Karls Enkel, Wacholder, Beckert & Schulz - Hammer-Rehwü (1994)

Wolf Biermann in the 1960s and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel and Steffen Mensching in their group Karls Enkel in the 1980s both  exposed the shortcomings of socialism in the GDR by reinvigorating a relationship tho the state´s literary and revolutionary heritage ("Erbe") in their work. While Biermann was criminalised outright for his political directness, the lesser known Wenzel and Menschin achieved a more tongue-in-cheek historical ambiguity in their work, which for the most part escaped the wrath of the censors.

At the same time, as Stasi files bear testimony, the secret police was well aware of the game that Wenzel and Mensching and their song-theatre ("Liedertheater") group Karls Enkel were playing. While Wenzel and Mensching´s own individual poetry collections appeared with the Mitteldeutscher Verlag, albeit only after long delays and protracted discussions with the publishers, the texts of their Liedertheater productions were never published in the GDR; most have remained a well-kept secret amongst the initiated few.

In the Hammer-Rehwü of 1982 the key concepts of Erwin Piscator´s famous proletarian revue of 1924, the Roter Rummel, were turned on their heads in order surreptitiously to parody the actual socialism of the 1980s. Whereas the Roter Rummel propagated distinct political morals and was used to support the Communist Party before the elections of 1924, the Hammer-Rehwü was consciously anti-ideological. If the hero of Piscator´s revue was the proletarian wsorker, the hero of the Hammer-Rehwü was the clown who parodied the glorified image of the worker. This was not lost on the audience who on the live video recording can be heard to roar their appreciation.

The popular "Hammer-Revue" of Karls Enkel, Wacholder and Beckert & Schulz from the year 1982 was only released as a recording in 1994, after the fall of the GDR.

Karls Enkel, Wacholder, Beckert & Schulz - Hammer-Rehwü (1994).
(320 kbps, cover art included)