Electronic music – Kraftwerk: anti-romanticism made in Germany

The German paradox: We are one of the world’s leading technological nations, build ultra-modern cars and machines, register countless patents every year – and dream of a world of hand-petted chickens and happy organic apples.

Kraftwerk never had anything left for nature. In 1970, when others moved to the rural community and despaired over potato cultivation, they set up their sound-sound studio in Düsseldorf and immersed themselves in the then still new world of synthesizers. Not only musical skills were required, but above all – typically German – engineering skills. Some of the instruments, for example the electric drums, had to be made in-house because they were not yet available as mass-produced products. And what was available was used immediately: Kraftwerk was one of the first bands ever to use a vocoder.

The founders and heads of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, called the result “local music from the Rhine-Ruhr area”.

The founders and heads of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, called the result “local music from the Rhine-Ruhr area”. And because there are more roads than forests “deep in the west, where the sun gathers dust” (Herbert Grönemeyer), they did not sing about the beauty of the oak grove, but rather described a German highway: “The road is a gray band, white stripes, greener Edge.”

There wasn’t much more text either. In none of their songs. The phenomena of the modern world – love of computers, radioactivity, robots – do not require verbose embellishments. A few short, concise sentences are sufficient. “She puts herself on display for the consumer product” – that’s all that needs to be said about the sick model milieu and self-promotion capitalism. This is formulated more clearly than all the rambling feuilleton analyzes about Heidi Klum’s “I prostitute myself to become famous” show “GNTM”.

Yes, Kraftwerk were ahead of their time. Even today – 50 years after their groundbreaking album “Autobahn” – their music still seems fascinatingly futuristic (only the rattling sound of a VW Beetle starting, with which “Autobahn” begins, is a little irritating in times of silent electric cars). Tobias Rüther from the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” is right when he asks: “How is it that Kraftwerk’s music doesn’t seem to age? That you listen to the group’s songs the same way you look at the architecture of Bauhaus?”

Kraftwerk themselves gave the answer. Because they continued where Bauhaus had left off: “The vibrant culture of Central Europe was cut off in the 1930s, and all the intellectuals went to the USA or France, or they were eliminated. We take up this culture of the 1930s at the point where it was abandoned, and do so on a spiritual level,” says Ralf Hütter in an interview in 1976.

Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider could not have foreseen that this “spiritual level” would give rise to their own style of music, yes, their own culture of life. The piece “Trans-Europe Express” (1977), which caused a sensation in black clubs in America, was to be the initial spark for techno. By the time Afrika Bambaataa and producer Arthur Baker sampled its musical leitmotif for “Planet Rock” in 1982 (a homage for which Kraftwerk were rewarded with one dollar per record sold), the Germanic anti-romantics had become a world cultural heritage. German intellectuals who revolutionized the international dance world – that too is a paradox.