Various Burg Waldeck (10-CD Deluxe Box Set)

10-CD in large-format slipcase with 240-page book, 281 single titles. Playing time approx. 780 minutes. 

CD-documentary with live recordings of the Waldeck Festivals at Waldeck Castle from 1964 to 1969, almost 15 hours of previously largely unreleased music by more than 80 national and international interpreters - from Franz Josef Degenhardt to Reinhard Mey, from Odetta to Phil Ochs, from Walter Moßmann to Hannes Wader, from Lin Jaldati to Perry Friedman, from Peter Rohland to Hein & Oss Kröher, from Hedy West to Guy Carawan, from Limbus to Floh de Cologne, from Christof Stählin to Schobert & Black, from Colin Wilkie & Shirley Hart to Fausto Amodei, from Dieter Süverkrüp to Rolf Schwendter. 

Bonus tracks are interview excerpts and an excerpt from the legendary discussion at the 1968 festival as the slogan'Put the guitars in the corner and discusses' festival audience how artists split and expressed the influence of the student movement on the festival. 

The 240-page accompanying book in German language contains numerous photos, a text on the history of Eckard Holler's festivals, reminiscences and remarks of some of the organizers and many musicians of the time. 

The'International Essen Song Days 1968' presented the Mothers Of Invention and the Fugs alongside Walter Mossmann, Dieter Süverkrup, Hein & Oss among others; there were further festivals in Tübingen, Freiburg, Ingelheim, Mainz and elsewhere - but no festival in the old Federal Republic has ever had such an effect as six events above a small castle ruin near the Moselle. Between 1964 and 1969, not only old German democratic song traditions were torn out of their shadowy existence at Burg Waldeck in the Hunsrück. The festivals also became the cradle of a new German-language political song.

(Diethart Kerbs, co-organizer of the Waldeck-Festivals, quoted from'FM folk-michel', issue 3/1989)

Waldeck. With this keyword nostalgic feelings awaken among German folk music fans and songwriters. Many younger people who have not experienced the events of the eventful 1960s are at a loss. Waldeck? I've heard it, but what was that? Well, the Waldeck festivals in the Hunsrück, above a small castle ruin near the Moselle, were, according to the'Folklexikon', "probably the most important dates in the German folk movement". Today, the memories of the six festivals between 1964 and 1969 are as varied as the interpretations of what Waldeck was, what meaning it had and has had.

A few facts are indisputable: The festivals at Burg Waldeck were the first German open-air festivals; they were an examination of the socio-cultural stale of the Adenauer Restoration. They opposed the pop singers and Healing World prophets with other German lyrics: "All the kitsch of'red roses, red lips, red wine', and this whole era that hung out of our mouths - we knew that would end". 

(Hein & Oss Kroeher) 

The Waldeck festivals tore the old German democratic song traditions out of their shadowy existence. And the interpreters of a new German song reaped an unparalleled echo in German music history. "For a small moment the German-language political song had become a cultural phenomenon of considerable broad impact", wrote Holger Böning on the 40th anniversary of the first Waldeck Festival in June 2004 in'Friday'. The songs of the first three festivals up to 1966 already contained "a quiet, often still covert criticism of society - the first seismographic harbingers of 1968". 

 That year, Phil Ochs, a prominent guest from the USA, stated on the Waldeck that the revolution was catching up with the revolution of the songwriters. Groups such as Floh de Cologne propagated the utopia of a freer, self-determined life developed in the extra-parliamentary movement. A development that culminated in 1969 at the last Waldeck Festival: While song and folklore were replaced by rock music sounds, revolutionary political debates came to the fore and put the end under a short but lasting festival history. "The Waldeck was an important catalyst [...], a focal point at which controversy was repeatedly raised over current trends in society and their consequences for a demanding culture. It demonstrated the power of social behaviours such as tolerance, self-activity and experimental creativity, which should prove to be promising for the future". 

(Detlef Siegfried, in'Time Is On My Side - Consumption and Politics in West German Youth Culture in the 1960s', 2006)