Bandleader Kurt Henkels Escapes East Germany (GDR) - ca. July 20, 1959 interview from NDR archives
From https://www.ardaudiothek.de/episode/n... - also to test YouTube's auto-transcription & translation capabilities, as I can't understand the entire thing...but the captions are pretty good!
Back to a format I had intended to do a little more of - this time, it's a rare recording of an interview with Kurt Henkels, the big name among German bandleaders! Henkels gave a few interviews alongside his occasional film (and eventually, numerous television) appearances, though recordings are often very hard to find. This was posted publicly in a series of episodes about refugees from East Germany, and Henkels had taken advantage of the leaking sieve of Berlin in order to go to Munich, then Hamburg in July 1959.
Gerhard Conrad's book mentions how the tall Henkels, whose face was known to thousands due to his media presence, had to crouch down in the car and hide his face when possible. He couldn't afford to be stopped by an East German police officer, since he had been banned from traveling abroad after refusing to ditch Western music, he realized the walls would not stop closing in. His children noticed that the stress of the situation didn't stop there, as "no one was waiting for him in the Federal Republic [West]", as his daughter said. His status as a refugee, then the ensuing smear campaign from his past patrons meant he couldn't be handled due to controversy. Past offers of contracts from EMI/Electrola went up in smoke, though if Nils Nobach had offered such a deal, it was probably not going to happen anyway. Reinhard Mohn's Ariola label, however, was more than happy to have Henkels onboard, and much of his legacy was preserved in numerous reissues of that early 1960s output.
The interview recording comes from the NDR (North German Radio) archive, implying it was managed by the Hamburg organization. Some sources mention a Munich press conference Henkels gave not long after arriving in the West, and the photos shown were ostensibly taken in Hamburg around the early 1960s [the files state "3/15/1964"], possibly for the O-Ton interview? https://web.archive.org/web/201107270... - still looking for that recording
Various topics are covered, including an employment dispute with older members of the Leipzig Radio Dance Orchestra who were slated to be let go by 1960. The younger members agreed with Henkels and the radio committee that fresh blood would be needed, so the older members were willing to try throwing Henkels under the bus, so it seems. Seeing later photos of the Leipzig ensemble under Walter Eichenberg reveal how many people were able to remain, and even some of them were still let go in the 1960s...!
#KurtHenkels