Heimerich gets a good thrashing from Rotzig
We were strolling through the city again with a small group of skinheads, and as usual we had been celebrating a little and talking nonsense. Towards the evening, it was still bright, we moved again in the direction of Bergstrasse. Suddenly there was a big commotion. We arrived one after the other at the platform of the gasoline station at the corner of Muhliusstrasse, where resolute punks waited in a rage. The punk, Rotzig, who we believed to be in Berlin as a military service refugee, suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the platform and purposefully attacked Heimerich, as if he had planned to in advance. That damned Rotzig, dressed all in black with a leather jacket, with dyed black hair and black boots, appeared as if he had just driven up from Hell to do the Devil's work. He was regarded as the most unpopular Kiel punk of all time. Heimerich, who always behaved appropriately, had no clue what was going to happen to him. Rotzig, who was full of hate that day, rushed the last few metres to Heimerich. Rotzig had made up his mind to attack him and struck him without warning. He kicked and punched Heimerich until he, dependent on his wooden leg, went down like a wet sack. The skinhead with the wooden leg was not able to defend himself. Poor Heimerich had not even taken part in the skinhead meeting during Kiel Week. Zico, the die-hard punk, played his part in the evil deed and punched him as well. A small cluster of punks formed, to which the Mettenhofer Smike and Bonny also belonged. Heimerich had no chance to grab anyone whom he could pull to the ground while he was falling. Rotzig kicked him with his heavy boots like a madman. Meanwhile, I arrived late from the direction of Wilhelminenstrasse to the gasoline station entrance on Bergstrasse, just to see how poor Heimerich went to the ground and received a severe kicking. At first I didn't know what was going on as I was a good fifteen metres away. It took me a few seconds to understand the situation. The people standing close to the crowd didn't intervene. I don't know why Rotzig had only chosen Heimerich. I stopped for a moment, spellbound and shocked, not knowing how to react, when suddenly one of our group, Marius, courageously intervened and stopped Rotzig and the other punks from further disaster. Rotzig was totally hateful – completely enraged, almost in a bloodlust. He left just as infernally as he had hurried to the scene. He headed towards the gas station exit and turned right into Muhliusstrasse. The bouncers of Bergstrasse did not interfere. Only Marius had intervened. I caught the end of the action from the corner above, where I saw Heimerich finally struggling back to his feet and shambling away in the direction of the Kleiner Kiel pond. There was no further confrontation. We had to gather ourselves mentally as well as physically as a group. The punks seemed to have no interest in competing with the other skins. Rotzig probably disappeared to Berlin again afterwards. We'd had enough; we were frustrated and asking ourselves why this fucking punk had just chosen Heimerich, who in principle was the weakest member of our clique and was always friendly to everyone.
For a long time I had a bad conscience, because I had not intervened at the decisive moment. Why did I stop at the top of the corner, as if rooted there? Why didn't I attack Rotzig to knock him down? I never saw Rotzig again after that. I hoped that he died of an overdose or some other reason. I have to calm down again. When I think about it nowadays, it still makes me sick.
Frustration is spreading
It was a mystery to me how it could get that far; how group dynamics could seize us and pull us into a mental abyss. The clash with the punks was another ingloriously negative episode and, at the same time, a wake-up call. For me, what followed was a great awakening from this comatose state. I wondered why we had caused this shit and why I had not acted consistently against these right-wing tendencies.
I was sick and tired of the whole thing: meeting regularly with this group of skinheads to start trouble, drinking several times a week, contradicting others pointlessly for reasons of provocation, arguing amongst each other and with passers-by, brawling and causing mischief. When we were in the right mood, we rioted and smashed bottles – and that was on a children's playground. This had been going on for a good year now. We heard nothing other than our Oi! music, Cockney Rejects and a couple of English street punk bands. When we were drunk we incited each other; we were all mouth and tried to sing street punk anthems, although many of us did not know more than the refrain. We constantly tried to imitate our heroes from the movie A Clockwork Orange by integrating their vocabulary. We were always talking about Tolchocks, Gulliver, Em & Pe and the whole horror show until we sounded stupid.
In the beginning, we got along with a few characters from the local punk scene we met at the beer vending machine or at the Muhlius statue, but the overwhelming majority of the punks avoided us. There was less and less fraternizing. Meanwhile, I was fed up with the everlasting rumours in the punk and new wave circles. Some things were close to hypocrisy and character assassination. Despite the friction, several protagonists still shook hands with us. Many punks still worshipped Gonnrad and Radke, some also the Konz brothers, because they were legendary in punk times. Others couldn't believe what was going on and let things slide.
