ABSTRACT
The term ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ usually abbreviated ‘NDW’,1 refers to a short period of five years, which, nonetheless, had and has an enormous importance for and impact on popular music in Germany. It is no exaggeration to say that the NDW transformed German popular music. NDW was the impetus for a number of key developments: it established new regional and independent scenes, it spurred the widespread use of German lyrics in popular songs beyond schlager (see Mendívil in this book), and it picked up on and recycled other traditions from German popular culture, developed subversive strategies and anticipated aesthetics of postmodern culture (aesthetics and strategies as, e. g., fragmentation, bricolage, taking affirmative and sceptical positions).
