Neue Deutsche Welle explained

The Neue Deutsche Welle, usually shortened to NDW, is the West German version of new wave and post-punk, sung in German, from about 1979 to 1984. It began as an underground of tiny labels, fanzines and art school bands in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and West Berlin and ended, only a few years later, as a chart boom that put songs such as 99 Luftballons, Da Da Da and Major Tom into the German top ten and, in some cases, onto the international charts.

The story is in two parts that do not like each other much. The early bands were experimental, political and often harsh. The later hits were light, catchy and sometimes plain novelty songs. Both are called NDW.

The name

The term appeared in the Hamburg music magazine Sounds in 1979. It is most often credited to the journalist Alfred Hilsberg, who wrote a long article on the new German bands in the autumn of that year. Some accounts point to an earlier advertisement in the same magazine by a Hamburg record shop. Hilsberg went on to found ZickZack, one of the most important underground labels of the period.

The point of the name was a declaration of independence. For the first time a generation of German rock bands insisted on singing in their own language and refused to copy British or American models.

The underground: 1979 to 1981

The early NDW was close to post-punk. It grew from the German punk scene of 1977 and 1978 in three cities.

1. Düsseldorf. The Ratinger Hof in the old town was the meeting point. DAF, formed in 1978, built hard, minimal dance music from sequencer and drums; their album Alles ist gut appeared in 1981. Fehlfarben, with singer Peter Hein, released Monarchie und Alltag in 1980, often named as the best German rock album of its time. Der Plan ran the label Ata Tak, which also released Andreas Dorau’s Fred vom Jupiter.
2. Hamburg. Home of Sounds, of ZickZack and of the record shop and label Rip Off. Abwärts released Amok Koma in 1980, Palais Schaumburg mixed funk, noise and absurd lyrics.
3. West Berlin. The most radical scene, around Kreuzberg and the club SO36. Einstürzende Neubauten worked with scrap metal and power tools, Malaria! and Mania D with drums and chant. In September 1981 the Festival Genialer Dilletanten, with its deliberately misspelt name, gathered this side of the scene.

The legendary producer Conny Plank, whose studio near Cologne had already shaped krautrock, recorded DAF and many others. The influence of Kraftwerk, also from Düsseldorf, runs through the electronic side of the movement.

The boom: 1981 to 1983

From 1981 the music industry discovered German language pop. Ideal from Berlin, with Annette Humpe, had a hit with their debut album. Trio from Lower Saxony released Da Da Da in 1982, a song with almost nothing in it but a preset rhythm from a tiny Casio keyboard, a few words and enormous charm; it became a hit across Europe. Spider Murphy Gang from Munich, Extrabreit from Hagen, Joachim Witt, Markus, Hubert Kah and Peter Schilling followed. From Austria came Falco with Der Kommissar.

The biggest success was Nena. The Berlin based band released 99 Luftballons in January 1983, a song about a chain reaction that leads to war, written at the height of the arms race debate. It reached number one in West Germany, number two in the United States in 1984 in its German version, and number one in Britain in March 1984 as 99 Red Balloons.

The collapse: 1983 and 1984

The boom destroyed itself. Record companies signed nearly anyone who sang in German over a synthesizer, and the charts filled with joke songs and imitations. Many of the original bands publicly rejected the label. By 1984 sales collapsed and the term became an embarrassment for a few years. Several of the more serious artists, from DAF to Einstürzende Neubauten, went on to international careers that had little to do with the NDW image.

The NDW bands that matter

If you want to understand the movement from both sides, start with these records:

1. Fehlfarben, Monarchie und Alltag (1980). The underground’s central album, angry and precise.
2. DAF, Alles ist gut (1981). The template for electronic body music.
3. Der Plan, Geri Reig (1980). Playful, cheap electronics and absurd humour.
4. Abwärts, Amok Koma (1980). Hamburg punk turning into post-punk.
5. Einstürzende Neubauten, Kollaps (1981). Noise as music.
6. Ideal, Ideal (1980). The bridge from the underground to the charts.
7. Trio, Da Da Da (single, 1982). Minimalism as a Europe wide hit.
8. Nena, Nena (1983). The peak of the commercial NDW.

Four songs that explain the NDW

1. Fehlfarben, Ein Jahr (Es geht voran) (1980). From Monarchie und Alltag. A deadpan look at a year in West Germany, set to a driving, almost danceable band sound, and the best known song of the underground phase.
2. DAF, Der Mussolini (1981). Two men, a sequencer and a drum kit. Provocative, minimal and danceable, it shows how far the scene had moved from rock.
3. Ideal, Blaue Augen (1980). Berlin new wave with a pop chorus, the moment the underground found the radio.
4. Trio, Da Da Da (1982). The joke that became a European hit and showed both the charm and the limits of the boom.

How the NDW fits into the wider story

The NDW is the German chapter of new wave, with the same movement from independent labels to major label campaigns, compressed into four years. It also has links to New York’s no wave: Berlin and lower Manhattan shared an interest in noise and refusal. For the punk roots see our history of punk rock, and for the international context our overview of new wave bands.