Swingjugend

Swingjugend

An artistic depiction of the subculture from an exhibition at the Humboldt Forum
Years active	1939–1941
Country	Nazi Germany
Influences	Johannes Heesters

The Swing Youth (German: Swingjugend) 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.^[1] They admired the "American way of life", defining themselves in swing music and opposing Nazism, especially the Hitler Youth (German: Hitlerjugend). 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.