Anniversary A posthumous 90th birthday to Udo Jürgens from Zurich
The musician and entertainer Udo Jürgens (1934-2014) would have been 90 years old today. He shaped German popular music like no other for 50 years.
30.09.2024, 07:00
SDA
Many of Udo Jürgens' songs achieved cult status during his lifetime. "Aber bitte mit Sahne" became a popular hit; in "Ich war noch niemals in New York" he portrayed the bourgeoisie's bourgeois life; and in "Griechischer Wein" he sang about the loneliness of immigrants in a foreign country. His recipe for success: he took the everyday worries of the "little people" and dressed them up in appealing melodies.
Clever, often ironic lyrics
Despite the pleasantness of his melodies, his lyrics were mostly clever, often ironic. Themes such as the exploitation of the environment appeared early on in his songs.
In the last years of his career, he also used the "fabric softener" he had been accused of more sparingly and some songs sounded harder. He expressed blunt criticism of social and political grievances. "When you reach a certain age, you have to say what you think," he said at his last concert in Zurich's Hallenstadion in early December 2014.
Udo Jürgen's career began back in the 1950s. His breakthrough came with the song "Mercie Chérie", with which he won the Concours Eurovision de la Chanson (now the European Eurovision Song Contest) in 1966.
He has composed over 1000 songs and a symphonic poem. He released more than 50 albums. Jürgens sold a good hundred million records in total. He also composed for international stars such as Shirley Bassey and Frank Sinatra.
He was born Udo Jürgen Bockelmann on September 30, 1934 in Klagenfurt, Austria. He grew up in upper middle-class circumstances on a country estate. He taught himself to play the piano as a child. As a boy, he had to join the Hitler Youth. There he received a slap in the face, which impaired his hearing in one ear forever. Jürgens describes the story of his family and the beginnings of his career in the book "The Man with the Bassoon", which was also made into a film.
Udo Jürgens was also known as a womanizer. Jürgens was married to the former model Panja from 1964 to 1989. He had son John with her in 1964 and daughter Jenny in 1967. He also has two illegitimate daughters. In 1999, he married his long-term girlfriend Corinna Reinhold. They divorced in 2006.
Adopted home Zurich
At the end of the 1970s, Jürgens made Switzerland his adopted home. For many years, he had an apartment in Zurich's Bellevue district, then moved to Zumikon and, shortly before his death, to a villa in Meilen on Zurich's Gold Coast. He acquired Swiss citizenship in February 2007, but remained an Austrian.
On December 21, 20214, he collapsed during a walk in Gottlieben in Thurgau and died a few hours later of acute heart failure. His unexpected death shocked his family, colleagues such as manager Freddy Burger and orchestra director Pepe Lienhard, as well as the public.
