Goths and the World: My Life in Black

They wear black and call themselves “Goths”: the followers of the scene stand out from the ordinary street scene. But being Goth is more than a costume. It is a search for a deeper meaning in life. But how does one live a black life?

Matthias Witte and Freyja MacLeod have made their everyday lives “black”. The two met and fell in love at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig. The New Zealander was so impressed by the scene that she decided to live here – always in a black outfit, with symbolic jewellery and eerie make-up. She regularly posts her own videos on her YouTube channel explaining the Gothic way of life. Her boyfriend Matthias joins in. He is currently taking his technical secondary school diploma in Osnabrück in order to study art afterwards. His teachers have long since got used to his outfit and his sombre artworks.

Ronny Rabe wears white at work, because he is a geriatric nurse in a Leipzig care home. He works only at night, because darkness has a magical pull on him. Ronny has wanted to help the sick since he was 12. He became a Goth at 16: “I didn’t decide to become a Goth, I simply became one. For me, being black isn’t just about costume and beauty, but above all a particular way of looking at life and of engaging with death, which is part of life.” Ronny has furnished his flat in gloomy style: dark walls, cobwebs, many candles. Bats everywhere. His wardrobe is overflowing, because Ronny loves self-staging and takes pleasure in setting himself apart. For Ronny, Freyja and Matthias, “being black” is their life. We show how the three of them move through both worlds every day, and enter the world of the “black scene” with them.