During his inaugural lecture as a visiting professor at Heinrich Heine University, Campino described the origins of punk as a late reaction to the Nazi era.
“After twelve years of Nazi dictatorship, there wasn’t much left that was cheeky. The Jewish artists were expelled or murdered. The youth had turned away from German-language music. Our attitude to life came from England.” At his inaugural lecture as a visiting professor at Heinrich Heine University, Tote Hosen singer Campino (61) described the emergence of punk music as a late reaction to the Nazi era.
However, Ton Steine Scherben had settled the reckoning with their parents’ generation (“I don’t want to become what my age is.”) ten years earlier. “It was punk, but we didn’t listen to it back then because they were hippies.”
In Düsseldorf, Joseph Beuys proclaimed a principle that also applied to punk with his sentence: “Everyone is an artist”: “Stand on a stage and play!” Back then, he worked on reactionary texts like those by Freddy Quinn (“We”).
“Didn’t attend a lecture”
Campino revealed that he was enrolled as a student of English and history at the University of Düsseldorf for years. “Due to scheduling reasons, I wasn’t able to attend a lecture.” Luckily, the university never held him against his years of absence and he always paid his student fee obediently.
During a performance with the Toten Hosen in the university cafeteria in 1985, ceiling lights and toilets were broken. “That was the moment when I had to expect a ban on the house – but it wasn’t me,” said the rock musician.
University Rector Anja Steinbeck said that Campino was almost a mandatory choice as a visiting professor. Heinrich Heine, who gave the professorship and university its name, had already taken a stand against the establishment and traditional conventions.
“We all against stupidity”
“I can hardly serve as a critic of the system anymore. I come as an elder statesman,” said Campino. “I bring nothing with me except enthusiasm for texts that mean something to me.” These were texts by Kästner, Brecht, Wader, Heine – sometimes as a poem, sometimes as a song.
“Everyone should read Erich Kästner’s collected poems,” recommended Campino. And: “We are faced with a big task. All of us against stupidity. Every voice is needed.”
30,000 people applied for a place in Campino’s lecture, 650 fit into the university’s largest lecture hall. Title of the inaugural lecture: “Kästner, Kraftwerk, Cock Sparrer. A declaration of love for everyday poetry”.
Before Campino, Helmut Schmidt, Juli Zeh, Wolf Biermann, Siegfried Lenz, Joschka Fischer, Antje Vollmer, Karl Cardinal Lehmann, Ulrich Wickert, Joachim Gauck and most recently Klaus-Maria Brandauer were Heine visiting professors. The first Heinrich Heine visiting professor was Marcel Reich-Ranicki in 1991.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
