Tenth anniversary of Udo Jürgens’ death: Five interesting details about the music icon

On December 21, 2014, Udo Jürgens (1934-2024) collapsed while walking in his adopted home of Switzerland and died shortly afterwards in hospital at the age of 80. The singer wrote history with hits such as “Griechischer Wein” (1974), “Aber please with cream” (1983) and “Merci, Cherie” (1966) and shaped the German-speaking music world for more than five decades. To this day, his songs are unforgettable and his performances are legendary. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death, we look back at surprising details from the entertainer’s life: from spontaneous stage appearances in a dressing gown to his relationship with the piano and a politically influenced family history.

The white bathrobe belonged to Udo Jürgens like his grand piano and the “Greek wine”. At every concert he played his encore in the cozy dressing gown with his embroidered signature. “Today it’s the case that people talk about the bathrobe almost more than about me,” the musician once told the Austria Press Agency. The tradition began quite spontaneously in 1969.

“Suddenly, when the concert was over for fifteen minutes and the people were still cheering, I went out onto the stage again. I had already changed and was only wearing a bathrobe,” Jürgens recalled in . The fans reacted ecstatically to this look – and the trademark was born.

By the way, a special bathrobe from the music icon will soon go under the hammer. Jürgens’ children John (60) and Jenny (57) have put together a personal selection from their father’s estate, which will be auctioned for a good cause from January 23rd to 30th, 2025. Among them is a very special terry cloth classic from the Adidas brand, which has signatures of German national football players from the 2014 World Cup squad on the back.

The highlight of the auction, however, is the Schimmel concert grand made of Plexiglas, made in the 1980s. The piano was Jürgens’ flagship instrument, the transparent grand piano his favorite version.

He once taught himself to play the piano after learning the harmonica and accordion. As a little boy, he was still afraid of the instrument, as he told WDR 5’s “Table Talk”: “I was afraid of this big grand piano. It had something threatening to me.” That’s why he later decided on the much less powerful glass wing.

But even in adulthood, Udo Jürgens continued to be plagued by fears. In the new ARD documentary “Udo!” (December 23rd, 10:30 p.m. on the first), his first wife Erika “Panja” Meier talks about his panic attacks due to fear of failure: “He often woke up crying at night. He cried so hard that I had to call the emergency doctor. They came then and gave him a sedative injection,” said Meier.

The reason for this was Jürgens’ “fear of the tour”. “The fear of having to fulfill what was expected of him. And he was so afraid that he couldn’t do that.”

Udo Jürgens was a perfectionist throughout his life. He is said to have been very pedantic with his song lyrics, which he often wrote himself. This makes the mishap that happened twice to those responsible for his gravestone in Vienna’s Central Cemetery all the more annoying. The text from his song “I leave you everything there” from 1999 is quoted.

According to the “Bild” newspaper, instead of the line “You are the sheet of music that was everything for me” there was the incorrect version “You are the sheet of music that was everything for me”. The corrected inscription in turn introduced a new error. “I’ll leave you everything – I’ll leave you everything there” initially became “I’ll leave you everything there – I’ll leave you everything there”. However, the text on the plate in front of the six-ton ​​sculpture of a concert grand piano covered with a cloth, including his signature, has long been correct.

Udo Jürgens – born Jürgen Udo Bockelmann – was born in 1934 to German parents in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee in Carinthia. His brother Manfred Bockelmann (81) took the artistic path like him and is a renowned painter and photographer. The Jürgens children were actually more influenced by their family to pursue political careers.

Her father Rudolf Bockelmann (1904-1984) was mayor of the municipality of Ottmanach from 1938 to 1945 and from 1954 to 1958. His brother Gert Bockelmann was also mayor of the community of Gut Barendorf near Lüneburg for some time. But that’s not all: Werner Bockelmann, again an uncle of Udo Jürgens, was mayor of Frankfurt am Main from 1957 to 1964.