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tetsabAnother link heavy post as I figure it makes the most sense to just point folks at the Flickr album I set up for this rather than embed All The Things, especially since I'm a week later than planned getting this up and over there is where you can best enjoy the crummy Google Translate. ;)
Right, yes, so as I said in the earlier post, Saturday I headed to the Runde Ecke (Round Corner building) for 12:30 for the Stasi exhibit on, as they called them: 'Negative Decadent Youth'. As explained in that summary they targeted subculture members in addition to church members and youth who were politically engaged. When it came to the subcultures they had a whole little classification table (in German with Crowd Favourite drawings of each type or in English if you'd like to read about the nefarious 'followers of "The Cure"'). They also attempted to keep counts of each, sometimes folding one subculture into another. Some of the displays elaborated a bit further on why the hippies, skinheads, metalheads, punks, and goths specifically attracted their attention (though, really, it didn't take much!).
On exhibit are document after document (scroll down for bad Google Translate) trying to figure out what these subcultures are or are up to (each of those are about goths: or is it the predecessor to the spooky kid?). These are supplemented by mug shots of goths, punks, and metalheads. To gather all of this they made site visits and documented what they found in addition to conducting interviews, monitoring mail relating to fan clubs and stealing the logs of Depeche Mode fans. Naturally, any sort of gathering by any of these groups was a great big No for them.
The tour didn't just focus on this special exhibit. We also got to go up to the index card "database" to see how they searched out all of this information about individuals before the computer age, toured the ephemera (including the communist ephemera), recovered sacks of records they tried to abruptly destroy (this was a last minute desperation move: before that they pulped tonnes for records once they saw the writing on the wall), and see how now we've been using the computer age to try and get them back together. All of what is left here is now critical for restitution efforts.
Unfortunately I already had unshakeable plans for the evening or I would have returned for the performance of a punk band the Stasi used to keep a close eye on who happened to be doing a one time gig there that day as well!
Like so many of the worst things in life the exhibit was both funny and depressing as all get out (funny for how ridiculous it all seems, depressing for how easy it is to slip back into a world like that). Protip for the future: if a Stasi-like org tries to recruit you as an informant against your friends you may be able to escape the duty by telling others of the attempt. The secret police like to stay secret and telling his parents is how one goth kid escaped being pulled into the spy job they wanted him for. Then he just had to contend with being blocked from higher schooling, travelling to certain parts of the city, and being followed around in general like any other person the Stasi took an interest in (there was also a display of camcorder footage of them driving around the streets recording youth hanging out).
In any case this was also a good taste of what would turn out to be one of the key themes of Prague: very obvious artifacts of resentment at communism. This includes a taxi stand flagging that it's there as a Museum of Communism promo and that if you want to be fleeced like you would be under that system just step inside one of the unlicensed cabs. The main train station also features the 'world must be made safe for democracy' Woodrow Wilson quote and when I crossed the Charles Bridge I had to step to the side for a stream of protesters to go by who seemingly wanted Andrej Babiš to step down in part because he was seen as a KGB collaborator.
Other less surprising themes of Prague are beautiful buildings and art (most of it by David Cerny and some of it more than a little Kafkaesque, in all senses of the word).
The last picture I took on the trip was the sun setting over Prague as I waited for the airport bus. I hope to go back one day and see the sun rise. :)
Right, yes, so as I said in the earlier post, Saturday I headed to the Runde Ecke (Round Corner building) for 12:30 for the Stasi exhibit on, as they called them: 'Negative Decadent Youth'. As explained in that summary they targeted subculture members in addition to church members and youth who were politically engaged. When it came to the subcultures they had a whole little classification table (in German with Crowd Favourite drawings of each type or in English if you'd like to read about the nefarious 'followers of "The Cure"'). They also attempted to keep counts of each, sometimes folding one subculture into another. Some of the displays elaborated a bit further on why the hippies, skinheads, metalheads, punks, and goths specifically attracted their attention (though, really, it didn't take much!).
On exhibit are document after document (scroll down for bad Google Translate) trying to figure out what these subcultures are or are up to (each of those are about goths: or is it the predecessor to the spooky kid?). These are supplemented by mug shots of goths, punks, and metalheads. To gather all of this they made site visits and documented what they found in addition to conducting interviews, monitoring mail relating to fan clubs and stealing the logs of Depeche Mode fans. Naturally, any sort of gathering by any of these groups was a great big No for them.
The tour didn't just focus on this special exhibit. We also got to go up to the index card "database" to see how they searched out all of this information about individuals before the computer age, toured the ephemera (including the communist ephemera), recovered sacks of records they tried to abruptly destroy (this was a last minute desperation move: before that they pulped tonnes for records once they saw the writing on the wall), and see how now we've been using the computer age to try and get them back together. All of what is left here is now critical for restitution efforts.
Unfortunately I already had unshakeable plans for the evening or I would have returned for the performance of a punk band the Stasi used to keep a close eye on who happened to be doing a one time gig there that day as well!
Like so many of the worst things in life the exhibit was both funny and depressing as all get out (funny for how ridiculous it all seems, depressing for how easy it is to slip back into a world like that). Protip for the future: if a Stasi-like org tries to recruit you as an informant against your friends you may be able to escape the duty by telling others of the attempt. The secret police like to stay secret and telling his parents is how one goth kid escaped being pulled into the spy job they wanted him for. Then he just had to contend with being blocked from higher schooling, travelling to certain parts of the city, and being followed around in general like any other person the Stasi took an interest in (there was also a display of camcorder footage of them driving around the streets recording youth hanging out).
In any case this was also a good taste of what would turn out to be one of the key themes of Prague: very obvious artifacts of resentment at communism. This includes a taxi stand flagging that it's there as a Museum of Communism promo and that if you want to be fleeced like you would be under that system just step inside one of the unlicensed cabs. The main train station also features the 'world must be made safe for democracy' Woodrow Wilson quote and when I crossed the Charles Bridge I had to step to the side for a stream of protesters to go by who seemingly wanted Andrej Babiš to step down in part because he was seen as a KGB collaborator.
Other less surprising themes of Prague are beautiful buildings and art (most of it by David Cerny and some of it more than a little Kafkaesque, in all senses of the word).
The last picture I took on the trip was the sun setting over Prague as I waited for the airport bus. I hope to go back one day and see the sun rise. :)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-19 11:33 am (UTC)I went to a Stasi museum in Germany and it was fascinating stuff.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-19 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-19 04:31 pm (UTC)I am so fascinated by this. Thanks for the run down! When I was there studying at the U of L in '98, my German prof was the widow of a Nicaraguan rebel who had claimed asylum in the DDR and then was eventually executed there for incitement. The exhibit at the time was of letters that had been intercepted and confiscated by the STASI, and some of his were stapled up there. We spent most of German class just listening to her talk about his life and how she became a vagabond for several years after his execution and then was finally re-hired by sympathetic peers at the uni after the Wende. What a history.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 01:15 am (UTC)2. The poor, abused apostrophe.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-25 05:06 pm (UTC)Another passage from the Skvorecky novel I just finished:
" 'The Beatles are profoundly reactionary,' he said enthusiastically. 'The content of their songs is banal and bourgeois - mostly about love - and their music is based on a suggestive rhythm that stimulates the passions. Thus they distract the attention of our youth away from the only serious problem confronting this society - how to wage class war.'"
All homework, all the time! The only purpose of any art was to heap praise upon the state. I am reminded of the Yes Minister quip that the only thing more boring than plays attacking the government are plays praising the government. And, as any school teacher will tell you, lecturing kids on how to behave is guaranteed to produce the opposite behaviour.
Apparently, stuff like this was more Revolutionary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUaYbfKZIiA