Praise for Paul Hockenos's Berlin Calling:
"Berlin Calling can serve as a Baedeker for those eager to visit Berlin and to experience its still lively spirit for themselves."
—John Rockwell in the New York Times
"The timeliness of Hockenos’ intelligent analysis of the effect of a wall on a people and their culture is uncanny. Here, Berlin-based Hockenos uses music as the lens through which to understand the subcultures, countercultures, evolutions, and devolutions that echoed through a West Berlin isolated by a wall..."
—Booklist (starred)
"Hockenos's insightful book captures the history of [Berlin’s] subculture... detailing them with sympathy and an analytic eye... Hockenos illustrates this work with photos and posters that stimulate the mind and delight the eye. "
—Library Journal (starred)
"Berlin Calling is an invaluable history of the divided and then reunified city. West Berlin, with its bars that never closed and hard narcotics practically on tap, beckoned and inspired Bowie, Iggy, Brian Eno, and Nick Cave. An untold tale until now is that of the punks, anarchists, dissidents and yes, even neo-Nazis, who rebelled against totalitarian rule in the east. I know of no other book that tells their story. Hockenos has made a vital contribution to the cultural history of post-WWII Europe. A must-read."
—Gillian McCain, co-author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
"No city has seen more tumult and disruption in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than Berlin. Paul Hockenos takes a deep insider’s look at the cultural forces that have transformed and are transforming Berlin, and act on creative cities, for better and for worse, across the world. A must-read for anyone who is interested in the challenges posed by the reurbanization and gentrification of the world’s great cities."
—Richard Florida, University of Toronto, author of Rise of the Creative Class
"An extraordinarily gripping insider’s guide to the past and present of this unique, shape-shifting city. Berlin Calling also offers savvy hints as to its intriguing possible futures. This is the book every Berlin aficionado needs to own."
—Frederick Taylor, author of The Berlin Wall
"Can unruly artists change the world? Or do they just provide the soundtrack to history? The Berlin of the 1980s is famous for two things: a wild counterculture and the surprising end of the Cold War. Paul Hockenos, who knows the city inside out, brings them together in a fast-paced, sometimes astonishing story of underground clubs, squatters, and dissidents."
—Brian Ladd, author of The Ghosts of Berlin
Praise for Paul Hockenos's Free to Hate:
"A pioneering and readable account of the rise of the extreme right in contemporary Eastern Europe."
— The Washington Post
"Hockenos provides the best English-language account of how a neofascist underground developed in the self-avowed antifascist state."
— The Progressive
★ 04/15/2017
In 1985, Hockenos (Free To Hate), philosopher in training, stepped off a train in West Berlin with only his savings and works by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in his duffel. He quickly became a habitué of the rich subculture found, rubbing shoulders with the squatters and rockers, graffiti and performance artists, and other nonconformists drawn to Berlin. When the Wall fell in 1989, the subsidies that had bought the time and space to experiment with new social and artistic arrangements ended. Hockenos's insightful book captures the history of that subculture and the adjustments made after the government collapse, detailing them with sympathy and an analytic eye. A flood of oversized personalities cross the scene, including musician David Bowie and his transgender muse Romy Haag, industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, charismatic anarchist Silvio Meier, and Warhol-inspired artist Thierry Noir. VERDICT This wide-ranging book will appeal to everyone from music devotees to history scholars. In addition to looking at history from a different perspective, Hockenos illustrates this work with photos and posters that stimulate the mind and delight the eye.—David Keymer, Modesto, CA
2017-03-15
An introduction to the countercultures of Berlin.In the years before the Berlin Wall came down, West Berlin, writes American journalist Hockenos (Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany, 2007, etc.), was "a sanctuary for contrarians looking to lose themselves, to search and reinvent." East Berlin, too, "sheltered a bohème every bit as raw and inventive as [West Berlin's], perhaps even more so." Dissent took many forms, "from sporting punk coiffeurs to communal living," each one subject to reprisal. In his new book, the author offers a love letter of sorts to both halves of the city. He describes the "broad society of new wavers and punks, queers of all types," and the artists, musicians, and squatters who created the countercultural life, whether above- or belowground, of both Berlins. Hockenos, who has spent most of his adult life in Berlin, divides the book geographically: he begins with the West, moves on to the East, and, at the end, includes a slim section on the "new" Berlin, the city of reunification. Despite those divisions, the narrative is largely unstructured and rambling. The author moves loosely from one topic to another, never digging deeply enough. He introduces us to many colorful characters—including fashion designer Danielle de Picciotto, French street artist Thierry Noir, and actress and musician Christiane F.—but doesn't stick with any one of them for long. Hockenos also relies on cliché, a habit that doesn't suit much of his subject matter—e.g., artistic innovation. A random sampling: "sowed the seeds," "a thorn in the side," "started a ball rolling," "showed him the door," "when push came to shove"—not to mention the too-frequent use of the phrase "do-it-yourself." The author's loyalty and love for Berlin are evident and may well be contagious, but he is short on analysis and insight.
