Vera Schneidenbach Meine Welt ist die Musik (CD)

“My world is music,” laughs Vera Schneidenbach when asked about the most important thing in her life. Indeed, the singer, who was one of the most important musical exports in the former GDR, has unconditionally dedicated her life to the ‘universal language of music’.

Vera Olga Iris Schneidenbach von Jascheroff, as she is actually called, is the descendant of a romance at the court of the Tsar of St. Petersburg between the Russian Grand Duke Nikolai von Jascheroff and the daughter of the Saxon ambassador Schneidenbach. She was born under the star sign of Leo on August 22 in the seaside resort of Warnemünde. Very blonde and very blue-eyed, she grew up on the Baltic Sea beach as the second youngest of four siblings. Her brothers Peter, Alexander and Nikolaus did not envy her for developing artistic talents in early childhood: while Vera took ballet, piano and singing lessons, the boys preferred to romp around outside. Vera Schneidenbach was able to celebrate her first successes as a child in small roles at the Rostock Theater.

After school, Vera completed an apprenticeship as a technical draftsman. Later, she studied at the University of Applied Sciences for Aircraft Construction in Dresden. Even at that time, she had her first successes as a singer with the Heinz Keller Band in Dresden and Leipzig. The fact that she still has time for another hobby besides her training and her favorite hobby of music is the result of very good time management; Vera Schneidenbach is a passionate glider pilot over the Dresden Elbe meadows.

She quits her job as a technician in Leipzig when the Heinz Keller band is desperately looking for a new singer after the one they had with them on tour in Budapest failed to meet expectations. Before Vera can say “Yes, but I can't just leave like this,” she's already on a plane to the Hungarian capital.

She has no idea that this flight will turn into a three-year tour. After Budapest, the program includes Prague, Bucharest, Mamaia, Sofia and Varna. She is also offered a small film role in Bucharest: In the film 'The Sixth Round', she plays a bar singer who is also the lover of the Nazi spy chief, and sings the Zarah Leander hit 'I Know a Miracle Will Happen' for the cinema audience.

After that, she begins studying entertainment art in Berlin and finishes it in 1967 with top marks. She was then accepted into the GDR television ensemble, and her career as a soloist began.

Vera Schneidenbach had a completely different career in the 1960s: the blue-eyed blonde graced the covers of various magazines several times. The pin-up photos in particular were so popular with the soldiers of the National People's Army that they decorated the inside walls of their lockers with them. “For us, her photos were what Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell were for the Americans,” recalls entertainer and presenter Bernd Walter (Ein Kessel Buntes, NDR radio show ‘Hitskopf’). He estimates that Vera photos have been sold 100,000 times, sometimes even under the counter due to popular demand.

As a singer, Vera Schneidenbach developed into the 'number one export of the GDR'. Her tours took her to a total of 31 countries around the world, including 18 trips to the former Soviet Union between 1970 and 1988. Vera Schneidenbach was just 30 years old when she first undertook the USSR venture, which was to bring her huge success. The audiences there are thrilled: together with the Reinhard Stockmann Band from Dresden, she sings in concert halls in front of up to 8,000 people.

In 1970, she also travels to Vietnam. With her concerts, she encourages the soldiers just as much as American stars like Marilyn Monroe do on the other side of the front line. That same year, she also performs in China.

After another tour of the USSR, the musical blonde is bubbling over with enthusiasm: “I am full to bursting with unforgettable memories. Three months in the USSR, 150,000 spectators and listeners in Moscow alone. We were a total of 39 soloists and groups. Many changed, I stayed the full three months. I'm thrilled.”

Vera Schneidenbach is also proud to present her first record to her friends, an EP released only in the USSR with four German songs. A long-playing record released later in the USSR sells 12 million copies.

She performs at the National Theater in Havana, the capital of Cuba, for the first time in 1972. Three more tours will follow by 1985. Despite rumors, head of state Fidel Castro was not among her audiences in Cuba. She would meet him only later, at the Berlin prison Niederschönhausen, where she engaged in a game of bowling with the Cuban ruler just for fun – and won.

Of course, Vera Schneidenbach can also be seen on GDR television and heard on the radio from time to time. She appears in over 100 TV productions such as 'Alte Liebe rostet nicht', 'Da liegt Musike drin', 'Klock 8 achtern Strom' or 'Mit Lutz und Liebe'.

