have been our mother.
Back in fucking Kiel we realized how broken and overtired we were. I had to pick up my bike with the camping equipment from Vielmann in Pries Village. Luckily, nothing was stolen. I'd just left everything in front of the apartment building. Vielmann's mother smiled at me surprisingly. I was not questioned by my parents back at home. They were convinced that my friends were camping with me at the Schlei. Nevertheless, my family life became more strained, as I seemed even more rebellious than ever. This in turn led to me being persecuted by my football opponents, not only because of my punk hairstyle and my provocative remarks. We drank on the weekends after the Chaos Days in great profusion. I was still frustrated despite the Hanover trip, because I had freshly failed the grade at school. In German and history I couldn't go beyond mark five.
Later we read an article in "Der Spiegel" (weekly news magazine) about the Chaos Days. We weren't allround-informed Spiegel readers, but we didn't want to miss this. In the Spiegel edition an interview with a punk was said to be printed. Back then in Hanover at the station I saw Kammkatz and Rochen with my own eyes sitting in one of the station halls. Several people later told us that Kammkatz gave the interview to Der Spiegel. I saw the photos, read the article, I'm certain I read the interview with Kammkatz. I was even convinced that I had seen the photo of the two Kiel punks. Also in the clique everyone talked about the photos and the interview – even the people who were not in Hanover. Years later, however, when I retrieved the aforementioned Der Spiegel from the cellar of Kiel University, I found the article about the Chaos Days, saw all the photos of the skins and punks, but saw neither a photo of Kammkatz and Rochen, nor an interview with one of the two. There was no interview at all with any punk to read. Instead I thought I recognized the punk with a mohawk from Nuremberg in one of the photos, who had collapsed at the concert in the Korn next to us. I wondered how this mass deceit could have come about. We all saw the Spiegel article in question right after the Chaos Days. When we talked about it, we agreed that we really saw and read the alleged interview. We were probably in some kind of collective intoxication – just euphoric and permanently drunk teenagers who were manipulated by the consumerist terror of the advertising industry and political babble. So it can only have been a rumour that had spread step by step like a kind of popular etymology. Strange that we could be so wrong.
In the short term our short trip to Hanover was important to the punk scene. Nevertheless, I still ask myself whether my visit to the 1983 Chaos Days ruined my school and football career or whether the reactions of my environment were primarily responsible – at school and on the football pitch – these had a lasting influence on me. Our outsider role in school was even more acute after the Chaos Days. Who knew about our Hanover trip?
Only many years later I was able to find out which bands were performing on the Chaos Days in the Korn on that Saturday. It was indeed Daily Terror, Die Alliierten and a band called Phallus I'd never heard of.
[1] „Was kann ich denn nur machen, was kann ich denn nur tun? Soll ich mit den Bullen raufen oder soll ich mich besaufen?“ (Verlorene Unschuld – Sinnlos, German punk band, Berlin, 1982), © Verlorene Unschuld
[2] „Frei sein, besoffen sein, Terror muss dabei sein! Bomben bauen, Waffen klauen, den Bullen auf die Fresse hauen!“ (Slime – Bullenschweine, German punk band, Hamburg, 1980), © Slime
[3] Many young men from Western Germany went to West Berlin at that time because they could not be drafted for compulsory military service.
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