Swing Kids

The Swing Youth (German: Swingjugend) were a group of jazz and swing lovers in Germany in the 1930s, mainly in Hamburg and Berlin. They were composed of 14 to 18-year-old boys and girls in high school, most of them middle- or upper-class students, but with some apprentice workers as well. They admired the British and American way of life, defining themselves in swing music and opposing the National-Socialist ideology, especially the Hitler Youth (German: Hitlerjugend).

The name Swingjugend was a parody of the numerous youth groups that were organised by the Nazis, such as Hitlerjugend. The youth also referred to themselves as Swings or Swingheinis ("Swingity"); members were called "Swing-Boy", "Swing-Girl" or "Old-Hot-Boy".

During the Nazi regime, all of the youth considered Aryan in Germany (ages 10 to 17) were encouraged to join the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens. The leaders of this organization realized they had to offer some attraction in the area of social dancing in order to recruit new members. Instead of adopting the popular swing dance (because it was viewed as degenerate and tied to the "damnable jazz"), they resorted to the new-German community dances. This proved to be unsuccessful, because instead of embracing the Hitler Youth pastimes, city girls and boys crowded the swing dance joints. This seemed to be the case particularly in the town of Hamburg, where the swing scene was huge. These teenage hoppers were known as Swing-Heinis, a name the authorities called them. The Swing Youth disparagingly called the Hitler Youth the "Homo Youth" while the League of German Maidens were called the "League of Soldiers' Mattresses". The Swing Youth used their love of swing and jazz music to create their sub-culture with one former Swing Kid Frederich Ritzel saying in a 1985 interview: "Everything for us was a world of great longing, Western life, democracy – everything was connected – and connected through jazz".

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