Wolfgang Niedecken

Wolfgang Niedecken (2012)

Wolfgang Niedecken (born March 30, 1951 in Cologne ) is a German musician , painter and author . In 1976 he founded the Kölschrock band BAP . To this day he is the singer , lyricist , composer and front man of the group and the only remaining founding member. He also recorded four solo albums as a soloist . Niedecken is one of the main protagonists who use the Cologne dialect beyond regional borders in German rock music have established.

Another focus of his artistic activity has been painting since the early 1970s . He studied painting and art history and had numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. Niedecken is known for his social and political commitment, for which he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 2013 .

life and work

Wolfgang Niedecken with BAP (1980)

Wolfgang Niedecken is the son of the winemaker and merchant Josef Niedecken (1904–1980), who moved from Unkel to Cologne at the end of the 1930s. His second marriage to his Cologne wife Hubertine (Tinny) is Platz in the Severinsviertel directly on Severinstorburg at Severinstraße 1 Grocery store. He described his father, who was a follower in the NSDAP , as "arch Catholic". Niedecken has a half-brother who is 20 years older than his father's first marriage. Wolfgang Niedecken has been married for the second time since 1994 and has two sons from his first marriage (1983–1992) with his wife Carmen; from his marriage to his wife Tina two daughters.

From April 1962 to 1970 he attended the seminary St. Albert, a boarding school of the Pallottine in Rheinbach , where he lived. There he was sexually abused. He attended the Rheinbach municipal high school , played in the school band The Convikts from 1966 and then sang with The Troop, which he left in 1969. After that he was a singer with Goin 'Sad until 1971, a group that Klaus, the violinist, invited to a session in the Tabernakel tea room . It was Klaus, the violinist, who prompted him to get involved in the demonstrations for Stollwerck .

Niedecken's first record was made in 1969 with this band on the EP Hans Daniels presents Bonner Beat Bands . The first track, Satin Rose , was written by Niedecken and recorded in 1969 in the Cornet recording studios in Cologne, owned by Heinz Gietz . The EP with a print run of 500 and four tracks contained progressive rock with funk elements , but was only intended for promotional purposes and therefore never went on sale. Without a high school diploma, he studied painting from 1970 at the Cologne Werkschulen of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and graduated in 1974 with an exam and a study visit to New York City with Howard Kanovitz and Larry Rivers . Niedecken is still an active visual artist today, who designed most of the BAP record covers and also presents his own exhibitions.

In the summer of 1974 he wrote his first Cologne lyrics with the title Nobody Can Help You . From 1976 rehearsals began with a nameless leisure combo, which appeared for the first time in July 1977 under its current name BAP in the Mariensaal in Cologne-Nippes . According to Niedecken's account, the name BAP goes back to his stories about his father (kölsch: Bapp = Pappa ), with which he amused the other band members. First appearances with the band followed in 1978, but he also toured as a soloist with guitar and harmonica. This earned him the nickname “Cologne Dylan ”, not least because of the great affinity that Niedecken had for Bob Dylan, who had a decisive influence on his development as a songwriter . Niedecken's appearance on April 21, 1979 in the town hall of Cologne-Mülheim , where he played the pre-program for the Butterflies , brought an important response .

When the LP Wolfgang Niedecken's BAP rocks other kölsche Leeder was made in October 1979 in the Cologne studio at the cathedral, the breakthrough came in the same year with BAP. Niedecken became the band's most important songwriter and wrote Cologne lyrics for Bob Dylan's titles.

Wolfgang Niedecken (2009)

In 1984 he met Heinrich Böll in the WDR broadcast Cologne memories from 40 years , which resulted in a friendship. Together with Trude Herr and Tommy Engel , he sang the song Never one goes so well in 1987 . In March 1987 he brought out his first solo album under the title Schlagzeiten , on which musician friends accompany him. Between March and April 1989, Niedecken was a guest at a live dialect session of the Bläck Fööss group in the Millowitsch Theater in Cologne . The concert recording was published on the double CD Bläck Fööss & Fründe .

In 1992 he worked as a lyricist, composer, guitarist and producer on Jürgen Zeltinger's solo record (Solo-Plaat) . In the same year he wrote the Cologne text for the anti-racism hymn Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander , which made it into the German charts after publication in February 1992 . In February 1995 another solo album was released under the title Leopardefell , which contains Dylan songs sung in Kölsch. His third solo production, Niedecken Köln , which he recorded together with the WDR big band , followed in 2004.

