Popular Culture Review Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2008 | Page 51

Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Gothic Band “Das Ich” [V]alues are not discovered by reason and it is fruitless to seek them, to find the truth or the good life. The quest begun by Odysseus and continued over three millennia has come to an end with the observation that there is nothing to seek. This alleged fact was announced by Nietzsche just over a century ago when he said, “God is dead.” —Allan Bloom 143 In 2002, the German Gothic band Das Ich released its new album with the title Antichrist. For those who are familiar with this group and this specific subculture, this reference to Nietzsche’s famous text is not surprising. In their second single, Die Propheten (1992), which had made them famous in the Gothic scene, the most important song was “Gott ist tot” (“God is dead”)—a quotation from Nietzsche’s Die frohliche Wissenschaft (481). This study will examine the band’s reception of Nietzsche’s Antichrist (1888) and try to answer the question of what made Nietzsche’s philosophy so relevant for young Germans living during the turn of the last millennium. In addition to the song “Gott ist tot” in Die Propheten, in later CDs Das Ich had adapted many poems of German expressionist poets who had been strongly influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. They even produced a whole CD referencing Gottfried Benn’s volume of poetry, Morgue. As Douglas Kellner pointed out, “Nietzsche attracted the Expressionists because they perceived in him a powerful critique of modern society and call for self-transformation” (9). For exactly the same reasons, both Nietzsche and the expressionists seem to attract Bruno Kramm and Stephan Ackermann, the two members of the group Das Ich. Kellner continues:' Nietzsche’s analysis of the modem era is crucial for understanding the expressionist project and its (often unarticulated) epistemological-metaphysical assumptions. For Nietzsche, the death of God was the decisive fact of the epoch, and deeply affected the totality of life. In his view, religion had declined as a viable philosophical system; consequently, many traditional values were rendered obsolete or threatened by the demise of a Deity who guaranteed value, meaning, and transcendence. (9) Listening to the songs of Das Ich that refer to Nietzsche, it seems that according to the band’s impression, in the Catholic city of Bayreuth, where both musical