Workshop: “Unser Leben ist der Inhalt”- German-language fanzines

“Unser Leben ist der Inhalt”
German-language fanzines. A workshop.

13.–14. March 2025
Archive for Alternative Culture and Archive of Youth Cultures, Berlin

Organized by Noran Omran (Erlangen) and Erika Thomalla (Munich) 
 
In the countercultural scenes of the westernized world, a new heyday of self-publications emerged from the late 1960s onwards. Assembled in a do-it-yourself style, therefore seemingly amateurish, usually published at irregular intervals, at first glance not designed for longevity, in a variety of formats, journals were created that were made by the members of a scene for its members: We are talking about journals that have been known since the 1930s in the USA and England and since the mid-1950s in the German-speaking world under the portmanteau word fanzines (cf. Nicolaus 1999, 17f.; Kleiber 1997, 47f.).
Largely unnoticed by their antagonists in the so-called establishment and mainstream and barely heard in the mass or established publishing and press houses, a large number of mostly short-lived journals emerged with the formation of diverse countercultures and subcultures in the German-speaking world (cf. Emig 1971). They were produced by self-publishers and small publishers of individual journalistic and literary scene members and distributed by hand (cf. Daum 1975,5). Despite divergent, sometimes contradictory ambitions, the countercultural patchwork of political, social and cultural scenes share a vehement rejection of the established mass media (cf. Kraushaar 2008,37) and a high culture that is perceived as elitist (cf. Bandel 2019,308–311). In addition, many magazines share the ambition of creating an alternative press that wants to distinguish itself from a dominant public that is perceived as hegemonic (cf. Daum 1981,42f.).
German-language fanzines are constitutive for the establishment and maintenance of counter-publics in German-speaking countries in the second half of the 20th century. As journal-like archives (cf. Podewski 2023), they preserve the present of different political and cultural currents and social spheres that existed simultaneously in a heterogeneous coexistence. Their creators are often themselves members of a subculture, insiders and chroniclers who have extremely “specific knowledge” – from music, culture, literature, spirituality, sexuality, political views to individual people – the list could go on and on, which is why, in addition to the term fanzine, terms such as egozines, comic fanzines, artcore fanzines, literary fanzines, punk and hardcore fanzines circulate (cf. Büsser 1997, 28-36; cf. Kleiber 1997, 62–64). Fanzines are places of experimentation. They combine and collage heterogeneous materials from other magazines and newspapers, try out new forms of sound, network local scenes through gossip (Thomalla 2023) and develop their very own expertise with regard to the objects or phenomena they focus on. This expertise is expressed not only in reviews or reports, but also in fan fiction (Jenkins 1992). The analysis of fanzines promises far-reaching insights into the self-image, knowledge, language, personal composition and organizational forms of countercultures and subcultures since the 1960s. When Klaus Abelmann wrote in his 1980 fanzine Gegendarstellung „Our life is the content. [Unser Leben ist der Inhalt] […] That is the difference to any magazines/newspapers”, then the potential of fanzines for a cultural history of the underground is named. While this potential has long been recognized with regard to English-language fanzines in the USA and Great Britain – for example in the works of Chris Atton (2001), Stephen Duncombe (1997), Henry Jenkins (1992) and Matthew Worley (2015) – their German-language counterparts have hardly been researched. So far, German-language fanzines have mainly received attention in youth culture research (cf. JuBri-Forschungsverbund 2018) and two interdisciplinary studies by Jens Neumann (cf. 1997; 1999) provide helpful overviews.
The workshop „Unser Leben ist der Inhalt“. German-language fanzines aims to take a closer look at the extensive collection of German-language fanzines. By evaluating materials from the Berlin Archive of Youth Cultures and the Archive for Alternative Culture, among others, the workshop will explore specific political and aesthetic programs, target groups, forms of communication and presentation of fanzines. On the other hand, the workshop is also interested in the production and distribution processes, reception movements, the relationship between privacy and publicity and the – often pseudonymous – authorship of the authors.

Program of the Workshop

  • Atton, Chris: Alternative Media. London 2001.
  • Bandel, Jan-Frederik: Underground, 304-325. In: Baßler, Moritz / Schumacher, Eckhard (eds.): Handbuch Literatur & Pop. Berlin / Boston 2019.
  • Büsser, Martin: Music magazines and fanzines in Germany, 17-44. In: Neumann, Jens (ed.): Fanzines. Scientific reflections on the topic. Mainz 1997.
  • Daum, Thomas: The 2nd culture. Alternative literature in the Federal Republic. Dissertation. Mainz 1981.
  • Daum, Thomas: Ghetto, springboard, base. On the self-image of the alternative press since 1968. Hamburg / Munich 1975.
  • Duncombe, Stephen: Notes from Underground. Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. London / New York 1997.
  • Emig, Günther: Aufruf zur Eroberung der Bibliotheken, pp. 39-43. In: Gehret, Jens (ed.): Gegenkultur Heute. The alternative movement from Woodstock to Tunix. Amsterdam 1979.
  • Fraser, Nancy: Rethinking the Public Sphere. A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. In: Social Texts 25/26 1990, pp. 56-80. Jenkins, Henry: Textual Poachers. Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York / London 1992.
  • Kleiber, Stefan: Fanzines. One of the last alternatives, p. 46-58. In: Neumann, Jens (ed.): Fanzines. Scientific reflections on the subject. Mainz 1997.
  • Kraushaar, Wolfgang: Theorie und Ideologie der 68er-Bewegung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pp. 37-50. In: Skenderovic, Damir / Späti, Christian (eds.): 1968 – Revolution und Gegenrevolution. New Left and New Right in France, the FRG and Switzerland. 1968 – Révolution et contrerévolution. Nouvele gauche et Nouvelle droite en France, RFA et Suisse. Basel 2008.
  • Nicolaus, Jörg: Fanzines – History, significance and perspectives, pp. 11-28. In: Neumann, Jens (ed.): Fanzines. Even more scientific observations on the medium of subculture. Mainz 1999.
  • Podewski, Madleen: Magazines as ‘small archives’, pp. 97-108. In: Scheiding, Oliver / Fazli, Sabina (eds.): Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung. Bielefeld 2023.
  • Schmidt, Christian: Meanings of Fanzines in the Beginning of Punk in the GDR and FRG. An Approach Towards a Medium Between Staging, Communication and the Construction of Collective Identities. 3 pp. 42-72. in: Volume! 5:1 2006. https://journals.openedition.org/volume/636 (accessed: 14.04.2024).
  • Sülze, Almut: Research with fanzines. In: JuBri-Forschungsverbund Techniken jugendlicher Bricolage (ed.): Szene, Artefakte, Inszenierungen. Interdisciplinary perspectives. Magdeburg 2018, pp. 3-32.
  • Schwanhäußer, Anja: Style revolt underground. Alternative culture as an agent of postmodernism. Leipzig 2023.
  • Subcultures Network (ed.): Ripped, torn and cut. Pop, politics and punk fanzines from 1976. Manchester 2018.
  • Thomalla, Erika: Underground Home Stories. Pseudonymous gossip in pop journalism around 1980, in: Lili. Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics 53/1 (2023), pp. 55-66.
  • Worley, Matthew: Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976-84: While the World was dying, did you wonder why? In: History Workshop Journal 79 /2015, pp. 76-106.

  • funded by the DFG
  • with the kind support of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
  • in collaboration with the Humboldt University Berlin and the Archive of Youth Cultures