The situation threatened to get worse, because some punks had also fallen from grace in the skins' eyes, especially when they spread unjustified rumours or because they had wronged somebody from their own common circle of friends, by withholding borrowed clothes, records, musical instruments and other things. The chaos continued, but despite all of the mutual accusations, one thing was clear: there was no one in the punk ranks who used right-wing extremist sayings or anti-migrant slogans.
During my skinhead past, I wore a shaved head, which had since grown back. A few weeks after every visit to the hairdresser, my hair would grow too long again, especially for the ringleaders of the clique.
"You definitely have to go to the barber soon!"
they would say.
"Your hair is too long. You almost look like a punk."
"You need a new skin haircut. Get it cut again!"
These moments were celebrated endlessly. For almost a year I had been wearing my Docs with my bomber jacket (which was just a cheap one from C&A), or my blue Harrington, with a pair of jeans. The behaviour of the ringleaders and others had become far too rude to me. I was also tired of permanently having to raise objections. When I was tipsy and being incited by the others, I would hit back more often. I started to become brutal, just like my skinhead colleagues and all the others who were hanging out with us at the Ansgar playground. I disliked it when some of them unthinkingly talked down to migrants or when right-wing sayings slipped out of their mouths.
Those people did not want to be called right-wing, but they gradually introduced right-wing statements. It was a grey area and last but not least sad because that a young Persian, Alit, belonged to our clique. Some tried to tease "our Persian" Alit in order to check out his limit. It was never quite clear whether the provocations were meant seriously, but things started to get out of hand. In addition, there was the bitter realization that the Kiel skinhead scene had been transformed into a neo-Nazi scene by outsiders, especially due to people like Nazi-Gerd. The development did not happen over night. It was a gradual process, in which the skins were driven a bit further each time to take part in this melée. Where was that supposed to lead? It had gone too far. Our clique had fallen into disrepute everywhere. I had also learned that from outsiders. Therefore I decided to turn my back on the skins. The clique was an enormous, close-knit network, who arranged their meetings by telephone, although nearly everything was about getting pissed. If someone didn't join in completely, he had to justify himself and was discriminated against. After the recent events – the spoiled Kiel Week, the evening with the two right-wing extremist Bundeswehr soldiers on the Blü and the attempted brainwashing by Nazi-Gerd and the piss artist – it was high time to draw a line.
The decision to exit
I was devastated when it dawned on me how dramatic life had become in Kiel between punks and skins. However, I had to finally realize that we skins as a group had made a complete mess of things. None of this should have happened, especially not the bullshit during Kiel Week with Stidi's Skinhead Chaos Days. We should have fought the right-wing tendencies of some group members more consistently and bashed up Nazi-Gerd and the fascist piss artist immediately. I realized too late that it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life to get involved with Nazi-Gerd. We should not have gone with him to the Chaos Days in Hanover the year before. I always thought we could control his manipulation attempts and turn the tables on him, but alcohol and our idiocy got the better of us. Another evening came, on which we drank together and provoked each other as usual.
Later, our horde dragged themselves again in the direction of Bergstrasse despite the recent incidents. On the way, I once again quarreled with Stidi. We all knew that he did not even refrain from attacking his own brother, Mig. Finally, we reached the corner at the petrol station entrance on Bergstrasse. I still argued with Stidi. The others had walked quite a distance infront of us. Stidi, with mental problems and seriously manipulated political stances, was standing in front of me during our dispute, with his back to the parking lot of the petrol station. Suddenly, he attacked me with an insult face-to-face, which turned out to be the worst insult I had ever heard. The moment he had insulted me, it felt like I had lost my hearing. He turned around immediately and walked towards the staircase to the Hinterhof disco. I stopped at the top of the corner as if rooted in place and stared after him for a few seconds. I was incredibly shocked. I could not imagine that he would say such a horrible thing and insult me so much. I don't want to defend Stidi, but I suspect that he picked up this cruel, insulting word from one of the old Nazi henchmen during a verbal exchange on the street. It was so cruel that he surely couldn't have invented it by himself, but perhaps I am wrong. The word was so anti-Semitic and sexist that I don't want to repeat it out of respect for the discriminated groups of people. Seconds after he had said it, I turned around and decided to go to the bus stop. At that moment, I finished with the skinhead scene. I drove home, depressed, and slept off my hangover.
