• 1 See Bodo Mrozek, Jugend – Pop – Kultur. Eine transnationale Geschichte (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019), p. (...)
• 2 I discuss the repercussions of these events in a newspaper article: Bodo Mrozek, “Aktion Steinschla (...)

1The early 1960s were relatively calm compared to the previous decade, during which clashes relating to rock 'n' roll and negative social stereotypes associated with the labels ‘Halbstarke’, ‘teddy boys’, and ‘juvenile delinquents’ constantly made the headlines. For a short while, it seemed as though adults adopting youth dances, such as the twist, had consigned the troubles of rock to the past, but towards the second half of the 1960s, the media reported several public order issues. These included, among others, the ‘Beatlemania’ that – according to the contemporaries – spread like wildfire across Europe, the United States, and as far as Japan. Fights between Mods and Rockers broke out in seaside resorts in the south of England, while in Paris a mass concert announced as the ‘Nuit de la Nation’ (held on the city’s Place de la Nation) spiralled out of control.1 This article restricts its focus to discussing the Rolling Stones tour which, in autumn 1965, became a focal point for media, police and political debate in Germany.2 I discuss the reception of the concert more than the band and their music, which are already sufficiently well known, and, in so doing, I draw on police reports and press articles from the months immediately after the event.

• 3 “Stones Dragnet! Police riot squads ready for action,” Melody Maker, September 5, 1964, p. 1.
• 4 Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave, Anti-Rock: the Opposition to Rock 'n' Roll (Boston: Da Capo Press, (...)

2The Rolling Stones’ tour was organised by the youth magazine Bravo, following the example of its French counterpart Salut les copains, which, two years earlier, had organised the concert in Paris at Place de la Nation in collaboration with the radio station Europe 1. Bravo’s tour included concerts in Münster, Essen, Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg. It was preceded by alarmist reports about the Stones’ reputation, on the one hand, and events linked to their concerts abroad, on the other: in Ireland, fans had invaded the stage; it transpired that during their tours in the United Kingdom, the band nicknamed the ‘Wild Ones of Beat’ travelled in windowless vans along secret routes as though on a ‘military operation’3: in Blackpool in England, in Belfast in Northern Ireland, in Halsingbord in Sweden, and in the American city of Lynn, incidents had taken place leading, in some cases, to the intervention of police dogs and police officers armed with water cannons.4

• 5 ‘Tick im Hirn’, Der Spiegel, n^o 37, 1965, p. 122.
• 6 See ‘Die “Steine” rollen auf uns zu’, B.Z., September 9, 1965; ‘Bindet die Stühle an!’, Quick, Sept (...)
• 7 See Bodo Mrozek, Jugend – Pop – Kultur, p. 641.

3Before the Stones’ German tour, the popular newspaper Bild had declared that the group’s ‘main objective’ was ‘hysteria, fainting, and turmoil’.5 The Berlin newspaper B.Z. predicted that Berlin-Charlottenburg’s Waldbühne, an open-air stage in the shape of an amphitheatre dating back to 1936, should ‘expect anything and everything,’ while the magazine Quick ran the title ‘Tie down the chairs!’ and stated that they feared ‘the worst.’6 Even Bravo promoted the event by means of hype and superlatives: the publicity and tickets promised the ‘hardest band in the world’, with the slogan ‘Things are going to really heat up!’7 After the event, these expressions would come to be considered prophetic.

• 8 Memorandum on the arrival of the English band ‘The Rolling Stones’ in Berlin on September 9, 1965, (...)
• 9 At Hotel Sachsenhof on the Nollendorfplatz. See ‘Die “Rolling Stones” wohnen im Hilton’, Bild-Zeitu (...)
• 10 Ibid.

4From the outset, preparations included a large police operation. When the five young Brits stepped off the aircraft at Tegel airport on September 15, substantial measures had been taken to ensure security on the runway. Only a few hand-picked guests – a dozen people closely connected to the organisers and a few reporters – were allowed to approach the musicians as they left the airport’s military zone via an entrance usually closed to the public, with special authorisation from the Commandant of the French sector in Berlin.8 A bus then took them straight to their accommodation at a secret location. Misinformation had deliberately been leaked to the press claiming that rooms had been booked in the city centre. In reality, the group were discreetly housed in Grunewald, a sparsely populated area on the outskirts of Berlin, largely covered in forest.9 The group then took a top secret route through the Berlin backstreets to get to the pressroom of the publisher Springer, where a press conference was held, having only been announced a short time before. The convoy also included unmarked cars to ward off any potential fans in vehicles, but everything went according to plan. 10

• 11 See the Report of the Schutzpolizei command S1, Berlin, 16 September 1965, p. 3, Polizeihistorische (...)
• 12 Ibid.

