Reading Socialist Cowboys

In their book of the same name, released earlier this year by Suhrkamp, author duo Friedrich von Borries and Jens-Uwe Fischer give the low-down on East Germany’s own Wild West. The former GDR is described as a reservation for more than mere games of cowboys and indians. This is namely a homeland for politically correct fans of Red Indian Studies, for leggings-weaving folk-art collectives, ‘Soviet Red Indians’ and cowboy victims of class struggle. Alongside Red Indian existence as a means to drop out of GDR-society in search of freedom, situations presented in Socialist Cowboys also reveal undercover secret policemen in Red Indian camps. In addition to the fascinating findings of in-depth research on Red Indian existence in the former GDR and beyond, the book makes very entertaining reading, thanks not least to cowboys’ target practice on a DAB beer-can range in the deepest East. At this reading from their work in the ‘Die Schöne Stadt’ gallery, von Borries and Fischer will review how the GDR perceived this aspect of America.