Suddenly, I was ashamed of everything that had happened in the recent weeks and decided not to meet the skinheads anymore. I turned my back on them once and for all – demolished, exploited and humiliated. An escalation had been looming for a long time. The aggressions of some protagonists were concentrated more and more on me. It was foreseeable that everything would become even more radical. I had to pull the ripcord now, even if I would have liked to remain a skinhead – England-style and working-class like in the early days – but not under these circumstances, not with what had happened. Now it was over.
The creepers
After this drastic experience with Stidi, I didn't want to be a skinhead anymore. I still had my shaved head, my bomber jacket and the cherry-red 14-hole Doc Martens with steel caps, which were almost worn-out from daily use. At Pfefferminz, where I stayed more often without the other skins, I sometimes met waver Koh from Schilksee. He revealed to me that he had a pair of black creeper shoes sitting around at home, which he absolutely wanted to get rid of, and offered them to me for a tenner. A few days later, I visited him in Langenfelde Street in Schilksee to try on his shoes. He lived in the same skyscraper as Zilvana; he lived on the first floor, she on the tenth. When I saw the shoes standing in the middle of the room, it was love at first sight. They offered me completely new future prospects. I took off my Doc Martens and slipped into the bulky, black suede creepers with ribbed rubber soles. The small, black studs on them also appealed to me from the start. The sole had already come loose in places and the smell was not great, but they fitted perfectly. I walked a few metres up and down Koh's room and they gave me a whole new feeling of walking. I pulled out my wallet, gave Koh the promised tenner, and we talked briefly about various subjects. I put on my Doc Martens again, packed the creepers in a bag (because I wanted to treat them at home first with a shoe deodorant), said goodbye to Koh and cycled back to Pries-Friedrichsort. I went back home and into the cellar, where there was a small shoe cupboard, and disinfected my "new" shoes with a shoe spray. From then on I wore a short-sleeved, checked shirt, turned jeans and the creepers. I put a button from ska band The Beat on my shirt. At Pfefferminz I met new people and was even invited to great ska parties. Tapes were recorded for me, but alcohol still played an important role in the future. I literally wore out the creepers in the weeks that followed. The black colour faded, and the soles completely detached. I tried to glue them several times with Pattex, but it didn't help.
I later bought myself a pair of cheap, grey pseudo-creepers in a low-priced shoe shop in Dreiecksplatz, but after a short time I found them so unattractive that I never put them on again. My involvement in the ska scene lasted only a few months.
Meanwhile, my hair got longer and longer. I sold my old bomber jacket to Mannek from Friedrichsort, the brother of Trabbel. Mannek also worked in the tank construction business. I soon separated the steel caps from my Doc Martens. I wore them a few more times before I threw them away. I sold my old skinhead records to Heimerich for a ridiculously low price, including all five Oi! samplers released so far.
The fight
The protagonists of the old skinhead clique heard from several sources that I had recently refused to cut my hair and was wearing Koh's old creeper shoes instead of my cherry-red Docs. For the skins, of course, that was a clear clash in styles.
I came to the conclusion that on one hand the punks regarded me as right-wing, because I had been walking around with a skin-haircut and a bomber jacket for almost a year, but on the other hand various skinheads and people from the right-wing scene called me left-wing scum, since I turned my back on the skins. Up to that point I hadn't managed to dissociate myself convincingly from the increasingly right-wing skins, for fear that all hell might break loose. So a final process of detachment had to take place, which should make clear to all parties that I distance myself from the radical people and radical thoughts, without running the risk of getting crushed.
Finally, a school festival took place at the Kiel School of Scholars near the city centre. I went to the celebration, because I suspected there may have been a few friends there. A DJ played dance music. For a moment I stood outside the entrance, when suddenly Stidi and Mig appeared. It was quite plain to me that something had to follow on the part of the skins, since I no longer spent any more time with them. Would they take revenge or even try to bring me back into line? When they saw me standing there, they immediately started to torment me. First they told me that my hair was much too long and asked why I now wear creepers.
"You have to go to the barber again. You're looking like a hippie."
"What kind of shoes are you wearing? Are you serious? You don't want to run up here with creepers, do you? Where are your Docs?"
"Why? Creepers are good shoes?"
I answered courageously.
I also had to answer the question of why I didn't show up with the clique anymore,
"Why don't you meet with us anymore? We already miss you."
"I'm shooting my own film now,"
I said resolutely.
