Get down to business! New Non-Fiction Books: The 1990s were characterized by a quest for exhibitionism.

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This is one of those memorable dates that every person who is at least ten years old knows about: November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell between the GDR and the FRG. Millions of people are sitting in front of their televisions in bewilderment and see how people from the East rush unhindered to the free West. “In Search of Freedom” by singer David Hasselhoff (70) is a reunion anthem performed live by the American singer at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on New Year’s Eve to celebrate the new decade.

“Madness! Freedom! Madness,” writes Jens Balzer (54) in No Limit. “Just knows no bounds when a permed man allows himself to be lifted over a wall in a faucet basket.” For Balzer, Hasselhoff’s performance was a beacon of the early 1990s 1970s, “decades of freedom,” as the subtitle of his new book calls it, “No Limit” forms a trilogy with “The Unleashed Decade” (2019) about the 1970s and “High Energy” (2021) about the 1980s – standard works on the history of culture.

As usual, the German pop culture expert writes lucidly and lucidly about the events and achievements that people were engaged in between 1990 and 1999: the first mobile phones made you independent of your location, the nascent Internet provides an unlimited exchange of information, and on the new private women reveal themselves freely on television (RTL Tutti Frutti broadcast). Many get trendy tattoos (often in the form of butt horns) and flaunt them at the Street Parade, which has been held since 1993.

“The pursuit of exhibitionism and the transformation of oneself into an unmistakable brand” is what Balzer sees as characteristic of the last decade of the 20th century. If the 1970s were characterized by innovation, and the 1980s faded away due to fear of the impending apocalypse, then “the 90s seem to want to erase the difference between innovation and nostalgia,” writes Balzer. What seems to be the avant-garde now is actually the most innovative approach to archiving.

Yes, looking back, the 1990s seem to be one of the freest decades since World War II — the pandemic and Putin are still a long way off. But Balzers shows how Putin had already solidified the neo-Nazi scene in East German Dresden that had flourished in the 1990s, how the Yugoslav war darkened the entire decade, and how the death sentence on Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–1989) by writer Salman Rushdie (76) fueled Islamist terror all over the world.

“The 1990s ended on September 11, 2001,” writes Baltzer, “on the Tuesday when Islamist terrorists flew two passenger planes into the two towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York. Postmodernism “everything goes”, which in the building of the World Trade Center designed by the American architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1986) was elevated into a utopian expression of a limitless world, finds its limit in attacks.

Source: Blick