Enlarge image

Fritz Puppel (1944 - 2024)

Photo: Andreas Weihs / IMAGO

City is considered one of the most important rock groups in the GDR.

Fritz Puppel founded it in East Berlin in 1972.

It has now been announced that the guitarist died unexpectedly on February 10th at the age of 79.

City singer Toni Krahl announced this on Thursday.

“We are at a loss for words and are stunned because we are losing our friend and comrade-in-arms for over five decades,” Krahl told the dpa news agency.

"And in general, the German music world is missing another creative mind who has enriched all of our lives with his art and his songs and touched millions of people."

City not only had many fans in the GDR, but also in non-socialist countries - for example through the hit “Am Fenster”.

A few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Berliners' success continued.

There have been different line-ups in the band's history, but Puppel has always been there.

The colleague led the band through ups and downs for 50 years, until the farewell concert on December 30, 2022, said Krahl.

And: "He always put his own personality, free of musical vanities, on the back burner and was inspired by the idea of ​​creating City as a band."

As a teenager, Puppel completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker, but in 1963 he founded his first band with the later Puhdys singer Dieter Birr: the Lunics.

When both were drafted into the army a little later, they had to break up the band.

On February 3, 1972, the City Band played one of their first concerts in a club in Berlin-Köpenick in front of around 200 listeners.

In the repertoire: songs by Santana, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.

The musicians later composed their own songs – in German.

Whether “The King of Prenzlauer Berg”, “Wand to Wall” or “Glastraum”: many texts were on the edge of what was permitted in the GDR.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, their career took a turn, but after a few years the fans returned, the band filled large halls again, and a new album was released almost every year.

After the death of drummer Klaus Selmke in 2020, the remaining four band members decided to disband City at the end of 2022.

cbu/dpa