I wanted to stand firm and not get involved in any discussion. My newly awakened self-confidence gave me strength. It was already dark outside when a hectic battle of words elapsed between Stidi and me. Suddenly, Mig jumped onto my back from behind and clung to me in a piggyback. I hadn't yet shaken him off when Stidi attacked me frontally. It only took a few seconds for a small cluster of spectators to form around us, consisting primarily of School of Scholars pupils from higher classes and party-goers who never missed an event. Mig released me, and someone from the crowd called upon him to stay away so that a one-on-one fight could develop between Stidi and me. We stood eye-to-eye facing each other. A fistfight broke out, an open exchange of blows in which the spectators spurred us on as if we were in a boxing ring. We both took direct strikes to our faces. After a few minutes we already had our first bleeding wounds. For me it was my nose again, for Stidi his upper lip was cut. The fight continued to the constant cheers of the spectators. I think I collected a lot of sympathy points simply because I was inferior in Stidi by stature. Throughout the whole fight, my main problem was that I had to strike upwards at an angle if I wanted to hit Stidi effectively in the head. Blows into his stomach area and to his chest did not seem to do anything, because he endured them without any hassle. As the fight continued, we hit each other in the face, without cover and regardless of damages. In my head, the will arose to stand strong and win the fight.
Meanwhile, after a continuous exchange of blows, we both had lots of cuts on our faces and were very blood-stained. Our lips and eyes were already heavily swollen an my right cheekbone had been hit. I didn't want to be the loser and tried to frighten my opponent, who was over half a head taller than me. I snarled,
"I will rip you to shreds!"
The exchange of punches continued, but I didn't give up so quickly. We both took further heavy hits. I felt the vibrations of his fist punching at my head. It was quite dark so I could hardly see my opponent or the spectators, who were standing around between the main entrance and the entrance to the auditorium. In spite of the darkness, I could see from the swelling and the blood that Stidi had taken a lot of damage as well. Soon we were exhausted from fighting, and each attack took more effort. The alcohol in our blood also contributed to the rapid decline of our condition.
From the comments of the spectators I believed that I was being regarded as the winner, but maybe they just wanted to motivate me. Apparently all but Mig were on my side, but the cheers also had their effect on my opponent. Stidi did not give in, quite the opposite. He continued to fight on. Soon each of my successful punches were rewarded with spontaneous expressions of sympathy and light applause.
In a boxing ring, the gong stops the fight after three minutes, but we were constantly hitting each other on the head for half an hour. It seemed to me we had been beating each other up for a full hour. Slowly, we began to communicate with each other. It was as if we realized that this brawl was pointless.
I asked,
"Had enough now? It's no use anymore!"
Stidi was slowing down and I asked,
"Shall we stop?"
That's when Stidi finally replied to me,
"Okay, let's stop. I'm not in the mood anymore."
Everyone seemed relieved when we finally separated, and the feeling arose in me that I had achieved something, namely to finally detach myself from the skins. I felt released, even if the price was a cut and bruised face. The skins let me go. I therefore retired from the Kieler skinhead faction, even though the procedure did not happen without bloodshed. I had finally fought my way out.
In the school building I washed the blood from my face and bunked off. Afterwards, I dragged myself with my smashed face to the Pfefferminz disco, where I had to wash the blood off my face and hands once more because blood was still running out of my nose. When the bouncers saw me, they wouldn't let me in. I first had to convince them. The Pfefferminz guests who saw me on the way to the toilet stared as if they had seen a ghost.
From the reactions of the spectators, and later of acquaintances of the clique, I recognized that I had succeeded; since no real winner of the fight was determined, I had been able to distance myself from the clique successfully once and for all. I had been able to reject the opponents and ringleaders. Nevertheless, my reputation remained damaged, and it didn't change much about the paradox that I was still regarded as a leftist to many skins, and as a rightist to some punks. However, I was able to collect a few more sympathy points with punks, wavers, goths and mods at that time, after the news about my brawl with Stidi had spread. A lot of people continued to eye me with extreme skepticism, but also with respect, because I had defied the others. At the same time, I was highly respected by many pupils in my age group in the neighbouring school where the brawl took place. Unfortunately, I was hated by many pupils of my own school.
When my old sports and geography teacher, Eder, the former Holstein Kiel trainer, noticed my smashed face on the first day of school after the brawl, he groaned in dismay, shook his head and said,
"Well, Shelter-Germany, what have you done again?"
My whole class was worried. My right eye was swollen shut for over a week. In the beginning it looked dark blue, but later it looked greenish. My swollen lip and the swollen bridge of my nose gradually subsided, and finally so did the right cheekbone. I did not go to the doctor, but suspected that I had suffered a slight concussion because my head hurt and was buzzing for days. Inside, however, I was proud that I had strength and endurance.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen