Germany celebrates 30 years of reunification on October 3rd. How did the famous GDR bands fare after the political change?
October 3rd 30 years ago: Day of German Unity. The whole country a sea of black, red and gold flags? Sure, in front of the Reichstag and other symbolic places. Where the politicians and "all the other great unity makers indulge in their national colors" and "have long since pushed the courageous East German turnarounds to the edge of the stage", writes the Berlin newspaper "Der Tagesspiegel".
A contemporary witness describes the first national holiday from his point of view: "Berlin is once again full of tourists. Most of them stroll to the Brandenburg Gate, where a kind of German currywurst day is celebrated with beer stands and pop music." What kind of music did you hear? What was the sound of the loudspeakers and the radio? A look at the 1990 annual hit parade of the GDR, which was still in existence until October 2, is a look at another country.
The hits from 1990
No. 1: The band Rockhaus with "Wohin?" where?" No. 2: The Keimzeit group with "Madhouse", excerpt from the text: "Crazy into the madhouse, the clever into parliament. It is your own fault who does not recognize the signs of the times." No. 3: The band Karussell with "Marie", text sample: "Marie, the wall is falling, we are getting closer and closer. Those with the dreams and those with the money will find each other sooner or later."
At the same time, the West Charts reveal an opposite world: No. 1 Matthias Reim with "Damn, I love you", No. 2 UB40 with "Kingston Town", No. 3 Nick Kamen with "I Promised Myself" and No. 4 the Wildecker Herzbuben with "Herzilein". The difference was more than amazing. While music tastes in the formerly socialist East clearly tended towards bands that addressed current German-German events, in the West they preferred soft, feel-good music.
Bands didn't want to fit into a template
Wasn't it actually the other way around? Hadn't the GDR leadership ostracized modern music as "American unculture" and decadent "dirt from the West"? Didn't the East Berlin government and the SED unity party demand ideologically adapted rock music typical of the GDR?
The GDR leadership succeeded only to a very limited extent. "It was always important to the musicians and their audience that they didn't want to fit into a template," wrote the "Neue Musikzeitung". "The predominantly German texts – by order of the rulers – did the rest. Often metaphorically conveying a form of resistance, they were more important in the GDR than at the same time in the Federal Republic." Birgit Jank, Professor of Music Education at the University of Potsdam, believes that rock musicians played their part in the peaceful revolution from below during the time of the fall of the Wall.
The musicians also provided descriptions of the state of the East-West sensitivities. "In half the country and the cut-up city, halfway satisfied with what you have. Half and half," sang the East Berlin band City in "Half and Half" in 1987. That was certainly not on the party line.
Petra Zieger and her reunification anthem
In the west of Germany one hardly heard such tones. And when they did, they were often more or less disparagingly referred to as "Ostalgie" and smiled at. A wall in the mind? The reunification anthem "The ice thaws" by rock singer Petra Zieger (61) from 1989 is indicative of this. The success of this song was much greater in America than in West Germany. Zieger was invited to the USA and sang in front of 500,000 people in Philadelphia.
Many talented musicians from the east did not survive reunification for long economically. Not so Petra Zieger. She still performs with her band and last toured Germany in 2015. The Berlin music and culture journalist Olaf Leitner wrote that a musical treasure was hidden in eastern Germany. This does not only apply to "Rock from Germany East", as a label for musicians from the East is called.
What happened to the bands?
In 2005 ZDF presented "Our Best – Centennial Hits". The first 16 included five GDR songs: No. 2 "You must go over seven bridges" by Karat, No. 6 "Old like a tree" by the Puhdys, No. 13 "Am Fenster" by City, No. 15 "When I went away" by Karussell and No. 16 "Jugendliebe" by Ute Freudenberg and the band Elefant.
Elefant was already dissolved in the 1980s, Ute Freudenberg went to the West in 1984, the Puhdys, the most popular Eastern band, gave their last concert in 2016 – after 47 successful years. Freygang, one of the outstanding blues rock bands, lasted until last year. The band Electra, which was burdened by the IM Stasi scandal of their singer Manuel von Senden in the 1990s, stopped in 2015.
The Klaus Renft Combo, founded in 1958, or Scirocco (1964) have maintained this for decades. The punk bands Skeptiker and Herbst in Beijing, which are popular in the East, have survived, as have the groups Silly, City, Karussell, Rockhaus and Keimzeit, which are well known in the West.
The band Karat (founded in the 1970s) is the most popular of all GDR formations in the West. Her hit "You must go over seven bridges" was covered very successfully in the west by Peter Maffay (71). After reunification, the song was performed several times by both interpreters, one of the few German-German examples of pop culture growing together.
What came after
Die Prinzen, a group from Leipzig that was founded in 1987 as Die Herzbuben, started pouring glass in 1991. They produced hits with original lyrics that became great successes in both East and West. In total, the princes sold around six million records. Silbermond, a band from Bautzen (since 1998), who has repeatedly appeared in the charts with sensitive German ballads, has achieved so much.
Kraftklub from Chemnitz, like Feine Sahne Fischfilet from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, are acting with harder texts and political engagement against the right.
Is pop & rock from the east more committed or at least more conspicuous?
Prof. Edward Larkey from the University of Maryland (USA) is a brilliant expert on the East German music scene; he had studied in the GDR for a time. When asked which GDR band was the first to become famous throughout Germany and beyond, he only knows one answer: Rammstein!
Rammstein was not founded until 1994, but emerged from the GDR punk bands First Arsch and Feeling B. The later Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann (57) founded First Arsch (Abbreviation for: First Autonomous Rioters Schwerins) in 1986, and guitarist Richard Kruspe (53) was also part of the party. Larkey believes that Rammstein didn't have anything Eastern anymore, but perhaps such a dark, eerily romantic band could only have emerged in the East in the early 1990s.
The global players
As a German band, Rammstein is a global player, after this formation nothing comes in this area for a long time. Tokio Hotel also celebrated great international successes. The group was founded in Magdeburg in 2001 and made it into the charts in France, Canada, Israel and the USA by 2008. After 2010 it became quiet around her.
Of course there is also the Scorpions, the world-famous band from the west, which has been on the road since 1965 and at times celebrated huge successes in Asia, the USA and even in the USSR (a total of 110 million records sold). Her singer Klaus Meine (72) came up with the song "Wind of Change" in 1989. The idea came to him in Moscow under the impression of perestroika which Mikhail Gorbachev (89) had proclaimed. The piece was published in 1991 – a subsequent Western contribution on the subject of German unity.
"Freedom" by Marius Müller-Westernhagen (71), a song that actually laments the loss of freedom, is also considered a standard anthem from the West. The artist wrote it in 1987 when he "didn't have the fall of the wall or the reunification in mind". "Freedom" reached number 24 in the singles charts.
This is how David Hasselhoff came up with his fall anthem
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and people from East and West were hugging each other, they sang along with the song "Looking for Freedom" by US actor David Hasselhoff (68). This song wasn't up to date either. The German music producer Jack White (80), whose real name is Horst Nussbaum, wrote it in 1978. It was released under the title "Auf der Straße des Südens", sung by pop star Tony Marshall (82). In 1989 the song was covered by Hasselhoff. It was pure coincidence that it appeared almost at the same time as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Even today, the German-born American Hasselhoff denies the persistent rumor that he tore down the wall between East and West with his little old song – and thus initiated the greatest turning point since the Second World War. The acting gentleman in the White House would certainly never have done that.