Herbert Grönemeyer: "I would love to write a musical"

Herbert Grönemeyer will provide two highlights of the Swiss festival summer with his performances at Summerdays in Arbon and Seaside in Spiez. We met him for a chat about current politics, dreams for the future and "Sekundenglück".

event: Your album, which was released in November, has been extremely successful. You obviously hit the zeitgeist with it. It's called "Tumult" - is the title actually meant politically?
Herbert Grönemeyer: Yes, it's certainly political - in the sense of: How do you feel about yourself? How do you get up, how do you read the newspaper, what goes through your head, how do you sort out the world, how do you cope with it? We don't have a shift to the right in Germany - but we do have a clear right-wing side. Now the question is, how do you react to this? Can we remain calm and oppose it without becoming hysterical? I think there is a good chance that we will hopefully succeed in preventing right-wing ideas from becoming firmly entrenched in society. Because of our history, we are naturally predestined to do so. The question now is whether we can achieve this with a certain nonchalance.

You also go to demonstrations and speak out. Have times become tougher with social media? Are people holdingback less?
Social media is a spittoon for opinions or even malice.
It's different than it used to be. I also experienced a lot of
hostility in the 1980s because I was always seen as someone who wasn't right-wing
. But back then you had to write a letter, call the office or leave a message on an answering machine. Today, you can do that in seconds. We recently played in a village that is known as a Nazi stronghold - there was a barbecue with the words "Happy Holocaust" on it.

Really?
Yes, the festival is called "Jamel rockt den Förster" - it's an event against right-wing extremism and for tolerance. The audience doesn't know who's coming. Around 1,500 people come - and then you play on the property of the family organizing the festival, which is in the middle of the village. People underestimate how important resistance is.

Is it important to you to get politically involved?
Sure, it's part of rock 'n' roll for me. I grew up with it, I'm a child of the seventies and eighties - back then it was all about Vietnam and Woodstock. Rock music has always had a social attitude. In that respect, for me it's just like writing a love song. You write about how you think about the world and how you think yourself. Taking a stand at the same time is part of it for me. That was always the spice of rock 'n' roll - that's how I grew up. I wanted to make it clear that people who have lived with us forever are Germans. This applies to the Turkish community here as well as the Greek, Spanish and Italian communities. I just imagine in this day and age with the whole refugee issue and terrorism: what's it like when you've lived in the country for decades and everything was fine - and suddenly you're looked at strangely?

That's why you sing in Turkish on the "Tumult" album. How was that received by Turks?
I got a lot of positive reactions. Many people really liked it and saw it as a signal. Of course, there were also some who said: "Oh God. Why is he singing in Turkish now?"