Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany / Edition 1

by Uta G. Poiger

Overview

In the two decades after World War II, Germans on both sides of the iron curtain fought vehemently over American cultural imports. Uta G. Poiger traces how westerns, jeans, jazz, rock 'n' roll, and stars like Marlon Brando or Elvis Presley reached adolescents in both Germanies, who eagerly adopted the new styles. Poiger reveals that East and West German authorities deployed gender and racial norms to contain Americanized youth cultures in their own territories and to carry on the ideological Cold War battle with each other. Poiger's lively account is based on an impressive array of sources, ranging from films, newspapers, and contemporary sociological studies, to German and U.S. archival materials.

Jazz, Rock, and Rebels examines diverging responses to American culture in East and West Germany by linking these to changes in social science research, political cultures, state institutions, and international alliance systems. In the first two decades of the Cold War, consumer culture became a way to delineate the boundaries between East and West. This pathbreaking study, the first comparative cultural history of the two Germanies, sheds new light on the legacy of Weimar and National Socialism, on gender and race relations in Europe, and on Americanization and the Cold War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520211391
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/03/2000
Series:	Studies on the History of Society and Culture , #35
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	1640L (what's this?)

About the Author

Uta G. Poiger is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1. AMERICAN CULTURE IN EAST AND WEST GERMAN RECONSTRUCTION

2. THE WILD ONES: THE 1956 YOUTH RIOTS AND GERMAN MASCULINITY

3· LONELY CROWDS AND SKEPTICAL GENERATIONS: DEPOLITICIZING AND REPOLITICIZING
CULTURAL CONSUMPTION

4· JAZZ AND GERMAN RESPECTABILITY

5· PRESLEY, YES-ULBRICHT, NO? ROCK 1N 1 ROLL AND FEMALE SEXUALITY IN THE
GERMAN COLD WAR

EPILOGUE: BUILDING WALLS

Notes
Bibliography
Index