Swing Kids
Sign in to saveThe Swing Youth () were a youth counterculture of jazz and swing lovers in Germany formed in Hamburg in 1939. Primarily active in Hamburg and Berlin, they were composed of 14- to 21-year-old Germans, mostly middle or upper-class students, but also including some in the working class. They admired the "American way of life", defining themselves in swing music and opposing Nazism, especially the Hitler Youth (). They loosely structured themselves into “clubs” with names such as the Harlem Club, the OK Gang, and the Hot Club. This underground subculture, distinctly nonconformist with a focus on A
Key facts
- Cultural movement.image
- Swing tanzen verboten Humboldt Forum.jpg
- Cultural movement.caption
- An artistic depiction of the subculture from an exhibition at the Humboldt Forum
- Cultural movement.yearsactive
- 1939–1941
- Cultural movement.country
- Nazi Germany
- Cultural movement.influences
- Johannes Heesters
via Wikipedia infobox
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Encyclopedic overview
11 sectionsContents
- Name
- Counter-culture
- Ways of resistance
- Connection with the White Rose
- Swing clubs
- Arrests and Operations
- In modern culture
- Famous people with a ''Swingjugend'' past
- See also
- References
- External links
The Swing Youth () were a youth counterculture of jazz and swing lovers in Germany formed in Hamburg in 1939. Primarily active in Hamburg and Berlin, they were composed of 14- to 21-year-old Germans, mostly middle or upper-class students, but also including some in the working class. They admired the "American way of life", defining themselves in swing music and opposing Nazism, especially the Hitler Youth (). They loosely structured themselves into “clubs” with names such as the Harlem Club, the OK Gang, and the Hot Club. This underground subculture, distinctly nonconformist with a focus on African-American music, was active in the German youth scene. Despite being largely apolitical and unstructured, the Swing Youth were targeted and, in some cases, repressed by the Nazi government.
== Name == The name ' was a parody of the numerous youth groups that were organised by the Nazis, such as the '. The youth also referred to themselves as Swings or ' ("Swingity"); members were called "Swing-Boy", "Swing-Girl" or "Old-Hot-Boy".
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Swing Kids” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.