German band the Scorpions who topped the charts in 78 countries with their song "Wind of Change", remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Before the Wall's fall, East German bands such as Die Prinzen were making political statements with their music.

VIENNA, AUSTRIA (JUNE 25, 2004) SONY - "Wind of change" became for many the soundtrack to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The German rock band Scorpions wrote the song in 1989 during a visit to Moscow. The chart-topping tune is based on the band's impressions of a performance at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in what was then the capital of the Soviet Union in August 1989.
"It was like the world was changing in front of our eyes and so coming back home in September '89, it was so deep emotions, you know, and what we saw between '88 in Leningrad and '89 in Moscow, was a strong feeling of hope that the world would change for the better," Scorpions singer Klaus Meine told Reuters Television.

The group admits it didn't imagine the Berlin Wall would fall only months later, but they had the feeling that change was in the air at the Moscow Music Peace Festival, and that the Cold War would soon come to an end.

The Scorpions were away on tour when the Berlin Wall fell, remembers the group's guitarist Rudolf Schenker:

"I remember I was sitting with my back to the bar and the bar was a TV, and Klaus was sitting exactly opposite. We were talking and had a good time and in a moment Klaus calls and says "hey Rudolf, look it's the Wall" and I looked around and said yes it was. You could see the people standing on the Wall. We couldn't believe it," he said.

They say they regret not being in Berlin that November evening.

In the period following the fall of the Wall, the end of the division of Europe and eventually the reunification of Germany, "Wind of Change" kept growing in popularity. The song made it into the charts in 78 countries and over 14 million copies were sold globally.

Meine says they think it is important to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain.

"I think history is still so young that later in the years to come, for the generations to come, they will go back in time and this was a very, very special moment in German history, in world history, you know, because it was peaceful and no bullet was fired and it was something to set up the future and to set up a united Germany," he said.

Gerd Dietrich, professor of history at Berlin's Humboldt University, says that even on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, western culture dominated in the 1980s.

"That was logically part of the preparation which belonged to this longing to change this country and to open the borders," he said..

"Die Prinzen" was an East German band which was popular in their home country at the time. The band, whose name means "The Princes" began their career under another name in East Germany in 1987. After the fall of the Wall, they also enjoyed strong success.

In 1991 they became "Die Prinzen" and became well known after they released their song "Klaus liebt Gabi" (Klaus loves Gabi).

The band's singer Sebastian Krumbiegel says he wasn't a revolutionary, but he did begin to think politically during the period before the fall of the Wall.

"At the time we wrote political lyrics, we sang songs that we sometimes had to change daily or weekly in the fast-moving time afterwards. When one head of state took over from another one and incredible numbers of things happened in a very short amount of time," Krumbiegel said.

Some of Die Prinzen's lyrics were also explicitly political, Krumbiegel says.

"We sang about Gorbachev, we sang [speaks Russian] "Tell us, what kind of a new game are you playing here, teach us the rules." And of course everyone in the East knew that we were talking about Gorbachev, about perestroika and glasnost," he said.

After the Wall came down, Krumbiegel says he was still aware of looking different, because he was an Eastener.

"Of course you noticed the typical hairdos, the typical clothes, the typical shopping bags. It was also funny to see it and to see yourself involved in it and to say now put some different clothes on. But now in hindsight I have to say that you are how you are and you shouldn't be embarrassed," he said.

Alongside the different clothes he and other East Germans were able to buy in reunited Germany, Krumbiegel says it was also exciting to be able to play concerts in large arenas right across Germany.