In 1976, guest performances took the singer to the Orient for the first time. She performed in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Kuwait and Egypt. In 1980, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola and the Congo were on her tour schedule.

In 1986 and 1987, she performed in Mongolia. In 1987, she won 3rd prize at the Festival of Friendship in the country's capital, Ulan Bator, which was a meeting place for pop singers from Eastern Bloc countries for 15 years.

In 1991, Vera had just returned from a professional cruise around the Orient when she received another invitation to Mongolia from the German Artists' Agency and the Foreign Office. Within two days, she had learned a popular song of the host country in the local language, dedicated to the mothers of this world. The blonde singer thrilled the jury and the audience with it and received the 2nd prize. She thrilled audiences in Mongolia with a total of 15 concerts, both in the country's capital and in Dacham and Eldemet.

Vera has covered around 30,000 nautical miles and 1 million kilometers by plane and car so far. The singer, who has a three-octave range and an unmistakable penchant for concert hits and light music, does not want to stand still and says, “I still have a lot planned, I'm bursting with energy and want to pass on to my listeners and fans what I have experienced myself: love and human affection.”

It is almost a miracle that with so much professional stress, Vera Schneidenbach still found time to find the man of her dreams. After all, it took until 1979 before sparks flew at a Berlin gas station: a respectable gentleman with a beard offered to check the air pressure in her car. He thanked her by inviting her for coffee the next day, and three months later the blonde singer said “I do” to traffic planner Dr. Axel Rackow.

It is no longer clear why the state-owned record company Amiga did not release Vera Schneidenbach's first LP until 1987. The album contains radio recordings from the years 1975 to 1984 that offer an (almost) representative cross-section of the singer's repertoire: from international musical melodies to evergreens and folklore to pop. Concert arrangements characterize all productions in which Vera Schneidenbach is accompanied by large orchestras. Cole Porter's “All Paris Dreams of Love”, Ernesto Lecuona's “The Breeze And I” or the Theo Mackeben evergreen “Bei Dir war es immer so schön” (With you it was always so beautiful), Vera sings the songs so convincingly as if they were written especially for her.

The Christian Bruhn hit Meine Welt ist die Musik, Henry Mancini's world hit Moon River or the Franz Grothe composition Sing mit mir also sound convincing in the singer's interpretation. For the recordings of the evergreens Träume kann man nicht verbieten and Resignation, Vera Schneidenbach sought out a very well-known duet partner in the former GDR in the 60s and 70s: On July 13, 1978, Ingo Graf was in the studio with her.

Ingo Graf, a former math teacher, won gold twice at the 'Junge Talente' finale in 1963 and took part in the show 'Herzklopfen kostenlos' five times before switching to the professional hit business. He had his first success with the song “Es ist noch kein Meister vom Himmel gefallen”. In 1966, he took part in the first song festival in Moscow, and a year later he won in Budapest with the song “Piroschka”.

But her repertoire also includes songs by GDR composers, such as Das ist meine Welt or Mann nach Mass from the GDR musical 'Letzter Ausweg Heirat', the Gerd Natschinski composition Lächeln und schön sein from the DEFA film 'Der Mann, der nach der Oma kam'. Trag die Sonne in jeden Haus and Eine richtige Seemannsfrau, written by Jürgen Degenhardt and featured in the 1984 DEFA film Hiev up, are tracks that truly reflect the fun Vera Schneidenbach had while recording them. The song Er war Student, which was first released in the USSR, was penned by top GDR lyricist Dieter Schneider. Dieter Scheider also penned the lyrics to the singer's personal favorite: Zugvögel (Migrating Birds). “The fact that I have a very special relationship with the sea is because I was born by the sea,” laughs Vera Schneidenbach. The sea is like infinity, Schön wie ein Traum (Beautiful as a Dream) or Der Wind vom Meer (The Wind from the Sea), there is usually a touch of romance in her songs. The Cuban-born Quiereme mucho and an international medley, in which Vera sings in Malay, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French and English, are a small sample of her large repertoire...

HORST-DIETER CZEMBOR

Schwerte, December 1997