To mark Niedecken's 60th birthday, which he celebrated on March 30, 2011 with around 500 guests on a ship on the Rhine, WDR broadcast the Niedecken-Nacht as well as a portrait from the series The Best in the West . The start of a BAP tour was planned for November 2011. Due to a stroke in Niedecken on November 2, 2011, the start of the tour was postponed to the beginning of May 2012. The award of the Federal Order of Merit 1st class for his social and political commitment was made up for in February 2013 in Berlin. Niedecken wrote about dealing with the disease in his 2013 book Addition - The Story of a Return . In the same year his fourth solo album Zosamme old was released , which was recorded in December 2012 with American musicians in Woodstock . The album was produced by Julian Dawson . The tracks on the CD are a compilation of songs he wrote for his wife over the past two and a half decades. He also worked on the German version of the charity song Do They Know It's Christmas by Band Aid 30 Germany , which celebrated its world premiere in November 2014. 2016 he participated in the Vox telecast Sing my song - the exchange concert part.

Wolfgang Niedecken with his wife Tina at the Radio Regenbogen Award 2017 in the Europapark in Rust

Since June 2017, he has been on the first Tuesday of the month in the WDR 4 Songpoeten series on WDR 4 with a one-hour program, primarily with the music that has shaped him, i.e. by Bob Dylan, Neil Young , Leonard Cohen or Bruce Springsteen . In 2019 he appeared at Lieder auf Banz with Werner Schmidbauer and Pippo Pollina .

Political and social engagement

Niedecken repeatedly shows political and social commitment. In 1992 he was one of the initiators of the Cologne concert, Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander against racism and xenophobia. In 1998 he received the Federal Cross of Merit for his leading role in this anti-racism campaign .

Since 2004, Niedecken has been the special ambassador for the aid campaign Together for Africa . The song Noh Gulu , which can be heard on the BAP album Radio Pandora , also comes from this activity . Together with the children's aid organization World Vision and his friend, the entrepreneur Manfred Hell , he founded the aid program Rebound , which supports former child soldiers in Uganda . Therefore, in 2005, Niedecken took over the patronage of the exhibition Children of War with photographs by the Cologne photojournalist Michael Bause and became an ambassador for World Vision Germany . For this honorary commitment, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in February 2013.

Niedecken is a member of the Cologne Citizens Committee, Alternative Honorary Citizenship , which awards alternative Cologne Honorary Citizenship in Cologne , as well as the Board of Trustees of the DFL Foundation (formerly the Bundesliga Foundation). Among other things, he can be heard as an off-speaker in a TV commercial for the Foundation for the Integration Success campaign . In addition, he is a member of the board of trustees of the Cologne Art Academy for Media , where his sons study.

With a sponsorship, Niedecken has been supporting the SchokoFair project of the Montessori secondary school in Düsseldorf since 2012 , which has been campaigning against the exploitation of children in chocolate production since mid-2010. In autumn 2013, Niedecken was one of the first to sign the appeal against prostitution initiated by Alice Schwarzer in the magazine Emma , which she publishes .

Abuse in church and boarding school

In 1990 he published his autobiography, in which he also reported on his own experiences and abuse in the boarding school. He repeated these stories, among other things. also in the talk show Maischberger on ARD in September 2018 and said specifically that he was not only beaten by a Catholic father, but also sexually abused.

Discography

Albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)			Remarks
		DE	AT	CH
1987	Beat times	DE5 (20 weeks) DE	AT28 (4 weeks) AT	CH14 (4 weeks) CH
1995	Leopard fur	DE12 (15 weeks) DE	-	CH48 (2 weeks) CH
2004	Niedecken Cologne	DE36 (2 weeks) DE	-	-	with WDR Big Band Cologne
2013	Zosamme old	DE4 (6 weeks) DE	AT57 (1 week) AT	CH36 (1 week) CH
2017	Reinrassije Stroosseköter - the family album	DE2 (6 weeks) DE	-	CH67 (1 week) CH
2020	Everything flows	DE2 (12 weeks) DE	AT26 (1 week) AT	CH9 (3 weeks) CH

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)	Remarks
		DE
1987	Maat et joot musical beats	DE47 (8 weeks) DE

Guest Posts

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)	Remarks
		DE
2003	It's So Easy C'mon	DE92 (1 week) DE	Sheryl Crow feat. Wolfgang Niedecken

Awards

Niedecken with the 1 Live Krone 2013

• 1995: Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
• 1996: Frankfurt Music Prize
• 1998: Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2007: Steiger Award
• 2008: The Peace Stream Prize of the Rhein-Kreis Neuss
• 2011: Radio Regenbogen Award in the Charity category
• 2012: ECHO for life's work
• 2013: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2013: Special prize of the 1 Live Krone of the WDR
• 2015: German Music Author Award for Text Pop / Rock (laudator Peter Brings )
• 2015: Great Culture Prize from the Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland
• 2016: Resistance Prize of the "Friends of the Robber Cave 2012"
• 2017: Paul-Lincke-Ring
• 2017: International Beethoven Prize for Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, Poverty Reduction and Inclusion

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1978: Kölnischer Kunstverein: Pictures to order (with Manfred "Schmal" Boecker) in the group show "Field Research"
• 1994: Cologne City Museum, Morsbroich Castle in Leverkusen: Pissjääl & Kackbrung
• 2004: Traces retrospective of his work as a visual artist; Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn.

