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Uwe Schütte (Ed.)
German Pop Music
Companions to
Contemporary German Culture

Edited by
Michael Eskin · Karen Leeder · Christopher Young

Volume 6
German Pop Music

A Companion

Edited by
Uwe Schütte
ISBN 978-3-11-042571-0
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042572-7
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042354-9
ISSN 2193-9659

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Kraftwerk © Magdalena Blaszczuk
Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
♾ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany

www.degruyter.com
Table of Contents

Uwe Schütte
Introduction – Pop Music as the Soundtrack of German Post-War
History 1

Julio Mendívil
Schlager and Musical Conservatism in the Post-War Era 25

David Robb
The Protest Song of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s – Franz Josef Degenhardt
and Ton Steine Scherben 43

John Littlejohn
Krautrock – The Development of a Movement 63

Uwe Schütte
Kraftwerk – Industrielle Volksmusik between Retro-Futurism and
Ambivalence 85

Cyrus Shahan
Fehlfarben and German Punk: The Making of ‘No Future’ 111

Christian Jäger
Ripples on a Bath of Steel – The Two Stages of Neue Deutsche Welle
(NDW) 131

Alexander Carpenter
Einstürzende Neubauten to Rammstein: Mapping the Industrial Continuum in
German Pop Music 151

Alexei Monroe
Sender Deutschland – The Development and Reception of Techno in
Germany 171

Marissa Kristina Munderloh

Rap in Germany – Multicultural Narratives of the Berlin Republic 189
VI Table of Contents

Christoph Jürgensen and Antonius Weixler

Diskursrock and the ‘Hamburg School’. German Pop Music as Art and
Intellectual Discourse 211

Heinrich Deisl
Saying ‘Yes!’ While Meaning ‘No!’ – A Conversation with Diedrich
Diederichsen 235

Contributors 253

Bibliography 257

Index 263
Uwe Schütte
Introduction – Pop Music as the
Soundtrack of German Post-War History
In 2015, three German bands gave concerts in Berlin that warrant closer atten-
tion. In mid-January, Kraftwerk played eight concerts at the Neue Nationalgaler-
ie, a hallmark of modernist architecture designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.
The series sold out immediately and the intense coverage by the national media
ran the gamut from derision to emphatic praise. The band, known for pioneering
popular electronic music since its commercial breakthrough release, Autobahn,
in 1974, devoted each evening to one of the eight albums that form the core of
its musical output. Versions of their songs, some dating back forty years, were
digitally reworked with the latest sound technology and accompanied by stun-
ning 3D video projections.
The videos consciously renounced any attempt to appear up‐to‐date in their
visual aesthetic. Instead, some playfully combined sparse modernist graphic el-
ements derived from the Bauhaus movement with visual allusions to German ex-
pressionist cinema (particularly Metropolis, 1927), while others featured footage
from the post‐war period of the 1950s and 1960s showing economic prosperity,
political optimism and a (self‐)satisfied sense of national achievement in the af-
termath of the Holocaust. Although the genocide was never hinted at, it loomed
large over the seemingly‐innocuous images of travel on an Autobahn or urban
nights illuminated by joyful neon lights. Sound and vision, the spoken and
the unspoken, combined to form an integrative, immersive experience that is
unique in contemporary electronic music and confirmed Kraftwerk’s standing
as the most important and influential of all German bands.
Then, on a hot summer day in July, DAF, which stands for ‘Deutsch-Amerika-
nische Freundschaft’ [German-American Friendship], gave a sold‐out concert in a
repurposed former East Germany railway repair works. The duo – consisting of
drummer Robert Görl and singer Gabi Delgado-Lopez – performed highlights
from their 1981 Gold und Liebe [Gold and Love] album. Just three songs into
the set, DAF launched into their best-known song, the controversial ‘Der Musso-
lini’. Delgado‐Lopez sang out ‘Tanz den Kommunismus’ [Dance communism]
while lifting his clenched left fist, and then ‘Tanz den Adolf Hitler’ [Dance the
Adolf Hitler] while raising his right arm in the Hitler salute, a gesture banned
under German law. He then barked ‘Und jetzt nach links’ [And now to the left]
while pacing to the left of the stage and ‘Und jetzt nach rechts’ [And now to
the right] while marching in strides to the opposite side of the stage.

DOI 10.1515/9783110425727-001
2 Uwe Schütte

As goes without saying, what we witnessed was not a political statement but
rather a grotesque, subversive appropriation of the gestures of the two political
ideologies that dominated German history in the twentieth century. Whenever
Delgado‐Lopez gave the Hitler salute, the crowd cheered wildly although none
of them are likely to have been of a right-wing political persuasion. Nor could
anyone suspect this of the band since both members are openly gay and Delga-
do-Lopez is the son of a Spanish Gastarbeiter [guest worker] who immigrated to
Germany in the 1960s. Furthermore, their merchandize stall sold T-shirts depict-
ing the Kalashnikov logo of the left-wing terrorist group, Red Army Faction
(RAF), although the lettering had been changed to read ‘DAF’.
Finally, in early December, Fehlfarben played a rapturous concert in a former
cinema near the Spree River, which once formed the border between East and
West Germany. A small but appreciative audience had gathered to hear the
band play tracks from their recently released album, but it rapidly became
clear that the crowd really wanted songs from their 1980 debut Monarchie und
Alltag [Monarchy and Everyday Life], a quintessential record of punk rock aes-
thetic and sociocultural highlights. Fittingly, since Fehlfarben was formed
when post-punk was emerging in Germany, this pivotal punk band never looked
the part. They rejected safety needles, colourful hairstyles and torn clothes and
wore conventional hair cuts and suits. Finally, their Teutonic iteration of ‘No fu-
ture!’, the anarchic battle call of British punk, was the seemingly affirmative
‘Keine Atempause, Geschichte wird gemacht – es geht voran’ [No respite, history
is being made – we’re moving on].
This transformation of and reaction to an Anglo-American musical move-
ment highlights how, like their Krautrock predecessors, Fehlfarben did not
want to copy a foreign model or even to translate it into German. Rather, the
band transcended German punk’s international origins with a mixture of irony
and seriousness. Their strategy of disguising criticism as affirmation confounded
expectations and clichés and, since it required a certain level of attention to be
understood, this strategy anticipated the contemporaneous neutralization of
punk’s rebellious spirit. In addition, Fehlfarben did not just sing of affirmative
subversion but lived it too: Singer Peter Hein refused to quit his day job, prefer-
ring the financial security of a boring office job in the German division of an in-
ternational company to the fickle life of a musician and the siren call of commer-
cial success.
Accordingly, at the Fehlfarben concert in December, one could not fail to no-
tice the large number of ordinary-looking people in their fifties and sixties, none
of whom displayed the usual pop-cultural signs of social dissent, such as T-
shirts with protest slogans or badges. Nevertheless, just like the band, one
must assume they were non-conformists, treading a thin line between social ad-
 Introduction – Pop Music as the Soundtrack of German Post-War History 3

justment and refusal to believe in the hollow promises of capitalism in the age of
late globalization.
Each of these three bands express a different sense of German identity in
their music, which is closely interconnected with contemporary German history,
society and culture. Coincidentally, all three bands were formed in Düsseldorf,
the capital of the [then West] German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. After
the Second World War, this very modern city developed into the fashion and ad-
vertising capital of Germany. Thanks to its famous Academy of Art, which pro-
duced artists such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Markus Lüpertz and Jörg
Immendorff, it was also considered the artistic capital of Germany. The surround-
ing Ruhr district, on the other hand, was heavily industrialized and had a large
working-class population – socio-economic factors that had a significant impact
on the bands discussed above.
The relationship between musical styles and regional surroundings has been
an important factor in the development of German pop music. The federal sys-
tem instituted after the war allowed different musical cultures to flourish in
(and around) the country’s larger cities. Indeed, unlike centralist countries
such as the United Kingdom or France, local scenes in Hamburg, Cologne, Mu-
nich, Frankfurt and elsewhere did not need to compete directly with the capital.
Although this situation naturally changed following the German reunification in
1990, the local identities of regional music scenes remain largely intact today
and continue to contribute to the fascinating varieties of German popular
music explored in this volume.

German Pop Music and Academia

Popular culture became a subject of academic study following the pioneering
work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, founded at the University
of Birmingham in 1964. Since then, cultural studies has been an important part
of the humanities predominantly under the leadership of Anglophone scholars.
Initially, universities in Germany (and Austria) were less receptive to this new
trend. However, it gained greater legitimacy and considerable momentum in Ger-
many under the moniker Kulturwissenschaften due to increasing pressure on aca-
demics to embrace interdisciplinary research methods and explore popular cul-
ture.
The success of film studies in the past decade, in addition to the academic
study of graphic novels, demonstrates an increased interest in pop-cultural prod-
ucts amongst German studies scholars working in the English-speaking world.
Despite all of this, the study of popular music continues to play a somewhat un-
4 Uwe Schütte

derrated and neglected role. Whilst film courses are now part and parcel of many
German degree programmes, pop music is mainly used in language teaching
classes. Yet there is eminent potential for teaching German history, society and
culture through the medium of pop music, as the present volume aims to dem-
onstrate.
German pop music offers an important opportunity to reflect on questions of
German national identity and the definition of Germanness. Pertinent examples
chosen from the history of German pop music enable us to ask how the nation is
imagined and constructed both in and through pop music, and how it challenges
received notions of Germanness. Simon Frith, a leading scholar of popular music
in the UK, asserts: ‘As the nation always oscillates between different enunciative
positions, and national identity is a constant process of re-articulations, the
question is not (only) how popular music reflects the people or nation, but
also how it produces them.’¹ As John Connell and Chris Gibson similarly report,
popular music is ‘an integral component of processes through which cultural
identities are formed, both at personal and collective levels’, for which reason
‘music […] is embedded in the creation of (and constant maintenance of) nation-
hood’.²
Frith explains that there ‘is an important reason why German popular music
has to be understood differently to popular music elsewhere: twentieth-century
German history has posed German musicians and audiences particular problems
of national identity’.³ One of these problems was that popular music in post-war
Germany had to address the fact that the Nazis had appropriated popular culture
for their racist notion of völkische Kultur. Another was that popular music had to
navigate between the overwhelming influence of Anglo-American culture and
music, and the many problems of German post-war history: the trauma and
guilt resulting from the unspeakable atrocities committed during the war, the
pressures resulting from the material and ideological reconstruction efforts,
the division of the nation in 1961 and its mismanaged reunification in 1989/90.
Following the financial crisis of 2007/08, the German economy has recovered
more rapidly than those of English-speaking countries. At the time of writing, an
unabashed neo-liberalism continues to undermine the foundations of the wel-
fare state established in the 1970s. Concomitantly, large numbers of (East) Ger-
mans have been taking to the streets to demonstrate against massive immigra-

 Simon Frith, ‘Music and Identity’, in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. by Stuart Hall and Paul
du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 108 – 127 (p. 109).
 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place (London:
Routledge, 2003), pp. 117– 118.
 Simon Frith, ‘Editorial introduction’, Popular Music 17/3 (1998), v–vi (p. v).
 Introduction – Pop Music as the Soundtrack of German Post-War History 5

tion and a perceived deterioration of German values whilst despicable attacks on

refugee camps occur at an alarming rate across the country.
The popular music discussed in the present volume has delivered, as it were,
the soundtrack for the post-1945 period of German history sketched above. It has
functioned as a fascinating cultural mirror, which also reflects the sociological
changes and political developments in the Federal Republic. The development
of popular music in East Germany, however, will not be discussed at length in
this volume, due to the repressive cultural politics in the German Democratic Re-
public (GDR). Even though bands there often found cunning ways to escape state
pressures by retreating into subculture niches, official control of the media and
record companies restricted the development of interesting, innovative pop
music. Furthermore, musical transfer across the wall was mostly a one-way af-
fair, from West to East. West Germans, let alone the wider world, took little or
no notice of East German pop music.⁴
A crucial terminological point must also be stressed: The term pop music will
be understood to apply to all the music discussed in this volume, which includes
heterogeneous styles from rock and mainstream pop to industrial and forms of
electronic dance music. As Diedrich Diederichsen explains in his fundamental
theoretical work Über Pop-Musik [On Pop Music] (2014), the cultural phenomen-
on of pop music transcends music per se: ‘Pop music is actually a complex of
images, performances, (mostly popular) music, lyrics and myths tied to real per-
sons.’⁵ Following Diederichsen, then, we should acknowledge that cover design,
stage outfits and haircuts, interview statements or promotional photographs are
as important as the music and lyrics themselves. In this sense, pop music is a
multifaceted ‘package’ that is difficult to define. At best we can say that pop
music is mainly, although not exclusively, directed at and consumed by young
people and tied to progressive, leftist, non-conformist, emancipative notions.
In accordance with Diederichsen, we will recognize a clear dividing line
when looking at the overall development of pop music (and pop culture in gen-
eral). The first, heroic phase, which he calls ‘Pop I’, lasted roughly from the early
1960s until the mid-1980s and was primarily characterized by political dissi-
dence and subversive transgression, sub-cultural resistance and opposition to

 For a concise overview of pop music in East Germany, see Fritz Herbert, ‘Über sieben Brücken
musst Du gehen: Eine kurze Geschichte des DDR-Rock’, in Made in Germany: Die hundert besten
deutschen Platten (Höfen: Hannibal, 2001), pp. 97– 101; and Michael Rauhut, ‘Am Fenster: Rock-
musik und Jugendkultur in der DDR’, in Rock! Jugendkultur und Musik in Deutschland, ed. by
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Berlin: Links, 2005), pp. 71– 78.
 Diedrich Diederichsen, Über Pop-Musik (Cologne: KiWi, 2014), p. xi. All quotes in English are
my translations, unless otherwise stated.
6 Uwe Schütte

mainstream culture. This element of protest against dominant social and politi-
cal systems disappeared completely in the politically affirmative ‘Pop II’ phase,
which runs from roughly the early 1990s to the present.
The political affirmation of ‘Pop II’ is perhaps not surprising given that pop
music reached the top ranks of political power in the 1990s: Bill Clinton famous-
ly played a song by Elvis on his saxophone on a US TV show, Tony Blair invited
Britpop band Oasis to Downing Street and the conservative German chancellor
Angela Merkel told Myself, a glossy women’s magazine, that she likes the Beatles
and Bruce Springsteen.⁶ Regardless of whether her passion for pop music is au-
thentic, Merkel’s statement proves Diederichsen’s point that popular music no
longer has an automatic claim to signifying opposition to and critical distance
from the ruling powers.
Pop music also no longer has an inherent claim to representing opposition to
racist, chauvinistic, homophobic, nationalist and similar political persuasions.
In the German context, this de-tabooization of nationalist discourse across the
entire spectrum of German mainstream pop music in the wake of reunification
is highly significant and is also accompanied by the rise of racist music,
which operates both underground (due to criminal prosecution and state censor-
ship) and, in a more veiled form, in the form of popular bands like Frei.Wild.⁷
By and large, the artists and bands discussed in this companion fall into the
Pop I phase, even if their musical output coincides chronologically with the post-
heroic phase of pop music. Since Germany has the third most important music
market in the world,⁸ bands can earn a living even if their criticisms of main-
stream culture or their challenging aesthetic positions prevent them from achiev-
ing success in the charts.
This volume also distinguishes between the term ‘pop music’ in the sense
outlined above and ‘popular music’ that only aims at commercial success.
Hence, we do not explore types of German popular music with greater market
shares than the music examined in this volume, e. g. the neo-Schlager of Helene
Fischer, the so-called volkstümliche Musik popularized by TV programmes such

 ‘Im Interview: Angela Merkel’, Myself, 9 (2009), 54– 57 (p. 55).

 On right-wing rock in Germany, see Thomas Neumann, Rechtsrock im Wandel: Eine Textana-
lyse von Rechtsrock-Bands (Hamburg: Diplomica, 2009); and Martin Büsser, Wie klingt die Neue
Mitte? Rechte und reaktionäre Tendenzen in der Popmusik (Mainz: Ventil, 2001). On nationalist
discourse in mainstream pop music, see Frank A. Schneider, Deutschpop halt’s Maul! Für eine
Ästhetik der Verkrampfung (Mainz: Ventil, 2015).
 According to statistics provided by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
(IFPI), it is bigger than that of the UK and only surpassed by the markets in Japan and the United
States.
 Introduction – Pop Music as the Soundtrack of German Post-War History 7

as Musikantenstadl or Der Blaue Bock, the surprisingly successful pop update of

medieval music played by bands like Corvus Corax, the various short-lived chart
successes that talent shows such as Deutschland sucht den Superstar regularly
push on the market, not to mention manufactured acts, such as boy bands
that target female teenagers or classically-trained opera singers performing
pop music aimed at an elderly audience.
Since this companion cannot address all German music, we have also limit-
ed ourselves to bands that use German lyrics. Interestingly, a great deal of the
music that tops the charts is German in origin but the producers and artists con-
cerned play down and even disguise this fact. Most notoriously, Frank Farian’s
bands Boney M. and Milli Vanilli featured only black singers and dancers, and
the lyrics were in English with Farian himself providing the vocals.
Another relevant example is Modern Talking, a duo that achieved immense
international success. Following a reunion in 1997, Thomas Anders and Dieter
Bohlen disbanded for good in 2003. The techno pop act Scooter, on the other
hand, is still going strong in commercial terms. This band was founded in
1993 in Frankfurt and has sold more than 30 million records and had more
than 20 top ten hits, which included ‘Hyper Hyper’, ‘Move Your Ass’ and ‘The
Question Is What Is the Question’.
This survey also disregards Germans who have produced or recorded their
music abroad. They include musicians such as the Hollywood film music com-
poser Hans Zimmer or the deceased Velvet Underground diseuse Christa Päffgen
a.k.a. Nico. German folk music and the various genres of German jazz also lie
beyond our scope, although they occasionally overlap with pop music, such
as in the case of Michael Wollny, who released free-floating piano versions of
songs by Kraftwerk and The Flaming Lips. Indeed, a closer examination of the
full spectrum of German pop(ular) music would require an entire encyclopaedia.

The Invasion of Anglo-American Pop Music After

1945
Popular culture peaked during the so-called Golden Twenties of the Weimar Re-
public but was disrupted by the historical disaster of National Socialism. The de-
mise of the Nazi regime left a cultural vacuum that was quickly filled with Anglo-
American music. Hence, the gradual development of post-war German pop
music in its early stages must be considered against the backdrop of this decisive
historical context.
8 Uwe Schütte

The role played by radio stations aimed at the occupying military forces
should not be underestimated. The broadcasts by the American Forces Network
(AFN) and British Forces Broadcasting Services (BFBS) also acquainted young
German listeners with pop-musical developments in Britain and the United
States. Later, DJs such as John Peel from the BBC or the US top 40 chart show
hosted by Casey Kasem were broadcast by the army stations which kept their
German listeners up to date.
A first indication of rock ‘n’ roll’s coming victory march was shown by the
rapturous reception Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ found amongst the
youth of Western Europe following screenings of the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle ⁹
and his 1958 concert tour, both of which caused outbreaks of violence that led to
cinemas and concert venues being vandalized. These riots also left behind a
shocked generation of parents who rightly sensed that this inflammatory new
music from America would create a shared sense of rebellion amongst the
post-war youth.¹⁰
Two events in particular promoted the infectious spread of pop music to
post-war Germany. The first was Elvis Presley’s spell as a GI in the provincial
town of Bad Nauheim between October 1958 and February 1960. He was already
a major star at the time and his presence created a considerable ‘Elvis mania’
amongst German teenagers which was fuelled by the media. The weekly maga-
zine Bravo, which was founded in August 1956 and is still being published
today, provided endless coverage of the star even though he never performed
during his army service. While Haley’s music demonstrated the unruly aspect
of pop music, Elvis stood for the physical, sexualized side of rock ‘n’ roll. He
was the very incarnation of rock ‘n’ roll on German soil and represented the dis-
ruptive spirit of this new music that was there to stay.
The second was the Beatles’ two forays into Germany in 1960/61 and again in
1962, which inaugurated the era of beat music. They had long-term gigs at the
legendary Star Club in the Reeperbahn area of Hamburg and their music inspired
a number of German imitators, most notably The Lords and The Rattles, who
only sang in English. Never surpassing the musical genius of their model,
both of these bands nevertheless benefitted greatly from the craving of young
people for this new type of music.

 The German title was the more appropriate Saat der Gewalt [Seeds of Violence].
 Between 1956 and 1958, there was a marked increase in youth riots that confirmed the sedi-
tious nature of rock ‘n’ roll. Statistics show a total of 93 riots with more than 50 participants,
mostly males between the age of 14 and 25 and often of working and lower middle class origin.
See Christian Peters, ‘Halbstark mit Musik: Der Rock ‘n’ Roll erobert Deutschland’, in Bundeszen-
trale, pp. 35 – 41 (p. 37).
 Introduction – Pop Music as the Soundtrack of German Post-War History 9

The Rolling Stones were the next wave in this invasion of English-language
music. Their eagerly anticipated first tour of Germany resulted in a riot at the Ber-
lin Waldbühne venue on September 1965 and the authorities had to rescue the
band by helicopter. However, this legendary outbreak of vandalism was due
less to the incendiary sprit of rock than to fans’ frustration at the band’s lacklus-
tre performance, which led to a violent eruption that was not yet connected with
any form of social protest. This soon changed, however, as English-language rock
music became the soundtrack of a cultural revolution and political rebellion in
Germany.
The cultural critic Klaus Theweleit even saw the role of pop music as ‘a kind
of symbolic de-nazification’.¹¹ Conservative society revealingly responded by de-
nouncing rock music with racists labels such as Negermusik [‘negro’ music], a
term coined by the Nazis. A leading newspaper described Jimi Hendrix, for ex-
ample, as someone who ‘looked like he was coaxed out of the jungle with the
help of a banana’.¹²
The music of the Rolling Stones also inspired many German imitators, all of
whom sang in English only. Setting aside such inferior copycats, only a handful
of musicians dared to use their mother tongue at that time. Amongst them was
(the aptly named) Drafi Deutscher, whose ‘Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht’ [Mar-
ble, Steel and Iron Breaks] turned into a major hit. However, Deutscher was an
exception and proved unable to repeat his one and only success. Most vocalists
singing in German – such as Peter Kraus, Conny Froboess or the German (would-
be) ‘Elvis’ Ted Herold – only delivered toned-down, inoffensive versions of rock
‘n’ roll and beat songs that were exclusively for commercial purposes and lacked
any sense of rebellion or nonconformity. Their ‘music’, however, was only a prel-
ude of things to come.

Schlager – (Un‐)Easy Listening in the Post-War

Era
The gradual paradigm shift in the German post-war musical landscape unfolded
against the background of Schlager music. Schlager are a German version of
easy-listening music that played a vital role in the social psychology of the trau-

 See Martin Büsser, On The Wild Side: Die wahre Geschichte der Popmusik (Mainz: Ventil,
2013), p. 21.
 See Peter Wagner, Pop 2000: 50 Jahre Popmusik und Jugendkultur in Deutschland (Hamburg:
Ideal, 1999), p. 54.
10 Uwe Schütte

matized post-war generation. Apart from the inherent function of such music to
distract the listener from personal, everyday worries and instil passivity, Schlager
then also served as consolation and reassurance in a post-war period marked by
hunger and great uncertainty. Many had lost family members on the battlefield
or during the Allied air raids that greatly intensified during the last year of the
war.
While the destroyed nation was being rebuilt from the rubble of the cities,
Schlager evoked consoling images of a beautiful and romantic countryside and
painted a distorted, idyllic picture of Germany that excluded any reference to
the horrors of the war and the atrocities of the concentration camps. In a
sense, one could even say that the Schlager dream world re-echoed the Nazi
ideal of a racially cleansed Germany.
Schlager also provided a soundtrack to the renewed self-esteem that resulted
from the phenomenal economic recovery from the early 1950s onwards. The en-
suing culture of consumerism and foreign tourism cemented a mind-set that re-
fused to look back at the horrendous crimes committed or the traumatic suffer-
ing of the German population. A popular song like the ‘Lied vom
Wirtschaftswunder’ [Song of the Economic Miracle] (1958) by Wolfgang Neuss
and Wolfgang Müller mirrored the desire to ignore the recent past, even though
this Schlager alluded to it. No tongue in cheek, however, is detectable in ‘Kon-
junktur Cha-Cha’ [Economic Boom Cha-Cha] by the Hazi Osterwald Sextett.
The song unabashedly praised financial greed and welcomed the capitalist mar-
ket system as a new arena of a supposed natural struggle in which only the
strong survived, a continuation of the Social Darwinist beliefs propagated by
the Nazis.
Julio Mendívil charts the entire history of the Schlager from its beginnings to
its rather sorry state in the present day. The focus of his chapter is on the period
from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, which he describes as the golden era of the
genre. He discusses the various stylistic adaptations Schlager underwent in reac-
tion to new trends and developments as well as the impact of the media, in par-
ticular the TV programme Die Hitparade, on the genre. He puts special emphasis
on the representation of the Other in this most conservative and highly parochial
genre of popular German music.

The Musical Revolution of the late 1960s

During the second part of the 1960s, the dominance of Anglo-American pop
music in Germany began to decline. Even though artists like Jimi Hendrix and
Frank Zappa, or a band like The Doors, served as countercultural heroes of an
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