5All the way through to the evening, fans continue to flood into the Waldbühne without incident. The venue was entirely sold out. With almost 21,000 people already crowded inside, several thousand fans who had not been able to get tickets pressed up against the entrance.11 At 8pm sharp, the Berlin groups opening the concert began to take to the stage, one after another. They included the Team Beats Berlin and Didi and his ABC-Boys, famous for their German adaptations of Beatles hits. The main concert was scheduled to begin at 9.30pm.12

• 13 See the Report on the execution and experience of the police measures (note 7), p. 13.
• 14 Ibid., p. 6.
• 15 Ibid., p. 7.
• 16 Ibid.

6The Berlin police had taken a range of precautionary measures, including the deployment of 357 officers, 12 mounted officers, and 30 dogs.13 Task forces and ‘substantial reinforcements’ were on stand-by next to the stage.14 Plainclothes surveillance officers were also present and a space was ready to hold any potential prisoners.15 But it was clear that no major public order issues were expected because equipment was limited to ‘uniforms, protective visors, and batons’ with no helmets or riot shields.16

• 17 ‘Welcher Spieler hat uns in der Hand ? Eine Betrachtung von Wolfgang Fietkau’, Blickpunkt, n^o 143, (...)
• 18 Police Report on the events at the Waldbühne on September 15, 1965, sheet 2.

7By 9.10pm, it was clear that this would not suffice. The first bottles had started to fly outside the venue. A little earlier, the first isolated cases of ‘police battoning’ had been reported, to prevent groups of ticketless fans from forcing their way inside. Larger groups were also ‘dispersed’ using fire hoses and a few youths were apprehended and placed in the space for prisoners. The events within the venue were also meticulously documented. From 9.10pm onwards, the atmosphere started to ‘become heated’. The first firecrackers were thrown, along with some objects including shoes and underwear. According to one press report, the stage was littered with ‘orphaned’ pieces of lingerie.17 Around 9.15pm, the police report indicates an initial ‘surge in tension before the arrival of the Rolling Stones’.18A mere six minutes later, the report describes how the situation escalated.

• 19 Schutzpolizei S 1, n.d.., n.p., PhS 3.43.3.
• 20 Note on the ‘Rolling Stones’ concert on September 15, 1965 at the Waldbühne, September 8, 1965. PhS (...)
• 21 See the Report on the execution and experience of the police measures, p. 6.
• 22 See the following interview with someone who participated in the clashes: ‘Wenn man da mitten drinn (...)

8The band had only been playing for ten minutes when several dozen fans climbed onto the stage to join the musicians. An initial police intervention cleared the stage, although not without ‘the use of batons’, and, after a short pause, the group was able to resume playing. But only twenty minutes later, the organisers stopped the concert.19 Around 9.50pm, the spotlights that had been flooding the stage with bright white light were turned off.20 This lighting had been chosen based on experiments conducted in jazz concerts, which seemed to show that fans’ emotions could be channelled and literally ‘cooled down’ by white light. In the Waldbühne, though, the police report testifies to the reverse effect: ‘in the glare of the spotlights, they [the audience] lost all inhibitions and felt as though they were the “photogenic focus” of all attention.’21 When the spotlights were suddenly turned off, at the organisers’ request, to signal to the audience that the show was over, many of them panicked as they were suddenly plunged into darkness.22 Recorded as occurring at 10pm, the ‘end of the event’ was disorderly, as the report states:

• 24 See ‘Wenn man da mitten drinne is […]’, op. cit., p. 7.
• 25 See the Report on the execution and experience of the police measures, Berlin, September 23, 1965, (...)
• 26 Ibid.
• 27 Annex b3 to S 1 524/65 of September 23, 1965: ‘Abschrift des Kommentars von Matthias Walden über de (...)

9The extent to which this destruction was deliberate remains up for debate. Certain accounts report that some of the audience climbed onto the benches and jumped up and down on them in rhythm, whilst shouting in chorus for the concert to continue. These wooden benches, designed only for people to sit on them, gave way beneath the weight and when the first planks were smashed to pieces, some fans started ripping up more, either caught up in the excitement, according to some, or out of anger at the brevity of the concert and at police use of batons, according to others – causing similar disturbances as during a Bill Haley concert at the Berlin Sportpalast six years earlier.24 The young band’s repertoire was still limited and the concert was not scheduled to last more than half an hour anyway, but, as the police report concedes, the end of the show was ‘more than premature for some of the fans, who were in a state of complete ecstasy’.25 Shortly after this abrupt end, ‘to avoid further destruction, the evacuation of the Waldbühne’ began around 10.15pm ‘with the use of batons’.26 A television journalist, who witnessed the events from the press gallery, described them in terms similar to those that would be used by a war correspondent, stating that, despite all the noise, it was still possible to distinguish ‘the sharp cracking sound of the destruction of the benches, dogs whining and barking, the crowd shouting and whistling, the injured crying for help, and the shattering of glass.’ 27

• 28 See Verlaufs- und Erfahrungsbericht über den polizeilichen Einsatz, S. 13.

10The next day, the police report recorded a heavy toll and some of these figures would later be revised upwards: 89 detentions, 61 injured given first aid, 28 injured treated as outpatients, 26 injured police officers – 6 of whom were hospitalised –, one injured horse, one urban train wagon destroyed (S-Bahn), and 300,000 Deutschmarks of material damage sustained by the Waldbühne. 80% of the venue’s wooden benches and 90% of its wooden barriers were destroyed.28

• 29 Ibid. p. 6.
• 30 Bravo, n^o 41, 1965, cited in BRAVO. 1956-2006: 50 Jahre Jugendkultur, edited by Teddy Hoersch (Muni (...)
• 31 Report on the execution and experience, p. 7.
• 32 See letter from Kindler und Schiermeyer publishers to the Police Prefect dated September 1, 1965, P (...)
• 33 See Bodo Mrozek, Jugend – Pop – Kultur, op. cit., p. 265-273; Thomas Grotum, “Die Bill-Haley-Tourne (...)

11The morning of September 16, the Waldbühne was not the only thing in tatters: according to certain commentators, the same was true for the image of beat music, of Anglo-American rock, and of a portion of the country’s youth. A new debate about the state of that youth began. Police spokespersons expressed strong criticism of the event’s organisation, pointing to the failings of the security services.29 Bravo magazine, which had organised the concert and so was the target of these criticisms, defended the event against newspaper commentaries trying to ‘lay the blame for what had happened on the Rolling Stones’.30 The police also came under pressure from the media. In defence of their strategy, police leaders pointed to the effects of alcohol but also to the ‘systematic propaganda of the tabloid press’, which had been ratcheting up the tension for weeks with sensationalist headlines as though hoping to provoke clashes.31 In reality, Bravo’s publishers had contacted the police before the concert.32 All security measures had been discussed beforehand by representatives of the organisers with the police and the inspectorate in charge of the Waldbühne. The police therefore could not use surprise as an excuse, especially not after the precedent set by the destruction of West Berlin’s Sportpalast during Bill Haley’s concert in 1958.33 A virulent debate then ensued between the concert organisers, the media, the police, and politicians, about who was principally to blame and all the interests involved.

• 34 Martin Morlock, ‘Girlie Action’, Der Spiegel, n^o 39, 1965, p. 157.

12In addition to the responsibility borne by the press, a police spokesperson underlined that of the music itself, moving away from the prior conclusions reached by the foremost German police psychologist, Rolf Umbach, for whom the fans’ contorted dancing – described by the media as ‘convulsive nodding and rhythmic swaying of long Jesus-like hair’ or as movements reminiscent of ‘someone milking a female elephant [sic]’34.’ – was merely ‘a harmless ritual outlet’.

• 35 See ‘Ventilsitte’, Lexikon zur Soziologie, edited by Werner Fuchs et al., 2^nd rev. edn (Opladen: We (...)
• 36 See the following chapter: Alexander Mitscherlich, ‘Die Idee des Friedens und die menschliche Agres (...)
• 37 « Let’s go, let’s go… Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen über Beatmusik », Kontakte. Zeitschrift für musisc (...)

