From Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s to the influence of The Beatles and the rise and fall of Nena's Neue Deutsche Welle, German pop has changed a lot in the past 90 years. A Frankfurt exhibition takes a closer look.
Image: Martin Luther
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German pop music, from swing to eurodance
There's more to Germany's music scene than Wagner and Beethoven — at least according to an exhibition that has opened its doors in Berlin. The show, called "Oh Yeah!" presents 90 years of pop music.
Image: Martin Luther
German pop across the board
If German music makes you think of the folk pop genre Schlager, you're not completely off, but there's more to it than that. The special exhibition "Oh Yeah!" at the Museum for Communication in Berlin shows roughly 200 exhibits and presents songs from 140 artists ranging from swing and rock 'n' roll to rap.
Image: Martin Luther
The liberating walkman
Young readers might wonder what this is. Back in the day, it was used as a mobile listening device - and was revolutionary at the time. Music used to be recorded on cassette tapes, which had limited capacity. Some walkmans even had an automatic rewind function that would replay the album after reaching the end of the tape. Unfortunately, the walkman did not serve as a phone or messaging device.
Image: Martin Luther
Germany's biggest prize
Some artists have several, others are waiting for their turn. The ECHO is Germany's most prestigious music award, but the criteria for getting one can be confusing. There is a jury, but what really counts are sales and music charts. According to critics, the award is more about commercial success than about quality.
Image: Martin Luther
A matter of taste
Good taste can be subjective, and only Martin Krumbiegel from the pop band Die Prinzen could pull off this suit without getting laughed at. Whether or not the suit is among Krumbiegel's favorite outfits remains a secret. But we do know that he contributed it to the exhibition "Oh Yeah!"
Image: Martin Luther
A dog and his phonograph
Although this dog achieved world fame, you might not recognize him without his phonograph. The real dog, named Nipper, posed curiously in front of his master's phonograph one day — and his owner captured the scene in a portrait called "His Master's Voice" in 1898. The painting later became the logo for numerous recording companies, including EMI in Germany.
Image: Martin Luther
Forever a king in Germany
The 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death in 1977 was marked on August 16. The King had special ties to Germany, where he is especially remembered. Even though he was already a global star with record sales totalling over 50 million, he was still conscripted into the US military and stationed in Bad Nauheim in 1958 at the age of 23.
Image: Martin Luther
Strumming like The Beatles
Following the Elvis hype and rock 'n' roll, another trend rolled over Germany. In both East and West Germany, musicians were influenced by The Beatles. In East Germany, bands like the Sputniks became popular, whereas the West German music scene was dominated by The Lords. One of its members, Leo Lietz, lent his guitar to the exhibition.
Image: Martin Luther
Higher than high heels
That taste can be subjective when it comes to fashion — including during the techno era. Miss Loveparade managed to wear this incredible shoe and the popular techno festival in 1999 without breaking her foot. Although it doesn't look like it, the shoe is actually more comfortable than high heels.
Image: Axel Thünker
Only half an hour per month
There were times when people actually had to wait for a particular time if they wanted to watch their favorite show. Teenagers had to be very patient if they wanted to enjoy the program "Beat-Club." This half-hour music show for young adults in Germany was only broadcast once a month on a public TV channel — but the appearance of Jimi Hendrix and The Who made up for that.
Image: Martin Luther
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Pop music was about fun and protest, hedonism and politics - and the exhibition in Frankfurt's Museum of Communication, which opened Thursday, includes it all. Marlene Dietrich and Pur to Ton Steine Scherben and Die Fantastischen Vier, the greats of the mainstream German music scene are there.
The show starts in the 1920s, taking into account the spread of the radio as a new medium.
"In addition to the radio, the grammophone and records also became popular," Jan Christoph Greim told DW. The new devices made listening to - and collecting - music a personal experience. Greim is the curator of the exhibition "Oh Yeah! Pop Music in Germany!" that includes roughly 200 exhibits, as well as more than eight hours of sound and video material.
Watching and listening to 90 years of pop music in GermanyImage: Martin Luther
Elvis Presley's fan mail
Frankfurt is one stop on the exhibition's tour, which includes four other cities. Greim says he wanted to honor the special significance of the show's planned locations. In Frankfurt, a focus is on presenting the army broadcaster AFN which spread the American way of life in the US-occupied zone of West Germany after World War II.
Visitors equipped with headphones can listen to works of 140 musicians, while studying posters and record covers presenting both subversive as well as mainstream styles. Among the exhibits are a suit James Last wore on stage and a duffel bag used to send fan mail to the King when he was stationed as a GI in the German town of Bad Nauheim.
Curator Greim raves about the golden 20s, as well as the development of pop music in postwar Germany. "The 1920s also saw revolutionary changes in the status of women, who went out by themselves and even smoked and drank in public. And cocaine became the first trendy drug."
The exhibit on the famous ensemble Comedian Harmonists shows how the Nazis later differentiated between "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" artists.
Rise and fall of genres
"The postwar era is also very interesting," notes Greim. Following the Elvis hype and rock 'n' roll, the Beatles came to influence bands in both East and West Germany, including The Lords in the West and the Sputniks in the East.
Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen - the father of techno? Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
In 1965, the first music show for young people called "Beat-Club" was aired on German television.
Also honored in the exhibition is German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who is seen as one of the pioneers of electronic music, greatly influencing pop icons like Frank Zappa and the band Kraftwerk. Some of his admirers even see Stockhausen as the father of techno.
"Oh Yeah!" also shows how music styles that originated as youth protest movements lose their power after being commercialized. "The so-called 'Neue Deutsche Welle' went downhill after becoming popular," says Greim. Once record companies discovered that a lot of money could be made with the genre, which included Nena and Falco, numerous copy-cat bands sprung up. "The 'Neue Deutsche Welle' could not survive this inflationary development," Greim adds.
The exhibition that originated in Bern, Switzerland, where the city's Museum of Communication put together a show on pop music in Switzerland, runs in Frankfurt until February 25, 2018, before moving on to Berlin, Leipzig and then Stuttgart.
