Post by listenerwants2know on Feb 9, 2020 10:59:04 GMT -5
In the summer of 1983 there was another popular song in Europe besides Nena´s "99 Luftballons", which dealt with the East-West conflict:
In a radio interview with "Sender Freies Berlin" on 3/5/1979 the singer Udo Lindenberg expressed his wish to give a concert for his fans in East Berlin. The answer came promptly: "Performance in the GDR is out of the question."
At the beginning of 1983 he had the idea to write a German text with the melody of the swing classic "Chattanooga Choo Choo" as a reaction to this refusal. The German text is ironically addressed directly to Erich Honecker, the Chairman of the State Council. He is portrayed as a man who officially presents the ideology of the government, but who is a rocker inside and secretly listens to Western radio. The insinuation was both ironic and provocative. Incidentally, "Pankow" was popularly used in the early days of the Cold War as a synonym for "seat of government of the Soviet-occupied zone". At the end of the song there is a (station) announcement in Russian, which can be translated roughly as follows: "Comrade Erich, by the way, the Supreme Soviet has nothing against a guest performance of Mr. Lindenberg in the GDR !" This passage was intended to indicate that essential decisions of the GDR were made in the Soviet Union anyway.
Udo Lindenberg has also covered Nena´s "99 Luftballons": In his song "98 Luftballons" from 1986 he advertises the use of condoms (in German "Luftballon" is also a synonym for condom). The female part in this song sounds like Nena, but is actually a woman named Mirjam Schonefeld.
In a radio interview with "Sender Freies Berlin" on 3/5/1979 the singer Udo Lindenberg expressed his wish to give a concert for his fans in East Berlin. The answer came promptly: "Performance in the GDR is out of the question."
Lindenberg was annoyed by this refusal, for several years he didn´t succeed in implementing his plan.
On 10/25/1983 Udo Lindenberg finally had his first and only appearance in the GDR until the fall of the Wall. This took place within the framework of the festival "Rock for Peace" in front of 4,200 listeners in the "Palast der Republik", but Lindenberg didn´t sing this title at the request of the GDR leadership. A tour of the GDR planned by Lindenberg for the following year didn´t take place - the tour was finally cancelled in February 1984.
On 10/3/2003, twenty years after these events, the "special train to Pankow" was real for the first time. 13 wagons, which were artistically designed by Udo Lindenberg himself, drove from Berlin to Magdeburg on the occasion of the celebration of the Day of German Unity. They were supposed to symbolically tear down the walls that still existed 13 years after reunification in the minds of people in East and West.