Third part of the series “Rebellion as Civic Duty”

The first two articles dealt with the big question: why does France rebel, and Austria does not? With Hofstede and Milgram, with police and media, with systems and structures. This article goes back to the beginning — to the moment when rebellion in Vorarlberg actually happened. Briefly. Loudly. And then it was over.

Feldkirch, 1977: Two Weeks to the First Concert

At the end of 1977, a few young people came together at the Graf Hugo youth center in Feldkirch. Galle, Franz, Slaughter, and Chy — four guys who had heard about punk in England through the German magazine Sounds and, yes, Bravo. The spark didn’t come from Vienna, not from Innsbruck, and certainly not from any Austrian institution. It came from a Zurich DIY fanzine called “No Fun,” published by Peter Wittwer and Martin Byland. Inside was a sentence from an English punk magazine: “Buy a guitar, learn a C, learn a D, learn an E and join a band.”

That’s what they did. They had one amplifier. Bass, guitar, and vocals all went through that single amplifier at the same time. After two weeks they said: we’re ready for the first concert. And they played it at the Graf Hugo.

The band was called Chaos. They were — probably — the first punk band in Austria to release their own vinyl record. Their 12" split EP from 1979, together with the Swiss band The Sick, is a collector’s item today.

Switzerland as Escape

What immediately stands out about Chaos: their scene was not Austrian. It was Swiss. The band played in Zurich and St. Gallen, not in Vienna or Graz. At the “Swiss Punk Now” festival in November 1979 in Emmenbrücke near Lucerne, Chaos were the only non-Swiss band on the bill — alongside names like Glueams, Crazy, and Kraft durch Freude.

This is no coincidence. Vorarlberg lies geographically and culturally closer to Switzerland than to the rest of Austria. And in Switzerland, from 1980 onward, something happened that never happened in Vorarlberg: demos, occupied buildings, autonomous youth centers (AJZs). In St. Gallen, spaces emerged — the Grabenhalle, the Gasse — where alternative culture was not merely tolerated but lived. Places where young people could experiment without having to justify themselves.

Chy, founding member of Chaos, reflects on it this way: these places had been fundamentally important because you could experience and encounter alternative culture there like nowhere else. This had led to the spread of new ideas — a process that permanently changed Swiss society. In Vorarlberg, these spaces were missing. There was the Graf Hugo, the Spielboden in Dornbirn, the occasional concert in old factories. But no occupied buildings, no autonomous centers, no infrastructure for counterculture.

Hostility Toward Authority — and the Nazi Past

Punk in Vorarlberg was not just music. It was a confrontation with local reality. Chy recalls: the hostility toward authority started with one’s own family, then extended to the workplace, apprenticeships, police, government agencies, politicians, clergy, and of course the military. In Vorarlberg there was something additional, something specific: the Nazi past. Among the older generation, there were still many fascists.

This was not abstract historical reckoning. These were one’s own neighbors, relatives, teachers. In a country that sold itself as Hitler’s “first victim” until the 1990s, confronting this legacy in a small province was particularly direct — and particularly taboo. Punk was the first youth culture in Vorarlberg to break that taboo loudly and publicly.

After Chaos: The Second and Third Wave

The members of Chaos continued after the band ended — Galle with Ex Chaos, Null Komma Nichts, and Boyfriends; Franz and Chy with the post-punk band Le Passepartout; later Chy with Billion Bob and The Yeomen. All remained musically active in some form, all stayed in the region. The Yeomen played exactly four concerts — three in Dornbirn, one in Hohenems, in an old factory.

In the 1990s, Social Genocide emerged from the Rhine Valley as one of the hardest projects in Austrian punk underground: raw crust punk without pause. Their lyrics — in rudimentary English — conveyed a rage that had no interest in academic formulation. Also from Vorarlberg: the pop numbers of Disconnected and the LP “Medeia Peri Medeia” by Kulta Dimentia (1994) — political punk/hardcore that smelled of sticky beer residue and cigarette smoke.

