Pankow announces farewell tour and plans open-air performances next year

The Berlin band Pankow will be ringing in their farewell next year with a final tour of eastern Germany. An initial 15 concerts are planned for 2025, including in Cottbus, Dresden, Rostock, Potsdam and Berlin. The band announced on Tuesday that open-air gigs are also planned for the summer. The musicians around singer André Herzberg left it open whether friends or other guests will perform on the tour. "We want to celebrate the separation (...) and consciously be there with spirit at the end," said the late sixty-year-old about the farewell tour.

Guitarist Jürgen Ehle, singer André Herzberg, drummer Stefan Dohanetz and keyboardist Andreas Dziuk will bid farewell to their fans on the "Bis zuletzt" tour next year. In advance, the band will release a single next fall - as a final declaration of love to the "we-feeling", as "Pankow" revealed.

The announcement of the farewell tour took place at a memorable location, the Berlin Prater. Pankow announced their first farewell there back in 1998. At the time, they thought they would no longer be able to hold out economically, said guitarist Jürgen Ehle. The 90s had been difficult and the public's appetite for East German rock had waned. However, the adrenaline that was still present made them return to the stage in 2004.

This was followed by numerous concerts and another album in 2011 with "Neuer Tag in Pankow" (Buschfunk). After 44 years, however, it really was time to call it a day. "If you want to create something new, you need continuity," said Ehle. This no longer exists.

The band was founded in 1981 in the GDR. They managed to become one of the most influential in the East and still be different. With their authentic, German-language rock, the musicians caused quite a stir in the East German cultural scene in the early 1980s and made it difficult for the GDR state to deal with them. "Provoking was not difficult for us," reported Ehle. All they had to do was put singer Herzberg on stage. "Pankow" offered songs with attitude and counter-proposals to the ideology of the "communist superhero" and struck a chord with thousands.