What measures did the GDR take against right-wing subcultures?

The youth subculture in the late GDR was largely anti-communist: East Berlin skinhead poses in his apartment (12.8.1990) -- image via Junge Welt

Interview with Stefan Wellgraf, Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin. Junge Welt, 16 January 2026. Translation and notes by Helmut-Harry Loewen.

Richard Malone: Your newly published book ”Staatsfeinde” ("Enemies of the State") deals with "right-wing subcultures in East Germany since the 1970s." A contribution to the current debate on reasons for society's rightward drift? [1]

Stefan Wellgraf: Much of the research in this area is party or survey research. This is clearly of great importance, especially given the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the subcultural and popular cultural contexts I have examined go beyond a party logic, and in some cases even stand at odds with it. At the same time, my focus on biographies and everyday practices yielded surprising findings. In this way, previous methods of explanation can be questioned and new perspectives are opened. In my case, for example, I noticed that the theories of the authoritarian character [2] did not fit my field of research in that no corresponding pattern emerged in the families of the former football hooligans I examined.

RM: So the "authoritarian character" that is sometimes identified as a breeding ground for fascism is not suitable for explaining, for example, the neo-Nazi street violence after 1990?

SW: It was a groundbreaking approach to understanding the attraction (Anzeihungskraft) of fascism, but the model was later transferred to East Germany in a rather mechanistic way, and the different historical and social contexts were not always sufficiently taken into account. Of course, authoritarian tendencies are still evident today – not only in the AfD, but also in political talk shows, at family celebrations and regulars' tables in pubs. However, this approach is rather a hindrance to understanding the East German skinhead and hooligan culture who often came from proletarian GDR families distant from the state. Many had previously been punks. Most of them were initially rebellious young people who, out of an attitude of provocation, felt attracted to the then fashionable right-wing subcultures of hooligans and skinheads. This attitude later solidified. As a result, they remained "enemies of the state" even after 1989. The associated self-images of non-conformism, anti-bourgeois and resistance offer opportunities for right-wing populist politics today.

RM: How did the authorities in the GDR take action against these right-wing subcultures?

SW: With harsh measures. In large parts of academia and the public, the claim still persists that the GDR authorities did not crack down hard enough on right-wing movements. After my studies in the archives of the Ministry for State Security, this claim is nothing short of absurd. There is almost no one among the numerous former hooligans and skinheads I interviewed who was not imprisoned in the GDR. If they were not yet enemies of the state, then they were later made into enemies. In addition to surveillance and repression, attempts were made to reach the young people through the Free German Youth (FDJ), but as the governing Socialist Unity Party’s cadre training ground, the FDJ never found a connection to the violence-oriented football supporters.

RM: In this context, the image of a supposed continuity in the "two dictatorships" is often used. The largely right-wing fan scene of the Berlin Football Club (BFC) Dynamo also does this in its own way, for example with the slogan "Grandpa with the Nazis/Father with the Stasi/and I with the BFC". [“Opa bei den Nazis/Vater bei der Stasi/und ich beim BFC”].

SW: Yes, but it's on an ironic shirt that makes fun of the prejudices of journalists and academics. There were no Nazi functionaries in the State Security, quite unlike in the West German security apparatus [3]. Both in East German families that were at some distance from the state and in East German families more closely tied to the state, there were also significantly fewer ex-Nazis overall than in the West German bourgeoisie. That is why the comparison with the student revolt of 1968 in West Germany, which was also understood as a rebellion of the youth against their own Nazi parents, does not fit. In the East German context, on the other hand, anti-authoritarian was not necessarily politically left-wing, since the state leadership saw itself as socialist. The "rebels" in the GDR did not experience a "march through the institutions" either, only one through the prisons. At home, people tended to unite against the state. The generational conflict that was mitigated as a result is

still evident today. Many of the subjects I interviewed had a remarkably good relationship with their parents.

Notes

[1] Book description from the publisher, Ch. Links Verlag - Aufbau Verlage, Berlin: “Beyond Authoritarianism: The Roots of Right-Wing Violence in the East. ~ Where does right-wing violence in the East come from? Since the 1990s, it has repeatedly been said that this is a consequence of internalized authoritarian GDR structures. Stefan Wellgraf, however, focuses on rebellious GDR youth who came into conflict with the state due to their anti-authoritarian tendencies and turned to right-wing subcultures in protest. Based on years of field research and archival studies, he examines how resentment against state elites emerged in East Germany and solidified after reunification. Using the biographies of former skinheads and hooligans, he shows how the ground was prepared for right-wing populism. An insightful book that turns common explanations of the East German right on their head and opens up entirely new perspectives on the roots of our political present.”

[2] One of the most influential theories of authoritarianism is “The Authoritarian Personality,” published in 1950 by the German philosopher and sociologist Theodor W. Adorno and a team of colleagues in California. Using a set of criteria by which to define, rank, and measure the intensity of personality traits rooted in childhood (authoritarian aggression, submissiveness to authority, conventionalism, superstition, rigid thought patterns, toughness, and so on), the theory positions respondents on an F-scale, where F stands for fascist. This model generated a vast research literature in the social sciences in the 20th century and massive output on Trumpism after 2016. See, for example, the research of Swedish scholar Magnus Lindén, “Trump’s America and the Rise of the Authoritarian Personality,” The Conversation, 16 September 2017; and Harvard University intellectual historian Peter E. Gordon, “The Authoritarian Personality Revisited: Reading Adorno in the Age of Trump,” boundary 2 (2017), 44(2): 31-56.

[3] On Nazis in the state security apparatus and other sectors of West German society, a recent article summarizes in some detail the results of a six-year study conducted by contemporary historians in Munich and Potsdam. See “’Rehabilitated’ postwar West Germany’s government was riddled with Nazis, study reveals.” By Robert Philpot, The Times of Israel, 13 December 2025. Among the findings: “During the first decade of the new

federal republic [1950-1960], two-thirds of those hired to work for Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had previously belonged to the Nazi party. Among the bureaucrats working for the chancellor, who was elected in West Germany’s first postwar elections in 1949, were lawyers who had played a pivotal part in the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws, administrators who had overseen the theft of property owned by Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and journalists and filmmakers who had worked in Josef Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry.”

~ Original article: Rechtsentwicklung. Wie ging die DDR gegen rechte Subkulturen vor? »Antiautoritär« war in Ostdeutschland nicht notwendig politisch links codiert, sagt Stefan Wellgraf. Interview: Richard Malone, junge Welt, 16 January 2026