Nietzsche's concept of heroic pessimism is certainly one of his most original. It dominates his early work, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872), and remains at least subcutaneously active in all his later works. In Germany, this concept was never understood. It has remained an intellectual stillbirth to this day: in the 19th century, the German intellectual world was strongly influenced by Hegel's optimism and the belief in historical progress, which carried over to Hegel's socialist followers. Nietzsche, however, not only rejected socialist ideas, but also all teleological concepts of history. But Germany remained firmly in the shackles of the salvation-history paradigm, the most unsavory post-war product of which was probably the Red Army Faction terror group and its apocalyptic logic in the 1970s. In Germany, pretty much everything was against Nietzsche's pessimism. And yet, in 1980, a peculiar kind of music popped up in a small time window in the country where people sang “Die Moorsoldaten” (“The Moor Soldiers”, a resistance song written by prisoners of the Börgermoor concentration camp in 1933) with sentimental self-absorbed fervor at anti-nuclear demonstrations: suddenly, there was punk. “No Future” was not a promise of salvation, and yet it was a salvation: the ugliest decade in cultural history, the 1970s, had been shot down, and the most gratifying thing of all happened—the idea of revolution had imploded.
Until 1980, Germany remained firmly in the shackles of the Hegelian-Marxist salvation-history paradigm, the most unsavory post-war product of which was probably the Red Army Faction terror group and its apocalyptic logic in the 1970s.
Someone had switched on the light and the emperor was suddenly recognized as naked before everyone's eyes: in the saturated Federal Republic of Germany of the 1970s, belief in the revolution was about as realistic as the Jehovah's Witnesses' desperate hope for the battle of Armageddon. And although everyone already secretly suspected this, no one had yet said so, and everyone continued to assiduously affirm the opposite. But we, who now had total insight, got off the horror trip with relief and became heroic (and hedonistic) pessimists. “Everything is broken, everything is in ruins, and I'm laughing”, sneered the German punk band Hans-A-Plast in 1979. It was our song, indeed our slogan, and that was our redemption.
However, punk was soon to give up the ghost. Punk had long since carried the germs of a deadly disease. Figures such as the unfortunate Campino (a fun-punk singer who had slipped into mainstream culture and commercialism) participated parasitically in punk's decay quite early on. It was all too much for the host body, which has been in a vegetative state for decades. But there is one thing that must remain to the great credit of the faded subculture: it was aware of its inevitable fate in the cultural-industrial machine from the very beginning.
“Everything is broken, everything is in ruins, and I'm laughing”, sneered the German punk band Hans-A-Plast in 1979. It was our song, indeed our slogan, and that was our redemption.
British punk band Crass's (1977-1984) slogan was “Punk is dead”. One of the historical merits of this pop-cultural movement was the unassailable insight that one can wholeheartedly reject and despise something, even hate it, without any obligation to offer a solution, without any reference to a future reconciliatory kingdom of heaven in which the Other would no longer be hell. Anyone who takes this reconciliation for granted has not experienced the leaden times. (And anyone who thinks of the Frankfurt School in this context—it too has been in a waking coma for eons—can count on my understanding, even if a lobster-guzzling Adorno in Frankfurt's stock exchange cellar restaurant can at best pass as a variant of hedonistic pessimism).
