Between ‘Ich will Spaß’ and ‘99 Jahre Krieg’: Receptions of the ‘New German Wave’ in the United States

Abstract

In the late 1970s a new music movement, rooted in British punk and New Wave music, emerged in West Germany. It distinctly was not only sung in German, but the lyrics played with the German language by adding Dadaistic elements or youth slang, and reflected on the political, cultural and social zeitgeist of late Cold War West Germany. Over the years this formerly underground music genre was labelled ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ (NDW) and became a commercial success, both domestically and abroad: Artists like Peter Schilling became known in the United States, the biggest hit ‘99 Luftballons’ by the band Nena reached number 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983 in its original German version. Like many other New Wave music, NDW songs found their way to mainstream success in the United States through the club scene, radio shows and the then new music television. At the same time, coming from the then still divided Germany catapulted the bands right in the middle of the Anti-war and Anti-nuclear movements at the end of the cold war, even when NDW bands themselves oftentimes labelled their music as non-political.