13The notion of ritual outlet was borrowed from ethnology, in turn inspired by psychoanalysis. The function of such practices is to ‘evacuate natural aggression’ in a controlled environment, in order to ward off more serious harm. Such ritualised situations can be seen in traditional April 1^st jokes or ‘orgiastic festivals’, such as Carnival, also considered as ‘moral holidays’.35 In these interpretations, it is above all male aggression that is ‘tamed’ in this way. Far from stigmatising rituals connected to concerts or sports events and viewing them as factors leading to agitation, this interpretation has progressively given them moderating and stabilising qualities.36 However, other researchers came to more alarming conclusions. In 1968, the West German magazine Kontakte published an article entitled ‘Do you want total beat?’ paraphrasing Goebbels’ 1943 speech on ‘total war’ at the Berlin Sportpalast and citing a musical education specialist from Bremen, Gotho von Irmer. Drawing on research conducted on goldfish at the Max Planck Institute, she warned about the danger of beat music impairing cardiac rhythm. As in one of the execution methods used in Ancient China, this imbalance could even lead to ‘death by music’.37 Politicians used these arguments to call for a ban.

• 38 Agency Bulletin ‘Berliner Polizei fuer Verbot von Krawall-Veranstaltungen’, n.d., typescript, PhS 3 (...)
• 39 During the 57^th session of September 23 and the 58^th session of October 7, 1965.
• 40 Note on the urgent question of the CDU group on the prevention of scenes of violence and vandalism (...)
• 41 Minutes of the debates published in Polizei Schau. Zeitschrift für die Berliner Polizei, October 2, (...)
• 42 Ibid., p. 15.

14Immediately after the events at the Waldbühne, the Berlin chief of police called for a ban on beat music concerts, with the support of the city’s Mayor.38 Finally, this uncontrollable concert was also debated in the Berlin parliament.39 It was asked whether reports about the potential threat should not have been taken into account and whether it would not have been better to ban the concert from the outset.40 When a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) representative argued that an example should have been made, by punishing the youths who were arrested, a representative of the Liberals objected that the water cannon could not ‘distinguish the guilty from the innocent’. He argued against any ban on the grounds that, in his view, the State should prohibit as little as possible.41 The socialdemocratic senator for youth and sports also made a measured declaration, reminding ‘the elders here present’ that ‘during the Roaring Twenties, he had indulged in strange dances and his parents had had trouble understanding his behaviour’.42 The representatives used the example of the concert to debate their parties’ conceptions of youth and security policies, with the result that a ban was put to a vote but finally defeated.

• 43 Ska., ‘Harter Test für Waldbühnenbänke’, Die Welt, January 6, 1967; see H. J. Bünger, ‘Stadtrat “ra (...)
• 44 See Report on the experience of police measures relating to beat music concerts, sheet 9, 15.

15It is true that due to problems with their insurance, the Waldbühne remained in ruins for so long that it was not able to host another beat music concert during the following years. Thanks to pragmatic measures, the venue was eventually suitably equipped for rock concerts, with wire fencing that was impossible to climb and metal benches that could take the weight of many spectators.43 Drinks were now served only in paper cups that could not be used as projectiles.44

• 45 Ibid., p. 2.
• 46 Ibid., p. 7.
• 47 Ibid., p. 3.
• 48 Telegraf, October 30, 1965.

16As the Rolling Stones’ tour also went to other cities in West Germany, debates about the public order issues linked to concerts did not only occur in Berlin. In Hamburg, only plain clothes officers had been used, some of whom were dressed as young fans in order to be able to marshal the crowd if necessary.45 Motorbikes proved more effective than horses, which tended to be too sensitive to the noise of the drums and firecrackers. This solution was even more advisable because ‘youths were drawn to everything to do with technology and admired the audacity and skill of the motorbike riders’.46 For the first time, audio and visual recordings were used to provide solid evidence but also for purposes of police training.47 In Essen, unconventional methods were used as described in one report, for example covering the front of the stage with black soap so that any fans trying to climb up would slide back down again under the jeers of the crowd!48

• 49 Telex sent to the Schutzpolizei command, September 22, 1965, PhS 3.43.3.
• 50 At the Civic Center in Baltimore, this ban remained in place until 1970; See: Linda Martin and Kerr (...)
• 51 ‘Rolling Stones machen keine Musik – nur Lärm’ (with the Associated Press agency), Berliner Morgenp (...)

