Andreas Rebers: Rumpelkinder - Schmuddelstilzchen

On Christmas Eve 1969, there was a square package wrapped in gift wrap under our Christmas tree that nobody seemed interested in. All the other gifts had already been unwrapped, and since no one in our family objected when I opened it, I considered the unwrapped double LP to be a gift for me.

Portrait: Franz Josef Degenhardt

I was 11 years old at the time and was considered “nervous.” Today, people would say I had “behavioral issues.” And so I wasn’t allowed to play the records in our record chest until after Christmas. But I consoled myself with the drawings on the cover, which had been drawn by a certain Gertrude Degenhardt. For hours I stared at the grotesque faces and imagined what they would sing to me.

Then Mom let me put on the LPs (it was a double LP). And that’s what I did. Nonstop. Instead of Peter Alexander, Will Glahé, or Willy Schneider, the voice of “Väterchen Franz” now echoed through the “Little Caucasus,” as I called the home of my childhood. Within a week, I knew every chanson by heart, and I sang the song about the wine drinker and the wolves in May.

That was fifty years ago, and it’s time to revisit that era. Before it’s too late.

Rumpelkinder - Schmuddelstilzchen
Rebers sings Degenhardt.
and is accompanied by guitarists Samuel Halscheidt and André Matov

Doors open around 6:30 p.m.

www.pantheon.de