But all of this remained episodic. Individual bands, individual releases, individual concerts. No cohesive scene, no infrastructure, no network that lasted beyond a few years.

Why the Scene Died

The most honest answer comes from Chy himself. He has commuted between St. Gallen and Vorarlberg for 45 years and observes: those who could, all left. Those who stayed mostly had to adapt somehow — and don’t even notice it themselves.

That is the core. Punk needs three things to survive as a scene: spaces, networks, and a society worth rebelling against — one that simultaneously leaves enough room not to be immediately crushed.

In Switzerland, all three existed. The AJZs, the occupied buildings, the youth unrest from 1980 onward — they created spaces in which punk could institutionalize without losing its energy. In Vorarlberg, there was the society worth rebelling against — but no spaces and no network. Whoever swam against the current in Feldkirch or Dornbirn stood alone. Whoever could afford it left for St. Gallen, Zurich, or Vienna. Whoever stayed, adapted.

The social partnership that shaped the first article works here too: in Austria, conflicts are internalized, not fought out. There is no cultural space for lasting counterculture because the system is designed to absorb any dissent before it can solidify. Punk is the opposite of consensus. In a country built on consensus, it has no chance of survival as a movement — only as an episode.

The Spielboden and the Graf Hugo: What Remains

Isolated venues have survived. The Spielboden in Dornbirn still exists and occasionally offers concerts in the harder genre. The Graf Hugo in Feldkirch, where everything began in 1978, is still active. But they are event venues, not scene centers. The difference is fundamental: an event venue offers a program. A scene center offers a living space. The first you consume, the second you shape.

In Switzerland there is the Reitschule in Bern, which has functioned as an autonomous center for decades. In St. Gallen, the Grabenhalle. In Winterthur, occupied houses. These are not just concert locations — they are places where political debate, cultural production, and social life converge. In Vorarlberg, there is nothing comparable. There never has been.

The “Democratic Time”

Chy describes the punk years as a “very democratic time” — a time when anyone was allowed to make music, regardless of direction. The quote hits the mark: punk was not just a musical genre, but a democratization of cultural expression. You don’t need a conservatory, training, money, or permission. You need an amplifier and two chords. The authorization doesn’t come from an institution — it comes from the doing.

This is exactly the attitude that is culturally absent in Austria. The idea that you can do something without asking permission first. That you can take up space without someone “granting” you that space. Punk in Vorarlberg was the brief moment when this attitude existed — before it was recaptured by the cultural gravity of the Ländle.

The Music Box as Legacy

This series began with someone walking through Feldkirch with a music box. Medium volume, small rebellion. Looking back across all three parts, a circle closes: in France, rebellion is a civic duty, from the streets to the newsrooms. In Austria, it is an episode — a few punks in Feldkirch who took the stage two weeks after forming and were then overtaken by reality.

But the episode is not worthless. It proves that the impulse exists — even in Vorarlberg, even in the Ländle, even beneath the surface of “what will the neighbors think.” Chaos didn’t ask in 1977 whether they were allowed. They just did it. That the scene didn’t survive is not due to a lack of courage, but a lack of spaces.

Perhaps the music box in Feldkirch is no substitute for a punk scene. But it is the same gesture: taking up space without asking permission. In a country built on permission, that remains — almost fifty years after Chaos — still a radical act.

This article is the third and final part of a series that began with a music box in Feldkirch and ended with the question of why some societies rebel and others do not.

Sources and Further Reading

Chaos and the Beginnings of Punk in Vorarlberg

Punk/Hardcore History in Austria

  • 20 Years SRA: The Last Twenty Years of Punk/Hardcore in Austria — SR-Archiv

Swiss Punk and the Swiss Connection

Context: Rebellion and Culture in Austria

  • Rebellion as Civic Duty: What Austria Can Learn from France — [Part 1 of this series]
  • Who Controls the Controllers? Rebellion and Media in France and Austria — [Part 2 of this series]

By René Jochum and Claude (Anthropic). License: CC-BY-4.0.