17The question of banning concerts was also debated at an inter-regional level. Bremen city services and police force asked to consult the files of their colleagues in Berlin in order to examine the conditions for banning the concert of the ‘so-called beat-band, the Rolling Stones’49. This ban had already come into effect for concert halls in Cleveland and Baltimore, while nearly fifteen other cities in the United States had decided on a temporary boycott of rock concerts in the name of public safety.50 As for the city of Munich, it considered applying a 14,000 Deutschmark tax on entertainment spectacles on the pretext that the shows by ‘young London singers’ were not about music but simply a form of popular entertainment.51

• 52 Request by the Wiesbaden Prefect of Police to the Berlin Prefect of Police, dated March 31, 1966, P (...)
• 53 Minutes of the 4^th meeting between officers of the Protection Police (Schutzpolizei) and Criminal I (...)
• 54 Rolf Umbach, ‘Beat Ekstase und Polizeieinsatz’, Polizeischau. Zeitschrift für die Berliner Polizei, (...)

18The event also sparked administrative reform. In May 1966, in anticipation of the Beatles concert, Wiesbaden police organised a working meeting on the topic of ‘modern police behaviour towards young people’, in which there was discussion of the lessons to be learned from the events in Berlin.52 The police were given training in crowd psychology, initially rejected by many of them as ‘brainwashing’ imposed by police prefects.53 In Munich, a jazz expert was invited to speak to senior police officers to give them an introduction, with the aim of raising their awareness of different sounds, with the help of a ‘very good Jazz band’.54

• 55 ‘Krawalle im Ausland’, Die Polizei. Fachzeitschrift für die öffentliche Sicherheit, n^o 56, 1965, p. (...)
• 56 ‘Extract from the Report of the Institute of Police, Paris,’ Bayer. Staatsministerium des Innern, M (...)
• 57 Ibid., p. 3-4.

19For comparative purposes, the German police also looked at similar events that had taken place abroad. Internal publications gave accounts of material damage sustained during rock concerts in Paris in 1961, clashes in the south of England in 1964, cases of fainting and ‘hysterical’ behaviour during showings of films about the Beatles that same year, as well as the destruction that took place during Beatles concerts in Australia and in San Francisco.55 The discussion around the Berlin Rolling Stones concert therefore reflected problems that had occurred in other countries, which were taken into account when examining its causes and led to an internationalised approach to police tactics. In order better to understand the events in Germany, the German police asked the French police for their files on the ‘Nuit de la Nation’.56 Transposing ‘American conditions’ in Germany sometimes exacerbated discussion, as evidenced by this report from the Federal German police in which the author remarked that means of ‘coercion’ such as ‘scatterguns’ had been used in the United States and concluded that ‘with the agreement of citizens concerned about public order, it might be wise sometimes to use more draconian means to restore public safety and order’.57

• 58 See: ‘Die Waldbühne im Wiederaufbau. Nur noch seriöse Veranstaltungen in den nächsten Jahren’, Der (...)

20Things did not reach that stage, however, and nor were beat music concerts banned generally.58 Nevertheless, the problems in Berlin considerably slowed down the future development of open-air rock concerts in Germany, which were generally criminalised in somewhat excessive discourse from the media, police, politicians, and academics alike.

• 59 See Claude Chastagner, De la culture rock (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2011).

21The incidents that took place during the Rolling Stones’ Berlin concert demonstrate in an exemplary fashion how the emergence of new forms of culture in the 1960s did not occur without conflict.59 While different actors tried to add to the disreputable image of the Stones before the concert, presenting them without hesitation as the ‘hardest group in the world’, to set them apart from the ‘nice’ Beatles, the media then only accentuated the desired effect. This was also due to the fact that, in this particular case, the publisher of the main Berlin tabloid newspaper was also the organiser of the concert. The violence also took place in reaction to the police intervention, which was in part unnecessarily aggressive, and as a result of logistical organisation and material conditions that were entirely unsuited to the new format required by a rock concert – as was the case in Paris with the ‘Nuit de la Nation’. In the debate that ensued at Berlin’s Municipal Parliament, elected officials from across the political spectrum all referred to on-going debates about so-called changes in values among the youth of the time. They also took up the topic of the fear of delinquency, dating back to the previous decade, in relation to rock 'n' roll and fuelled by demographic data suggesting societies were becoming ever younger. In their analysis of the concert, the organisers and the police alike participated in a transnational debate and reacted to rock-related events partly in line with new standards. The discourse of criminalisation came to an end and the rock concert became recognised as a cultural event. Once again, then, the 1960s emerge as a period of transition (‘Schwellenzeit’, Reinhart Koselleck) in the establishing of an increasingly transnational youth pop culture in the second half of the twentieth century.