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CULTURE

Who are Rammstein and why are they so big in Germany?

Currently swept up in a scandal, the cult band Rammstein is arguably Germany's most well known musical import. Here's how the group got so popular in the first place - and how that’s changing.

Published: 7 June 2023 12:23 CEST
Rammstein
Rammstein lead singer Till Lindemann (r) fires a flame thrower at band member Christian Lorenz (l) on stage during a concert as part of the German tour with the album "Zeit" in Düsseldorf . Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Malte Krudewig

Ausverkauft (Sold out). This is the note on the Rammstein website behind most of the concerts on the European tour – despite an alleged sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the heavy metal band over the last few days.

In Munich’s Olympiastadion alone, the heavy metal group is slated to give four concerts in a row over the next few days to 250,000 audience members – even though it remains in question how many will give up their tickets while the allegations are investigated.

READ ALSO: German band Rammstein hit by sex abuse scandal

The band’s world tour, which ended last year, was also a commercial success.

According to the website Touring Data, Rammstein generated a turnover of almost $220 million from tickets alone last year. 

This put the band, founded in 1994 in Berlin, in 6th place for concert ticket sales worldwide in 2022, behind artists such as Elton John and Coldplay, but ahead of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Part of an industry

But pure ticket sales only make up a part of the turnover of the business enterprise that is Rammstein.

Last year, for example, the still current album “Zeit” was by far the best-selling record in Germany. In addition, there are millions in sales of fan merchandise such as T-shirts, wine, chocolate or even printed doormats.

The exact figures are a well-kept secret, but in the industry, Rammstein are considered the undisputed top earners in German show business. Behind this is a corporate construct whose core is the Rammstein GbR registered in Berlin’s Pankow district, in which the six band members are listed as partners.

Consequences of scandal

Frontmann Till Lindemann also became Germany’s best-selling contemporary poet with books of edgy poetry. 

However, publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch has ended its cooperation with Lindemann following allegations of sexual assault at concert after-parties. 

Whether a European tour of the singer with his musical solo project scheduled for autumn and winter will take place as planned is currently unclear. 

The band as a whole is also feeling the consequences of the controversy. Rossmann, for example, has dropped the Rammstein perfumes “Cocaine”, “Sex” and “Pussy” from its range. The fragrances can currently no longer be found in the drugstore chain’s shops or online.

How did Rammstein get so popular in the first place?

Founded in Berlin in 1994, the heavy metal group Rammstein became well known, in part, for their provocative lyrics, performances and videos.

Rammstein sexual assault allegations

Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann performs at a concert in Düsseldorf. Lindemann is at the centre of a wave of sexual assault allegations. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Malte Krudewig

Their songs have dealt with subjects from cannibalism to necrophilia, and the band name itself evokes the 1988 Ramstein air show disaster that killed 70 people and injured more than 1,000.

The band is considered to be behind the music style Neue Deutsche Härte (New German Hardness), a sub-genre of rock music.

Fame did not come immediately to the group though: their first album Herzeleid in 1995 barely garnered any attention at first, but the six-person group hailing from former East Germany quickly gained fans through their fire-filled live shows and their second album, Sehnsucht (longing), debuted at number one on the charts in Germany when it was released in 1997.

The album spawned the successful singles “Du hast” and “Engel”, and led to a four-year-long worldwide tour – and a handful of international fans. To this day, the group remains the only German commercial international success that also sing in German.

They became known for their over-the-top shows filled with pyrotechnics, and led fans to coin the motto, “Other bands play, Rammstein burns!”

In 2001, they signed a deal with Universal Music, and released the album Mutter, which spawned six more singles, which topped the charts in countries throughout Europe. 

The song “Mein Teil” (my part, slang for “my penis”), which deals with an infamous cannibalism case in Germany, became a number-one hit in Spain – the group’s first number-one single. 

Their first number single in Germany, however, didn’t come until 2009, when the song Pussy topped the charts, despite a video which showed hard-core pornography. The second number-one single in Germany didn’t come until a decade later, with the controversial song Deutschland. 

The accompanying music video – which showed band members dressed as concentration camp prisoners with nooses around their necks – was heavily criticised by politicians, historians and Jewish groups. 

Germany’s anti-Semitism commissioner Felix Klein called it “a tasteless exploitation of artistic freedom” that “represents the transgression of a red line”.

READ ALSO: German rockers Rammstein slammed over ‘repulsive’ Holocaust video clip

Current controversy

As of Wednesday, several women have come forward with allegations of grooming and sexual assault at Rammstein concerts.

A poll published Tuesday by the German daily Bild said a majority of people want the group’s remaining European tour gigs to be cancelled until the allegations are addressed.

Bild also reported that hundreds of fans were trying to sell their tickets for the Munich concerts on the online ticketing platform Eventim.

“I was a big Johnny Depp fan, I was a big Marilyn Manson fan, I was a big Rammstein fan, and that changed 180 degrees for me with the first abuse accusations,” wrote one Twitter user. “Because I’m first a woman and second a fan.”

The band has denied the claims.

“The accusations have hit us all very hard, and we take them extremely seriously,” it wrote in a statement posted on Instagram.

“It is important to us that (fans) feel comfortable and safe at our shows — in front of and behind the stage,” the statement said.

But German newspaper Die Welt reported on Tuesday that Alena Makeeva, a Russian woman accused of recruiting young women to engage in sexual practices with Lindemann, had been banned from all further Rammstein concerts.

Makeeva called herself Rammstein’s “casting director” and had been working for the band since 2019, according to Die Welt.

The band has also hired a Berlin-based PR agency specialised in crisis management to help with the fallout from the scandal, the newspaper reported.

Together with the agency, the band has also hired a law firm to investigate the allegations, it said, with the first findings expected on Friday.

With reporting from AFP.

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For members

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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