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Based on pop cultural motifs from the USA and USSR, the project made the transfer to Germany and posed the question of the extent to which both in the 1950s/1960s and today rowdy behaviour of young people can be influenced by socio-political upheavals (in this case: German reunification), or whether youthfulness already has a potentially dangerous status and in this respect social upheavals are less strongly inscribed in their behaviour.

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The project included basic research into four content areas:

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a) dealing with East or West Berlin in terms of housing quality

b) East Berlin youth of the 1960s

c) leisure time behaviour of the East Berlin youth generation from 1985 to 1992

d) East Berlin youth dealing with US-American and post-Soviet role models from pop-cultural youth culture.

 

A total of six individual interviews were conducted. Five of the six interviewees were born in East Berlin between '85 and '92 and grew up in Prenzlauer Berg (formerly East Berlin). Their professions today are in the fields of crafts, medicine, art, music and philosophy. In order to include an outside perspective in addition to these East Berlin generations from the "reunification-years", who deal with the topic of hooliganism on a professional level in the broadest sense, namely on the level of criminal law with a focus on graffiti, a Berlin lawyer (born in 1961) was also interviewed. The interviews provide information about the constitution of a generation that grew up in Berlin before and shortly after reunification and whose leisure time behaviour shows both hooliganism and, more than 30 years after reunification, East Berlin influences in their views. As a widespread leisure behaviour of the interviewees, a strong proximity to US-American hip-hop culture, especially graffiti culture, was revealed. However, there was no evidence of a decidedly East Berlin influence. If one considers as central to hooliganism that actions are undirected, unidiological and spontaneous, then graffiti is a prime example of this, which according to many respondents is currently experiencing a renaissance.

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The basic principle for conducting the interviews was that the transcribed material could not be published in its basic form and could only be used anonymously in a later artistic transfer. This made it possible to overcome inhibitions in talking about leisure time behaviour in the criminal or semi-criminal area.

However, the following information can be provided in anonymised form:

Interview 1: 02.03.2021, Profession: carpenter, Hooliganism: graffiti artist, Year of birth: 1988, Gender: male, provenance: East-Berlin

Interview 2: 06.03.2021, Profession: musician, Hooliganism: graffiti artist, Born: 1987, Gender: male, provenance: East-Berlin

Interview 3: 19.03.2021, Profession: stage designer, Hooliganism: graffiti artist, Born: 1992, Gender: male, provenance: East-Berlin

Interview 4: 27.03.2021, Profession: phd student in philosophy, Hooliganism: trespassing, Year of birth: 1989, Gender: female, provenance: East-Berlin

Interview 5: 06.04.2021, Profession: medical doctor, Hooliganism: former aggravated damage to property, Year of birth: 1985, Gender: male, provenance: East Berlin

Interview 6: 23.04.2021, Profession: lawyer (including graffiti legal proceedings); Hooliganism: none; Born: 1961, Gender: male, provenance: West Germany with ancestors from East Germany

An anonymised artistic form of publication of the project is planned in 2024.