Dieter Thomas Heck remains calm. He announces the band UKW just as disciplined and precise as the Schlager greats Nicole (“A little peace”), Bernhard Brink (“You of course”) or Roland Kaiser (“Where are you going”). “Continue with the number six,” says the presenter, who always wears a suit, calmly in studio one of Union Film in Berlin. And that despite the fact that a revolution is taking place on his show.
Four weeks after Neue Deutsche Welle was heard in the “ZDF hit parade” for the first time, the song “Sommersprossen” created a sensation. On June 7, 1982, the band UKW won the Ted vote hands down, so they’re back on the next show. From then on, bands like DÖF, Peter Schilling, Hubert Kah, Trio or Nena climbed the ranks of the Schlager Olympus and disrupted the ideal Schlager world. The triumph of the Neue Deutsche Welle can no longer be stopped.
The NDW interpreters cleverly take advantage of a circumstance that until then had received little attention. Half playback is sung in the “ZDF hit parade”. The music comes off the tape, the voices are live. This meant that there was usually only one singer on stage and not much happened. Bands like Hubert Kah suddenly change that.
Whole hordes of musicians storm the stage in funny costumes. Doing nonsense and attracting attention is the order of the day. When Kah appears in a short nightgown for his “Starry Sky,” it’s tantamount to an affront. The singer is booed by the staid Schlager audience. He will still win. Miss Menke should be denied an appearance in a wedding dress – the institution of marriage should not be sullied. Without further ado, she hides her veil in the dress and takes it out during the live show. A scandal back then.
Heck defends the newcomers. “I don’t even know what people want. For years they complained that young people no longer listen to German music,” he said in a 1982 interview with the “Bunte”. Now there would be a turn to German groups that would produce “real hits”. The titles of the NDW were “sung along all over the country”. “You can’t find a better definition of Schlager.”
It takes a full two years for the Neue Deutsche Welle to subside again. But the aftermath remains. With Nino de Angelo and Juliane Werding, a new generation of pop singers has grown up, ousting Heck’s old guard Rex Gildo, Roy Black and Karel Gott from the chart thrones forever. In 1984, the presenter says goodbye himself. An era comes to an end with Dieter Thomas Heck. The “ZDF hit parade” is never again as successful as it was then.
