Rebellious, non-conformist and cool – barely ten years after the Second World War, it was attitudes such as these that put parts of the younger generation on a collision course with a largely authoritarian society, not just in the USA and other countries around the world, but also in West Germany in the midst of the Adenauer era. While in America, the neutral term "teenager" was widely used to refer to this newly established social group, a word from the turn of the century became the much-cited German label for this youth movement and eventually also the title of a film: DIE HALBSTARKEN (Teenage Wolfpack, Georg Tressler, West Germany 1956) – for some an expletive, for others an accolade. Some of the cornerstones of this "deviant" behavior included coolness and criminality, insurgency and protest against established values, rock’n’roll and motorbikes. November’s Magical History Tour sets its sights on this area of tension and presents adolescent wild ones, rebels, rockers, troublemakers and their spiritual cousins from earlier days or other geographical contexts.