Book publications

• with Matthias Immel and Patrick van Odijk: Information. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-462-02072-2 .
• Pissjääl & Kackbrung. How to deal with material and color. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-882-43267-5 .
• with Teddy Hoersch: Verdamp Lang Her - The stories behind the BAP songs ; Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-462-02805-7 .
• with Oliver Kobold: For a moment . Autobiography. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-455-30699-6 .
• Autobiography, with Oliver Kobold: encore. The story of a return . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-455-50302-9 .
• Wolfgang Niedecken on Bob Dylan. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2021, ISBN 978-3-462-00120-4 (KiWi Music Library Volume 11).

See also

• List of songs by Wolfgang Niedecken and BAP

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Niedecken  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Wolfgang Niedecken in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Wolfgang Niedecken in the catalog of the German National Library
• Chronological listing of Niedecken's work as a painter and performing artist (including his exhibitions) on bap-fan.de

swell

1. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken: For a moment: autobiography . Hoffmann and Campe, 2013, ISBN 978-3-455-85119-9 ( google.de [accessed on March 29, 2020]).
2. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken with Oliver Kobold: Für 'ne Moment , S. 4; Hoffmann and Campe 2011, ISBN 978-3-455-50177-3
3. ↑ You never let anything come of the Herrjott , Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, September 21, 2018, p. 32.
4. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken, Matthias Immel and Patrick van Odijk: Information. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3462020722 , pp. 18-20.
5. ↑ n-tv NEWS: Wolfgang Niedecken drinks to the good guys. Retrieved September 20, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken, Matthias Immel and Patrick van Odijk: Information. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3462020722 , p. 34.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken, foreword to Klaus the violinist, We all know the paradise Geiskirch-Verlag, Saarbrücken, 3rd edition 2009, ISBN 978-3-938889-75-6 .
8. ↑ You never let anything come of the Herrjott , Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin , September 21, 2018, p. 32.
9. ↑ The Niedecken-Nacht on the WDR website
10. ↑ The best in the west: Wolfgang Niedecken on the WDR website
11. ↑ Yes, it was a stroke In: BILD Online from November 27, 2011
12. ↑ BAP singer seriously ill In: Spiegel Online from November 3, 2011
13. ↑ After Niedecken's illness - BAP back on stage from May 3rd ; Express.de, November 24, 2011
14. ↑ ^{a b} Award of the Order of Merit to Wolfgang Niedecken ; bundespraesident.de of February 21, 2013. With speech by the Federal President.
15. ↑ Booklet for the CD
16. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken moderates at WDR 4
17. ↑ If we don't help, this misery will never end. Archived from the original on September 4, 2010 ; Retrieved July 9, 2010 . 
18. ↑ Hedwig Neven DuMont becomes alternative honorary citizen ; express.de, July 19, 2011.
19. ↑ Bundesliga Foundation brochure (pdf; 6.8 MB) Bundesliga Foundation. P. 48. Archived from the original on May 18, 2013. Retrieved December 11, 2011.
20. ↑ Board of Trustees of the KHM ( Memento from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
21. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken - "My wife only says: man, man, man!" ( Memento from February 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); monstersandcritics.de from March 25, 2011.
22. ↑ See slideshow on start page with video integration
23. ↑ BAP front man Niedecken confirms abuse . In: Die Welt online from April 14, 2010
24. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken discusses abuse in the church . In. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger online from August 26, 2018
25. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken was abused as a child: Music helped him through experience. Source: Focus magazine September 9, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2020
26. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: DE AT CH
27. ↑ Echo for life's work - Wolfgang Niedecken thanks his Guardian Angel , article in the online edition of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of March 23, 2012 (accessed on November 11, 2012).
28. ↑ Niedecken receives the SWR Landesschau resistance prize on the youtube page
29. ↑ Wolfgang Niedecken receives the Paul-Lincke-Ring 2017 from the city of Goslar. City of Goslar, January 13, 2017, accessed January 20, 2017 .