Burning down the Haus

What Hacker News says

1. itsjustme2Jun 2022
   For those interested in some good history of the punk movement in East Berlin, I recommend the book Burning Down the Haus by Tom Mohr. Really gives a window into the courage, creativity, and motivation of the youth, and their oppression by the Stasi.
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2. mieseratteMay 2019
   If you find this era interesting, I recently read the book "Burning down the Haus"[0]. Most histories I've read of the region and era focus a lot on the mechanics or politics of it, but the book was interesting to me in that it made you aware of the changes, the ebbs and flows of the East German security-state over time as they fought against even harmless "dissidents" and the abuses (and to a lesser extent incentives) to address those. Now I'm not bleeding-heart, but a lot of the tactics really start to look familiar. Modern America isn't that far removed from the Stasi.

   [0] - https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-east-g...

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3. jhbadgerMay 2019
   If you liked "Burning Down the Haus" you'd probably like Ian Walker's "Zoo Station" which was written actually at the time -- Walker was a British journalist who lived in Berlin for a time and spent time on both sides of the Wall, and was particularly interested in the East German music scene.
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4. coldteaMay 2019
   >American journalist and author Tim Mohr admits that when he first arrived in Berlin in 1992, he was clueless to the reality of what the post-Wall city would look like. “I thought all of Germany was Oktoberfest basically,” he told punk writer Legs McNeil at Brooklyn record store Rough Trade last week to celebrate the release of his new book Burning Down the Haus. “I was shocked when I got off the plane and everyone wasn’t wearing lederhosen and holding giant beer steins.”

   And that person, with that knowledge of global culture, was a journalist?

   At least in this case, traveling did broadened the mind!

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