World History

appalachiablue

(41,127 posts) Wed Dec 16, 2020, 06:34 PM Dec 2020

'Swing Kids' In Nazi Germany, Jazz Music Loving, Non-Conformist Youth 1930s, 1940s

Last edited Wed Dec 16, 2020, 08:54 PM - Edit history (1)

- In the late 1930's and World War II Germany, young fans of Jazz and Swing Music, collectively known as the Swing Youth (in German, the Swingjugend) were a group of teenagers that didn't conform to Nazi standards. Rather than taking part in the state-approved Hitler Youth, this group listened to Jazz, danced Swing, and protested the massive restriction of personal freedom in Nazi Germany.
Music in this video. National History Day Nationals Level. Senior Individual Documentary.
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- Trailer, 'Swing Kids' movie (1993) Christian Bale, Kenneth Branagh.

Wiki. The name Swingjugend was a parody of the numerous youth groups that were organised by the Nazis, such as the Hitlerjugend. The youth also referred to themselves as Swings or Swingheinis ('Swingity'); members were called 'Swing-Boy;, 'Swing-Girl' or 'Old-Hot-Boy'.

Counter-culture: During the Nazi regime, all the youth (aged 10- 17) in Germany who were considered to be Aryan were encouraged to join the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens. The leaders of these organisations realized they had to offer some attraction in the area of social dancing to recruit members. Instead of adopting the popular swing dance (because it was viewed as degenerate and tied to the 'damnable jazz'), they resorted to the new German community dances. This proved to be unsuccessful, and instead of embracing the Hitler Youth pastimes, city girls and boys crowded the swing dance joints. This seemed to be the case particularly in the town of Hamburg, where the swing scene was huge. These teenage hoppers were known as Swing-Heinis, a name the authorities called them..

The Swing Youth used their love of swing and jazz music to create their sub-culture with one former Swing Kid Frederich Ritzel saying in a 1985 interview: "Everything for us was a world of great longing, Western life, democracy – everything was connected – and connected through jazz".

The Swing Kids danced in private quarters, clubs, and rented halls. These adolescents dressed a little differently from the others who were opposed to swing. For example, boys added a little British flair to their clothes by wearing homburg hats, growing their hair long, and attaching a Union Jack pin to their jacket. Additionally, as a reflection of their Anglophilia, the 'Swing boys' liked to carry around umbrellas whatever the weather and to smoke pipes. Girls wore short skirts, applied lipstick and fingernail polish, and wore their hair long and down instead of applying braids or German-style rolls.

A police report from 1940 described the Swing Youth as follows:

The predominant form of dress consisted of long, often checked English sports jackets, shoes with thick light crepe soles, showly scarves, Anthony Eden hats, an umbrella on the arm whatever the weather, and, as an insignia, a dress-shirt button worn in the buttonhole, with a jewelled stone.

The girls too favoured a long overflowing hair style. Their eyebrows were penciled, they wore lipstick and their nails were lacquered.

The bearing and behaviour of the members of the clique resembled their dress.

One of their German idols was Johannes Heesters, an actor specialised in operettas. The Swingboys admired his pale face and combed long black hair and tried to copy his attire.

This group consisted mostly of teens and young adults from the upper-class homes of Hamburg...

- Read More, Connection to The White Rose resistance group; Arrests of SwingKids, Prisoners in Concentration Camps, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingjugend

- The White Rose, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose