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CULTURE

From folk to techno: 13 German songs that never grow old

Here is a showcase of some of the best music Germany has to offer.

Published: 14 August 2019 16:20 CEST
Updated: 25 March 2022 16:23 CET
From folk to techno: 13 German songs that never grow old
Die Toten Hosen in concert. Photo: DPA

Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst) by Peter Schilling

‘Major Tom’ by Peter Schilling, released in 1982, is an example of Neue Deutsche Welle and Space Rock. The song, which unofficially carries on the legacy of the fictional astronaut from David Bowie’s 1969 hit of the same name, reached number one in West Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Following this success, an English Version, ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’ was released in 1983.

Fremd im Eigenen Land by Advanced Chemistry

Translated as “Stranger in my own country”, this protest song from Heidelberg hip hop crew, Advanced Chemistry, paved the way for German hip hop in the 90’s. It was released in 1992 in reaction to the racist pogroms of Rostock-Lichtenhagen and combines radical political views with emotional reactions to personal experiences.

Subzero by Ben Klock

The track ‘Subzero’, released in 2012, is a classic example of electronic dance music. Its creator, Ben Klock, is one of the resident DJs at Berghain, Berlin’s most notorious techno club. Germany is known throughout the world for its techno scene which has played a huge role in party culture since the genre first emerged in the 1980’s.

Halt dich an diener Liebe fest by Ton Steine Scherben

Ton Steine Scherben are a German rock band, well known in the 70’s and early 80’s for their socially critical lyrics. The song ‘Halt dich an deiner Lieber fest’, meaning ‘hold on tight to your love’, was released in 1975 and is one of the band’s best known tracks.

Über den Wolken by Reinhard Mey 

Reinhard Mey is a prolific singer-songwriter who many Germans will remember from their youth. Born during the Second World War, he has released almost 400 songs in his lifetime, but the best-loved is the nostalgic and hopeful song, ‘Über den Wolken’, or ‘above the clouds’.

Pure Vernunft darf niemals siegen by Tocotronic

The song ‘Pure Vernunft darf niemals siegen’, which translates to ‘pure reason must never prevail’, is a prime example of the German ‘discursive rock’ movement. The song’s creators, Tocotronic, are an indie-pop/rock band from the late 20th century music movement known as the ‘Hamburger Schule’. The movement was considered “discursive” as it combined guitar heavy music with left-wing, “intellectual” lyrics and built on the traditions of the Neue Deutsche Welle, incorporating pop, punk, indie rock and grunge. 

Bist du Down? by Ace Tee

Hamburg-based rapper Ace Tee, although fairly new to the music scene, was dubbed on Twitter the “new TLC” and has earned her place on this list due to her creation of possibly the most silky smooth sounding German R&B you will ever hear. Ace Tee is an example of the modern, digital revolution in the music scene, rising to international fame after achieving viral sucess with the song ‘Bist Du Down’. 

Kaltes klares Wasser by Malaria!

Cult electronic band, Malaria! were produced by Mark Reeder, composer and score producer of the film ‘The B-Movie: Lust & Sound’. ‘The B-Movie is a documentary film, released in 2015, about ‘music, art and chaos’ in the pop- and subculture melting pot that was West Berlin the 80’s, of which Malaria! were a part. The avante garde duo found fame in Germany and around the world, particularly with the song ‘Kaltes Klares Wasser’.

Eva Braun by Die Ärtze

Punk band Die Ärtze also featured in the 80’s Berlin documentary ‘B-Movie’ and are one of the most successful German punk-rock groups of all time. The song ‘Eva Braun’ is a satirical ode from the left-wing band to Hilter’s mistress and, due to its taboo subject matter and concerns about its meaning being misinterpreted, was never officially released.

Autobahn by Kraftwerk

‘Autobahn’ by Kraftwerk is iconic due to its amalgamation of techno and Autobahns, two things for which Germany is world famous. Pioneering electro-pop group Kraftwerk, meaning “power plant”, live up to their name with their machine like musical style. They have been hugely influential on the electronic music scene since the 1970’s and were dubbed by the New York Times as “the Beatles of electronic dance music” in 1997.

Ich rolle mit meim Besten by Haftbefehl ft. Marteria

“Ich Rolle Mit Meim Besten” is German gangster rap vom Feinsten. The song is by German-Kurdish rapper, Haftbefehl and features Echo award winning rapper Marteria. Haftbefehl’s music is deeply rooted in street and urban culture and he describes himself as “antisocial, hard, and direct in your face”. 
 
Tage Wie Diese by Die Toten Hosen

Die Toten Hosen are one of the most successful German bands in history. Their style is mostly rock with elements of punk, and they have reached number one in the German album charts over 10 times. The song ‘Tage Wie Diese’ is about the collective feeling of joy from being at a concert. It was released in 2012 and was named ‘Hit of the Year 2012’.

99 Luftballons by Nena

The most iconic song of the Neue Deutsche Welle, ’99 Luftballons’ by Nena was a smash hit all over the world.
 
The song, released in 1983 during the Cold War, tells the story of 99 red balloons being released into the air, only to be mistaken for UFOs and shot down by 99 fighter jets. This is miscontrued by 99 neighbouring states as an act of war and a 99-year war follows which ends civilisation on earth. Although hugely successful in its original language of German, the song gained further fame after an English version was released in 1984.
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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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