Wolfgang M. Schmitt & Ole Nymoen: Pop Songs for Everyone

In 1949, for instance, in keeping with the inflation of the time, people lamented: ‘Who’s going to pay for this?’, whereas by 1960, thanks to the economic miracle, they knew: ‘Go with the flow!’ The events of 1968 provoked deep discontent in Freddy Quinn, whilst Udo Jürgens almost became a revolutionary.

Following the oil crisis and the recession, people in the 1980s ‘rolled up their sleeves’ once more to boost the gross national product. Gitte Haenning wants it all, and Katja Ebstein advises the yuppies to go ahead and marry the office. The neoliberal self is given its very own songs.

Economic migration is celebrated just as much as the longing for an anti-materialistic lifestyle – ‘free and broke’. Even the Amigos know: ‘Tears are shed even in a Porsche’.

Ole and Wolfgang explain and sing the story of West Germany’s economic history from 1949 to the present day.