Ostrock: Popular music from East Germany

By the early 1970s, experimental West German rock patterns had crossed the border into East Germany and influenced the foundation of an East German rock movement referred to as Ostrock. On the other side of the Wall, these bands tended to be stylistically more conservative than in the West, to have more reserved engineering, and often to include more classical and folk structures (such as those established by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in their 1920s Berlin theatre songs). These orchestras often featured poetic lyrics loaded with indirect double-meanings and deeply philosophical challenges to the status quo. As such, they were a pattern of Krautropck. The best-known of these bands were Silly, City Keimzeit, The Puhdys and Karat.

Only a few individual songs, such as Am fester by city and Uber sieben Bruken muBt geh’n by Karat, found wide fame outside the GDR.