‘Satan demands total annihilation’: Heavy metal in the German Democratic Republic

East German Heavy Metal fans established themselves as the largest or second largest subculture of the GDR in the 1980s. Yet, only few academic works have explored this group. Using sources from the Stasi Record Agency (BStU), documents from the German Radio Archive (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Babelsberg) and academic works from ZIJ, GDR’s Central Institute for Youth Research (Zentralinsitut für Jugendforschung), this article describes the practices developed by the East German Heavy Metal fans to cope with their special situation behind the Iron Curtain. The article also explores how the regime tried to deal with these deviant youngsters. Their practices were so closely linked to the party-state that they served no function when the Berlin Wall came down. The subculture therefore shared the same fate as the GDR and quickly vanished in 1989/90.