Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Rolling Stone * BookPage * Amazon * Rough Trade

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence



"[A] riveting and inspiring history of punk's hard-fought struggle in East Germany." -- The New York Times Book Review



"A thrilling and essential social history that details the rebellious youth movement that helped change the world." -- Rolling Stone



"Original and inspiring . . . Mr. Mohr has writ­ten an im­por­tant work of Cold War cul­tural his­tory." -- The Wall Street Journal



"Wildly entertaining . . . A thrilling tale . . . A joy in the way it brings back punk's fury and high stakes." -- Vogue



It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery. The buzz-saw guitars, the messed-up clothing and hair, the rejection of society and the DIY approach to building a new one: in their gray surroundings, where everyone's future was preordained by some communist apparatchik, punk represented a revolutionary philosophy--quite literally, as it turned out.



But as these young kids tried to form bands and became more visible, security forces--including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi--targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and fired from jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned. Instead of conforming, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall.



This secret history of East German punk rock is not just about the music; it is a story of extraordinary bravery in the face of one of the most oppressive regimes in history. Rollicking, cinematic, deeply researched, highly readable, and thrillingly topical, Burning Down the Haus brings to life the young men and women who successfully fought authoritarianism three chords at a time--and is a fiery testament to the irrepressible spirit of revolution.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. vii)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• I Too Much Future (p. 7)
• II Oh Bondage Up Yours! (p. 77)
• III Combat Rock (p. 121)
• IV Rise Above (p. 191)
• V Burning from the Inside (p. 249)
• VI Disintegration (p. 297)
• VII Lust for Life (p. 333)
• Acknowledgments (p. 357)
• Bibliography (p. 361)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The Berlin Wall was difficult to cross physically, but some West Berlin radio signals got through. Starting in the late 1970s, East Berlin youths started hearing a new form of music-punk-played by Western bands such as the Sex Pistols. In a strictly regimented society such as East Germany, the kids inspired by this new music and the radical style that went with it represented a baffling and threatening form of social nonconformity. Mohr's book (originally published last year in German) chronicles the revolutionary movement that grew up around the East German punk-a movement pushed more and more into direct anti-government action by the activities of the state itself, as punks were targeted by police spies, arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned for simply expressing anti--authoritarian points of view. Mohr highlights the unique elements of the East German punk scene compared to the more familiar American and British narratives: a recurring theme is how, in contrast to the Sex Pistols' "No Future" slogan, punks felt oppressed by "too much future" in East Germany's overplanned society that offered youths no say in their mandated lives. A surprising element to the story is the unexpected alliance between the Lutheran church and the punk movement, as the church's "open work" missionary outreach efforts provided punk activists with sanctuaries to meet and organize as anti-government efforts grew closer to a boiling point. British narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies's reading is personal, warm, and passionate as he reads a story full of individual threads and snippets of oral history. VERDICT Readers of punk histories like Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me and John Doe's Under the Big Black Sun will find this title an exciting new perspective of Eastern bloc punk during the Cold War. ["Mohr pens an inspiring history of a punk scene that literally tore down a symbol of division and oppression. An excellent companion to Paul Hockenos's Berlin Calling": LJ 8/18 review of the Alginquin hc.]-Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In this lively narrative, music journalist and former Berlin DJ Mohr takes readers on a profanity-laden, up-close-and-personal tour of the punk rock scene of 1980s East Germany. He follows notable figures in the scene-"Major" (who was 15 in 1977 when she became, in Mohr's retelling, the first punk in East Germany), "A-Micha," "Colonel," "Pankow," "Chaos," "Otze," and others-and their associated bands as they evolve from a handful of disaffected youths influenced by outside radio and bootleg Sex Pistols albums to a relentless movement of politically minded revolutionaries determined to change a corrupt system from within. Mohr makes clear the punks weren't seeking a reunited Germany, just an East Germany where they'd be free to express themselves, yet their movement contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He chronicles the ongoing clashes between the East German authorities and several microgenerations of punks, describing a compelling war of subversion, persistence, attrition, and defiance, where every act meant to crush spirits and enforce conformity only helped to fan the rebellious flames. The short chapters and punchy prose, coupled with thorough research, give the reader a front-row seat to the events of the '80s. This take on punk evolution is engaging, enlightening, and well worth checking out. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* When punk emerged, in the late 1970s, its irreverent attitude in music and appearance was met with sneers in the mainstream and unbridled awe from young people searching for a way to express themselves. Yet while punk was an open cultural phenomenon throughout the West, the youth stuck behind the Berlin Wall in East Germany encountered punk only in quick glimpses of magazines and on radio waves from West Germany. By embracing punk, young East Germans rejected the obsessively and oppressively planned life the government mandated. In fact, to be punk there was to be an enemy of the state subject to interrogation, loss of income, searches, and imprisonment. Translator, editor, and former Berlin DJ Mohr energetically details the origins of East German punks down to the first female teen punk, nicknamed Major for all the safety pins she wore on her jacket. As other nicknamed punks encountered each other, they formed a movement aided, curiously enough, by church organizations, which were left alone by the state. Bands with pieced-together instruments recorded in DIY studios, they performed in basements, and no punk traveled alone for fear of being attacked. Mohr tells a frantic and exciting true story of music versus dictatorship, and the infamous wall it helped bring down.--Michael Ruzicka Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

How a forbidden punk-rock underground fomented rebellion against totalitarian East Germany.A translator and former Playboy staff editor and club DJ in Berlin, Mohr carefully documents a rousing, little-known Cold War story, showing how alternative culture developed in the Eastern Bloc in a similarly grass-roots fashion as elsewhere but for greater stakes. "The ethos of East Berlin punk," he writes, "infused the city with a radical egalitarianism and a DIY approach to maintaining independence." But during the 1980s, homegrown punks were seen as both a nuisance and threat, worthy of repression. Based in part on interviews with survivors, Mohr ably documents how regional small-scale punk scenes grew and connected nonetheless. From the start, he notes, "groups of punks started to attract attention from security forces everywhere they went." East Germany provides a vivid backdrop to the narrative. Conformity to state-supervised existence was enforced by surveillance and informants, so punks' embrace of abrasive music and fashion was inherently political. As the author memorializes one uncompromising early punk, "he had always hated the way his whole life was predetermined by the state." Despite Stasi harassment and harsh prison sentences for "antisocial" acts including graffiti and subversive lyrics, punks made common cause with socially conscious churches and developed illicit performance and taping networks. Despite the state's hostility, the punk movement was thus well-positioned to contribute to the civil unrest that fueled the Eastern Bloc's unexpected collapse. Mohr closes by documenting how the initial punk squatters blossomed into a mass movement that helped preserve East Berlin's dilapidated architecture. "Eastern bands," he writes, "died off quickly after the fall of the Wall.For Eastern punks, the original enemy had been vanquished." The author dives deep into a chronology of the ferocious early bands and committed scenesters whose rebellion carried steep risks. His writing focuses on their experiences and stays attuned to the punk ethos, only occasionally becoming rant-y or rambling.An appealing, lively cultural history worth reading in an era of corporate punk nostalgia. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.