Helene Fischer – Atemlos durch die Nacht

Since 1992 the German Phonograph Academy has honored outstanding achievement by national and international artists with the Echo prize. The Echo prize sits with the Grammys and the Brit Awards as one of the most important musical prizes in the world. The awarding of the Echo is the highlight of the year for the German music industry. In 2015 a singer of “Schlager”, who became a household name in Germany with her hit “Atemlos durch die Nacht” (Breathless Through the Night) became queen of the Echos: Helene Fischer. This 30-year-old cleaned up taking home four of the popular prizes, for a total of twelve Echos for her career - more than any other German artist. For this reason, the 2015 Echos has gone down in history as the “Helene-Fischer-Festival” and the 5’2” small singer has definitely arrived in the German pop pantheon.

This is reason enough to get carried away, but Helene Fischer doesn’t call herself a star: “Being a star is claustrophobic for me. Being a star can also be connected to aloofness. That is not me, and I don’t want to become that way.” Indeed, Helene has worked hard on her career since her childhood. She was born in Siberia to ethnic German parents, moved to Germany when she was four and was raised in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz. Even as a little girl she dressed up and performed at family parties. At school she was the first to sign up for theater and musical extracurriculars. She wanted to be on stage. For three years she went to Frankfurt for training in musicals, learning singing and dancing. Then her mom sent the manager Uwe Kanthak a demo CD, and in 2005 she appeared on TV for the first time, on the show “Hochzeitsfest der Volksmusik” , together with Florian Silbereisen, her now significant other.

Helene Fischer has released six albums, the most recent being “Farbenspiel” (Play of Colors), which sat for three consecutive years at the peak of the German charts: in 2013 for three weeks, in 2014 for eleven and in 2015 for one week. The record went platinum ten times and is one of the most sold albums in Germany. On the side she moderates her own TV show, the “Helen Fischer Show,” acts, is the face of many brands, is a wax figurine at Madame Tussauds, and celebrated together with Germany’s national soccer team in Berlin after they won the World Cup in 2014, in front of 400,000 screaming fans.

Breathless through the night? It seems as if the perfectionist Helene Fischer speeds breathlessly through life. She says herself: “Of course, I want to be as perfect as possible in my career. Nevertheless I am not an art object, but a person.” A person that has made “Schlager” in German relevant again and who at the age of 30 has pretty much achieved everything someone in the German music scene can achieve. It remains to be seen how she will surprise us next - so restless and antsy as Helen Fischer appears to be, one can expect a great deal from her.