In the book "Red Metal", historian Nikolai Okunew tells the story of the GDR metal scene. The Stasi and the People's Police scrutinised and fought the actually apolitical metal scene in a variety of ways. Due to the progressive deregulation of the event market, the responsible authorities had largely lost control, especially around concerts. Metal fans were welcome guests for many private organisers, but not for the local representatives of the security apparatus. Some popular groups were maltreated with IM, who gathered knowledge that was used to "break up" bands. The best-known case here is that of singer Detlef Wittenburg from the Erfurt band Macbeth, who was persecuted and imprisoned by "conspiratorial" means. Scarred by his prison experience, he died by suicide in 1989. Fan clubs that deliberately organised themselves outside the FDJ were also targeted by "smashings".

Metal fans rarely wrote about their activities, which is why Okunew's book is largely based on Stasi records, which were mobilised for an everyday history of the 1980s and make clear the tension between dictatorship and pop culture in which many young people in the late GDR lived.

A co-operation between the Bautzner Straße Dresden Memorial and the DFG project "Polyphony of Homeland" at the TU Dresden.

With the kind support of the Saxon State Commissioner for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship

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Admission free.