Die Halbstarken (The “Half-Strengths”) - Greasers of a Divided Germany | Subculture Shock

Die Halbstarken (half-strong/half-strengths), or well the Halbstarke if you want to anglicize it, were a youth subculture in post-World War Two Germany (both East and West; along with parts of Switzerland and Austria later on*). Inspired by the Americana brought by occupying soldiers, and fuelled by rebellious attitudes at home and in films from abroad, these youths would be comparable to the American greaser or British Ted. Lasting from an unspecified period somewhere in the late 40s/early 50s up until their fading away sometime in the 1960s to other countercultural movements.

So who exactly were they? Well, my rusty B-level German language skills built by Rammstein, Neue Deutsche Welle and a bachelor's on the language and culture itself have made it a bit hard to translate. Luckily, with a few seconds set aside from some oddly-situated jokes, there's an answer for that and more in this episode of Subculture Shock.

Don't mind the Wolfenstein music, for some reason YouTube and other mediums do not have much for 50s (West) German music outside of classic schlager from that decade or stuff from the 1960s; not much for 50s rock, sadly, but Germany has made up for that gap since the 60s.

*We'll probably be covering the Swiss and Austrians as different groups in some video or another, both because of differing decades and parent cultures. We also threw in a handful of Swiss Halbstarken photos for some flavor; they're easy to spot, don't worry.

Disclaimer (because one isn't enough): We are not a group of professional researchers, at best we're people interested in the world around them and perpetual college students. We encourage all out viewers to use these videos as a stepping-stone to introduce themselves to whatever subculture the video above covers.

Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h...