The most striking example of narrative role-play in the post-Biermann generation of "Liedermacher" in the GDR was that of Hans-Eckardt Wenzel and Steffen Mensching, who inhabited roles as clowns. Having begun in the "FDJ Singebewegung" with the group "Karls Enkel" in the late 1970s, they took the group to new heights of artistic experimentations in the early 1980s. In a state where the expression of "otherness" was a delicate matter, they spoke to a taste group of "Andersdenkenden" through the medium of the clonw´s mask. In the climate of censorship, the mask presented the possibility, as Wenzel himself put it, "auszusteigen ohne weggehen zu müssen" (Wenzel in an interview with Jens Rosbach, 1998). This temporary opting out was the implied narrative of Wenzel and Mensching´s songs, attractive for the frustrated intellectuals who made up their audience. Via the use of the clown masks and costumes and clownish antics Wenzel and Mensching took their audience into a world of surreal subversion where they could momentarily forget their poitical impotence. Supporters of reform, Wenzel and Mensching believed nonetheless in the ideals of socialism, and in this respect inhabited a socio-cultural milieu distinct from that of the dissident Prenzlauer Berg poets, who rejected the socialist cultural "Erbe" that so preoccupied Wenzel and Mensching in their songs, poems, and "Liedertheater" productions.
They achieved fame in the 1980s with satirical productions such as the "Hammer=Rehwü" and the "Da Da eR" clowns’ series. Due to the heightened sensitivity surrounding the GDR public stage they decided to abandon singing their own lyrics and to express themselves via texts from poets of the literary ‘Erbe’. Using a technique of musical and theatrical disruption, they constructed montages from texts by, for example, Goethe, Hölderlin and Heine, highlighting where these ironically clashed with the ideological rhetoric of the GDR state.
This literary montage approach has also served them well in the 1990s. Wenzel and Mensching’s "Aufenthalt in der Hölle", inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s "Une Saison en Enfer", reflects the disorientation of the early years of unification and forms a clownesque account of the conflicts of a new society of winners and losers.
In "Der Abschied der Matrosen", first performed in January 1993, Wenzel and Mensching again address the issue of the absence of the utopian ideals in which one could formerly seek sanctuary. They sang: "Jetzt gibt es ja nicht mal mehr die Flucht, / Du bleibst der Ewig Doofe. / Na dann, bis gleich. Mit voller Wucht / Hinein in die Katastrophe." Behind the irony there is socialist resentment, on a local level, at the GDRs assimilation into the Federal Republic, but also anger, on a global level, at the devastating repercussions of the "Sieger"-mentality on the developing world. The production finishes with a parody of "Die Internationale", emphasizing the artists´ view of people in general - not just East Germans - as refugees in an alien world: "Völker hört die Matrosen! / Ob an Bord, ob auf Grund / Die ewig Heimatlosen, / Die beißt zuletzt der Hund."
Tracklist:
1. ENTREE
2. STEUERMANN
3. LINKSOPTIMIST
4. MURMANSKER SHANTY
5. NA STAROWJE DRUSJA!
6. KLEINES CEVENNEN-LIED
7. MATROSENHOSE
8. DER ABSCHIED DER MATROSEN
9. KANONENSHANTY
10. SIE WERDEN KOMMEN
11. SEEMANNSFRAUENLIED
12. ZWEIUNDNEUNZIGSTES TRINKLIED
13. SE EQUIVOCO LA PALOMA
14. ARSCH HOCH,IDIOTEN
(192 kbps, cover art included)
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